NASA Podcasts

NASA Goes to Star Wars Celebration V
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And it's always been a quest of man to look up and to the stars and wonder what is beyond that black and blue space.

I think it's logical that we should assume we are not the only sentient being in the galaxies, although we like, probably like to think we are. And so we should consider what's out there and we do, we look at the moon, and we look beyond the moon.

GARY KURTZ (Producer, "Star Wars"):
For us, the making of 'Star Wars' was based on the idea that we wanted to celebrate the whole idea of space travel. And the idea of going out there into deep space has always been fascinating to us and we wanted to do a film that celebrated that.

Anything that's unknown, I think it drives us to find out more. And I'd say No. 1, probably everybody not wanting to feel alone in the universe. I think it would be really spectacular if we could just find even the most microscopic of living organisms somewhere else.

It is quite interesting to think, what is out there? You know? Exploring to the unknown. I think everyone's excited to look at the sky, look at the stars and think, 'What's out there? What are the possibilities?'

It's imagination, and we all have that imagination and 'Star Wars' helps that imagination. Whereas NASA, to me, can make that a reality. And reality is a part of fantasy, too.

Something along the lines of a hyperdrive.

I'd like to see the hyperdrive.

Hyperdrive and faster-than-light travel.

Oh, light speed.

Spaceships that can take you quite quickly from one planet to another.

Well I certainly think, obviously, the ability to travel between galaxies and that sort of thing, to make it outside of our realm of understanding because it's such a limited scope that we have.

Well, we need better propulsion systems. Right now it takes us six months to get to Mars, so I would say that's probably the one invention that would really help us in the future. It would be great if our astronauts could go at hyperspeed.

Let's make us a TIE Fighter, I think that would be awesome. That would just bring joy to me and if made the same noise like – (ROARs) – I'd be really happy.

The whole watching of the countdown of the rockets at Cape Canaveral and the technology of what you hear on the intercoms and the, a lot of the written material, and in fact some of the artists we used for inspirational concept art were ones that had drawn a lot of, a lot of NASA stuff. So we were very inspired by what was happening, including the landing on the moon.

I always thought, wow, if I could only do some work that would be related to space and after so many years I had the opportunity of working with NASA and having an experiment on the International Space Station, so it's like a dream coming true.

The things that happened in the film 'Star Wars' is now happening in real life and it's very exciting, I mean, it really is. Every day there is something new.

I got to meet a lot of the scientists and so on from Harvard and CMU and all that kind of thing and so many of them are inspired to become a scientist because of "Star Wars." Really, art can inspire science and vice versa.


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