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Future of XYZ is a bi-weekly interview series that explores big questions about where we are as a world and where we’re going. Through candid conversations with international experts, visionary leaders and courageous changemakers- we provoke new thinking about what's coming down the pipeline on matters related to art & design, science & innovation, culture & creativity.
Future of XYZ is presented by iF Design, a respected member of the international design community and host of the prestigious iF DESIGN AWARD since 1953. The show is also a proud member of the SURROUND Podcast Network. For more information, visit ifdesign.com/XYZ.
00:00:04:00 - 00:00:25:08
Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Future of XYZ. Super, I mean, beyond excited to talk about space communications with David Rager. David, thanks so much for... I think you say Rager, but I can't really like I can't really avoid saying Rager when I see your name, but I'm really thrilled that you're here with us today on future of XYZ. Thanks for joining us.
00:00:27:18 - 00:00:30:04
Speaker 2
Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
00:00:30:06 - 00:00:54:13
Speaker 1
Well, you have like the world's coolest job. I mean, you have a couple of decades experience as a brand designer and creative director. You have your own firm called Weekends, which operates between L.A. and Paris. Interior, architecture, creative consulting. You've worked at Disney, you've worked at LACMA, which is the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A. You've worked at Disney and MOCA.
00:00:54:13 - 00:01:26:05
Speaker 1
Sorry, I thought it was LACMA. And I'm really fascinated because you ended up at the Jet Propulsion Lab, and now you're the creative director of NASA, which is pretty extraordinary. Given what NASA does, which is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is basically a US government agency that's responsible for the civilian space program, plus aeronautics and aeronautics research that was established back in the ‘50s by Eisenhower.
00:01:26:07 - 00:01:56:07
Speaker 1
As creative director, you lead all communications for the agency and the agency's various projects, which include education and research, but also all the cool missions that we all are really like nerd out about in the world. So I think it's a starting point. David It's really important that we always ground in what's the topic. So given your experience and expertise here, how do we define space communications?
00:01:56:09 - 00:02:23:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's a great question. In my I mean, I'm sure you could ask 100 people and get 100 different answers, or if you were at NASA you would ask 100 people to get 150 different answers. But how do we define... For me, space communications is really defined, you know, in a few ways. We have federal mandates that require us to communicate about the value of our work.
00:02:23:06 - 00:02:49:09
Speaker 2
So why why is what NASA is doing important? Why is it important to fund efforts in space? How do how do they what are the impacts of the work that NASA does, even just outside of directly the direct discoveries and all the kinds of great spinoffs and things like Velcro that exist due to due to NASA's efforts in other fields.
00:02:49:10 - 00:02:56:07
Speaker 2
So it's pretty broad, but really it's I define it as communicating the value of NASA's work.
00:02:56:09 - 00:03:26:05
Speaker 1
And NASA's work is pretty broad. Obviously, the mission is, I believe it still is, to encourage peaceful applications in space science. There are about 18,000 civil servants plus, I'm sure, thousands of outside contractors at NASA. It's a pretty it's a very prestigious job. It's kind of a dream job of the universe for many and for many of us in this, you know, kind of nerd it out design space.
00:03:26:07 - 00:03:46:00
Speaker 1
I guess the first question I would ask in this is like, what does it mean to be the creative director at NASA? You've just given like what your mandate is in space communications. But I mean, yeah, how do you how do you actually what do you do to kind of do exactly what you just said? What are the touchpoints?
00:03:46:02 - 00:04:10:21
Speaker 2
Yeah. So I think that, you know, it's it's a dream title. I would say it's an amazing job, but but the truth is, it's not a position that existed before a year and a half ago. So it's all being defined. It's not as if I opened you know, walked into the office on day one and had this amazing infrastructure like like you might expect.
00:04:10:23 - 00:04:43:02
Speaker 2
You know, like like I did when I worked at Disney, for example. So really, a lot of my job over the last couple of years has been making people aware that this job exists and what it does and, you know, you know, I try to use more carrots than sticks in my work and a lot of people are doing the creative direction or, you know, visual design or deciding deciding which efforts are the most important on their own.
00:04:43:04 - 00:05:05:04
Speaker 2
And there is an effort to add some rigor to our communications and add some strategy. So a lot of my job is really layering that that those outside best practices, you know, from working in agencies, from working museums, from working at big companies like Disney and bringing them into NASA. I mean, they're being done in really great ways in certain pockets.
00:05:05:06 - 00:05:13:07
Speaker 2
But, you know, there's there's definitely room for improvement on the on the broader scale and in the aggregate.
00:05:13:09 - 00:05:55:23
Speaker 1
That makes sense. I mean, I think most large organizations land there. I mean, and you're now in a large government agency, not typically credited with the greatest amounts of creativity. Plus, NASA obviously operates within quite, I would say, a veil of secrecy given the sensitive scientific, you know, research that is undergoing and the length of time it takes to get to, I'm sure some of these some of these conclusions/missions/launches/retrievals, etc. What are kind of just basically and we're gonna get to the future in a minute but like I think it's interesting to like understand like what are some of the design principles or if you will, creative elements that you rely on to get your work done, especially given that this role didn’t exist until you took it?
00:06:01:16 - 00:06:28:17
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's a good question. In the tools that I have at my disposal of our disposable disposal are unique to this specific job, right? Not to the specific job. Maybe other federal agencies. You know, I have I have contacts at the National Park Service and other places that are running big design efforts. And I think on the numbers side of things, you mentioned there's about 18,000 civil servants, but the total NASA employee pool is, I think, around 150 to 200000.
00:06:28:17 - 00:06:54:19
Speaker 2
So I work with a lot of contractors and there are a lot of people and a lot of cooks in the kitchen at any given moment. And it's one of the biggest tools I have is that we have something called the Code of Federal Regulations, which is, you know, federal the federal Bible essentially. And there are a lot of there are a lot of sticks inside the inside of that document.
00:06:54:19 - 00:07:23:02
Speaker 2
But the CFR is what we call it for short mentions the NASA branding. It has a section things one, two, two, one that speaks specifically about the administrative seal, the NASA insignia and the logo type. And it points to the NASA stylebook, you know, the graphic standards book, which which is currently a thing I manage, which is, you know, there's a book that was on Kickstarter, the Standards Manual.
00:07:23:02 - 00:07:55:14
Speaker 2
Folks put it out a bunch of years ago, a very popular book you can buy. It's a coffee table book, but that's how I managed that 2024 version of that book, which is our style guide. So our style guide is unique in any style guide I've ever worked with or created or managed in that there's a federal there's a federal mandate behind it, and our logos and our brand elements also, you know, they come in, there's like real actual you can commit a crime, you can be considered committing a crime if you use them incorrectly.
00:07:55:16 - 00:08:21:05
Speaker 2
And we do have an employee pool that is very respectful and takes very seriously those mandates and the government requirements. So that's the biggest thing I can use. I'm in the process of updating it and that goes out. But really it's that document. It is our pool of 3 to 400 creatives that we meet with. We meet together once a month.
00:08:21:07 - 00:08:44:06
Speaker 2
We share information. I get a lot of feedback in those sessions and they help inform updates that need to be made or changes that can be made. Yeah. I mean it's, it's a, it's a lot of that and I still have you know there's ten centers, there's 400 people, there's a lot of people I still need to meet and connect with.
00:08:44:06 - 00:09:16:02
Speaker 2
So it's been sort of project by project and doing my I'm in a lot of conversations so a tool that I use too is just collecting things from one conversation and bringing them to a different conversation. And I act, I find myself acting as kind of a, a cheerleader kind of show and tell person, you know, and like flagging the efforts that I see of one team with a larger group so they can be inspired and create things on their own.
00:09:16:08 - 00:09:37:18
Speaker 1
It actually makes a lot of sense. I mean, and I was really I mean, I want to come to to the fact that, like, we had a chance to visit at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California earlier this Fall, and it was so extraordinary. And what I nerded out on the most at the beginning was the insignia on the security guards, you know, shoulders.
00:09:37:20 - 00:09:55:12
Speaker 1
And I was like, wait. It's specific to JPL. And I realized and the woman explained to me, you know, that every single, whether it's Goddard or whether it's Johnson or and you you had shared the same thing, you know, whether it was, you know, Johnson or Kennedy or or Marshall or any of the many, many locations that you just mentioned.
00:09:55:15 - 00:10:24:13
Speaker 1
There's a different insignia. There's a little bit of a different culture. There are different mandates. And you're obviously in charge of communications across these. How does comms actually work besides listening and learning and having a big book with a lot of sticks in it? How does like what is the role of space communications When we define space communications, as we did across all of these different sites that have really different specialties?
00:10:24:15 - 00:10:51:22
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, to be clear that, you know, I'm not in charge of all the communications. I'm in charge of the visual side of things. It's it's impossible to decouple those things. But there isn't very you know, all our centers all have big comms teams. Well, big, big ish. And they work collectively and understand NASA's priorities. They share their specific center's priorities.
00:10:51:22 - 00:11:12:21
Speaker 2
So people communicating the largest amount of communication, I think that we do generally is internal because we have, you know, 100 to 200000 people to talk to and to be made aware of things. And, you know, you can imagine even at any at any company of that size, an HR team is probably doing the most communicating of any specific group.
00:11:12:23 - 00:11:34:10
Speaker 2
So we have a lot of internal communications to deal with. We have a lot of people who want to work with us, communicate with us, or to have NASA inform some of the work they do. So we have partnerships and then of course, we have a newsroom. I mean, we're really our all of our comms teams, I believe, come from are born out of news teams.
00:11:34:10 - 00:11:54:09
Speaker 2
Right. So they're used to communicating. Here is exactly what happened today. Here's what's going to happen tomorrow. Here's the value of that and getting it out to the AP. So that it can get out broadly. So really, like, it kind of starts it starts with that top line of news communications and then it works down into all of the other efforts.
00:11:54:09 - 00:12:22:02
Speaker 2
We have public engagement teams who partner with specific missions. So like for example, we walked around JPL, Europa Clipper launch, what was it, a week ago? It was a JPL led mission. There is JPL is a center that is specifically funded to do science work. There are teams that are funded specifically to do public engagement, which is outside of news, which is and those teams are organized thematically.
00:12:22:04 - 00:12:43:10
Speaker 2
So they might have a team that focuses on what person, who is the astrophysics person or the exoplanets or whatever it might be. And they're assigned missions. They're kind of paired up with different missions and they look at what they can do to share the value of that mission. So, you know, a piece of art that went up there was attached to the Europa Clipper.
00:12:43:16 - 00:13:21:09
Speaker 2
It was the vault plate. And we worked with Debbie Millman, who designed the exterior side of it. We had Ada Limon, the poet laureate, write a poem that was actually on the inside of it that was like a really, you know, inexpensive but very impactful way to add a little layer of communication. So really, like, what is communications at NASA really depends on what is the audience we're trying to reach and, you know, all the way from from everybody, just news, to people who are who are interested learning more specifics and and finding those gateways between those things.
00:13:21:09 - 00:13:40:10
Speaker 2
So how does a broadcast then get a person to a website that might get them to learn about that launch plate and then just kind of hopefully leave them at one point along the way with with with the hair on the back of their neck standing up a little better or getting getting chills about what they're just what they're learning.
00:13:40:10 - 00:13:41:16
Speaker 2
00:13:41:18 - 00:13:57:08
Speaker 1
I want to I've I mean, this is now, as happens on Future of XYZ, especially with these big topics, like I can now explode it into like 12,000 directions and we don't have the time for that. But really quickly, you just mentioned the Europa two mission. I just want like the quick one liner for people listening.
00:13:57:08 - 00:13:58:15
Speaker 1
What is it?
00:13:58:17 - 00:14:25:00
Speaker 2
Well, Europa Clipper is a mission that is heading to Europa, which is a moon of Jupiter. And the reason we're going there is because it's an icy moon, it's a watery planet, which is very high, high likelihood, a higher likelihood that be it'll be signs of life on that moon. So for some reference there's on this little moon, there's more water on the moon than all of Earth.
00:14:25:02 - 00:14:52:22
Speaker 2
They believe that there's about 12 kilometer icy crust and about 100 kilometers of water below that. So and then there's these great plumes that explode up off the surface. And and they're going to go investigate what the composition is. It'll take six years to get there and we'll start to get back some great images and information about the potential for life on it on that moon.
00:14:53:21 - 00:15:05:01
Speaker 1
Well, in in the course of six years, you'll you'll have more fodder for your content and your visual content creation that tells these stories.
00:15:05:03 - 00:15:19:03
Speaker 2
Our campaigns are a little bit different than the marketplace for sure. Just in terms of length, you know, like imagine running a six year very specific campaign. It's like a, you know, in the in in the outside world.
00:15:19:05 - 00:15:56:12
Speaker 1
Well, it's funny because it kind of makes it that the future of space communications is actually already here because you're doing it in the present because of those timelines. But we'll avoid that for the second. I want to start at the very basics of visual communications for NASA. There's an interesting thing, as I was as I visited the store and I was looking at logos, but as I did the prep for this call, I realized that actually just in 2023, NASA reprised the first ever logo, kind of went away from the worm and went back to the blue planet.
00:15:56:12 - 00:16:15:08
Speaker 1
I think those are like kind of like like in jargony terms. I don't know if you were involved in that, David, but like, can we just talk about the logo and it's like so iconic and like, how does that start and impact the visual identity of a brand such as NASA?
00:16:15:10 - 00:16:53:15
Speaker 2
Yeah, so the timeline is ‘58-’59, we had this the blue I usually have on hand around here somewhere. You had the blue, the blue logo with the red vector on it. That's called we call it the meatball internally. And that was done by an internal artist at NASA in Ohio and that was our identity until 1975, when the National Endowment for the Arts got a big amount of funding from the Nixon administration to rethink all of the branding for all these different Fed organizations and all of the things we grew up with and love.
00:16:53:21 - 00:17:14:04
Speaker 2
There are federal like the National Park Service stuff, the EPA, all of that identity, all those identities came out of that project. And NASA was one of the first to be nominated to go through that process and that's 1976 is when the worm came about, which is the red logo type that spells out the letters that spell out NASA.
00:17:14:05 - 00:17:37:01
Speaker 2
And along with that came a lot of rigor and like a lot of documentation. And it was the first time all the different centers were required to work together and create products that look the same. Right? So that was our logo until ‘92 when kind of post shuttle stuff. The administrator said, Hey, we need to bring back some of that legacy and brought back the meatball.
00:17:37:01 - 00:18:04:23
Speaker 2
So we've we've, we've oscillated between the two and then 2021 they had built up the marketplace was really like our merchandizers and people want to use our license. Well, we don't license anything. It's all available, but people want to use the logos. Kept really asking about the worm and there's a collaboration that happened, or we allowed it for some vintage pieces on a high end, on a luxury, a piece of some piece, a luxury line that happened.
00:18:04:24 - 00:18:29:13
Speaker 2
And that kind of opened the door a little bit further. And then in 2021, we allowed SpaceX to use it on the DM-2 the boosters. It was really, really, really a beautiful application. And after that we were tasked with how can we bring is there we were we're asked the question, is there a way to bring this the worm back in earnest and use it in a way that's considered?
00:18:29:15 - 00:18:52:13
Speaker 2
And so I got to work with Richard Danny, who was one of the two original worm designers and a couple of people at headquarters in a design lab at JPL. And we went through a process and figured out a way to use it in a very considered limited application, bold. So we use both of them. Now, the meatball, the blue, the blue logo will always be our logo logo.
00:18:52:13 - 00:19:15:12
Speaker 2
It has an official ness and then we have the worm, which is our supporting graphic and can be used in large applications. So that's how it came back. And I was involved in that process and now it's now it's, you know, maintaining that balance and finding ways to grow the use of both of those things and make that clear to the people who are using it.
00:19:15:14 - 00:19:37:03
Speaker 1
I mean, so, I mean, Logo is kind of the beginning of visual identity, right? And when you when we're talking about all the things that the 200 plus thousand people at NASA do and the various locations and really I mean, the fact that this isn't a terrestrial like bound organization, right? It's in fact, that's why we're talking about space communications.
00:19:37:05 - 00:20:22:17
Speaker 1
There are rocket ships, there are rocket boosters. They're retrieval vehicles, there are rovers. All of this is true. There are spacesuits and there are dashboards and there are launch centers. And there is so much that is visually designed. I mean, pretty much everything, it seems to me, that NASA does is designed, but your team is not really touching all of that, except for the fact that you just mentioned that this collaboration with Debbie Millman and Ada Limon is amazing because you're actually adding this really rich design human creativity to something that may never come back to Earth, first of all, and may never be seen by any creature with intelligence.
00:20:22:17 - 00:20:31:12
Speaker 1
We don't know that. But there's still a desire to do that. Like what is what are kind of the parameters of visual design within NASA?
00:20:31:14 - 00:20:55:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, I guess that's a good question. I think that I mean, the thing that caught my ear at the beginning of the question is that logos are like the first thing. I'm trying to do the opposite internally and have logos be the last thing, because a logo is a logo is a reminder of an experience, right? So like you have to have it build the experience and then the logo you see and it reminds you of the thing you've just done.
00:20:55:12 - 00:21:20:19
Speaker 2
So I've been encouraging our teams internally to work on their strategy and their communications and their messaging and all of that stuff and then see how that informs a mission, what we call the mission identifier design. But we also, the team at JPL I worked with, we did the Europa Clipper mission, identify the key visuals and then the sort of larger communication packages and all those things kind of get rolled up together.
00:21:20:19 - 00:21:44:07
Speaker 2
So there is an opportunity to do that. A good example is the Mars 2020 mission, which we came up with these hero images that were illustrative, that kind of step by step explain how we would how we were going to Mars and how there was going to be a sky crane that lowered this rover down to the Martian surface and all these complicated things, but done kind of in this heroic visual style.
00:21:44:09 - 00:21:58:20
Speaker 2
And then we came up with the great color palette that ended up being used all over the place on landing day. So I guess I have talked and I have lost track of the original question, but.
00:21:58:22 - 00:22:22:11
Speaker 1
I really feel like, I mean, all of the you've just answered it, though. I mean, it's it's the integrated package of communications for any of these missions. And I guess when something you said earlier and we we saw when we visited with the public domain, like none of this is private, like what most of what you guys are creating is it's not open source, but it's open, open use.
00:22:22:13 - 00:22:44:03
Speaker 1
You know, the visuals, the posters, that logo you can you can a person can go on to the website and download. I mean, that's quite an incredible opportunity as well as a creative director to be putting not just building an iconic brand, but putting educational and inspirational materials into the public domain. How how does that kind of weigh into the experience?
00:22:44:08 - 00:22:53:16
Speaker 1
And the same thing is true like a spacesuit, right? Like on a cool mission. Like, I mean, these are iconic, historic humanitarian moments.
00:22:53:18 - 00:23:12:24
Speaker 2
Well, I guess it cuts both ways, right? Because well, I guess I'll say on the on the posters and the visual side of things that we like, we love making those kinds of things the creative teams do because they're a fun way to share the value of some of our work and to tell the stories of some of our missions and discoveries.
00:23:13:01 - 00:23:33:06
Speaker 2
And then it is a nice side effect that we don't license things that, you know, you're that's why a lot of times you'll see a NASA poster that one of our teams have designed in the background of a film or something on someone's on a wall of a character's bedroom on TV or something. And so it's nice that they're, you know, that they look great.
00:23:33:06 - 00:24:03:06
Speaker 2
I mean, people wouldn't use them if they didn't look great. But they look great also, the backside of every one of these posters has a lot of text which tells the story of what you're looking at. And, you know, I think with the growing commercialization of space, there is what is nice about like about the rules that exist around what we’re allowed to do is that we, you know, the logo, the NASA logos on those things because it has to be because it tells you who's doing the communicating.
00:24:03:08 - 00:24:34:11
Speaker 2
And as we start to work with commercial partners, it gets a little bit more money because we're not allowed to have commercial logos on things and we don't want things looking. We don't we want to stay away from the NASCAR ification of things. So yeah, there is there is a you know, I can see I can feel challenges on the horizon with maintaining that purity and dealing with, you know, managing, you know, the commercial partnerships that we have, which are super important.
00:24:34:13 - 00:24:36:22
Speaker 2
But I think there's going to be some some meeting in the middle on there.
00:24:37:00 - 00:24:59:17
Speaker 1
Totally fair. I mean, things evolve. I'm coming back to the visit to, to, to JPL and Design Lab there specifically because I think something we talked about the Debbie Millman collab, but I was blown away by looking at the mission. What is it call the Mission Control Center at JPL.
00:24:59:17 - 00:25:00:17
Speaker 2
Space flight operations.
00:25:00:20 - 00:25:02:06
Speaker 1
What's it called.
00:25:02:08 - 00:25:05:06
Speaker 2
The Space Flight Operations Facility, S5.
00:25:05:08 - 00:25:10:00
Speaker 1
Space Flight to S5.
00:25:10:02 - 00:25:12:18
Speaker 2
The Space Flight Operations Facility.
00:25:12:20 - 00:25:39:08
Speaker 1
But it was amazing because you guys had worked with an iF Design award winning designer like Debbie is actually, Refik Anadol, on these amazing interactive ish graphics that were just absolutely spectacular. I mean, for anyone who doesn't know, Refik is the one who created the sphere in Las Vegas recently and the graphics there. So I mean, really incredible visual designer, but there were a lot of those things.
00:25:39:08 - 00:26:02:24
Speaker 1
There are artifacts all over JPL that are collabs with incredible designers or with, you know, public figures who had once visited or are discards from something. I mean, there is something about the future of space communications that NASA is making in real time because you're kind of archiving what is already the future in a really interesting, what's the past
00:26:02:24 - 00:26:18:21
Speaker 1
but it's for the future. It's really interesting. Like how do you how do you manage this incredible responsibility of kind of operating? Yes, it’s the present. And yes, sometimes it's capturing the past, but it's really everything is about the future, isn't it?
00:26:18:23 - 00:26:37:24
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, I think everything is about the future, but there's a lot of great like one of the things I think wasn't on display when you were there, which is my favorite thing. One of my favorite things is the first close up image of Mars, which is, which is a series of paint by number kind of pastel paper strips that were hung up one by one.
00:26:37:24 - 00:27:17:09
Speaker 2
That is just it was something that the scientists and engineers on a project of the Mariner four in 1964 were doing just for their own kind of sanity to make sure that the image that they were receiving from Mars was was valid. But that part of it is looking at that history, finding objects like that, finding stories like that, and telling them in a way that, you know, that feels inspirational and, you know, like that's that's I mean, that's the value of design inside of a space agency is that kind of that access to culture, right?
00:27:17:09 - 00:27:42:13
Speaker 2
Like that kind of the design is the the group that sits between the business and the culture. And I think it's necessary, you know, especially in the storytelling that we do. I don't know how much we think of. We think of of course we think of the future like the distant future. And we think about, you know, living and working on the moon and making it to Mars and those kinds of things.
00:27:42:15 - 00:28:05:15
Speaker 2
In the larger NASA conversation and the communications conversation, we really are we have so much going on. We're really focused on the matters at hand and how we can tell this, tell those stories best. And I think I don't think it is I think a lot of it's organic and a lot of it, too, is having a catalog of ideas that you have there.
00:28:05:15 - 00:28:15:09
Speaker 2
That you generate and saving those ideas and waiting for the right project to come along, to plug the idea and the project together. You know.
00:28:15:11 - 00:28:48:08
Speaker 1
I love that. So, I mean, you've been known to say that the only products we at NASA really have to sell are wonder and awe. I think maybe actually, you know, I heard that when when we first met at Adobe last year, the idea of being able to sell wonder and art is pretty exceptional in these times especially. What are some of the things that are on the horizon for you that you're most excited about right now as we kind of start wrapping up and thinking about like where it's all going?
00:28:48:10 - 00:29:26:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, it's sort of endless. I was really looking forward to getting to Europa’s launch, and that was like where my mind was because I was involved in that project that is special to me. And then of course, you know, we have a lot of partnerships with then, you know, one of my favorite things growing up was seeing images of videos of the lunar buggies, the Lunar rovers, you know, like and seeing those and, you know, seeing the replicas of them in person is so, so cool and seeing what the future of lunar transportation is going to look like is pretty exciting, I think.
00:29:26:02 - 00:29:36:14
Speaker 2
And then, of course, you know, we have next year, we have Artemis-2 and then it'll turn into three and then we'll have boots on the moon before too long, which is incredibly exciting.
00:29:36:14 - 00:29:40:19
Speaker 1
And that's what the Artemis project is. Is it boots on the ground on the moon, right?
00:29:40:21 - 00:29:50:24
Speaker 2
Yeah. It'll be our first return to the moon in quite some time. And. And they'll set us up for future exploration. You know.
00:29:51:01 - 00:30:28:05
Speaker 1
It's, it's pretty exceptional. One thing we didn't get to touch on and then I just want to quickly, as we think about educating the next generation, part of what you guys do is creating incredible exhibitions, whether that's at Kennedy Space Center or Smithsonian or anywhere. What if you just could like leave listeners with like a couple of thoughts on like, what is the what's best practice for kind of like building something that resonates and helps helps helps especially the younger generations connect with the future of space, not just the future of space communications.
00:30:28:07 - 00:30:55:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, obviously the work that we do is incredibly complex, so making that understandable and digestible for a general audience is our number one priority for us and we work with some. It's interesting, there's a little bit of with every mission or any communications project, there's a moment where the mission teams are primarily speaking to their peers and colleagues and other scientists and other engineers.
00:30:55:11 - 00:31:13:19
Speaker 2
And now they have to make this transition into speaking to everybody. And so that's a lot with it, where our comms teams come in and they help tell that story. So we keep it simple. And I think the most important thing, you know, when you talk about awe is the studio at Design Lab has a working framework that they set.
00:31:13:19 - 00:31:30:16
Speaker 2
They call sneaking up on learning. And that's those moments when you're you may have experienced that when you visit a JPL where you're looking at something and you're thinking, This is really cool. I'm really drawn to this. I don't know why. And you start to piece it together and then you understand what you're looking at or what you're hearing or what you're seeing.
00:31:30:18 - 00:31:41:05
Speaker 2
And you kind of have that moment that makes your head explode and that is that's that is the most important thing to me.
00:31:41:07 - 00:32:05:02
Speaker 1
It's it's amazing. And so is the last question that I always like to ask guests, David, because we were at time. As you think about, you know, your term as creative director at NASA and the work of NASA and the growing, as you said, commercialization of space as well, what's your greatest hope for space communications, let's say in 25ish years, in like 2050?
00:32:05:06 - 00:32:08:12
Speaker 1
Where do you hope we will be?
00:32:08:14 - 00:32:37:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, I hope that it continues to be inspiring, really. You know, like we make it to a point where it's an everyday activity to explore space, that we’ll learn something new about space. But it's really space is endless. So I hope that we can we can continue to inspire and it doesn't be become something that is just an everyday thing, you know, or the or something that people feel blasé about.
00:32:37:04 - 00:32:44:04
Speaker 2
I hope it will always be something that people can look to the stars and feel that sense of wonder about, about it.
00:32:44:06 - 00:32:55:00
Speaker 1
David Rager, thank you so much for joining us on Future of XYZ today. I say it correctly at the end, but I do love saying Rager.
00:32:55:02 - 00:32:56:24
Speaker 2
You’re not alone. I don't mind it at all.
00:32:57:01 - 00:33:04:20
Speaker 1
I bet not. Really, really nice to have you on. Thanks for joining us for the future of space communications.
00:33:04:22 - 00:33:06:09
Speaker 2
Thanks for having me.
00:33:06:11 - 00:33:26:09
Speaker 1
For everyone watching and listening, be sure to leave us a five star review and recommend us to your friends. That's how people find out about future of XYZ, which is now presented by iF Design and available on the Surround Podcast Network. We look forward to seeing you in two weeks. Thanks so much.