The Talking Room: Adam Savage Interviews Dava Newman

6 thoughts on “The Talking Room: Adam Savage Interviews Dava Newman”

1. I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Newman at the reception following this live show last month and found her to be an extremely gracious and genuine person. She is a fantastic role model for young girls like my two daughters and I am so glad that NASA has enthusiastic, visionary people like her at its helm. She and I are the same age and like her, I grew up watching the Apollo missions and dreaming of humanity’s bold future in space. We lost our way for the longest time but I believe that a massive renaissance in space exploration is just around the corner, especially given, among other recent commercial space news, the successful flights of Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew capsule and launch vehicle earlier this week. That was absolutely light-years beyond amazing!

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2. To start this meandering comment off, I am an engineer with experience working in the bicycle industry.

   I was just wondering to myself what the best method of transportation for an astronaut on mars might be… and immediately thought of modern “fatbikes”. Adding the choice carbon components that are commonly available these days results in a total bike mass right around 20lbs… In a future where a better/less bulky martian suit exists i am beginning to think a bicycle makes a lot of sense on mars and expands the range of surface travel over walking by a factor of 10. It is not rover good, but from a mass standpoint it is so cheap.

   The question that this brings up is the mass cost of sending a fuel source for an astronaut transit vehicle like a rover to mars vs sending additional food stores for the astronaut due to calories burnt transporting him/her self… Well a rover would probably use solar and batteries or maybe a RTG, but still, that puts it’s mass well north of Curiosity whoch hit the scales at 2000lbs.

   would you mind sharing some of your spreadsheets with me? i am looking for your predicted rover mass and also predicted mass of an astronaut’s daily calorie consumption. 😉

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3. OK this is now real for me…we are going to Mars.

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4. Great interview. Dava is a very engaging speaker with such great passion and enthusiasm for her job and NASA as an institution. Great to see.

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5. It’s fantastic to hear the “We’re going to Mars” mantra repeated by someone who is actually going to make it happen.

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6. That was a lovely talk. Thank you Tested and Adam for these wonderful talks. Lastly, Adam I will be cheering you on all the way for whenever that chance comes along for you to go into space.

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