The sound of science.
Or that astronauts on the International Space Station experience sunrise and sunset 16 times a day?
Fletcher is the ESA’s head of branding and partnerships.
And, more interestingly, what does it get wrong?
So, in only 27 years.
This, Fletcher told me, is “ambitious”, but certainly not impossible.
“It’s an interesting schedule.
“[That was] a ‘superpower versus superpower’ thing.
They could invest huge amounts of their domestic product to do their moonshots,” Fletcher noted.
I mean, that’s the heart of the agency.”
However, he also reflected on how far we have come with flight in general over the last century.
After all, the Wright brothers' first powered flight was in 1903, only 120 years ago.
And now, we have rockets and space exploration in what is a relatively short amount of time.
“And look at the first computer!
“We’re still doing things that you wouldn’t even think that you could do.
And you would think, ‘nah, I don’t think we could do that’.
Well, the scientists are going, ‘Yeah, we could do that’.
That said, Starfield has laid down a pretty “tight schedule” for it all, he laughed.
Well, it turns out, this would be a very,verybad idea.
“So, we can do more exploration, but it’s not a replacement for Earth.
We evolved for Earth.”
“If we screw it up, [Earth’s] not gonna be a nice place.
[ESA] is producing a lot of data to help identify climate change.
So that’s one of the things that we are very keen on…
The European Space Agency is a peaceful organisation.
So we have no military side… the core of everything we are trying to do is science.
Fletcher said if we continue on as we are going, Earth will become a very different place.
Despite how entertainment media often paints it, he says, there “is no planet B”.
And they’ve been thought about for decades.
But are we all gonna live in space?
I don’t know.”
Your weight is limited.
“There were a couple of incidents 10/15 years ago, where there were collisions in space.
Especially when it’s the size of a penny or something?”
All of this is in orbit, and generally travelling at seven kilometres per second.
You’re going to create a horrible cloud of debris and it’s not going to be good.
We also discussed what it would be like to actually shoot someone in space.
However, it would not look exactly as entertainment media often portrays it.
There is also a chance the other person’s spacesuit would protect them from the bullet.
And, as already mentioned, this debris is travelling faster than a freshly-fired bullet.
This is because a person’s internal pressure is then only working against the vacuum of space.
Then, the astronauts need to slowly depressurise in the airlock.
“It takes a while.
It’s not a case of ‘Oh look, there they go!
Quick - get in the spacesuit!
Off I go!’
you could’t do that, at least not right now,” Fletcher laughed.
Thankfully, things are a bit quicker on the other side.
“But an asteroid?
We are doing a lot of work on mining asteroids.
There are a number of ways space agencies can move an asteroid.
Another, easier way to move an asteroid is to attach a probe with an engine to it.
It could then be piloted back to a more convenient location.
“How do you find the best asteroid, for example.
My time with Fletcher was fascinating, and I feel we only just scratched the surface of many subjects.
Honestly, I could have spoken to him for hours.
His answer was quick - the noise.
But in space, there is no air, and sound has no way to travel.
The insides of space stations are, as well.
“It’s never quiet inside the International Space Station, it’s never quiet inside a spacesuit.
Even though outside, it’s dead quiet.
But inside, it’s very noisy, because you have to be able to breathe.”
Do you hear that?
It’s the sound of science.
