BSM students had an amazing opportunity on November 28 when a group of 75 students, faculty, and alumni had the chance to talk with ‘85 alum Mark Vande Hei. Over the 30 minutes of the interview, Vande Hei floated in the ISS and answered student’s questions. In all of human history, only 536 people have been to space, and space travelers have spent 77 person-years in space. Vande Hei will have added 5 1/2 months to that total by the time he returns to the planet in February 2018. He spent half an hour of his incredible, 5 mile-per-second journey answering the questions of an amazed crowd.

Due to NASA rules, quoting the interview or taking pictures was not allowed. This article is thus a compilation of quotes and ideas from similar interviews with astronauts available online. One hundred years before Vande Hei’s 2018 touchdown, the world had just started to recover from the First World War. Where will we be in another hundred years? The students who watched Vande Hei last Tuesday will decide.

John Beutz