It looks like we're live, so welcome everyone. Thanks for tuning in again this week. We are very lucky this week to have Colonel Gregory H. Johnson join us today to continue our series of Google Hangouts. He is a former US Air Force pilot, as well as NASA astronaut. And currently, he's the executive director for the Center for the Advancement of Science and Space. He's going to talk to us today about scientific research and technology development aboard the International Space Station. And I might even mention some firsthand experience helping to construct the station, as well as living aboard the outpost for over three weeks on two separate space shuttle flights. So I think we'll have a lot of interesting conversation. And he has a ton of cool things to share with us. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to Colonel Johnson now. Well, thank you, David. It's always exciting to share the experiences of space. And I've also enjoyed how my career has progressed after being an astronaut for a little over 15 years. I guess I'd like to start off today. I know this is a systems engineering class. And I was an engineering student in undergraduate and graduate school. But then quickly started doing the flying thing originally to be a better engineer. But ultimately, I just really thought it was great, fun, and very rewarding. So I had this fighter pilot career, but eventually came back to the systems engineering front as a test pilot and then as an astronaut. So what you all are studying right now is very important not only to yourselves and to the country, but frankly, to the entire planet as we become higher tech and try to stand on the shoulders of those scientists and engineers that have achieved the levels of technology thus far. So to start things off, though, I'd like to share with you a little bit of the less academic and more show and tell part of my career, which might generate some questions about the space program. And so if we could start that first slide, I've got a slide deck that I'd like to share with you from my second shuttle flight. So tell me when you guys have that slide ready to go. Are we there? We're up. Yep. We're up. OK, so you should be seeing a slide of the STS-134 crew. Let me see if I can get this. There we go. The STS-134 crew, and this is our Star Trek pose, our Star Trek copycat pose. Mark Kelly is the guy in the center of the screen. He was the commander of STS-134. And he was a pilot twice before and a commander once before. So this was his fourth shuttle flight. It was just almost three years ago that we launched into space. And you might also recognize Mark because he is the astronaut who was married to Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot three and a half years ago, three years and two months ago, during our training for this flight. So it complicated our training. But I think in the long run, it actually brought our team closer together as we dealt with that adversity. And Mark went to Arizona to take care of his family. And we continued training and got smarter from another provisional commander, CJ Sturco, who by the way now flies for Virgin Galactic. And anyway, Mark made it back. We flew the flight. And we had a very successful final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour. Space Shuttle Endeavour flew 25 missions. And this was her final flight launching back in May of 2011. You can go back. I want to describe the crew members real quickly. You can see me. I don't have my Spock ears on. But I'm standing to, as you look at it, to Mark's right. And then next to me is Roberto Batore. He's an Italian astronaut. We call him Ricky Bobby. And then at the very end is Greg Chometop. And then starting on the other side, Drew Foistel was a Hubble Space Telescope space walker. He was our lead space walker. And then rounding out the crew, we've got Mike Fink. And Mike Fink is still active as our Drew and actually just Drew and Mike are now the only two active astronauts. But Mike has the distinction of having the most time in space. He has spent over a year of his life on the International Space Station. OK, next slide. OK, there's Space Shuttle Endeavour. You know, we're sitting in the cockpit there. We have to get in about two and a half hours prior to lift off the strap in and get ready to go. So we're on our backs. We actually strapped in during the dark hours. And then the sun rose. And then right as the sun rose, a very calm, placid morning. We transitioned from this still calmness to a crazy ride up on Endeavour. Next slide. About 7 million pounds of thrust as we blasted off into the air. You could see the sun has just risen. There were boats out on the water that were taking a video of some of the launch. And as I was looking at them, sitting on my back, it was very peaceful. And then all of a sudden we leaped off the ground like a wild animal. And the roll program, during the day, my first flight was at night, so I didn't experience the roll program on my first flight because it was completely dark, was absolutely spectacular. Next slide. The vibration is intense. It's like sensory overload. Acceleration, light, sound, vibration. It's a wild ride. And about this time, I was wondering, OK, I lived through this one time. So why did I sign up for this again? I'm joking, but seriously, those sorts of things go through your mind because you really know you're going somewhere and you're not coming back to the Cape. Next slide. There's a low cloud deck on both of my flights. My first flight was in 2008. And in this flight, we had a low cloud deck as well. Next slide. And you'll see that we blasted into the clouds at about 31 seconds on the clock. Next slide. It was interesting, though. I was an old F-15 pilot, and one of my buddies was up there patrolling the airspace above the clouds and got this spectacular shot. At this point, we're going almost three times the speed of sound. Next. Well, those final missions of the Space Shuttle program were, for the most part, to assemble the International Space Station. We spent 36 flights total assembling the Space Station. And then we had a one more flight, STS-135, that completed the outfitting of the interior of the Space Station. So the last 15 years or so, the shuttle was the mainstay of that assembly. And we took pieces up, modules, of one flight at a time. Next slide. As we look out the overhead window, we can start to make out the individual modules of the International Space Station as we get closer. On the left of your screen, you could see Mark Kelly. He's navigating what we call the rendezvous, where we join up onto the Space Station and drew poistles on the right. And he's taken photographs out of the overhead window. Next slide. This is a shot that was taken from the International Space Station as we came aboard. And I'd like to point out the Space Shuttle is a lot like an 18-wheeler. The folks in the crew are all in the very front of the vehicle. And then in the back portion of the vehicle, the payload bay, we have the three final objects that we attach to the outside of the Space Station. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is on the far left. The ELC-3 is basically a logistics carrier that held a bunch of spare parts for the Space Station. And then finally, there's a long boom that's on the bottom of the shuttle, the edge of the payload bay. It's about a 50-foot boom that we attach to the Space Station to help extend the length of the robotic arm. Next slide. Well, that's where we attach to the Space Station at the top of the picture. This photograph was actually taken by a Soyuz that departed about halfway into our docked mission. But this picture clearly shows, starting from the bottom of your screen, the Russian modules that are actually there's a visiting vehicle at the very bottom. But the Russian portion is in the bottom of your screen. And this whole vertical line from the ATV all the way up to the Space Shuttle, you can float all the way into the Space Shuttle from the ATV, about 200 feet total there. And then the trusses goes horizontally. And you can't go there without a space suit. And so the trusses will hold it all together. And of course, you can see the huge solar rays and the Space Shuttle Endeavour docked at the top of your screen. Next slide. And do we have another one coming? Looks, oh, there we go. OK. Well, here, we've been in space now for a couple days. And we're greeted by the members on board the Space Station. They've been there actually four. There's six of them. Three of them have been there for a couple months. And three others, the three that departed during our docked mission. Two of the three are shown here. Paolo Nespoli is on the left. He's from Italy. And then Dmitri on the right, he's from Russia. He's a MiG-29 fighter pilot, which is kind of interesting. He was a MiG-29 fighter pilot. 20 years ago, he and I were training as enemies to shoot each other down. Now we're living and working in space, working constructively. It was really professionally rewarding for me to work with these international people that have joined in on the International Space Station. You can see Mark greeting Paolo for the very first time. Next slide. And you'll see Mark as he's floating by those guys. Next slide. Like to point out, the crew members that have been on the Space Station, they have matching shirts and pants. They look very well kept. And we're not matching. We've only been in space a couple days. It reminds me of a campsite up in Fillmont, for example, where all the camp counselors have been in the field for months. And they look great.  But we did have matching shirts. You can go to the next slide and see how we cleaned up after a couple of days. And now we're doing one of those zero gravity photographs. I think the camera's upside down in this picture. I think Mark and I are supposed to be right side up. But actually, there is no right setup when you get out to zero gravity. Next slide. And here's the combined crew. The ISS crew members who have been up there for several months are on the left. And you can see Katie's hair floating in zero gravity. And then our six crew members on the right. Next slide. Well, we got to work as soon as we got to space. And we used the robotic arms. You can see here the space shuttle robotic arm is removing the ELC-3 out of the shuttle's payload bay. Next slide. And then we handed off to the robotic arm of the space station, which then installs it onto the top of the truss. Next slide. The AMS, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. I'd like to talk a little bit about that. It's probably one of the most important experiments aboard the space station. It's a particle detector to help us understand the origin of our universe, dark matter, dark energy. And we know that dark matter makes up over 90% of our universe. So it's a big unknown. And this particle detector might also help us understand naturally occurring antimatter. So there's a bunch of very interesting science projects that are generated from the data from the AMS. 50 or so billion particles a day, I think, totally. The count now is about 43 billion cosmic particles that have been collected and analyzed in CERN, in the CERN control room in Europe. Next slide. Well, we used the robotic arm to also remove AMS. Next slide. And then handed off to the space station robotic arm. Next slide, please. Where we attached it on top of the truss. And we're not progressing to the next slide. But you will see us attaching it to the top of the truss. There you go. Oh, back one, please. And so you can see the top of the truss there, the AMS, with the robotic arm. It was actually my job, and Greg Chometop. We worked together to install the AMS on top of the truss. I did not want to, I guess you can't drop it in space because it's zero gravity. But I certainly didn't want to crash it into anything else up there. So we were very careful as we installed it. We practiced that maneuver quite a bit because it was an activity that we didn't want to mess up. And in the background, you can see the solar arrays of the space station. Next slide. And during the assembly of the International Space Station, we spent over 1,000 hours total of spacewalk time putting the space station modules together by hand, really. And these guys and gals spend six to seven hours in pairs of two going outside. Next slide. And we call them spacewalks, but they're really more like space crawls because, of course, it's the zero gravity that the feet aren't any more functional than the hands are actually much more functional because you grab things with your hands. So they're crawling around the outside of the space station doing work. We had four spacewalks total. Next slide on our flight and, of course, the final four spacewalks of Space Station assembly. There you can see, I think it's Drew. He's holding on with one hand. He's waving at mom and dad. And to the left of the screen, you can see a tether. We always have tethers when we do spacewalks unlike the movie Gravity that you might have seen with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Next. This gives you a sense of scale. You can see there's an astronaut on the far right. That's Drew Poistil. And he is working a materials experiment way out on the right side of your screen. And then there's a camouflaged astronaut in the center of your screen. It's hard to see who is doing some other work supporting Drew. And, of course, the AMS is sitting there now collecting data. Next. I love this shot because it's a photo of Greg Chometoff. But if you look carefully in Greg Chometoff's advisor, you can make out Mike Fink. We call him Spanky. And Mike Fink is taking this photograph. And you can see the details of his reflection in Taz's visor. Next. This is on the mid-deck of the space shuttle. Ricky Bobby or Roberto Vittori and I, we were the butler and the maid for a lot of the, during the space walks, for example, we prepared the food. You can see the vacuum, the space vacuum cleaner on the upper left. We have those lockers there behind us where all of our equipment is inventoryed and stored. And Roberto and I are also working on an experiment in the center of the screen, upper center, that was an Italian sport experiment. Next slide. Our Russian friends, we collaborated quite a bit, although we do kind of have our own timelines. And so we're not always working together on projects. This particular night, though, was the night before we undocked. It was a very special night. And they came over to the space shuttle. We're on the space shuttle mid-deck right there. And we shared a meal. What's interesting is I see my M&Ms are being stolen in the center of the screen. And I did not realize that they had taken my M&Ms because I was focused on, next slide, another concern of mine that I had had for two missions. And that was getting a photograph of my grandparents' house. This is the actual lake in northern Michigan, near Traversea to Michigan, where my grandparents lived. And I spent many summers on that lake. And it was truly an emotional event when I finally got this shot. I spent almost a month up in space. And the cloud cover never cleared enough for me to get this shot until that final night. And so while the Russians were running off of my M&Ms, I got this picture, which was very exciting for me. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. Actually, that's not true. They were welling in my eyes because there's no gravity. Or you don't feel the effects of gravity. But anyway, I just love this shot and remembering that moment. Next slide. About a second later, I snapped another shot. So you can see how quickly we're moving. The lake is now in the bottom left of your screen. And then you can see the city, the beautiful city of Traversea to Michigan. Next slide. I believe we had the first on-orbit rock band, if that would be three members or more. Katie Coleman brought her flute with her. That guitar right there that Drew Poistil is playing is the same one that Chris Hatfield was playing, I believe. And then the keyboard on the right, I didn't even realize that thing was up there my first flight. But Katie found it the second flight. And so we played Brown Eyed Girl in zero gravity. Next. This is the planet that we live on. It's a beautiful planet. This picture is not enhanced in any way. You can see the northern lights, the beautiful reds, the beautiful greens as we look to the north. The orbit of the International Space Station is 51 degrees inclinations. So we cross over about 90% to 95% of the populated land masses of our planet.  And if there's anything that I took from my two trips in space was the appreciation for how wonderful the planet is that we live on. Next slide. We're flying over Italy at night. We had two Italians on board. Paolo Nespoli was Italian on the International Space Station crew, as well as Roberto Vittori, who was on our shuttle crew. So we got a lot of shots of Italy. And this is Italy at night. And they do turn their lights on at night. I think they might even point them up instead of down. Next. But an advantage of having two Italians on board is we got an opportunity to talk to the Pope. And so the Pope spoke to us and challenged us to learn great things in space. And also thanked us for working as a team and collaboration with 16 other nations on the International Space Station. Next. That's what the Space Station looked when Mark Kelly said, Space Station assembly is complete. Next slide. Now it's time to go home. We're looking out the shuttle overhead window. And there's the Space Station, the way we left it. Next slide. You look real closely. You can see that the AMS and the ELC3 are now installed on the Space Station. Next. And now it's a process of transitioning the space shuttle from a orbiting spaceship to kind of a glider to come in for landing. Next slide. But all the time, very happy that the AMS is working. Next slide. And leaving behind one of mankind's greatest achievements, the International Space Station, working with our international partners. This is looking out the Japanese laboratory window. We can see the earth below and the beautiful heavens above that are yet to explore. Next. Shuttle coming in for landing, Endeavour's final landing. Next slide. We came in in the middle of the night. Next slide. And transitioned to 1G. Transitioning to zero gravity takes about a day, day and a half to get really comfortable with it. Sometimes we feel a little bit dizzy and nauseous at first when we get into space. And we have that same kind of process getting used to gravity when we get back on the ground. You can see the six of us, we look pretty stable. But if somebody bowled into a drew on the right side, we'd all fall down. So anyway, but that was the end of a great adventure, a 16 day flight to the International Space Station aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. And so with that, I think I will take questions. That's great, Greg. That's really great that the experience that you had on the space station, I think one thing that a lot of people have been asking, part of this course is mainly about the planning and design of missions and systems. And so what is the role of an astronaut such as yourself in mission design? Well, that's a great question. Every space mission is a test mission. And the original flights, they were very, very much more a test mission than these later flights as we understood the systems and we matured as a program. But each mission is unique. And so at least up to this point that NASA has been interested in recruiting test pilots to help contribute to the systems aboard either the Space Shuttle or the Space Station or whatever vehicle that we're designing. Right before I left NASA, and I just left NASA about seven months ago, I was involved in the trajectory design of the Dream Chaser, which is a little vehicle that Sierra Nevada is hoping that NASA will purchase. There are three competitors right now to take crew to and from the International Space Station. Right now the Russians are the only ones they can get us to and from. And so there are three different companies, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, and Boeing that are working on these vehicles. And I got involved with the approach design of the Dream Chaser is great fun. I mean, it's test pilot stuff. You're flying on a very steep trajectory and then working the software, the man-machine interface such that you can make the landing task repeatable and safe. And so as test pilots, we were always paying attention to all the different systems and how they interacted and how we could make them better. That's great. And so another question that we've gotten from a few different people so far has kind of been about your transition from your background as a pilot to your current role. So what kind of pitfalls or successes did you experience as you transition from an operator to a manager? And how did you overcome them? That's a $3 question there. I'd say as operators, as I went through almost 25 years in the Air Force, eventually became a colonel, we have different leadership positions along the way. So we do get quite a bit of experience in working with teams and understanding how to get basically all the sled dogs moving in the same direction. I also took 15 months out once I'd left the Air Force, but I was still with NASA to manage an organization of about 60 people in Cleveland, Ohio to do education and outreach, which was actually our mission up there. But management is an interesting thing. And there were, I had an idea of what to expect coming to CASIS, the Center for the Advancement of Science and Space. But I was very obviously surprised by the complexity and the relationships of our mission, which is to manage about 50% of the US portion of the US National Lab, which is 50% of the US portion of the International Space Station, a daunting task and on a very limited budget. So I'd say the challenges that I encountered first were communication, because communication is always difficult. It doesn't matter if you're communicating from the very bottom of an organization or top of an organization outside to other organizations. Communication has all kinds of opportunity to break down. And so one of the things we've been working on since I've been here with CASIS is getting that message efficient and accurate. Secondly, I'd say probably it would be trying to keep myself out of the weeds. Because as an operator, I'm always interested in how things work and getting the job done. And as an operator, your job is to get the job done. And so as a manager and executive, I obviously have to stay high level out of the weeds and yet be close enough to the weeds to understand what's going on. So that's been a balance for me as I've been learning what we're doing in CASIS. But I think we're getting to a stride now where we're accomplishing really significant projects on the space station. And I'm doing a lot more of the up and out where I'm speaking on the hill in DC with stakeholders and with higher level players in the different companies that run our projects. I'd say our successes are that we're a startup.   And it took a while for us to get going. And now I think we have the right people. We have the right connections, the right communications. I think we're getting credibility as an organization. And we just recently put science up on the space station. So we're really excited. That's great. So I guess kind of then going, sorry, I'm jumping over to the place here, but going back then to you touched on your transition from the Air Force to NASA. So can you kind of explain the different pathways to becoming an astronaut? I mean, you obviously took the military route, but what about civil scientists? What are the options? What is one better than the other? Just elaborate on that if you can. Well, certainly there's not one cookbook way to become an astronaut. I think one of the biggest ingredients is getting lucky because there are so many qualified astronaut hopefuls as I was going through the process. I was actually really surprised that I was one of the lucky guys that got picked. But yeah, traditionally we've had two different kinds of astronauts. You have the pilots and the mission specialists. The pilots very often have come from almost always actually from military and mostly test pilot scenarios. And they have been the operators traditionally of the ship, for example, the space shuttle. Mission specialists also take part in the operation. And many of the mission specialists also were pilots, maybe not test pilots. Maybe they were helicopter pilots or helicopter test pilots or other operational jobs, submarines, for example. But they also came from civilian life because they bring other skills to the table. In the space program, we need geologists. We need medical doctors. But we also have individuals from, we have a veterinarian, for example. We have teachers, school teachers, that have become astronauts. So we bring lots of different skill sets. And one of the challenges of the astronaut office is to gather the right teams with the right skill set to do whatever that particular mission is that we have. So that being said, to become an astronaut, I think it's important to realize that you should do what you love because that's what you're going to do the best in.  I mean, eventually we're hoping to colonize the moon and Mars and we're hoping to move a substantial presence off of this planet, partly for survival. And so all of those critical capabilities and skills will be used in these future colonies of space explorers. But certainly right now science and math are probably areas where we tap the most of our astronauts from, but doing very well in those projects and not assuming that you're going to become an astronaut.  I loved being a test pilot. And if I was never selected to be an astronaut, I would have loved my career in the Air Force as a pilot. You had mentioned kind of the future of space exploration briefly in that answer. And so another question that we've been getting a lot is obviously just your opinion from your experience, your expertise, but where do you see the future of space travel? Is it going to continue to be progressed by commercial space industries or do you believe this is more of just an interim fix to drive technology advances and we'll eventually go back to government military driven? Well, I mean, it's a mixture of both actually. If you think of any transportation system, how it evolved, if you think about the chariot, the stagecoach, the train, the plane, you know, it starts out as a science project, if you will. I mean, when cars first came out, only the very rich added, they were on novelty. Airplanes were the same way. And then as we learned how to develop better and faster and cheaper airplanes, for example, then the airline industry was born. And but even then, only the very rich were able to fly on airplanes. And now, regular Americans with normal jobs routinely fly on airplanes every year. So I think the space program will evolve in the same way. I think it's going to, right now it's expensive. Depending on estimates, six to 10,000 pounds, I'm sorry, dollars for each pound that we get into orbit, that's very, very expensive. And so we're hoping to, for technologies to grow, to enable us to cut that by 90%, hopefully, by an order of magnitude. And maybe even after that, an order of magnitude so that we can get to the moon or Mars much more cheaply. So as it's expensive and there's a lot of risk, there's gonna be government involvement. But as soon as commercial companies start learning how to design those new innovative technologies and find creative ways to make a profit, you'll see more of that. Right now we're seeing space tourism. Virgin Galactic is getting started up this year. They've got their first space tourists. You've got Bigelow, Jeff Bezos, you've got Elon Musk with SpaceX, you've got Orbital Sciences Corporation, Sierra Nevada, they're all getting involved in the commercialization of space. This is a new emerging market, a commercial market. And I believe over time, there will be commercial players in space. That's great, thanks. So another question that we've just got is about the ISS specifically. People are wondering, while it's up there, I mean, these things seem so delicate, right? I mean, these intricate mechanics and solar panels and people are wondering, do meteors hit the ISS frequently? And what kind of protection is there for these things to stop this kind of really expensive technology from just collapsing up there? Yeah, that's a great question. Where did that one come from, by the way? Her name is Victoria Walsh. Thank you, Victoria, great question. Micromedium rides are flying around all the time up there. It's a literal minefield up in low Earth orbit. We're orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes and we're about 250 nautical miles up. When I was aboard the space shuttle, docked to the space station, actually we had just done docked on my first flight. We took a micrometeorated hit, the commander's left window, made a big divot in it, actually had all the rookies really concerned. So there's a lot of stuff flying out there. The shell of the US side has a, basically a protective layer that will take a micrometeorated and pulverize it into a bunch of little pieces so that they won't penetrate the outer hull of the pressurized modules. So that protects astronauts on the inside and our particular modules with that micrometeorated layer, protective layer. The solar cells, on the other hand, they don't have protection, but there's just zillions of solar cells up there. So the micrometeorites do routinely take out those solar cells, but the good news is we have so many of them up there. We have virtually unlimited power on the International Space Station. That is certainly one of the commodities that they're not short of. In fact, when we joined on the International Space Station with the space shuttle, we robbed their electrical power because they had so much power. And let's see, other micrometeorites, I mean they could hit astronauts, right? So that's a big danger if you're doing a spacewalk and a micrometeorated hits you. So we have contingency plans to get spacewalkers inside if they do get hit by a micrometeorated. I think the odds of a catastrophic hit are possible, but not strongly likely in the duration of the expected life of the International Space Station. But it is a danger and so we do have the capability to make repairs if one of those larger micrometeorites penetrated the outer shell of the modules. So I guess along those same lines, say one of these meteoroids did hit the space station and it took out communication. If communication was lost between ground control and the space crew, do you typically keep the communication up from your end in the space crew side, assuming that it'll come back on or without the assurance that they're even hearing you down on ground control, how does that typically work? That's a great question. Yes, when we lose communication, we still assume that we have one-way communication so we make calls in the blind. And so that's part of the training and we make calls in the blind to let the mission control know what we're doing, what we're thinking, and where we're going. But we do have procedures that are in place that do not require direction from the ground. So when we have catastrophic events, depressurization, atmosphere poisoning, for example, like toxic atmosphere or a fire, we have specific procedures that we follow in order to get in a safe configuration. Great, thanks. So another thing that people are wondering about is, I mean, obviously, the career as a fighter pilot, piloting a space shuttle, two amazing things. What are the, are there any similarities between those two? Is one more challenging than the other? Just any kind of compare and contrast between those two different types of piloting? It'd be like comparing maybe riding a motorcycle and maybe a huge Mercedes or something. They're both very special, they're both very interesting. I have to say the same feeling that I had prior to my first combat mission in a fighter where I didn't know what to expect and what was on the other side. I was well-trained, I was very confident, but I didn't know what to expect. I had that same feeling before my first space shuttle launch. When I was sitting on my back and I was thinking about all the years of training that had led up to that point, but not knowing what it would really feel like. And so there are similarities. When you're operating an airplane, obviously, there's one, a fighter jet, there's one or two of you, and so you're more self-reliant, you're more autonomous. When you're on a space shuttle, for example, you have a larger crew, you're working with the team on the ground, and so it's more of a team environment, but there are a lot of similarities between the two. This is a question that we have about CASIS, their current work. So how do you guys prioritize the investigations that get to fly on the ISS? Is there a definite high-level pathway mapped out for the next 10 years? Indeed, you have, I guess I'll just stop the question there. I'll let you answer that. Yes, and you did point out, we do have 10 years of runway now instead of six years. We just recently, the White House set a policy change to extend the life of the space station to 2024. So that's 10 years from now. We're actually hoping to get another four years and get 14 years of capability on the International Space Station. At CASIS, we have a portfolio evaluation process, and so when we get project ideas that come in, we first look at them operationally, and some projects just are not gonna work on the space station. If they have toxic materials, for example, we won't take the risk to put them on the space station. Then we look at them economically and scientifically, and if they make economic sense and they make scientific sense, we draw the line and we do have a score that they get, and an ultimate score helps us prioritize those projects. We certainly, because we, in this fiscal environment, we're resource limited, we don't have a lot of funds to put up toward projects. So if projects come specifically, or especially commercial projects that bring their own money because they have a project that might generate a product that they could sell, those projects are very important to us because if we can commercialize the space station and then all benefit from the jobs and the products that are created, then we could fund additional projects. So commercial projects are important. We also have a STEM mission, a science technology engineering and math program, and so if there are projects that will stimulate our young space, future space explorers out there, or help them understand the wow of space, that is also part of our mission. But of course we want to cure cancer, we have stem cell research projects, we can build huge protein crystals up in space without the gravity vector, all scientific processes fundamentally change. That's great. So earlier you had mentioned colonizing the moon and perhaps even colonizing Mars, you mentioned your time on the hill. And so another question that we got is from your experience, your time on the hill, do you think there's currently enough support to continue throughout the years to support sending humans to colonize Mars? Is that still something that you believe people are passionate enough about to keep us pursuing? Well, there are a lot of steps between where we are now and colonizing Mars, but I really do believe that it's in our spirit as humans to do that. And I do believe it may not be in my lifetime, it may not even be two or three generations from now is lifetime, but I think ultimately we will learn how to get out to those far spaces in our solar system and maybe even outside of our solar system. So I think Mars is certainly a great candidate and I could be pretty sure that within 100 years, 200 years, we're gonna figure out how to have an outpost on the moon and on Mars and maybe somewhere further away. Mars is a planet that's closest to the characteristics of Earth, so it's a good, and it's also relatively close, it's only 60 to 150 million miles away. And I'm joking, but we've noticed with Kepler, there's Earth-like planets that are light years away, but right now Mars is the closest habitable kind of planet. It does have some difficulties that we would have to overcome, but it has some better characteristics than for example the moon. So I think within, I mean, I'd be totally guessing, but I'd say certainly within a couple hundred years we should have something fairly permanent on Mars, I'd say. That would be really interesting. I guess kind of keeping with this Mars theme. So one of the projects for this course that all the students are working through is this Mars sample return report that they're putting together. And they kind of analyze and go through the process of doing research and doing scoping and concept of operation tests to kind of see the detailed technical step-by-step how that would work, sending a craft to Mars, collecting samples, bringing it back. And so one question that a number of students have asked is has there been any talk or just the general idea, what do you think about, instead of collecting these samples in Mars, bringing them all the way back to Earth to analyze, is there any kind of geology lab on the ISS that we could bring samples to from Mars and kind of analyze them there? Well, I think that's a great thought. Curiosity, for example, on the Earth, on the Martian surface does have the capability to analyze some of the materials on the Martian surface and send them back to Earth. But the notion of going to the International Space Station to do that wouldn't make much sense because the space station is really close to the Earth.  And so the space station, if the Earth were an orange, the space station would be on the orange peel. I mean, it's right there. And Mars is millions of miles away, so it'd be more challenging probably to bring those samples to the space station than it would be just back to planet Earth. But if there were an orbiting laboratory around Mars, then that might be a real sensible way to go. And so just like we have a space station around the Earth, you could have a space station around Mars, and that space station might be an interesting place to process materials if, for example, there weren't a way to do it on the Martian surface, or if you needed zero gravity, because sometimes when you take the gravity vector out of the equation, we'll learn new things. And so who knows what they could learn on a space station that orbited Mars? That's great. So another question is about the ISS again. And so cases is doing a lot of stuff with ISS, obviously, right now, like that you've mentioned. Is there, do you see, I guess, kind of a tipping point or an inflection point? How will we know if ISS has reached the end of its life cycle? Couple of weeks ago, one of the lessons that we're going through in this course was the project life cycle, and they went through all the way from implementation or design implementation, and then it comes back down to Earth, and it kind of gets retired. And so do you see an end for ISS or do you see it lasting much longer into the future, and how will we know when it's time? That's a great question. I think there's been a lot of studies done to understand where we could extend the life of the space station to for minimum extra effort. And I think that line has been drawn at 2028. And so without serious re-engineering or redesigned of modules or replacement of modules, I understand that 2028 is kind of a line in the sand that we could achieve with very little additional risk or monetary outlight. That being said, I personally believe, probably if we wanted to when we put our heads together, we could figure out how to get it further than that. It might mean replacing some modules. That would be difficult. We'd need a vehicle to get the modules up there or a way to get them up there. So I'd be speculating how far we could go past 2028. But certainly we can get the space station, I believe, through 2028. And so I'm very hopeful when I speak to the congressmen, the decision makers in DC, that they understand that the space station, the engineers believe that space station could be extended to 2028, and the time to do that is now. So we have the most time to get those meaningful projects up on the space station. Now that being said, I think your question was twofold. It wasn't just about the structure itself, but it was also the useful life from a scientific perspective. I don't think that we're ever gonna run out of science to put on the space station. I think as we learn new things, then new problems will surface. We have this very interesting project right now in medicine, where we're studying, when you take the gravity vector out of the equation and zero gravity, cells interact differently. And biologists are learning about this, and also genes express differently. And so by understanding certain genes that turn on and off in zero gravity, how these, how zero gravity affects live animals, like rodents and humans, we can better understand medicine. We can map better drugs in some cases by understanding the larger protein crystals that we can grow in space. And I think medicine will be revolutionized within five to 10 years. I think we're gonna have some great strides in medicine from our studies in zero gravity. Thanks. So I'll give you a softball question up here. So someone asked what was more fun for you? Flying the Space Shuttle or doing aircraft testing with Air Force? Oh, I'll tell you. Those two are pretty different. I mean, what I really enjoyed about flying, test flying in the Air Force is I got to fly lots of different airplanes. I think it totaled about 45 different aircraft. The A-10 is the neatest airplane I got a flight in that. It's just a story that I'll tell to my grandkids about the A-10, that some foreign airplanes that I got to fly, the other fighters, and heavy aircraft as well. The C-141, the B-52, flying all airplanes is great. And then making milestones is a lot of fun as well. I had the opportunity to fly in the active program at NASA Dryden where they had a highly modified F-15 and we were testing thrust vectoring on that airplane. It had canards on the front. It was fly by wire, it was a fabulous airplane and we were doing some initial testing on this axisymmetric thrust vectoring project that I think the technology from that test program is gonna be on the Joint Strike Fighter. So being a test pilot was awesome. But I have to say not one of those flights compares to one space shuttle flight. And a space shuttle is a wonderful vehicle. It was, words can't describe the power that it had. My second launch, there were no malfunctions from lift off all the way to main engine cutoff. Just an amazing vehicle that could have gone on for many, many more years. I know there are a lot of trade-offs, political and fiscal trade-offs for retiring space shuttle but it was a very, very good vehicle and I think at the end of the program it was the safest that it had ever been. So I love flying the space shuttle and those are great memories that I'll take with me forever. Yeah, it seems like it'd be pretty hard to beat that, I would imagine. So I guess kind of to wrap this all up, we're close to the hour now. So from your, your entire career as a fighter pilot to piloting the space shuttle and to even now as the director at CASIS, how do you, what is your interaction with space systems engineering? How does your past relate to engineers? Do you work with engineers now? I guess just kind of relating your experience to this course. Well, engineers make things and scientists investigate and so our involvement in CASIS with engineers is we need to use hardware and actually put it on the space station. We have to get it there and so the engineers help us design the hardware, the modules, the cubes, whatever configuration the experiment's gonna be to get it onto the space station, to give it power, to get the data from it, to analyze it in zero gravity and then bring that data back to Earth. So the engineers have, and also of course the engineers are involved in the design of the vehicles that actually get us to and from the space station, for example, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation. The scientists are the ones who are actually running investigations to learn scientific principles. So two very different disciplines that are working together. So how does systems engineering work together? Well, every spaceship and every experiment for that matter has different subsystems that have to interact and interrelate and so as an operator, as I said before, it's very important for us as human machine interfaces to help those systems work together. If you're an avionics engineer, you're gonna have a set of requirements that you have that might be very different from the propulsion engineer. The propulsion engineer doesn't wanna have all that heavy and expensive gear that needs cooling and everything else. The propulsion engineer just wants to fly a brick up there, this very simple, right? And so these different disciplines of engineering work together and the system engineer is the one who kind of puts it all together. So all the things that we do on the international space station and in the space shuttle and all space vehicles and airplanes have system engineers. That's great, thanks Greg. So yeah, unfortunately I think that is all the time that we have today. Greg, I wanna thank you again so much for joining us today. I think it's been great to get a different perspective, someone from a different background. We've heard from engineers and scientists throughout this course, but having an astronaut pilot and now someone who kind of works from an outside organization but still in conjunction with NASA I think is great. So thank you so much for volunteering your time. But otherwise I think that wraps it up and we will see you all next week. Thank you all for tuning in. All right, thank you all, see you all later. Bye.


The review examined the current state of research into 3D printed materials and techniques used for the fabrication of orthodontic appliances. It found that there was some evidence available on materials properties that are clinically relevant, but that more research is needed to fully understand how these materials perform in real-world applications. Additionally, there is a need for further clinical trials to better understand the potential benefits and risks associated with using 3D printing technology in orthodontics. This article was authored by Cecilia Garacci, Giovanna Jielowski, Claudio D'Amico, and others.


Good afternoon and welcome, excuse my voice, it's cold season in the heat and I'm just getting over it so I'm not contagious. I'd like to welcome you today, it's really a delight and an honor and I'm very excited to have Christina Viaggi come and speak to us today and I'm really thrilled that all of you are here. One of the great parts about the forum in the center is that we are able to provide and produce programming like this and so I'm delighted that you're taking advantage of it and I'm sure that you're going to have a wonderful opportunity to hear and to have dialogue with Dr. Viaggi. Lucy LePard wrote in the wonderful Power of Feminist Art by Gerard and Brode, she wrote feminist art replaces modernist egotistical monologue with dialogues between art and society, between artist and audience, between women artists of the present and those of the past, intensity arises from the rawness of personal experience and impact from the power of personal truth. When I was thinking about this center and starting this center and having this center this was a very important piece of information for me to think about. The suppression and oppression of women in any form whether or not it is mild or radical is directly linked to a biological fact. This means that our bodies are targets and this is very personal. Hence feminist art and the mantra of feminist art is the personal is political. The work manifested by women and feminist artists and women arts activists is usually honest and intimate it's sometimes raw and confrontational and demands and it often commands our attention. I read this before we begin today would you like to come in and have a seat or you just sort of want to see whether or not you want to stay. I'm not putting you on any no stay stay as long as you want you can stand right there. The act of creating creates action as the action of creation is acting in creativity. Working in art is an action and the action of creating action. Action and art art is action. These days creation and action by word or by deed by inference or exactitude is on everybody's mind. I wrote that this morning. Thank you very much and please join me in welcoming Christine Viagra that was lovely. Thank you so much Elizabeth that was just wonderful that set me up. I have been an activist for a long time and my activism has inspired a particular body of work that I've created at different periods of my artistic career. Besides going to the usual protests against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the nuclear industrial complex in New York City, Washington DC and other places I protested along with other women all over the world in places like Greenham Common, Comiso and Seneca Falls in upper state New York. All this activity basically took place in the 70s and late 70s and early 80s and this is inspired the body of work which I'm going to show you. In 1980 slide webs were woven in connection with women's pentagon action. Women were protesting the pentagon's role in nuclear proliferation. Nuclear webs were woven around the fences of the pentagon, around the pentagon itself as a symbol of women's unity in a common purpose. The web was considered to be a powerful symbol of the worldwide women's movement emphasizing women united in the protest against the nuclear industrial complex and the desire for world peace. What follows is the beginning of the unity statement of the women's pentagon action and you can forward and forward again. We are gathering at the pentagon on November 17th because we fear for our lives. We fear for the life of this planet, our earth and the life of our children who are our human future. We have come here to mourn and rage and defy the pentagon because it is the workplace of the imperial power which threatens us every day. Every day while we work, study, love, the colonels and generals who are planning our annihilation walk calmly in and out of the doors of its five sides. You can go on. We are in the hands of men whose power and wealth have separated them from the reality of daily life and from the imagination and then from the women's pentagon action. 1980, November 17th. I didn't go to the first women's pentagon action but I did go, there were about 10 of them in all and I did go to some of them and here are some images of some of the later ones. Slide. Slide and slide and slide. Okay, now I'm going to talk about Seneca Falls. Slide. Some of these images are, many of these images are mine but some of them are by Catherine Alport, my friend who was also up there at the, at Seneca Falls, peace encampment. Women created encampments situated next to missile bases in order to protest the proliferation of weapons aimed at the Soviet bloc. In fact, peace camps were established all over the world, including in Nairobi, Kenya and certainly, you know, in England, in Italy, in France, in, in Germany, in Holland, there were a lot of peace camps. In all cases, women wore, wore wolf webs surrounding the army bases. I visited some of the encampments, as I said before, three of them. I stayed at Seneca Falls a few weekends in 1983. Slide. And with hundreds of other women, took part in peaceful demonstrations, including climbing over the fence into the nuclear base. And then, of course, as soon as we climbed over it, we were arrested and that was part of the whole thing. As you can see here, many of these women are nude because that's what they did. And of course, this created problems with the surrounding populace, which tended to be a little more, you know, Bible believing and all that. Okay. A few words about, okay, slide. A few words about the Seneca Falls peace encampment. It was founded in 1983 and it was modeled after Greenham Common. And here is the main house of Seneca. Slide. Okay. I'd like to read you the vision statement of the Seneca Falls. Vision statement, which is from the back cover of the encampment handbook. And this is what it said, women have played an important role throughout our history in opposing violence and oppression. We have been the operators of the Underground Railroad, the spirit of the eco rights movement and the strength among tribes. Remember, this is at Seneca Falls. So the Iroquois tribes were very, they were based there. And giving voice to the 19th century feminist movement. Once again, women are gathering at Seneca, this time to challenge the nuclear threat at its doorstep. The Seneca Army Depot, Native American homeland, once nurtured and protected by the Iroquois, is now the storage site for the neutron bomb and most likely the Pershing II missile. And is the departure point for weapons to be deployed in Europe. Women from New York State, from the United States and Canada, basically from all over Europe and from Australia and New Zealand and so on and so forth came to Seneca Falls in the early 80s. The existence of nuclear weapons is killing us. Their production contaminates our environment, destroys our natural resources. And slide, and our human dignity and creativity. But the most critical danger they will present is to life itself. Sickness, accidents, genetic damage and death. These are the real products of the nuclear arms race. We say no to the threat of a global Holocaust, no to the arms race, no to death. We say yes to a world where people, animals and plants in the earth itself are respected in values. And I don't think it's changed much since then, unfortunately. So what did we do at Seneca Falls? How did we protest? The encampment utilized a number of different techniques in their protest to bring their causes and issues to the attention of the outside world. They used many ritual elements. The women would protest in large circles, holding hands, weaving webs of yarn around each other and around the fence or army depot. They performed slow walks where they would walk in slow motion, twisting, turning, pulling each other along in one protest that they tied themselves to the fence with ribbons and yarns. And we'll see that slide. Other demonstrations featured singing, dancing, masks, costume, makeup and signs. Sometimes dynes were performed, this is a dyn here, to imitate war casualties. There was even a laundry ritual in which women hung sides in a local laundromat while doing their laundry. And of course, fence climbing was a chief activity, which usually resulted in arrest. Okay, slide, slide, slide. These are two women from Greenham Common that came to help us protest. Slide. This is my friend Gail. Slide, slide, slide, slide. Okay, climbing the fence. Slide. Looks as if she's being booted across the fence. Slide, slide. Look how happy she is. She's being arrested. Slide. And here's a young woman from Minnesota who's encountering the soldiers. Slide. And being arrested. Slide, slide. Okay, I'd like to talk about one incident. It's called the Waterloo Bridge incident. On July 30th, 1983, about 100 women from all over the U.S., including women who had been at Greenham and who had participated in some of the Pentagon actions, walked, began a peace walk from Seneca Falls all the way to the women's peace encampment. Four miles into their walk, their way was blocked by several protesters, local protesters. So what did they do? And these protesters started calling them and saying, commies, go home, lesbians, vegetarians, all kinds of other things like that. No. To diffuse everything. The women sat down in the classic position of, you know, non-violence. The standoff lasted some time and the police told the marchers that if they did not disperse, they would be arrested. So the townspeople threatened the women with their flag poles. I didn't actually see this, but I heard all about it. Threatened the women with their flag poles as if they were swords. And here they were, you know, and saying that our action would lead to conquest by the Russians and the denial of our freedom in the United States.  Finally, 54 women were arrested, including the wife of the mayor of the town because she had joined the protesters. And then eventually the charge was dismissed. Okay, slide, slide, slide. These are women being arrested. Wailing, slide, slide. Don't they look happy? The fence, slide, slide. This is one of the women, the 54 women. Slide, another one, slide, slide. One of the women sitting down, slide. Onlookers, slide. The witness says yes. Slide. This is in the center there. This is Gwen Kirk from Greenham Commons. She was quite something if anybody remembers her. Slide, slow walk and wailing.  Another die in, slide. At the main gate, Nagasaki Day, slide. Slide, slide, slide. Some of the locals with their motorcycles, slide. Catherine Allport photographing them, slide. And some confrontation between the media, as you can see on the right. Slide. The locals. Slide, wonderful picture. Slide taken by Catherine Allport. Slide, slide, slide. And this is a women's sign, of course, that we used to do all the time. Slide. Okay, and this was in the local paper, and I'm here. That's me with a hat. And that's Gail behind me, a friend of mine. This is after we climbed the fence with 600 people, including Dr. Spock, the baby doctor. And we were jailed for a day. Slide. And then, of course, we talked, we had conferences about what we had done and what we had seen and what we had witnessed and all that. And here's one of the flyers for one of the talks that we did. Slide. Okay, then I went in 1983. I went to Greenham Common and took part in an action with 40,000 women from all over the world. We dismantled a good part of the fence around the base and confronted the police and the Barbies. Here's part of my description of the action which was published in Women News, January 6, 1983. On Sunday, December 11, 1983, about 40,000 women converged upon Greenham Common. Excuse me. U.S. Air Force Base to protest peacefully the installation of cruise missiles, which had begun in November and to celebrate two successful years of women's peace encampments, existence despite mounting opposition. You can slide. From the government and the media, women came from all parts of England, Europe, Australia and the United States and also, you know, Europe. Some read statements for the benefit of the numerous international press who were present. The women, along with some men and children, were arriving at 10 a.m. and by 1 p.m. they were over 200 buses parked at the main gate. The women started moving around the base. Slide. Okay, here is singing in front of the main gate. Slide. Inside the peace and freedom tent. Slide. This is the living conditions in Greenham. Slide. Slide. Quaint. Slide. Slide. Slide. There were some wonderful banners all over. Slide. And this is at the main gate. Look at the posters on the left there. Slide. Okay. All right, the women started to slide. One more. Okay. These are onlookers. Women started moving slowly around the base. Chanting, singing, milling around the fence like a slowly moving but powerful river. Especially recruited policemen, weaponless bobbies, thank God they were weaponless, lined the fence on the outside in every 10 feet. British military police were stationed on the inside of the fence at regular intervals. And behind them, American MPs armed with Billy clubs and attack dogs. All of a sudden, a number of women tried to climb the fence. Slide. But were prevented by the bobbies then as if it had been carefully pre arranged. The women closest to the fence fastened their fingers onto the chain link and started pulling on the fence in unison, chanting and yelling. This massive effort produced surprising results in a short period of time before the police could react sufficiently. The fence was nearly pulled down in several places. 40,000 women. Slide, slide, slide, slide. This gives you an idea of the amount of women. Police reinforcements appeared swiftly and started to push the women away, knocking some of them down, but the women, undaunted, came back time and time again to the fence with increasing vigor. Now the British and the American MPs on the other side of the fence flew into action, banging their belly covers on the fence, some deliberately aiming at the women's fingers. Some of the women who managed to climb over the fence were vigorously pushed back by the police, who may have been instructed to make few arrests and avoid greater publicity, except for a few nervous policemen who overreacted. The police were well behaved, considering the sea of determined women facing and greatly outnumbering them. 56 women were arrested and there were some broken fingers and wrists. One policeman suffered a pencussion from a falling fence post. While fence pulling was the most dramatic part of the action, only a small portion of the women were involved. The rest supported them with shouts, singing and keening. Mirrors were flashed towards the base to turn the base inside out, which is a shamanic technique. With the coming of night, there were candle vigils, group rituals and more slow chanting. While the women continued milling around the fence, pulled a slide. Even though the main part of the action took place between one and five, some activity continued until eight and nine. This is from the December 11th action at Greenham Common that was published in Women News January 6, 1983. Slide. Women lived along the fence around Greenham from 1981 to 2000. The United Air Force Base in the British closed the cruise missile base in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the 19-year period from 1981 to 2000, the women wore wool of continual webs along the fence surrounding the camp. Throughout the camp's existence, thousands of women took non-violent direct action at the base and in towns and places all throughout Britain. Actions were taken in the spirit of celebrating and protecting all life and challenging the basis of nuclear violence. The spirit of Greenham not only spread across England like a web but the United States and Europe as well and other places. Slide. Slide. Three Americans and three, oh no, four Americans and three British climbing over the fence the next day. Slide. Slide. Bobby's repairing the fence. Slide. Slide. All right. Comiso. I have very few images of Comiso in Sicily because I was arrested and they were taken, everything that I had, all my cameras and so on were impounded. So this, you know, I'm going to have to talk about it. Slide. Okay. This is the town of Comiso. It's a small little town in the middle of Sicily. In Italy, the Ragnatella slide. Word for Italian, word in Italian for web was started as a woman's protest camp on the outskirts of Comiso, an American cruise missile base based in Sicily in 1982. A few words about the Comiso base. In 1982, the small town of Comiso in Sicily was chosen to house the largest arsenal of cruise atomic missiles in Europe. Comiso was an especially sensitive area since it would link parts of Eastern Europe and Western Russia, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Egypt and all of North Africa. The townspeople of Comiso were very upset by this and about the nuclear base and they signed a petition against the base. The participation of the women's groups was unique because the women couldn't go out the way the men or they didn't go out the way the men did. So the women couldn't circulate as freely as the men. So they went from door to door and talked to other women about their, you know, the fact that they were very unhappy about the base. And they denounced the U.S. project and urged their peers to fight against it. In 1983, female activists in Sicily issued an invitation to women throughout the world to join them in Comiso in March on International Women's Day. The result was three days of dancing, parades and an effort to encircle the base. And unfortunately, violence occurred. However, when groups decided to try to stop the trucks entering the base and the police responded violently, arresting many women and dragging them by the hair. So this was in the news. I didn't participate in that action. I came in 1984. The women in the Ragnatella realized that the missiles represented the top of the iceberg in a society that takes a very passive attitude toward rape and exploitation. One of their most dramatic actions was sparked by this realization, which came as a result of the following incident. A young girl was raped by three masked men. And no particular blame was attached to the men, while the woman was kept indoors by her grieving and ashamed family. So the Catania women took this incident as their rallying point. 500 of them marched into Comiso and headed for the square, which was usually full of men. Each woman wore a sign saying, I am a woman that was raped at Comiso. I am this woman. I was raped. When the women arrived at the square, they found it full of about 5,000 men. At first they were frightened, but then their anger took over. And they realized that this young woman had been raped and nobody was doing anything about it. So as a result of this they started chanting and they pressed the men back. And the men cleared a passage for them until the women were all inside with the men. And then the women linked hands and they started chanting and keening and so on and so forth. And they pushed all the men back out until every man was out of the square and the men didn't make one bit of sound. Well, I heard this and I had to go, of course. I visited the Ragnatela in 1984 with the intention of spending a few days there and taking part in some actions. When I arrived there I found no one there.  I conducted my own protest action by climbing onto the roof of the utility which was used as the basis for this camp. Something that was forbidden. Within 10 minutes two police cars descended upon me and arrested me. And I'd like to, you know, redo what I, and I ended up spending four very, very interesting days in a Sicilian jail. Something I'll never forget. It wasn't that bad, but I mean, you know, in retrospect it wasn't, but at the time. I arrived at Comiso at 3.30 p.m. on Thursday, January 12th and was directly, and went directly to the Ragnatela. The women's encampment which borders on the Maliochio air base. This is from a periodical called Bad News from, you know, you probably remember, you New Yorkers remember Bad News.  Okay, no one was there. I was devastated because I'd been looking forward to staying here so much. I called and suddenly a man, Tino, appeared and offered me wine, of course. According to him, the women had left one month before because they'd all gotten sick. And because the predominantly English women wanted to pattern the Ragnatela after Greenham and the Italians resented this, of course. I found this strange and asked him to tell me how I could locate some of these women. He gave me some names and he gave me some telephone numbers and I called. And I contacted a person by the name of Cathy Manus and Adele Fiascessa and arranged to see them in the next couple of days. Then I spent the night in a pensioning right near the base. The next morning I got up and was at the base at 8.30. I went to the air base with the intention of photographing the Ragnatela and the base. So I took several pictures of the base and I even took pictures of a sign saying, don't take pictures of the base. Then I saw two soldiers who said, no, don't do that, don't do that. And I took pictures of them. So of course, I was dictating what next would happen. And sure enough, I was on top of the roof of the Ragnatela when suddenly two police cars from two different sides barge in on, you know, and then five policemen from each car jump out and say, lay, soprali, vinga jusubito, come down immediately. I said, what the fuck, what did I do? And so, well, it went on a little bit like this. Okay, one of them told me that since he was not sure, basically I was taken into custody. One of them told me that since he was not sure I was taken photos of the base, I would have to follow him to the police station. There I was interrogated and my passport and camera were confiscated. We don't have slides in this part. I admitted that I had taken photos of the base and told the Marichalo, my reason for coming here, my feelings about the base and about the missiles and about, you know, the American presence in, you know, in Sicily in this terribly awful fashion, three hours passed. Finally, I was informed that I was arrested and had to sign several documents in front of a judge. I was allowed one phone call and I called Kathy Manos, one of the women who I was supposed to have meet and she told me she would get me a lawyer. Then my bags were searched, my camera, my photo equipment was taken and my car was impounded. I was put in a police wagon in a company to the Ragusa prison, which is a medieval prison with walls that are two meters thick and a gate, a front gate that is about this thick. And the vice-martial on the way started telling me, you know, he said, I admire you, senor. I have some miniature paintings in my house. Maybe you'd like to come and see them after you get out of prison.  He said, nel mezzo del camin di vostra vita, mi ritrovae in una scura scura, you know. Okay. And then the gate clanked shut, and that was it. I arrived at the prison at 3.30 p.m. and was fingerprinted and photographed. Then I was admitted to the women's division and placed in a cell approximately line feet by five feet. I stayed in prison four days from January 13th through the 16th. I was in solitary confinement for the duration of my stay, which meant that I was technically not allowed to have communication with the others and was locked in my cell the whole time except when I needed to go to the bathroom or when I had one hour to exercise. I had no communication with the outside world, no TV like the other newspapers. The other prisoners were discouraged from talking to me. However, since this was Italy, we managed to talk and I was able to feel their human warmth and that of the four women guards who were also very kind to me. There were five other prisoners in the women's division, 190 prisoners in all. The men were, you know, naturally many more men. Two had killed their husbands, and I could really understand why they killed their husbands because Sicily is a very patriarchal place. And three were in for theft. The food was abundant but very starchy. I spent my time reading. The hardest part was waiting for the event which would decide my fate. My lawyer and the judge were scheduled to arrive together to interrogate me. This would take place any time, day or evening. When I might expect this, I was told soon, in a few days, maybe a week. At 5.30 p.m. on January 16th, a guard came into the prison and proclaimed, La prigioniera viaggi è liberata. And he banged. I was elated and I kissed my fellow prisoners and the guards goodbye and packed my things. The guard returned. Is the liberated one ready? So I was taken to the Justice Department where I was questioned for three hours. Had to sign more papers and was issued an exit visa for January 25th. Then I was released. That was the, you know, that's my, that's my story slide. Okay, well what, what did all this protesting accomplish? I think it made people, the media aware of the U.S. involvement in massive amounts of armaments. Why did we climb the fence? How can getting arrested for doing so help the cause of world peace and nuclear disarmament? If the act is isolated and considered only as a literal event, it's worthless, it's, it's essentially worthless. Symbolically, climbing the fence is surmounting an obstacle, crossing a barrier, denying passive acceptance of the thing, of the way things are. If the web is damaged or torn down, the spider recreates it again and again in order to survive the spider must never give up. Therefore climbing the fence became a symbolic act of survival for women. By repeating this act of civil disobedience again and again, women tried to make the rest of the world understand that they were not going to sit down and give up. This is what we must start doing now all over the world. Some of us are already doing it in some way or other. In art and, you know, in, in talking about it and so on. We must keep it up for our sake, for our children, for our animals and plants, and for our beautiful work, beautiful earth. Another result of this protesting, civil disobedience, etc., was that some of us, like me, were inspired to create art reflecting these actions or write about them. Okay, slide. The work that was inspired by these actions. Actually, so I did a series, I started in the 70s before I really, you know, took part in these actions. I started with a series of crucifixions and here are some of them. The triptych form, as you know, is used for these works with the way of depicting religious art in the Middle Ages, so that's why I use the triptych form, the three, you know. These are collages on wood, on a wood backing, and the triptych, of course, clothes. These work reflect women's plight all over the world. Her inequality, which in some instances is like a crucifixion. Her second classness, her low position. Women on the wings of the crucifixions look on in concentrated empathy at the women on the cross. And on the wings, you see, I was teaching art history at the time, so a lot of these women are derived from Van Eyck, from Giotto, from Piero della Francesca, and others. And there's Joan of Arc here in the bottom. Slide. Here we have the female Christ on the cross and the sacred sheet that Christ was wound at, touching all of the women. And here's Ingrid Bergman as Joan of Arc, in that wonderful, yeah, maybe some of you will remember that. Slide. Sejourner truth. Here. Slide. I've had the worst time of all, I think. And here I started putting some of my friends and some of my, you know, some of my relatives, like my sister, right there, and my mother up there, looking at the woman who is crucified. Slide. I also did an animal crucifixion because I was getting into animal rights, into protesting for animal rights at that point. And the animal crucifixion is basically the same. It's even more horrible. It was very hard to do this piece. Very, very hard indeed. And on the wings of this piece, again, like the crucifixion with the human beings on the cross, the animals are looking on because they might be next. They might be next, you might be tortured. Slide. This piece that I just showed you is two and a half by two and a half feet in size. And then I had it blown up to 14 feet by 12 feet and transferred the cloth and put on a frame and then I carried it in a big animal rights demonstration in Washington against the treatment of the Springfield Monkeys by the Department of Health. If any of you remember that. Slide. Okay. And then in 1984, I started, you know, I'd already gone to a lot of encampments and so on. I started a piece called Cutting the Red Tape. And here I use the triptych motif or, yes. This is, I consider this a precursor to some of my webs that you'll see later on. Okay. In this case, I show in the center panel and in the wings of the crucifixion, I mean of the triptych, I show the women's rights movements from the Suffragettes, the women on the left side of the triptych. I show women against apartheid in South Africa and on the right too. And then in the middle portion of the triptych, you can probably see some of the images you saw before, Seneca Falls, Greenham Common and so on. And finally at the very top of the triptych is a woman, my friend Gail who's actually doing the women's peace sign.  Slide. These are details from Cutting the Red Tape. Slide. And of course I couldn't get away from showing Johto's Angels. So here are Johto's Angels. Slide. And my daughter doing the peace sign and my sister. Slide. These are details, okay. And then in the center a lot of the abortion rights protest in Germany and in Holland and also in Italy. Slide. And always the hands going up, pushing, pushing, helping, helping, you know, the symbol of the hands. Slide. The suffragettes, Emily Pankhurst here. And her daughter Sylvia Pankhurst being carted away by the police in some of their demonstrations. Slide. And Confrontation at Greenham Common. Slide. Sojourner Truth. Slide. Coretta Scott King. Slide. Okay, and then I also I couldn't resist. I transferred this to to make it larger and this is a recent picture of me in front of my piece. Slide. Okay, but my, you know, my great okay. Slide. Okay, finally I created a large piece. Well, this was not that large called, which I call the web. It was during this period of my life naturally that I was rediscovering the power of women and so on by visiting campings and taking parts and peaceful protests that I started to create webs. First I created a small model which you can see here. It's in my kitchen. And it was a collage again.  Now our menstrual blood the blood that goes through our bodies and so on. Slide. Okay, this gives you an idea of, you know, who's where on the web. And as you can see there are three levels. There's the great goddess in the center because here I'm also I'm also connecting it with women's spirituality which I was getting very involved at that time not only the political actions but also the women's spirituality which is very important to me. So in the center we have the great goddess and then in the first circle there are three circles and three is a sacred number it goes way back, prehistorically and so on. Each circle consists of seven panels seven also is a sacred number so I was getting into sacred numbers. Okay. Slide. Okay, here are the two sides of the web and this is a very large piece that's 45 feet in diameter and I had it transferred here on cloth so it's a double sided piece and connected with red ropes and this was in my backyard I hung it on my backyard you know and you'll see a short clip a short clip about it. Slide. Okay, here are some of the panel details you can probably recognize some of the green and common images that I took in this panel. Slide. This is one panel this is a Seneca Falls panel you can probably recognize some of the images that you just saw from Seneca Falls. Slide. And this is the web from the air a helicopter and I photographed it from a helicopter so that you'd get a feeling of the size of it. There's my mother sitting up there way up there. Okay. Okay, slide. Okay, this is the clip. Their bigness was exciting to me because it's so bold and it was big enough to be tangible. Me putting together the pieces many women and some men helped me with this. This is my mother and my aunt. Both are gone now. There they are. Everybody got into the act. That's my sister. You can only see her hand. That's my aunt's voice. And I'm interested in anything that advances the cost of ideas of feminism. She worked at the UN but women she was very caring. To everybody. We've been struggling for rights for peace for freedom throughout history for a couple of hundred years. Then I became I continued my web work. Next came the three-dimensional webs which I started doing just with rope with some spheres which symbolize the macrocosm and the microcosm and so forth. The web was meant to be an extension of the idea of interconnection with all living things and our need for peace. The three-dimensional web was first installed at Thorpe Gallery in Spark Hill, New York in the fall of 1990. Here's an image of that. Thirty-one women participated in its five-day creation. Approximately one mile of different colored ropes and varied widths, lengths and textures were woven using the wall and ceilings as anchors. The effect on the 127 feet by 34 feet by 14 foot space was both dramatic and inspiring. Ropes were hung from all angles and heights, encouraging the viewer to interact with the piece. So that's the first three-dimensional web slide. And then next came, you know, I did a series after that. I did a series of eight in different parts of the United States and also in Europe. This one is in Rockland Center for the Arts in West Nyec that I did in 1991. Next. This one is I did in Mount Holyoke in 1992 and I used the trees, the outlining trees, whatever, you know, obstacles trees were there. That's what I used. Next. This is in Parco de Villa Tegulio in Rappalo in Italy. Next. And Lausanne in Switzerland. Okay. Now I'd like to talk about my, about some of my work around the theme of Medusa, which to me is connecting my political activism with my women's spirituality concerns. Medusa is an aspect of the great goddess about which I'd like to briefly talk. Okay. This is the first Medusa that I created and I created these, I've done a series of them. This one is called the You Medusa. I'm sure you all know the patriarchal myth of the Medusa, how she was decapitated by Perseus looking into the shield of Athena who had lent the shield so that he wouldn't have to look into her eyes and die. That's the patriarchal myth. But there's a matriarchal overlay. And how do we know that? Because of certain motifs that Medusa has such as her snake hair which bespeak her ancient lineage. Snakes are the terrestrial alter ego of the goddess. This goes back to the Paleolithic. The power of women's eyes. Medusa was supposed to be able to turn men into stone. Okay. The power of women's eyes is considered dangerous in certain societies. Women create life and they can also take it away. The Malocchio in southern Italian culture is a case in point in prevalent many parts of the world as southern Italy or in Turkey. What is the significance of Medusa's power that can turn men into stones? This combines two symbols, the power of her eyes and the fact that she turns men into stones from the Paleolithic monument into stelae which signifies that she has deep association with the death goddess. Okay. Actually, my sister is responsible for my creation of this piece because she came over to walk dogs with me one day and I had just uprooted this U which turns out to be sacred to Hecate and this U was lying in my drive and she said, Chris, this looks just like the Medusa. So 108 hours later I had this piece which, you know, next and I failed to mention it's my face 25 years ago whenever I created it because I created that piece in 1978. Then, okay, I did a black Medusa and here the Medusa is on a wooden base and the power of women glances are staring at the viewer as is the Medusa so they all become Medusas the power of the glance. Next. That's also my face. Next. Okay, then I created another type of Medusa, a laughing a red laughing Medusa and this time I used the face of my daughter and everybody in the piece was laughing. I had, at one point I had a bumper sticker in my car saying she who laughs lasts and I think laughter is a very is a very important political tool so here's some images of people laughing we can go through them very fast. Next. That's my mother laughing. Next. That's my aunt laughing. Next. Me laughing. Next. A person that I met on demonstration laughing. Next. My friend Catherine Allport laughing. Next. And my daughter and here's my daughter I used her face for the laughing Medusa. Next. Okay. Next. Oh and here's the one that I did in 1995 called the raging Medusa and for her face I used I used as inspiration for her face I used Maria Callas hitting a high C in the performance of Bellini's Norma at the Met. Next. Next I'd like to talk about two works which I consider part of my political spiritual work the Gigi sculpture in the Goddess Mount. Next. The Goddess Mount is part of my political spiritual work which is missing value in patriarchal culture which we are in connectedness. The emotional isolation necessary to commit violence is healed by the mound. The part becomes connected to the whole and we are all part of life and thus beloved by the mother by the goddess the ever renewing life force. And right now it is more important than ever before to consider how we're treating the earth our mother. The climate you know you can see the weather lately has been hysterical. Okay so I created this as actually part of my Ph.D. dissertation I created this piece called which I call the Gigi sculpture and it's a it's no longer in existence it's made of papier-mache it was meant to be a model and it was 24 feet by 14 feet wide by 8 feet tall and it was a papier-mache structure with a wire armature inside and inside it was a negative form of a female figure the goddess and you enter through her navel because we're all connected by her navels to our mothers so it took me it took me about 2 months of very very steady work to create this piece with the help of several of you know my contingent my mother my sister my friends and all that next this is the inside and it's difficult to see that the inside is actually the negative form of a female figure that's the maybe we could turn the lights down a little bit okay next okay here you can see kind of that this is the arm this negative female figure is lying down with her legs going inside the earth below her knees so that she doesn't have long legs and she has her arm draped along her side and she's still in a sleeping position okay next okay now we're going to watch a small clip of the GG sculpture taken with an antiquated 1981 camera the great goddess sculpture took 2 months to build with the help of 11 people it is a paper mache structure using a wood and chicken wire armature it measures approximately 23 feet in length and is 12 feet in width and about 7.5 feet high on the outside this work was inspired by the findings of my research on the Maltese and Scottish megalithic structures which are explained in my dissertation images of the great goddess my intention in this sculpture was to literally depict the body of the goddess as a temple to be entered the sculptural thrust of the piece is on internal space the negative shape of a reclining female figure six times life size lying on her side one arm draped along her hip her legs disappearing into the earth below the piece the final column is very difficult to see because this is not a terrific video ok next ok the goddess mound this is the one I would like to build somewhere the sculptural thrust of this piece will be two fold an outside earth mound and an inside negative space of a female figure this time giving birth the exterior earth mound will be approximately 25 feet high quite big and 74 feet in diameter and will be covered with wild grass the inside figure made of some permanent material will be approximately 2 feet high and 14 feet wide all of these measurements are the design of this figure I did with the late architect Mimilo Bell who used to teach Pratt the figure will be in a squatting birth giving position the floor will be 3.5 feet underground and will be entered through a passageway leading from the outside doorway directly into the figure's vagina and we all come from there so you know there's no problem at one point there was a college in the south which almost accepted this piece but as soon as the president actually saw what was involved he quickly called me up and said no I can't have this I'll be crucified on the front lawn the inside will be painted an overall red ochre with swirling black designs and possible pictographs ok slide this is an aerial view and you can see the long passageway inside into the into the sacred precinct which is the inside of a female figure the shape of a mound of the mound is an oval recalling other megalithic monuments in the British Isles and elsewhere the mound's entrance the winter solstice will penetrate deep inside the mound the way does it nougrange the mound's astronomical metaphors are two types the ones that have to do with the moon and the ones that have to do with Venus and all the dimensions have to do with sacred numbers I designed this work with the help of the later architect as I said before if you'd like further details on the goddess mound please go to my website goddessmound.com to see other things both the Gigi and the goddess mound were inspired by Maltese and Scottish temples slide and tombs from the Neolithic period which I studied for my doctoral dissertation which I was awarded in 1981 I believe that the creation of such a structure is very important for now in this era of growing attention to women's place in history I think such a sculpture will renew our thinking about architecture as habitable sculpture with harmony with the environment and about sculpture as a symbolic embodiment of the goddess presence and character which forms an architectural hold with the landscape and is related to human need next other works next just to give you a smattering of things that I've done recently more recently which also are political in nature in the mid-80s I traveled to Nairobi, Kenya and the third world women's international conference there I was inspired to create this piece called 52% because that's what we are we're 52% of the population of the world and all of these images I photographed the center one is a little girl that I met in one of the black spots because I also went to South Africa to witness the apartheid at that point and one of the little girls that were in the black areas black spots where the blacks were confined during the time of apartheid and she represents Lucy or Eve who we all come from next then in 1995 I attended the fourth women's international conference in Beijing and created this sphere which I call the Beijing sphere again I took all the photography of these women and many of them were activists such as this one was an activist from Fiji she was protesting the French involvement in the nuclear stuff in the tests there the one way up there the Indian looking one she was a lesbian from Sri Lanka and she was so happy to be there because we had a wonderful lesbian demonstration in Huayru which the Chinese were very worried about and she was finally able to be completely herself and she was ecstatic and this is an Italian activist and so on and so forth I remember a lot of their stories and lately well in the last in the latest millennia I reacted of course to the 9-11 and this is my piece about 9-11 unfortunately it's not very well photographed it's a very large piece it's 20 foot by a 9 foot collage on cloth and it shows you the whole events of 9-11 and since my partner died at that shortly thereafter I connect 9-11 sort of with her death so here she is disappearing into the sky you know an image of her and then I did this with people which was again it's a large piece 16 feet by 6 feet collage on cloth which reflects all the demonstrations and marches that took place all over the world including Antarctica to try to influence our basic guidance government not to start a war in Iraq so the people come towards you you know visually next and then of course the inevitable war which we're still in I won't even comment beyond that next then in 2004 I had a show at series gallery and I called it Disasters and the first one is the election of 2004 and as you see Bush is depicted in the center it was very difficult to work with this image like the dark dark lord in the Lord of the Rings there's a lot of segregation all around him while he gives his ridiculous grin in his thumbs up sign and where's his idiotic grin all around him like ticker tape are and expanding in sizes they get closer to the edges are copies of email messages that I receive from all over the world in Italian, French and English which are basically my languages after the election saying I'm devastated I couldn't get out of bed and so on and so forth you know and longer messages in Italian and so on as a result of this disastrous election which we're still feeling the results of of course next then I reacted to the tsunami of Southeast Asia and again I used the whatif of hand first of all I was inspired by who you that know Art History, Hokusai's wave which is very famous and this piece is also quite large about 15 feet by 6 or something like that and on one hand are the women who have all lost their children and you know the people in the water and on the other hand these people were saved by this person right here and then there's a famous tortoise and the hippopotamus which some of you probably know the story of the hippopotamus was a baby hippopotamus and this old ancient tortoise and they're still apparently together the next and then the latest the have nots inspired by the events resulting from the hurricane Katrina in New Orleans on the left side you can see the haves leaving because they have cars to leave while the rest of the people the have nots have to endure the frightening destruction of the hurricane in its subsequent aftermath ok then I've come to the end of this as for my writing inspired by my activism I've written three books Habitations of the Great Goddess published in 1995 which examines temples, tombs and dwellings inspired by the great goddess in Malta in Scotland then in the footsteps of the goddess in 2000 which is a compilation of personal stories by women and men of their experiences with a female divine and then the latest one is The Rule of Mars 2006 my publisher is right in the back there which are essays by 32 experts in the field on patriarchy and you know the advent of patriarchy and the effects of patriarchy you know in this world I hope that I've conveyed to you the importance of creating art inspired by activism as a means of reflecting the activism as a means of continuing the activism because we all need to to do that and I've also shown you some of my work inspired by my activism I hope you've enjoyed it thank you so much are there any questions this is one of the camp songs from Seneca Falls questions yes that is usually and it's taught us in Seneca where a universe is simple and that's the only way to interpret people's dreams it's the predatory mother in Gulfman by the mother it has a very very negative advantage but you're using web as connectedness and regeneration as all kinds of good things and it's so necessary to even question the kinds of things that we learn and sort of accept that they really may have some political significance that's only one aspect of the meaning of the interview that can be taught to us at this point thank you very much we all have to always question that's true question authority another very good bumper sticker anybody else yes go ahead yes the female body is unleashed I mean it's not shown as it as a prize where you see people and you see the marks of the that's a very good comment and yet she's preserved I mean and you were depicting it and evoking the suffering but I was wondering about that aspect well she also had that was my partner before Pat she had cancer and there is she does have if you look closely she does have a wound right where Christ was supposed to have his wound so any other questions inspirational I want to mention usually I do a full introduction at the beginning and I had a feeling that the opportunity to hear Christina was going to give us Christina so but for our video I'm just going to read segments of your wonderful biography Christina Viaggi has achieved international recognition for her work and contributions in the field of goddess centered art and her scholarly studies her work is a reflection and an extension of her lifelong interest in the classics art and art history, archeology literature, languages Vassar Harvard, NYU this is a very very good line up when she isn't preparing for new pieces she's writing, lecturing, working with children Shakespeare theater she has mentioned her books to you she's lectured and exhibited throughout the United States in Europe and she continues very evidently to fight for justice in all aspects of her life and in aspects of course of ours her book we have three copies in the back they're signed by Christina they're available for sale the rule of Mars reaching about readings about the origin and impact of patriarchy which I think is really relevant and very connected to today's lecture so thank you very much all of you for coming and thank you very much thank you so much thank you