If you’re fascinated by the idea of humans traveling through space and curious about how that all works, you’ve come to the right place.
“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center from Houston, Texas, home for NASA’s astronauts and Mission Control Center. Listen to the brightest minds of America’s space agency – astronauts, engineers, scientists and program leaders – discuss exciting topics in engineering, science and technology, sharing their personal stories and expertise on every aspect of human spaceflight. Learn more about how the work being done will help send humans forward to the Moon and on to Mars in the Artemis program.
For Episode 107 space philosopher and author Frank White discusses the impact of looking down at the Earth from above, and how it can create a shift in the way astronauts view and think about our planet and life itself. This episode was recorded on June 11, 2019.
Transcript
Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center. Episode 107, “The Overview Effect.” I’m Gary Jordan and I’ll be your host today. If you’re new to the show, we bring in the experts to talk about all the cool parts about human space flight. But if you’re a regular listener of the show, you probably have a strong interest in human space flight. Maybe you’ve dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Maybe you’re like me, and you’ve actually had dreams of floating in space. But it can be hard to imagine looking down at the whole Earth from space. Even astronauts and cosmonauts, the only humans who can fully appreciate the views, sometimes have difficulty communicating the impact that it can have on you. Space philosopher and author Frank White coined the term the overview effect in a book of the same name, published in 1987. The overview effect can create powerful shifts in the way you think about Earth and life. The words beautiful and fragile are often used by astronauts describing the experience. So today we sit down with Mr. White to talk about this phenomenon, and about his interviews with the dozens of astronauts that helped him understand and communicate this overview effect. Enjoy.
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Host: Frank, thank you so much for joining me today. Let’s talk about this really cool thing, the overview effect.
Frank White: My pleasure. Glad to be here.
Host: All right, let’s start a little bit with you. Because the overview effect is this, I think, I think it’s a general concept. But looking at your background, you have a background in space philosophy. And I have a lot of questions there. But let’s go back to what interested you in all of this in the first place. You know, when did, when did space started interesting you?
Frank White: Well, I grew up in Mississippi. And I grew up with my first cousin. Our dads were over in World War Two, in the Pacific. And my cousin Ann says that I started talking about leaving planet Earth when I was a little kid. I mean, really little, maybe four years old. And she claims that I said to her, you know, we’re going to have to leave planet Earth and go live on other planets someday. Now, I can’t say I recall that. But what I really remember as the kind of turning point was, my mother gave me a book on astronomy. And by that time, I was 10 years old. And it was a small book called Stars. And it just blew my mind. Oh, my goodness. There’s a universe out there. I can’t wait to learn more. And so that started it, and it really has never ended. I’ve always been fascinated by space exploration, broadly, broadly considered. I mean, astronomy is a form of exploring space, after all. So I also had the good fortune of being a teenager at the time of Sputnik and the early so-called space race. Very exciting for a young person. And at that point, I thought maybe I should be a rocket scientist. And so I wrote to Werner Von Braun. How do I become a rocket scientist? And he said, you have to study math, science, chemistry, physics. Those weren’t my strong points.
Host: He wrote back, though?
Frank White: Yeah.
Host: That’s fantastic.
Frank White: And he sent me pictures. Of course, he was in Alabama. He was in Huntsville, I was in Mississippi.
Host: Sure, of course.
Frank White: So I thought, maybe. I don’t know. I mean, you know, I was actually trying to launch rockets from my front yard, you know? Everyone reacted to Sputnik and the early rocket activities that way. We were trying to build rockets. And those weren’t very successful. But then it turned to, well, maybe I could be an astronaut. Maybe that’s how to express this interest. So what happened was, I decided to go to the Air Force academy. And so I applied and did everything you were supposed to do to compete. And I thought okay, that’s the way to become an astronaut. My guidance counselor intervened and said, you really should apply to Harvard. Because her son had just graduated from Harvard. Bear in mind, this is a little tiny town in Mississippi, and we didn’t think about going to Harvard. You know, too many Yankees, after all. And very expensive. So I applied just to respond, and then something really unexpected happened. I got into Harvard. And I got scholarships, and money was no longer a problem. And I still thought, well, I really, I don’t know. I want to go to the Air Force academy. But I had dinner with her son, and he just convinced me that’s the place to go.
Host: What did he say?
Frank White: He basically told me that it was a place where the life of the mind was honored, that thinking about big questions was okay. And I really thought an environment like that was what I would like to be in. And I’d never been in a place like that, really, where scholarship was honored in such a way. And then, guess what happened next. I heard from the Air Force academy, and they said, you’re in. And now I had a terrible choice to make. Here’s my ticket to space. And here’s this incredible other op opportunity. And to make a long story short, I chose Harvard. And reason was really because the academy curriculum was very heavy on math, science. All those things that Mr. Von Braun talked about. Those, I mean, I passed those courses. But those were not my strengths. My strength was social science, history, philosophy. Things like that. And so I went to Harvard. And then that raised the dilemma, how do I remain interested in my space activities? And that was a long, different period. And I went to Oxford for three years to do graduate work. And now it got even worse, because that was the Apollo era. I watched Apollo 11 from England. I watched Apollo 8 from England. And it, it got me back into how do I get into the space field?
Host: Yeah.
Frank White: Finally I discovered Gerard K. O’Neill. And the Space Studies Institute, which, O’Neill was the pioneer in thinking about settlements in what we would call free space, between the Earth and the moon. Not building on a planet, but building what have come to be known as O’Neill cylinders. And what he envisioned was a human settlement. Doctors, lawyers, artists, poets. It was really beginning to move beyond science and engineering and math and the technical side. And that was the place for me. So I got involved with the Space Studies Institute. And that was my way in. And ultimately it was what led to the overview effect.
Host: Hmm. So yet, tell me more about this merging. Because you said the maths and sciences weren’t your strengths, it was more the philosophies. So, you know, what about the philosophies and space? How did those two things merge to you? You talked about efforts to have them come together.
Frank White: Yeah. Well, first of all, I would saw that although I’ve always been of a philosophical nature, ironically when I was at Harvard and Oxford, I actually didn’t fundamentally focus on philosophy. I was more in the social sciences. And interested in international relations. And the space philosophy thing came up later, and I’ll tell you about that. So what happened was, the first thing that happened with that I had the experience that led to coining the overview effect as a term. And that was an experience flying across country and looking out the window. And having what I think was a mild experience of the overview effect, where I was imagining living in one of those O’Neill cylinders between the Earth and the moon. And I thought, if I lived in a place like that, I would always have an overview of the Earth. I would see it from a distance. And I would see it’s a unified whole. There are no borders or boundaries. All of these things would become knowledge. Which, living on the surface, we find it very hard to philosophically grasp, or mentally grasp. And the term overview effect came to me. And that’s when I started talking to astronauts. Because there were no people living in space permanently. There wasn’t even an international space station at the time. And it was just beginning to be conceived. And so, I began work on that. And in 1987, published my book on the topic, The Overview Effect. But I wasn’t honestly calling myself a space philosopher at the time. What happened was kind of serendipitous again. I was finishing up the writing, and the Challenger accident happened. And there was a show on TV called This Week with David Brinkley. And he had Isaac Asimov, Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, and George Will, who was a frequent guest on the show. And they were trying to understand the Challenger accident. What does this mean for American exploration of space? And what they were really getting at was, is this worthwhile? I mean, we just lost people. We lost the first teacher and all of that. Is it worth it? And George Will said, Mr. Wolfe, haven’t we been justifying space exploration on rather banal ground, like non-stick frying pans? And Tom Wolfe said, you’re right. Our nation has never had a philosophy of space exploration. What he meant was, we had purpose, because we were competing with the Soviet Union. But we didn’t have a, a sort of a solid grounding for why we were doing it. We were doing it to beat the Soviets. And now, in the shuttle era, we don’t really have that overarching purpose. And it was very much like when I had the insight that led to the overview effect. I just said, well, we have to have a philosophy of space exploration. Nobody’s doing it. I’ll have to do it. So I become a space philosopher by default.
Host: Okay.
Frank White: And, and the term stuck, and I’ve been focusing more and more on that purpose, that goal. And the first insight that I had that was in any way useful was, my friends and I were all justifying space exploration not on the basis of frying pans that don’t stick. But it’s still very human-centered. We explore outer space to benefit ourselves as humans. Is there some larger purpose we’re fulfilling? And I asked myself, are we doing anything to benefit the universe? The universe, broadly speaking, has done something remarkable, which is through evolution, we suddenly, on this remote planet in the Milky Way, we suddenly have a spacefaring species. And we may be the only one. So what can we do to justify our existence, other than helping ourselves? So that was the beginning of my quest for a broader understanding of human space exploration.
Host: Yeah, that’s interesting that the whole idea of the interview. Interview. The overview effect came to you on a flight, but it was, your mind was a little bit higher than that, right? You were imagining yourself on this space outpost while you were on the flight. But the view kind of made you think about that. And interviewing the astronauts was the thing that says, if I’m going to get inside anyone’s head to really fully explore this, it’s, it’s got to be the astronauts.
Frank White: Yeah.
Host: So, you know, what were those things that you were finding out when you, when you started exploring the minds of astronauts? People who have actually been a little bit higher than that.
Frank White: The first thing that happened was, I was happily confirmed that my experience in the airplane was actually confirmed by the astronauts. They, they understood what I was talking about. They didn’t think it was a silly question. And they said, oh yeah. We know what you’re saying. We know what you’re asking. And so, the first thing that most people think about when they think about the overview effect is no borders or boundaries on the Earth. And we know that. But we create maps that show borders and boundaries. And what the astronauts were telling me was, I, I knew before I went into orbit, or went to the moon, that there weren’t any little dotted lines. But it’s knowing intellectually versus experiencing it. And so, there’s also the, the striking thinness of the atmosphere, something that they see. And again, for most astronauts, the feeling that the Earth itself is awe whole system, and we’re just a part of it. We need to think of ourselves as part of this organic system, if you will. And then there are other things that come out of it that is kind of conclusion they draw. I mean, those are things they see, and then there are conclusions they draw. And one of them is that we are really all in this together. Our fate is bound up with people that we may think are really different from them. We may have different religions, we may have different politics. But ultimately, we are connected. Totally connected. And not only with people, but with life. We’re totally connected with life. And everything relates to everything else. And out of that, also, is the realization again. You could know that, too. I mean, you could say, I know that. I know we’re all connected. I know our differences don’t matter that much. But again, it’s knowing it with the brain and not the heart. And so, the big, sort of, what would I call it, insight, about their experience is that it is an experience.
Host: Yeah.
Frank White: And they talk about the fact that it’s really hard to convey it, because all you have is words. And part of it is seeing the Earth itself. Part of it is seeing the Earth against the backdrop of the universe. You also, you’re actually seeing the universe for the first time in a way that no human has seen it. You’re also moving around the Earth frequently. Time changes. You realize time is very Earth-bound, the way we think about it. And also, they are weightless. Zero gravity definitely has some effect on how these perceptions occur. And so, I suppose one of the most important insights was that if we want people to understand the overview effect in a way that will lead to changes in their behavior, we have to have them experience it. Now, it’s like Zen Buddhism. If you know anything about Zen Buddhism, every Zen master will say, Zen is beyond words. And then they proceed to talk about it. Or they write books about it. So I really believe the overview effect is beyond words, and yet I’m now in the fourth edition of writing about it. But now we need to move beyond it. And one way to move beyond it is commercial space flight. Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin. NASA just announced, hey, come on up to the space station. That’s great. And another way is through virtual reality simulations. And there is a project I’m involved in here, working on that. And there are people all over the world. Whether they care about space exploration or not, they care about the Earth. And they’re talking about, how do we bring the overview effect down to Earth?
Host: Because it is, like you said, an experience. And from what I’m gat gathering, I mean, you started listing, what is the overview effect. And you were kind of going into these different realizations that you have to witness from that perspective. You get this sense, you know, of free floating, of a different perspective of time. Do you, do you find that is something that can be instantaneous? And you can experience these things through a visual, through a moment? Or do you think it’s more of a process, where you look at, you have this perspective, but it takes you awhile to fully digest everything and get to that moment where you’re experiencing the overview effect?
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Frank White: That’s a challenging question to answer. And I think it differs depending on the person. There are definitely people I’ve talked to who’ve been there, and it seems like it happened in a moment. There are others for whom it seemed to have grown over time. I think most of the astronauts I’ve talked to would say that first visual rendering of the planet was very significant. I mean, in a way, that first moment when they looked out of the Soyuz spacecraft, or the shuttle, or they went to the cupola on the International Space Station. In a way, that was a big moment.
Host: Yeah.
Frank White: However, it’s very clear, especially when you talk to people who were on the space station for six months or so. It does accumulate. And in a way, I think it becomes a little bit more like my space settler idea. Where I think one of the astronauts said it becomes something like commonplace but not ordinary, if you can, you know, it, it, you get used to it. But it never stops being unique. And it seems contradictory.
Host: Right.
Frank White: But I think that there is this kind of dichotomy that you, you get used to it, and yet at the same time, they talk about how the Earth is constantly changing. You never see the same thing. You look out the window yesterday at, let’s say, North America. You think, okay, tomorrow I’ll look at North America, it’ll be the same. But it’s not. There’s a hurricane. There’s a storm. There’s a tornado. There’s dust blowing. You know, something’s going on. And so, I do think it becomes more meaningful over long periods of time.
Host: Yeah. That settlement idea, right? Because, because a lot of the folks, especially when you were, when you coined the term, and you were talking to a lot of astronauts. I mean, I don’t know if you talked to Apollo astronauts who have seen it? You did. Great. So, so they had that perspective from the moon, which is, I think, a little bit different from short durations space flight on the Space Shuttle in low-Earth orbit. So was there, did you notice some difference there, too?
Frank White: Yeah. That was an important insight, because surprisingly, I hadn’t really thought about that at the beginning of my research. That oh, you know, low-Earth orbit is a couple hundred miles from the surface. The moon is 240,000 miles away. And so, I really came to understand that first of all, you’re seeing the Earth in the context of the universe. Whether you’re on the space station or on the moon. But the Earth takes up most of your view when you’re close. When you go to the moon, it is definitely the whole Earth, which is different. And it is definitely he against the backdrop of the entire cosmos. So it is really different. Gene Cernan said to me, it’s two different space programs. He talked about being in orbit being like on a roller coaster. He said you don’t have much time to be philosophical. And, but he said, when I was on the moon, I was thinking, where am I? You know, where am I in the universe? Where am I in time and space? And Edgar Mitchell talked about, you get a more universal perspective. He said you relate more to the universe as it is than to the Earth as it is. So one of the aspects of the overview effect is, it’s only the beginning of changes and awareness that happen as you move further and further away from the surface of the Earth. People have said to me, well, when astronauts go to Mars, will they experience the overview effect? Well, not exactly. First of all, they will approach Mars from a distance. They will always see – it won’t be shocking. You know, to them. But then when they land on Mars, in relationship to the Earth, there is a big difference, because the Earth will be a point of light. That’s going to be dramatically new for us, because even on the moon, you can still our home, our planet. And there is some concern about the psychological impact of not being able to see our home.
Host: Yeah.
Frank White: But you, you’re absolutely right. There is a significant difference in low-Earth orbit and the moon. And it’s one of the reasons, from an overview effect perspective, I’m very excited about plans to return to the moon. Going back to experience, you can tell you did not experience Apollo directly. You’re too young. Recently it came to my mind that only a small percentage of people alive on the planet today know about Apollo because they lived during that period. That was an incredibly exciting time. Right? But it’s, it’s just history to most people. If we go back to the moon, and we are. I’d say we. I don’t mean just Americans. I think there’s a general interest in it. We have a chance for that Apollo experience to be shared. Again, for the first time. We haven’t been there since 72. So when people say, well, why should we go to the moon? We’ve already been to the moon. Well, one reason to do it is, most of the people alive on Earth today were not alive when we went to the moon. So that’s a good reason to go.
Host: Yeah. Kind of reinvigorating that excitement that a lot of us missed out on.
Frank White: Yeah.
Host: You know, not only the distance, like you’re saying, being that change of the overview effect that you get from being so far away, from being on the moon. And you’re right. It’s an international collaboration, so a lot of people are going to get to experience this. We’re talking partnering with international partners that we’re now partnered with on the space station, and doing the same thing for Gateway and the lunar program. But I think this idea of time, too, is pretty important. What’s different about going back, going forward to the moon now is, we’re going to do it in a sustainable way. Which means you get to experience it for a longer period of time. And that might give you a little bit, because like you said, you know, you’re talking about a settlement in space. That settlement idea, that may be what the astronauts on the international space station get now for being up there for months at a time. That becomes regular, but still unique. Now, take that idea and to the same thing even further away.
Frank White: Yeah.
Host: That’s crazy to wrap your mind around.
Frank White: Yeah, and it’s going to be interesting to see. For example, let’s imagine, just for fun, that there’s a settlement on the moon, and people are living there, and let’s imagine it’s several difference countries. That’s going to be the international space station writ large, isn’t it? You can imagine an astronaut from NASA having lived on the moon for six months, and been with international partners and everything, and seeing the Earth from a distance, and having that realization of why are we fighting each other? You know? Why are we in conflict? Why are we having wars? And they come back to Earth, and they start to share that consciousness, the way our astronauts are doing now. It could be very helpful to how we conduct ourselves back here on the Earth. Because ore we’re already seeing astronauts do that. They’re talking about that change in awareness, that change in world view. And yet, at the same time, realizing it’s a beautiful planet, it’s alive, it’s always changing. And yet on the surface, there’s so much strife and I’d like for the beauty and harmony of what I’m seeing to be realized on the surface. And you can see that becoming even stronger with the lunar mission.
Host: Wow. It’s such a, a shift in your mindset. There’s, there’s forward action. That’s kind of associated with it. What have you seen? Have you seen more volunteering? More traveling? What have you seen astronauts doing because of the overview effect?
Frank White: Well, you know, the astronauts I think express it in different ways. One of the most important lessons I got from Edgar Mitchell was, he asked me when I interviewed him, well, what have you learned from interviewing people? And I said, I think the experience is very different for people. And he said no, it’s the same experience, but we express it differently. And that’s the subtle nuance, where we all say the Earth in a new way. We all experienced it as we were weightless, and so on and so forth. But we’re different people, so we may express it spiritually. We may express it scientifically, et cetera. And the astronauts are the same. Let’s say they all have the same experience. Some of them come back and they dive into humanitarian efforts. Or Edgar Mitchell created the Institute of Noetic Sciences. So how they express it varies a lot. Like Nicole Stott came back and become an artist, as Alan Bean did. And it’s not that everybody is radically transformed, and they throw away their old life.
Host: Right.
Frank White: But it may express itself in more subtle ways, or in very dramatic ways.
Host: Yeah. It’s an experience that starts a shift, and then where that goes is per the individual.
Frank White: Yeah. And I think in being interviewed, a lot of people have wanted, hoped I would say, there’s this dramatic transformation, and their lives are never the same when they come back. And they’re marching in peace parades. And that isn’t, I can’t say that.
Host: Sure.
Frank White: But I think it’s okay for it to be more subtle. And if you imagine, for example, the coming period of non-professional astronauts, where quote-unquote ordinary people. I don’t think there are any ordinary people. But you know, non-professional astronauts begin to fly. To bring great change on the planet, it would only take two or three of them to do something radical, if you think about it. And also another big change that’s going to happen now is that people who are going to fly on Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic and so on, by definition they have money. Because initially it’s going to cost money. And that means they have influence. And so the astronauts, generally having been government servants, have not come back with huge resources. Their influence has been through their speeches, and talking to people like me. But the people who are going to go experience the overview effect now, if they do have a profound insight, they can come back and really do something with it.
Host: Yeah, for sure. That’s definitely one of the target markets here. I think, I think the idea for, especially when it comes to private astronauts mission and enabling this, it’s, we’re trying to see who we can get. You know? I think that’s absolutely a market. I think, you know, definitely wealthy people who want to do this by themselves. We’ve talked about, you know, going to other nations, too. And nations who don’t normally get to put forward an astronauts can have the ability to do so now. So it’ll be interesting to see that shift, and where it goes. And who gets to experience, and how many people, how many more people, different people, get to experience this, this overview effect. I was trying to think about parallels to the overview effect, because you did mention Zen Buddhism. I, you know, some other things, I don’t know a lot of different philosophies. I thought immediately Transcendental Meditation, but I don’t know if there’s parallels there. Are there other ways that you can sort of experience this, this positive cognitive shift through an experience?
Frank White: Yeah, there are. I mean, you mentioned meditation. And I definitely think meditation can bring it about. The difference might be it takes a long period of time of, at meditation. It may take longer to have that shift than it does if you go into orbit, or go to the moon. But definitely we do see that kind of change in awareness that happens. And in a way, it is a thing where you get outside of yourself and, and you see yourself from a higher level, when you go through meditation. I think psychotherapy has an analogy where the therapist tries to help the client get outside of their life. Because what you’re trying to do is help them change their life. And so, I’ve been working on a memoir for myself, and it’s called My Life as Seen from Orbit. I’m trying to see my life from a distance, you know? But much simpler, something everybody has experienced is going to live in another country.
Host: Yeah.
Frank White: I’m different because my father was in the army, and he was sent to Germany for three years. I came back, I was a kid. I came back, and I said, when I graduate from college, I’ve got to live abroad. I was obsessed. I wanted to go back. And I got to, because I went to Oxford.
Host: Right.
Frank White: I spent three years at Oxford. I saw my country in a way I’d never seen it before. I changed.
Host: Yeah.
Frank White: So, and again, people can travel and express their experience differently. Some people come back, and they say, oh, you know, the food over there wasn’t very good.
Host: Yeah.
Frank White: The cars are very small. And somebody else can come back and say, oh my goodness, not everybody’s like us. And I’ve got to go again. So, once again, we do have parallels. We do.
Host: Yeah. I’ve taken shorter trips abroad. I’ve been to Italy, and I think most uniquely, I’ve been to India. And that was definitely a shift for me culturally. And I think what connected, when you were talking about the overview effect, when you were talking about this routine but still unique. Because I was there long enough where I kind of got used to a certain way of doing things every there, but there was still this kind of distant newness. I knew it was there, but even though I was going through my routine, or whatever I was planning that day. I definitely, I definitely felt that.
Frank White: Yeah. I think it’s important. I don’t want the overview effect to be seen as something out of each, or really, really weird. It’s not. I mean, the first astronauts I interviewed was Joe Allen, the shuttle astronaut. He worked on Apollo. And he said, I thought it was an extension of my travel on the Earth. It was heightened. It was, you know, in many ways more profound. But it was an extension of something familiar.
Host: Yeah, okay. So those feelings, it was just, yeah, a little bit, a little bit more. I’m very much looking forward to all of these, you talked about opportunities. You know, definitely the private astronaut missions, and opening up more opportunities for more people to travel. But this, this virtual reality experience will be very cool, too. I got a little bit of a demo here, just, just before. And it was, it was definitely different. Because we’ve, we try to, you talk about words, you know, trying to take this experience into words, and how hard it is. We try to do the same thing with imagery. With photography. With videography. We’ve tried 4k, 8k. And it’s all spectacular. There was something a little bit different, though, about doing this in virtual reality. It definitely gave it a different way of thinking.
Frank White: I saw that demo too, I mean, I had that demo. I think one of the differences is that when you’re watching, say, a film or a video, you’re not inclined to move your head around and look at things, or reach out and try to touch people. And VR definitely does immerse you in a way that our previous media can’t quite do.
Host: Yeah. It’s the, it’s the interactivity of it all, I think. Just the, that ability. You have more control over it, and you can kind of immerse yourself in it a little more. I do appreciate that. Frank, thank you so much for coming con the podcast. This was, this is an interesting discussion. Because, you know, you read about the overview effect, and you talk to astronauts who have, who have had such a thing. But to talk about someone who’s thought, talk to someone who has thought about it so deeply and from so many different sources has been very interesting. Frank, I really appreciate your time.
Frank White: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you so much.
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Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. Really good conversation we had with Frank White today about the overview effect. He got to talk to a number of astronauts to really get inside their head about what it was like to be in orbit and look down at the Earth from space. We’ve done that a few times on this podcast, too. Talking to a number of astronauts about their biographies, and about their time in space. There are all kinds of episodes across the board. You can listen to them in no particular order. I think one of the more recent ones, at this point, would be Episode 98, with Drew Morgan, who is currently on the International Space Station. You can see a little bit about what he’s going to expect now that he is in orbit. There have been a few astronauts we’ve talked to after they’ve landed, as well. If you want to check out more NASA podcasts, we have a website for that. NASA.gov/podcasts. All across the board. If you want to know something other than human space flight, we’ve got that covered. If you have a question for this podcast, go to any of our social media pages, particularly the ones for the NASA Johnson Space Center. Just use the #AskNASA on any one of those platforms, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, to submit an idea for the show. Just make sure to mention it’s for Houston, We Have a Podcast. This episode was recorded on June 11, 2019. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Norah Moran, and Pat Ryan. Thanks to Mr. Frank White for taking time out of his day to speak with us. We’ll be back next week.