Wired got together astronauts Chris Hadfield, Jeffrey Hoffman, Mae C. Jemison, Jerry Linenger, Mike Massimino, Leland Melvin, and Nicole Stott to answer the 50 most Googled questions about space. It’s great to watch how quickly they can rattle off certain facts that I imagine were relevant to their safety on the job—the weight of a space shuttle, the speed of the International Space Station—and how they struggle for the perfect answer on others, like those about the history of astronomy.
The most-Googled questions include:
- Can birds fly in space?
- Do you age in space?
- Why is Mars red?
- Can you see the space station from Earth?
- Is there life on Mars?
- How was space created?
- How much does a space shuttle weigh?
- How fast is the International Space Station moving?
- How many Rovers are on Mars?
- Can you hear sounds in space?
You also get to see some of the astronauts’ personalities. Jeffrey Hoffman is clearly the ringer with the answers, Jerry Linenger is still mad about not getting to see the Great Wall of China from space, and Mae Jemison is the most skeptical about the state of U.S. science education. However, my favorite part of the video is when the astronauts lovingly defend and hype up space’s infinite and all-encompassing nature, only to find out the “correct” answer was more mundane. For example:
“Does space ever end?”
“NO!” they all shout.
(The correct answer is, “We don’t know.”)
“How far is space?”
“Everywhere! Infinite!”
(The correct answer is 100km/62 miles.)
May we all have people who root for us like these astronauts root for space.
(via Nerdist; image: screengrab)
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