Your Kids Asked the Artemis Astronauts Questions. They Answered.

and so much reason to hope all at the same time, let me save a hear you.

I'm Ezra Klein from New York Times opinion, host of the Ezra Klein Show.

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From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the Daily.

Two weeks ago, we asked if you, or more specifically, your kids had questions for the Artemis

to astronauts. Hello, my name is Joaquin. Hi, I'm Irina Gartner. Hi, my name is Denton Hugo. My name is Owen. I'm three years old. Kids, definitely, had questions.

“How young are you with the food? I think they ate stars.”

Kids, they made me happy. How did you get to the room without eating Google Maps? Kids wanted to know about life on board the spaceship, about the wonder and the vastness of space. What are you scared? Because I'm scared. Why did they go on the mission thing? What it was super duper, duper, duper whiskey.

My question for the Artemis who is how do you think people look back at this mission in 15 years? And today, we posed these questions to the astronauts themselves. Read Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Cook and Jeremy Hanson, to learn what their mission to the moon was like. How it changed their perspective about life here on Earth and whether it is possible to drink soda in space.

It's Wednesday, May 6th. Crew of the Artemis 2, welcome to the daily. Thank you. Thank you. Read Jeremy, Victor, Christina. You have been answering about a thousand trillion questions since you got back from your mission to the moon.

And that makes sense because space captivates us in a way that very few things do. And perhaps no group of people embraces the wonder of curiosity of space better than children. And so for that reason, we asked kids to submit questions to the daily. "Can I go to space, be cute?" And we got so many responses. So many more than in my entire time of the daily

and amazing. A lot of kids, as you am sure you've heard, they want to go to space too.

"Let's go to space, can that summer?" "What does it take to be an astronaut?" "When you were a kid, do you guys ever imagined that you would go to the dark side of the moon?" "I want to be an astronaut when I grow up. What is one piece of advice you can give me?" What would you tell a child about the qualities that allow you to do what you do

“to be astronauts, and how a child might cultivate those. Read which like to start?”

"I think curiosity and the wonder of nature. I just, you cannot leave out the wonder of nature. Walk outside, look at a tree, watch a bird fly, watch water going around rocks, is it coming down a waterfall or a stream, just any way you can look at nature?" "Jeromy?" Persistence is another one we talk about a lot because the one thing that we can all guarantee

kids today, they're going to be challenges between you and your goal, and they're going to be times where you do not believe you're going to make it, and you're just going to have to have persistence to keep trying and let other people know where you're trying to go, so they can help you." Victor? The number one thing I would say to a young person is being a good teammate. And the reason I would start with that one is because at the end of the day, you don't get to say

if you're a good teammate. It's your teammates who say that. And so focusing on that, they can start practicing that today. Christina? Browning yeah, there's so many left to choose from, I'm thinking about humility, I'm thinking about hard work, and I'm thinking about supporting the people around you. Well, those are all very beautiful answers, and now I want to actually talk about the mission that you went on. So this was a historic trip, of course, you were gone for

the far side of the moon, you lost contact with people back on Earth briefly. And we got a lot of questions about what that felt like. So here is a question from Colin in California. My question for the astronauts of OMS2 is how did it feel like to be on the dead side of the moon was it scary or was it adventurous? Christina, scary or adventurous. Wow, I would say in some ways, I would almost call it solemn. We had so much work to do. So we were also very busy, but we did

know and needed to be commemorated amongst us when we were the four people out there by ourselves, and we did that. We took a moment, and then we kind of got back to work. But I can't imagine read that you're not up there looking at what you're looking at and being at least momentarily

“distracted from the very important work that you're doing. He last. This finding out you need a”

question. It turned out that Victor's he didn't know his job before launch would be to always

pull me away from the window back in the vehicle, but that did end up being his job. But when we're on the far side of the moon first for us, the far side of the moon is often lit by the sun. Whenever we have a new moon here on Earth, that means that the far side is fully illuminated. And it was as we're looking at the far side, it was the right side of the moon that was lit up, which was really special for us because human eyes, even though we went to the moon in the 1960s and 70s

in the magnificent Apollo program, human eyes had never looked at what we were looking down on. There are a few craters, a basin called Oriental, which is kind of the marquee basin of the solar system that we were able to look down on. Craters like vabbel off an omen, omen, omen, omen, oms ejectorase, streak from the far side around to the front side. That was really special for us to get to see. The thing that I just can't stress enough is we did take a moment, but then we had so

much science that we were trying to conduct. We were trying to record everything that the human

eyes saw on the far side because we never see it here on Earth. We are gravitationally locked,

only see the near side of the moon here. So we did take a moment and then it was right back into the work. I haven't found good words to describe it, but you know, how it felt was overwhelming. There was a time when Reed mentioned that our brains have not evolved to see what we're seeing, and so we were actually transitioning from the far side to coming back toward the near side when the sun went behind the moon. It got really bright and then really dark. And looking

out at this really large orb, it was all of the things. I mean there were so many different emotions at the same time. I can't tell you how many times I heard something like, "Oh my God," and I think that was not invaded. That was inappropriate response for what was happening at that moment. It was so unreal. And you have described yourself as a religious person. And so I wonder, did you have a singularly spiritual experience in those moments? The whole thing, the entire mission

“to me was about God's glory. I think at any point in the mission you could go,”

look at that. That's kind of amazing. And we did not build that. The amazing spacecraft we were in

that we built, that allowed us to go do it, but it was like we're next to the moon which dwarfs us and like we didn't do that, right? That just happened over billions of years. It's quite an amazing perspective to have. All of that is very beautiful. But we did get one question that I think embodies a little bit of the skepticism that some people have about the cost-benefit analysis of space travel. So here is Isaac from Arlington, Virginia. Hello, I'm 13. I'm a normal listener

of the daily. And I also know why is it important that we are spending billions of billions of dollars on something, rather than what it is looking at it. I believe he said, "Why are we spending the money when we're not even landing on the moon? We are just looking at it. Jeremy, do you have a

“thought?" Yeah, sure. First of all, Isaac, I think it's really important question to ask,”

because we have a lot of problems here on the planet that we need to tackle. And we are investing a lot of money in space exploration, but I do see it from a different perspective. I see the genius that we bring together under the focus of a common goal and the solutions that people create to that allow us to go out into deep space, do benefit us here on the planet. And I think if we didn't have that push of exploration, we would miss out on these extraordinary innovations that only come

together when it's not one mind, but when it's a thousand minds, trying to solve a problem together. Well, we got questions that were about things that were much less serious and much more tangible than that. The kids were actually obsessed with every single part of your trip. I want to ask the astronaut to play any games on the spaceship like tag or something,

'Cause that first time, it's not really bad for four people in space.

“They wanted to know what space smelled like? What happens if the astronaut cannot find?”

What is it called, and then you thought it would be? They wanted to know whether it was cold, whether it was hot. Astronauts have to be clocky. And they had a lot of questions about what you guys ate. My question for the astronaut is, what's the food in space as good as the food in your home and earth? What question for the astronaut? Do they have pizza parties up there?

How do I get sweet asses now restaurant? What do you eat in space register? How do you drink soda and tea? I'll take first stab at this. First, yes, we have broccoli, and it's actually delicious. Broccoli all-grotten, one of my favorite things to eat. It's just saying that. You're just saying that 'cause you're talking to parents of the chocolate.

She's in it, but you just had a little bit of water and heated up. It was very good. The food is magnificent. We have tortillas, you can put brisket on tortilla. We have chicken and beans, broccoli, spicy green beans, and other favorites. What were some of your favorites? Beats, kale salad, kale salad. And I wanted to bring in tortillas because Jeremy, on the first ad, I don't know if you invented it,

but you may have seen we had Nutella. And taking Nutella and spreading it on a tortilla, and then folding that in half, it almost made like a chocolate crate. And Jeremy was just distributing those around the cabin and they were a great dessert.

“Did any of these stuff spill like did you have them over the tortilla?”

I've been into it constantly. But it's funny, I like to say that we shared a lot of meals. Sometimes it was on purpose. So pieces of things would fly by and you make sure it's food. But then you just enjoy the true tasty food. Make sure it's food. One of the coolest moments on that. First step there, I had some oatmeal, and I didn't put quite enough water in it to rehydrate it. So when I opened it,

there was crumbs of oatmeal that just started floating out. And I don't mean like two crumbs. I mean like 10,000 crumbs of oatmeal. And I was very embarrassed. You know, I've flown in space before I shouldn't be making these mistakes. And instead of being annoyed, Victor just floats over he goes, oh, this is my favorite game. It just starts eating the water out of

the floating area around me. That's really great. That's amazing. I think there's actually a

Simpsons episode where that is exactly how it is. With Nutella Chess, it's so funny. We did get a question about soda in space. How do you do that? soda? I haven't seen it happen successfully. I think there have been attempts. But for many astronauts, that's something that they crave when they get back. Something bubbly. What's the problem with carbonated beverages? We tried when I was on space station. We did try to drink carbonated beverages.

Some of my Russian crewmates had a soda bottle. And we couldn't even open the cap because the bubbles do not go to the top. They're just distributed throughout the entire thing. And any time we would twist the cap a little bit and would start to spray out like if you shook up a can. And so we would twist the cap and just try to suck it off that cap. And then we eventually gave up.

“That's the worst way to drink a spray. So our next question is from Leonardo in New York City.”

It is about another aspect of daily life. My big question for the Artemis two crewers. What does a feel like to sweep off side down and face when there is no gravity? Also, is there gravity in your dreams? I want to be an actual physicist when I go up. Well, great question. I think one of the great things about being in weightlessness is there is no upside down. There is no upside down. There is no upside down. Meaning that any side could be right side up.

It all feels the same. Hmm, so I'll convention. What do you call the floor and what do you call the ceiling? Could be anything. Yeah, you just blew my mind. Everyone listening. Their mind just got a no, no, no, no, no, no, moment thinking about that. Did you have to strap yourself in in some way and did anybody ever bump into anybody else in their sleep? I'm sorry, Jeremy. Yes. It was you. He just said yes. No, it was me. Well, we kind of slept almost as if we were in bunk beds. So like to this way,

to this way, but in opposite directions. And I ended up sort of in this middle space with Reed and Victor underneath me. By one point, I made the mistake of saying, I kind of like how like I float around and I move around. And so, at once I said that, then Reed would just kick me and I would not float. That's around for a bit. And then I would just be drifting off. And then I get another kick and let's keep going for another ride. The second part of Leonardo's question was, is there gravity in your dreams?

I think we all dreamed that we were floating at different times. And one really neat thing that happened. I think to all of us was when we got back and woke up in our beds at home, we all felt like we were

floating for a little while. Wow. Yeah. So you obviously traveled more than a quarter million miles away

from people that you love and your home. And we got a lot of questions from kids about what that distance might have felt like. This one is from Aiden. He's eight years old. And he lives in Santa

did you feel when you were that far away from now? What did one light? Was it lonely, Reed?

You are flying with great friends. And so I never really felt lonely. I would say the one thing that I

“definitely felt. And I think it's all individual. But I definitely felt some fear. You are so far away”

and you're trusting this vehicle. And ours handled marvelously well. But if something went wrong out there, it could be a very tough day. So that to me is always, it was always in the back of my mind. I didn't feel lonely at all. But what I did get this new sense of as how everything is sort of distributed in our galaxy. When you look up in the night sky, every star you see in our night sky is in our galaxy. This is one galaxy in the entire universe. And we were looking

out from our spacecraft. And we were just seeing these other stars in our galaxy. But I was seeing

them in a three-dimensional space. Like what some of them looked closer than others. And they Earth in the moon and seeing them and just seeing how their juxtaposed have such a hard time explaining

“it to people. But it was very different than I expected. And when I see the pictures now, I'm like,”

"Well, those are really beautiful pictures." But that's not what I experienced when I saw it. I didn't feel lonely, but I felt longing for Earth. It's all of the people I love and Shakespeare was down there. It's everything. But then you get out there and you go, there's a lot of

nothing out there. Space is emptiness. There is no air. There's a lot of nothing. And you go,

"Wow, if all of the things we know of, even this spacecraft that we're hanging out in was built there, it is an infinitesimally small piece of the universe." But Mary, Jesus, Gandhi, you know, it's all there. And these folks and their families, it's special, even though it's small. I don't know that this will relate, but if you look at the crescent moon, it's rounded and it stops where the sun goes to shadow. But when you look at a crescent Earth,

the same thing happens, but the edge of the Earth just extends a little bit longer. And if you look at it, you realize the extension right there, this tiny, it's like two little tiny whiskers coming off the edge of Earth. It's the whole atmosphere. It's everything that keeps us alive. You really sense fragility. You just sense such a special little tiny thing right there that atmosphere. You can just tell the moon cannot sustain life, but Earth can. And when you put those two things

next to each other, the thing that enables us to live here is so tiny. It's impossible to even rationalize your mind. We're going to take a very quick break. And when we come back, I am going to present questions to you about the number one topic that we got questions about. I gave my brother a near-kind subscription. She sent you your long subscription, so I have access to all the games. We'll do a word of many spelling bee. It has given us a personal connection.

We change articles. And so having read the same article, we can discuss it. The coverage, the options, not just news. That should diversify, yes. I was really excited to give him a New York Times cooking subscription so that we could share recipes. And we even just shared a recipe the other day. The New York Times contributes to our quality time together. You have all of that information at your fingertips. It enriches our relationship, broadening our horizons. It was such a

cool thoughtful gift. We're reading the same stuff, we're making the same food, we're on the same page. Connect even more with someone you care about. Learn more about giving a New York Times subscription as a gift at NYTimes.com/gift. It probably does not come as a surprise that the number one topic we got questions about was the bathroom. Of course. And so we want to play you a very small number of questions that we got

“about the topic. My name's Alekis, I'm Florence recorded and how do they poop with key in space?”

How did you go pop in and study? You're going to have a bathroom. You're not to use what isn't like to go to the bathroom and space. And you guys have a new privacy. Who farts the most in space? Where does it go? You poop in space and did it close? I'm wondering what you did while your toilet was broke on the spaceship. Where do you fall when you

answers. How do you have a bowel movement in space? What part of the toilet broke? And what did you

do when it did? Well, there's a lot of doesn't go up, doesn't go down, where does it go? If it's going up, you have a problem. And you did something wrong. Because you're right, we don't have gravity to naturally bring all the things where they need to go. But what we do instead is we create an entrainment with kind of like a suction/fan. It's not very, very strong like a vacuum cleaner. I'm going to say it's sitting on a bathroom, is that what it is? It's enough to make everything

go where it should go if you do everything right. So for us, we have the primary toilet. The channel is the bowel movements and the urine normally. And then once you urine it into this hose, it gets stored in a tank and then that gets vented to space. Okay. The capability to vent it to space clogged and that will fail. And so we needed to go to a backup method, which is these just very simple tubes that you can connect to a port on the side of the spacecraft and vent them to space.

I just assumed you did what we all do, which is use an empty water bottle. That's the same I mean, space water bottle. Well marked. It was definitely a challenge for us. And we live that way the whole entire time. And what's the privacy situation here with all of this? For a capsule pretty good, there is a separate toilet area with a door. It's in the floor. So you get float in there and you can close it off. It's actually pretty good. It's one private space we had other than

putting on headphones, which was a signal that you might want a little privacy. We could not talk about questions from kids without a question about aliens. So we have one. Well, my name is Celine. I'm 8 years old and I live in California, but I want to live in New Jersey. So I have a question for you guys on the Artemis tube. Is there other life out there, a gay alien? And did your experience on the dark side of the moon seems your answer? Oh, yeah, that's it. Bye!

Aliens, guys. Who wants to answer? I mean, I've been in New Jersey. Jeremy? Oh, well,

“when I think about the universe and I was talking to you before, every star you see is in our”

galaxy the Milky Way. But then we think there's maybe a couple of trillion other galaxies out there. So it's pretty hard to fathom that there's not alien life out there.

If you look at the closest neighboring galaxy, which is Andromeda, let's say there's this amazing

civilization there. They have the most extraordinary telescopes and they're looking at Earth right now while we're chatting. What do they see? They see us a couple hundred thousand years ago. And so we're not here. That's our closest neighboring galaxy. So gives you an idea of how hard it is to look for life in the universe. It's just really far away even at the speed of light. As the details about the toilet show, you guys prepared for every single eventuality. So I have to

“ask, did any of your training Victor include what to do just in case you encountered an alien?”

No. But the other part of that question did our experience on the far side of the moon change that? No, we've looked. I mean, we have a lot of resources pointed at this dark sky looking for answers and it's a great question and I hope it continues to drive us to explore further. I just want to point out that no is the answer that somebody who saw an alien but wasn't allowed to talk about it would say. You realize if we found alien life out there and we came back and

reported on it, NASA would never have a budget issue for the rest of eternity. So trust me.

That is one good argument. I'm not going to argue with that. Also, we tell Reed not to say things all the time and he does. So true. We have one more question about your experience while you were actually in space. This is Claire Jones, A9, a Dallas Texas. What was the most beautiful thing you saw? What was the most beautiful thing you saw? Victory was like to start? Oh, like, I'm sorry to be boring on this but it's the earth.

Well, it just stood out. It was so different. The colors, the shapes, our planet looks alive. Even though we can't see human structures in boats and roads, it looks alive because the swirls

“change and it just it demands your attention. When you see it out the window, you have to stare at it.”

I think one of the most beautiful moments from this, the least for people watching back home, was the video read where you dedicated the crater to your late-life Carol. Would you mind describing

that was a special moment for this crew and it was clearly a special moment for everyone watching. Thank you. So we have a couple more things we'd like to take this moment for. Christina had the idea and Jeremy approached me before we launched and said hey,

the crew would like to do this. And I said, Jeremy, that would be an amazing honor for my family

and I would love it if you all did that but I cannot do the talking. And so Jeremy did. A number of years ago we started this journey in our close-knit astronaut family and we lost a loved one. And it was very emotional for all of us. I mean, I just Jeremy still can't believe you made it through that. There's a feature in a really neat place in the Moon and it is on the near side far side of boundary. In fact, it's just on the near side of the Moon. I can't believe

that thought that you all put into that was very special for me. We will be able to see this from Earth. And so we lost a loved one, our name was Carol. And as we were approaching the Moon, even days away from the Moon, we can look out and see that crater. This was a read, the mother of Katie and Ellie. And I turned out that both of my daughters were in Michigan trolley or in the viewing room. It's a bright spot on the Moon. And we would like to call it Carol

and you spread all that CA. And that moment, even though it was an honor of my late wife and

“primarily to my two daughters. But that was the moment that our crew coalesced and I think we were”

bonded there forever. How did your daughters react when they first learned that you'd be able to

do this for their mom? We still haven't talked through that. But I know it was, they did not know it was coming and I know it was, I think for them, I can't think of more special moment in their lives to get to hear those words come down. That sounds very beautiful. It was. You guys have done so many interviews. Since you've gotten back, you're obviously doing one right now. And you will probably get asked about this trip for the rest of your life. And I wonder how you land to hold on to

something this singular and special Jeremy? We talked a lot about gratitude and just remembering what a privilege this was. And you know, we're not doing it that well right now on the planet, but we can at least have the stated goal of trying to get to where we collaborate to lift one

“another up here. Victor, I think I heard in an interview that you tried to kind of seal yourself off”

from the world for a week just a process. Can you talk a little about that? Two weeks, actually. Two weeks managed two weeks. It ended when we started this trip to, you know, get out and share the news. And I think that for me that two weeks was nice. It was medical checks and reconditioning working out. And it's also given me time to just get ready for this to just think about it and be very intentional as we transition to being more in the public. And to connect it to the

previous question you asked, I've actually decided it's not as a person who gets to kind of be an ambassador of the cosmos, right? Like that's a crazy job title to be an astronaut. I don't want

to hold on to it. I was there and I can't, I will never be able to put words to what we actually

saw felt there. I'll try. But really, I want to give it away. I want to give it away technically to the next crew. And I want to give it away socially and culturally to people who who made it possible. So thank you again, gratitude for doing this, but it's not mind to hold on to.

“I think one of the astounding things about your trip was just how much it brought people together.”

You're talking about your crew back home. But also you guys have said you wanted to do something that was really unifying for people watching. And now that you've had a chance to come back and reflect, we want to ask one more question from a kid that kind of gets at what your take away might have been. Hi, my name is Amol. I'm 11 and a half years old and I'm calling from Los Angeles. My question is when you saw the whole or some far away, didn't make you think differently about

what really matters in life, like what people should care about or how we should treat each other, thank you. It's such a deep question. There's so many, there's so many things that I want to say. I guess the thing that I would relate to that is you see the purity of earth and you can sit there and wonder why we can't get along and why we have differences. I would also say that maybe those differences are what makes us great sometimes.

It lets us explore different avenues. If we were all the same, I don't think we would do what we do. Well, we've talked about joy. I think it really said in our hearts that our purpose here on this planet is joy and lifting one another up and I don't think that's new, but I think it's certainly reinforced that for us. I have one last question for you guys, which is I think most people

happen and you're going to carry it with you for the rest of your lives and we're just not going to

get it. But I also wonder whether being up there with no life, gave you a renewed appreciation or

“wonder for what I think is sort of the unlikely scenario of life down on earth and just”

all the things that had to come together for us to even be here right now. 1,000%. Absolutely. That was one of the biggest takeaways because when you look out and you see the earth tiny earth and you mostly see blackness around it, you recognize what and completely unlikely scenario this is and how precious it is. There is some such thing as a global scale and we have a choice as to what we do with that. I think what I sort of wanted to end with is just a gratitude

to people who pay the attention to the mission. We look a lot and pay attention at the negative right now and the things that are different and how they're wrong but you can also look at the things that are different between us and how that's right and how that's an asset. And so what I have a renewed sense for is that people are willing to spend energy and pay attention to the positive things and therefore we have a choice of where we put our energy in our attention.

Our world, our choice. Thank you all so much for spending this much time with us. I get my last word. Oh, sorry. I was looking at, I thought you were nodding like, you were just there last thing. This is the most profound. Okay, good. Come on, let's you get ever here. So if there's kids listening, I want to give

homework. You absolutely can. My homework would be the next time you see something in bloom or something growing out of the ground. Just stop for a second and look at it and just

“be impressed by it. You get sometimes you have to leave and look back and then come back”

to realize the simplest little thing can be the most impressive thing you've seen all week. Crew of Artemis 2, it has been such a pleasure and congratulations. Thank you. Thank you.

Here's what else you need to know today. Officials at the Food and Drug Administration have blocked

publication of several studies supporting the safety of widely used vaccines against COVID-19 and shingles. The latest step by an administration that has tried to limit access to vaccines and promoted information that casts doubt on their safety. The studies were conducted by scientists at the FDA and cost millions of dollars in public funds. Researchers found serious side effects to the COVID-19 in Schingles vaccines to be very rare. And Senate Republicans have inserted a

billion dollars for security enhancements for President Trump's new ballroom into the immigration enforcement funding bill they hope to rush through Congress this month. Democrats pounced on the proposal signaling that they intended to make the ballroom a centerpiece of their opposition to the measure and their election year message that the president and his party were not meeting voters needs. The president had previously insisted that the renovation would be funded through

private donations and the proposed new ballroom is currently being challenged in court. The crew for today's episode includes producers Lexi Deo and Anna Foley with help from Rachelle Bongeau. Our episode was edited by Mark George with help from Paige Cowett and contains music by Diane Wang Pat McCusker, Sophia Landman and Chelsea Daniel, original music by Mary and Lzano and Dan Powell. Our theme music is by Wonderley. The episode was engineered

by Alyssa Moxley and a special thanks to our entire video team, including Peter Colpart, Christina Avalos, Mustafa Mirza and Devon Greenleaf, and to our studio engineers,

“Kyle Grandillo and Sam Winter. If you want to see the Artemis astronauts react to these questions”

from kids, check out the video version of our interview at our website. And finally,

thank you to everybody who called in. The kids, the parents, the teachers who got their whole classrooms to ask questions, we really love listening to all of you.