BibleProject - Chaos and the Cosmos: An Astronaut Interview – Chaos Dragon E19

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

In this series, we’ve talked a lot about chaos—chaos waters and the great chaos monsters of the deep. In this episode, Tim and Jon interview an expert with a unique vantage point on the chaos of the cosmos, NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson. Listen in as they discuss the fascinating intersection between ancient cosmology and modern scientific exploration of our universe.View more resources on our website →Timestamps Part one (00:00-16:23)Part two (16:23-29:02)Part three (29:02-45:07)Part four (45:07-1:01:18)Referenced ResourcesInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTSAll music breaks by Tyler BaileyShow produced by Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder, Lead Editor Dan Gummel, and Editors Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Mixed by Tyler Bailey. Podcast annotations for the BibleProject app by Hannah Woo.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey Tim. Hey John, hello. Hey, this is a great day for us. We have the pleasure of sitting in a room right now with someone that you all get to meet. Tracy Caldwell-Dyson. Hi Tracy. Hi John. Thanks for being here.

My pleasure. Tim, maybe introduce us to Tracy a little bit and then Tracy you can fill in the gaps. Yes. Yeah, this is a unique kind of interview we're doing on the podcast here today. What's a unique backstory? I'll just do a short introduction which is Tracy you are a NASA astronaut. Yes. Which means that your adult job and career has been involved in spaceflight, space missions,

living on the international space station for long periods of time. Yes, and supporting the missions that are going on right now and the ones in the future. Yes. So it's such an honor to have you here. Thank you. We're sitting here having this conversation because you reached out to John and I in February of 2023 with the really amazing letter that you wrote. And we received that letter during the months while John and I were having the chaos drag and theme conversations. The thing that you talked about in the letter that I'm going to let you read part of in a moment, overlapped with one of the main things that John and I were

working through, ideas of chaos and creation, disorder and order, the image of the chaos waters and the dragon in those waters. So you wrote a letter and shared where you're going to share, and my response to you was, this is so cool. Thank you for reaching out. Would you want to come talk to us on our podcast about the stuff that you wrote about? And so here you are sitting now months later. Yeah, I when I wrote that letter, I had no idea it was going to result in me sitting here with both of you let alone just starting up a conversation. So it's been a blessing and a thrill for me. As I'm preparing for my mission,

which is to the International Space Station, I launch it. You're going up again. Yes, I'm going up again. Have it got enough of it. And I will be launching in March of 2024. And in preparation for that, there's several things that we have to coordinate. And I have an opportunity to have outreach while I'm on orbit.

And I thought that it would be really cool to reach out to all of you at the Bible project, to give you a little bit of a gift to say thank you for all that you have done for me and others through the work here teaching us more about the Bible and and how it leads to Christ. So I was also at the same time doing the classroom study on Adam to Noah and Tim you had made a comment during that time that inspired the thoughts that I had shared with you in the letter. So the letter was twofold one to introduce myself and ask you all for your thoughts on maybe connecting from orbit. But then I said these words, regardless,

I feel compelled to share with you these thoughts I've had for my previous missions. In the view of Earth, I've seen from space. It's much like an infant placed in a hostile environment. The Earth is so plump, tender, exquisite in detail, yet soft in color. It seems so fragile hanging there amid such intense darkness, swaddled in a thin blue blanket of atmosphere. It's so delicate, so vulnerable, and yet so protected from the harshness of space.

I could go on and on about it, but suffice it to say. Tim's discussion on the cyclic pattern of biblical narrative in the Adam-to-Noah series session five video at 23 minutes and 27 seconds. Jard me as I reflected on my own experience of viewing our planet from the vantage point of space. Tim said, in biblical theology, God's creative power is the power he exerts every single moment to keep creation from collapsing on itself. And I thought, that's exactly the visual I get

when I see his creation through the portal of the International Space Station. I've shared this observation publicly before, but I am never sure people really understand me. I'd love to share this view with you, this experience with you and your team, perhaps you can convey it better than me. So. So thank you for writing that letter. It's my pleasure. Thank you for receiving it. It's been fun. Yeah, we immediately started passing it around the office. You have to read this paragraph.

So beautiful. It is so beautiful. And then to try to imagine what you experienced, it's actually really hard to imagine it. My whole vision of reality has been from a relatively small geographical area on this orb floating, hurling through space, and to have the experience of being other than it looking at it, that's the place we are right now having this conversation. It's almost, it's defying our programming in some way to try and do it other than just having the experience. They're really, I'm guessing, can't be a replacement for it.

Exactly. I think the top question I get asked as an astronaut is, what is it like to be in space? And it used to grieve me to try to answer that because I can't give a 30-second answer to that. It starts to grieve me to think of, how in the world do I explain to you what it's like to be in space and when I learn the word ineffable, that's it, that's my answer, it's ineffable because it really is hard to explain in a way that you feel what I feel when I look out the window at the earth.

Yeah, it's hard. So, we would like to have a more focused conversation about, this conversation is going to fit into the Chaos Dragon series because it occurred to me, especially after you wrote the letter, that there really is this important analogy that in our imaginations, I think modern imaginations, the role that the vacuum of space plays as the disordered, the uninhabitable realm. The Tahoe of the Who. Yeah, that in some way analogous to what the dark ocean

or the wilderness represented to the biblical authors. And so I thought it would just be fun to have a creative, exploratory conversation thinking about what space is in our imaginations. You've been in it. And if it is, in what ways is it a really good analogy between the chaos waters and space, and then in what ways maybe is it not a good analogy. But before we explore that, just real quick, like Tracy from Southern California, originally. How does a young woman in Southern California end up on a trajectory to living in Houston and being an astronaut? The only answer I could give is following God's path because I didn't start out knowing exactly how to get to NASA and become an astronaut.

But I just followed the things that I was most interested in and it led me there. And only by the grace of God can I say that I actually made it. But I started out in high school, it. But I started out in high school, not knowing exactly what I wanted to study in college and what I wanted to be later on in my life. And I shared that that concern with my parents. And they tried to hold back their laughter at the the seriousness I asked that question. Because it, you know, 16 years old, you don't have to have it all figured out. But I feel like I did. They gave me some great advice at the time to write down a list of all the things that I enjoyed doing.

And what that led to was me, just with a list of things, that when you take the collection of no occupation, jumps out at the page. And so again, I was back in that moment of despair of I still haven't figured it out. But they said to put it away, add to it, take away from it, but it's yours. And you get the exercise.

And so then I did. And then later on, maybe a couple of months later, the world started getting really excited about NASA and this mission to be conducted in space, involving a teacher, Christa McCollough. And it was before the tragic accident, but nevertheless, it got my attention because at that point in my life, I'd never really met a fighter pilot, a test pilot, but I sure knew a lot of teachers. And it really inspired

me to look more into the astronaut program, to see what were astronauts doing, who were they, what skills did they need, what was NASA doing, they were right then building the space station freedom, it was becoming the International Space Station, and all the things that I read made me go back to that original list. And when I looked at all the things that I had put on it, it just said, this is what you want to do. And so from that point forward, I started pursuing a higher education, doing all these other things. And I went to Cal State Fullerton, got my degree in chemistry,

went on to UC Davis to get my doctor, my PhD in chemistry. But the only reason I did that was because I could defer my student loans. And my advisor said, you don't have to be brilliant, you just have to work hard. And I was said, you don't have to be brilliant. You just have to work hard. And I was like, oh, I can do that. And it just led to just greater growth.

And the fun I was having with chemistry, I still didn't know how I was going to get to NASA. But I filled out an application. Real quick, for the handful of chemistry nerds that probably listened to the podcast, what subfield of chemistry did you do your work in? I was a physical chemist, I was a pee chemist, and a laser jock, a mass spectrometrist, laser jock. I was a laser jock at, actually. I don't know what that means, but it sounds like

it's such a great term. You can use it, it's a real term out there, and anybody that uses a laser knows exactly what I'm talking about. I used a variety of different types of lasers to study the fundamental aspects of molecular and atomic interactions and I'm a better person for it. It was a really fun time of my life. I spent more time with a wrench in my hand than I did beakers with liquids and making potions. wrench in my hand that I did beakers with liquids and making potions. I was really, it's just a peak chemist and mostly that involves turbo pumps and ultra high vacuum chambers and special optics and I got to play with all sorts of stuff like that. And that's what you get to do in space too. You get to do that.

Yes, so that's really a good point. Yeah, I am like totally fixing things all the time on space station because you don't have a hardware store just down the street So you got to make do with what you have and you have these specialized pieces of equipment that either produce science or they produce you know Air free to breeze To help maintain the space things and you're doing science. Yes, that's that's a good way to wrap it up Are you are you allowed to tell us like one of the experiments going on up there? Is it all like... Oh sure, yeah. Gosh, it's hard to pick just one, but one in the kind of field of physical chemistry or physical science is we look at combustion

of various either liquids, gases, solids. And the reason we're looking at that is not just so that we can understand flames in microgravity, which help us in the space business learn how to work with materials as we develop other vehicles and space stations, missions, and things like that. But it also helps us understand how fire responds here terrestrial, so we're doing some fundamental work in the absence of gravity

basically to help understand the way flames behave and it's fascinating to watch the videos that are produced from that. But also the science behind it and the temperature gradients from the center all the way out to the edges, the fact that instead of one of those the classic view of a flame that looks bulbous at the bottom and then it kind of reflects things. Yes, at the top. Well, a flame in space is a sphere.

Oh, beautiful. Fascinating. Second orb. An orb, yeah. Oh, you're saying the traditional shape of fire in our imaginations is because of its compassion. Because of gravity. Yes. So one g flame. Yes. In the convection. That exactly. Yeah. Because of the convection in the flame.

And so there's just a whole lot of science to begin from that. But then also as we also have a whole series of biological experiments where we are the human subjects. And we go through either certain nutritional diets to understand aspects of how, for instance, protein can, from plant versus animal can affect your bone growth as well as bone loss. Great big study on the eyes because we're finding that there's some phenomenon in microgravity that changes the eyesight of some of our astronauts. And

it's not every astronaut. So we've got so much brain power focused on trying to understand that from practical aspects to just understanding genetics. Yeah, I guess then that's relevant. What would it look like for humans to live in zero gravity for longer periods of time permanently if that's ever possible, right? Or logistically what would be the effect on said humans? Yeah, and it's a really important question to figure out before we do it. Yeah, and it's not just NASA that's interested in going to the moon and to Mars. And if you think about the trip to Mars, it's going to take a little while to get there.

You want to spend some time there on the surface to make the trip worthwhile, and then you've got the same link the time to come back home. And that's going to be significantly longer than the missions that we even do today that are six months to a year long. And you're going up for six months? Yes, that's the current plan. And that's the longest you've been or did you did six months? I did six months before. Wow, okay. And each increment is planned for six months. But we just had a recent mission with our NASA astronaut Frank Rubio who ended up being up there a year just because of an issue that we had with some of our Russian vehicles.

Okay, yeah, and it's hard on your body. Oh, yes, but we are again learning a lot about countermeasures to our bodies like what do we do to keep from losing bone, losing muscle mass, losing flexibility, those kinds of things, and so we've got a fantastic compliment, not just of equipment onboard the space station, but some really fantastic people who are doing research in that realm, as well as those who are operationally keeping us fit. And so we are probably in the best shape of our lives while we're up there, but you also have to prepare for coming home and your body experiencing microgravity for six months coming back to one G, as we say.

It's an experience of tremendous fatigue. How long was your recuperation? It's about, I would say, truthfully, 30 days before you're feeling like your old self again, but 10 days is probably the amount of time you need for your system vestibularly to recover from being a microgravity, not to mention your muscles and your bones and things like that. So this is a wonderful segue because what we're talking about is the chaos of space is about the fact of that our bodies right are designed and have developed to live in a particular environment to live on the land. Yes, yes, and very narrow biological parameters, yes. That we can actually survive and be healthy within. And so what you have been able to experience is a group of humans over the last many decades

pioneering what does it like to carve out a space of ordered human habitation in a chaos realm. In a realm that is literally hostile and will take you apart. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, so here's a way to start the conversation then about how we bridge it to chaos. So you have been able to go live in this chaos realm, this disorder realm. What are ways from your experience as you have learned about the biblical symbolism and the ancient context of the dark chaos waters that are surrounding the dry land and constantly threatening it except for the line.

I guess in the biblical imagination the coastline marking off the dry land would be the equivalent of what you call it the thin blue blanket around that keeps the vacuum at bay. It insulates our planet. So I think the experience that you have had, I think would be analogous to how ancient people thought about climbing mountains, which we do recreationally now, but I don't think anybody would have ever thought of doing that. Just for fun. No, you're going into a very dangerous space. And I'm sure the effects of altitude, you know, that would be felt by anybody, like ancient or modern, who goes up there, or living in the desert. I have this experience going even to Eastern Oregon, which is a high desert region, and

my skin freaks out after a few days. Like it's all dry. And so there's experience we have. There's the habitable realm, and then there's the chaos realm. So Tracy, what has been helpful to you learning about the symbolism of the waters and the chaos waters is you think about the experience of space, and maybe what is space really?

Like what's the vacuum? Like is it empty or what's it full of anyway? Oh, I hardly know where to start. Because I think I started thinking about this on my first mission, which was on the shuttle and it was a relatively short mission where we wrap their docked to the station for about 10 days, but you know, give or take a day or two on both sides to get there. But the first time I had

a chance to actually look out the window and gaze at space was maybe close to the end of our docked mission and my commander just cut out time and he said, I want you rookies to be in that window for a whole orbit, which is about 90 minutes. What a gift. And he also requested that the ground team turn off all the external lights on the space station. Because believe it or not, there's so much light on board, the external lights outside the station that it's just the same thing as light pollution here where you can't you cannot see all the stars because of it.

So it requires a lot of darkness even on the space stations behalf, but once you did that and we could see out, I was just astonished at the view. I was seeing, I mean, you could you could literally spend an orbit just looking at the earth, especially when you're going over a populated area with lights. But then when you're, we've got your full fill of that, you've got to remember there's a whole universe out there. I mean, and you're looking at the other stars. Exactly. Just look up from the horizon and you see the beautiful stars and I'll never forget when

it popped out at me, you know, from here and some of the most remote places you've been looking up at the stars, you, you're looking through the atmosphere and all the stars, though some look bigger than others and brighter than others. You still see them all basically on the same plane. But when you're above the atmosphere, which is where we orbit, you are looking directly at these stars. And your eyes start to sense the depth between the stars. And when you start to have a mind. What do you mean? Well, it's like that graphic art back in the...

Yeah, the pop out, are you? Yeah, and I think you were talking about that on a podcast. I think I have, because when I was a kid, they were very popular in the malls. Yes. Oh, the 3D, the 3D art. They're very different images. Exactly. You walk by and then you sit there for a while

to try to get the image pop out. It's seen the stars are just like that, where all of a sudden paint. The dementia, I don't even really see. You can release your eyes detecting like the light years. You're right. A difference between, okay, you can tell that this star, even though it's fainter, is actually closer. No way.

Serious. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it. Wow. No joke. And it's like nobody told me about that part. I was... I just remember being mesmerized by that. So, what becomes 3D? So, it becomes 3D. And I guess that's probably not something that can ever be reproducible through a 2D image on a screen of a picture you're looking at. I don't know how it should represent.

I don't know how you would, because I've tried. I even took, my mom gave me like black paper and these neon colors that when I went up for my space station mission at 6 months, I still couldn't recreate this. I was like, never mind, because only your naked eye, and plus you're in the environment where you're like, this is real. It's not you're like, this is real. It's not like a replica, this is real.

And so I think that also computes in your mind, like this is astounding. And I remember I was so moved by that, that all of a sudden, as I'm staring at it, the image becomes super blurry. And I was like, what's going on? And then I rubbed my eye and I realized I was crying. Like tears were wailing up in my eyes, but because I'm in microgravity, they don't drip.

So it's like this big water bubble coming off my eyeballs and I was like, oh, and I'm smearing it. That's what happens with water and spaces like if you have it on your skin, it just migrates. It doesn't unless you unless you don't go down. It doesn't go down. Of course it wouldn't. And so if you're you don't go down. It doesn't go down. It just and so if you're There is no down So if you're tearing up, it's like this this water bubbles Just growing on your face and and it was like I had to move the water out of my way so I could keep looking

So that's how much it moved me I know I'm not answering questions about that. No, it was a great. But it was just like that was my first view of space. And since I was in, you know, a church-leave environment because the inside of the shuttle very ordered, you know, our environment is, you know, specifically crafted for us to breathe and be comfortable. I don't have to wear a spacesuit or a helmet. I don't have to have an oxygen hose connected. I'm just in my element just watching this.

It just moved me so much. But it wasn't until I, my second mission when I was going up and a Soyuz rocket and then coming home and a Soyuz capsule, just those two events alone, where I was sitting very close to a window where I could see the chaos outside through that dynamic event where I realized just how just what chaos really really manifested itself as in my business and when you've got a capsule going through our atmosphere, that beautiful blue hue that you see, it looks so peaceful when you're looking at it through a window.

But when you're in a capsule, coming back home at the speeds that we're traveling. And even then, we're going mocked 25, 17,500 miles per hour. That's the speed we have to go to stay in orbit. Oh my God. And you don't get a sense for that, except for the fact that the earth is moving underneath you, but you don't have any wind rushing by, and you just don't get any other sense of that speed

until you are going home and through it. And there's parts of the capsule that are meant to ablate because it's taking on the energy to keep you safe. But out your window, you're like looking at red flames and Pieces of your capsule, you know flying off like they're supposed to but still you're like, whoa I'm glad I'm here and not out there. So In that moment. Yeah, there's a window between you. Yes, and Thousands of miles per hour in the friction and the heat

Mm-hmm like not that is not a space or an experience where a human body belongs. Exactly. 100% right. Yeah. And then while I was on my mission, we had to do a series of contingency space walks. We had a failure on board that required us to go out in short order to fix else. We'd have some either even bigger problems. So we had to go out there and order to fix else, we'd have some either even bigger problems.

So we had to go out there and in our spacesuits and I was one of the spacewalkers. And just that experience in and of itself, where you're as ordered as possible, but you are entering the realm of the uninhabitable. And it's only by virtue of your space suit that you are safe and able to work in that environment. And I'll never forget the time when I was working on something in the, we call it the front face,

the forward face of the space station. It's a trust segment that's basically facing the velocity vector, the direction that we're traveling. And you're unprotected in the sense that once that great big fireball comes up over the horizon and shines its light on you, you're going to feel it. And it's pretty warm. I mean, take the hottest place here on Earth and you might have a sense for what that feels like. But when you're in your own space suit and that sun comes up, even if you're not looking at it, you know it, because, well, parts of the space station light up in pretty amazing ways, but you can feel the heat even through your space.

And then if you don't have certain shields or visors down on your helmet, that it's blinding, but it's also piercing. Like you can feel it penetrating. You're like, I remember my temple. I was like, oh, it like shot me in the temple. There's not a whole lot of my skin that's exposed when I'm in the spacesuit. It's pretty much just your face. And so I just remember that feeling alone and it's like thank goodness I've got all this you know metal

and fabric that I can turn around and not have that you know directly pointed at me. Speaking of lasers. Speaking of lasers. That's one of our favorite things to say around here. It's the sun as a powerful laser. Oh, deadly, deadly laser. Well, and yeah, and let me just add my tweezers. I'm going to test to that. So yeah.

So there's a lot of ways in which, you know, especially when I'm inside the space station looking out the window, or if I'm in my space suit out in the actual environment, it is not lost on me, the kind of chaos that surrounds us. And that's kind of what I was trying to describe in the letter to you guys that, in those moments where I would reflect looking out the window at the earth from night pass to a day pass, and I'm just looking at this. It's just almost unfalible how this beautiful planet that is so complex and beautiful. And here it is in the middle of blackness,

in an environment that has so much more to be uncovered and discovered that we don't even know about. So even I feel like the chaos lies in our, even uncertainty out there of what it really is. I mean, we've got some smart minds that are studying, you know, what goes on in space, but space is pretty big. And it's just the enormity of it is enough to elicit thought

of what chaos really means. Yeah, so the biblical imagination that one way to describe it is the sea. And then there's a boundary of the coastline where we're kind of spared from the sea coming and destroying us. What I hear you saying is if you think of space like a different type of sea, a different type of chaos, that the ancients didn't have a way to really appreciate the way we do. That boundary, the coastline, is that atmosphere. And it is probably awe-inspiring to be, it is awe-inspiring to be on a coastline and to see the waves crashing on and to kind of feel the violence of the ocean. But the way you described going through the atmosphere into space sounds like another level of entering into a chaos realm.

That's just, yeah, pretty intense. Yeah. And when I think about all that, you know, especially with the soy use and all of it, it has to go through in order to make it safely from orbit through the atmosphere and then to land. All of these events have to happen at just the right moments, at just the right intensity or level in order for us to make it all the way back safely. And it's like the amount of order that has to be applied, it's opposed to oppose the chaos that we are entering. It's impressive.

Yes. You know, just, what were you saying John? Well, you know, you asked, what is space? So, well, that was the last, you had a string of questions. I did, the last one was what really is space? So if, you know, I know what the ocean is, right? I think. But yeah, what is, if this is a different way to think

of a chaos room, I think we're saying that's appropriate. What is it? What is space? Oh, I don't know if I'm the right person to do it. Okay. Someone must have told you along the way. It's a big vacuum. It's a big, it's a lot of nothing. It's nothing? Yeah, and we should be afraid of it. Okay. Yeah. It's it's it's harsh. And it's surprising sometimes we we're learning as much as we can about how to live and work in space, but there's still a lot of things we we don't know. And as we try to, you know, not to sound cliche, but to push the boundaries, we sometimes are very surprised at what that boundary really looks like. And also, we're talking about the space and the environment, but the operational realities

of trying to live and work in space have their own layers of chaos. And it makes me think about my yard at home that, you know, we have to tend the garden, right? And if we don't, weeds grow up and undesirable things take over the garden and trying to live and work in space with a huge global partnership like we have, it's trying to apply order every day to something that wants to be chaotic, from just vehicle traffic coming up

and going down from the space station to the amount of storage that we have on board to take care of our needs for remote outposts like we have. I mean just when I think about just the operational constraints that were under as we conduct our day-to-day mission, that's like trying to make order at a chaos. So do the land and rule it. Yes, one of the creatures that we are to rule over is the Ta'ni, the symbol of chaos itself. Do you see yourself as an astronaut being connected to that image of God, vocation then? I think God uses all of us in pretty neat ways. And I think I get the most joy from what I do

thinking about it in those terms. And from even the mundane things, we would consider mundane in orbit, even though the spectacular environment we're in. But from those to the spectacular things, doing a spacewalk is kind of a big deal in our careers. And having the blessing to do is kind of a big deal in our careers and having the blessing to do that kind of work is I really feel like God had his hand in that.

So I'm curious just continuing to explore the symbolism of the cosmos, the biblical cosmos, the ordered realm, because in a way what you've been able to do is participate in these extensions of Eden order into a new realm, just outside the planet. And so it's like pushing out, but it's an extreme example of I think a universal human experience that really is what the biblical authors are trying to invite us into is that humans. I mean, the reason you guys are up there is because of ideas in your minds about designing this habitable, you know, outpost up there.

It's just, first of all, that's so remarkable to think. That's moving 12,000 miles an hour. What did you say? 17,500 miles total. Wow. In that environment, when I go outside my house and ride my bike to work here every day, I am in a way of going up against the dragon.

There's cars out there. I have to watch for them. Your skin's not getting dry out here in Portland. That's too much of that. Yeah, there's right. So anytime you wake up and go into the world to bring order and love your neighbor and do stuff, in a way, you're facing resistance. And so that the biblical symbols of resistance are primarily the darkness, the waters, and

then the danger in those waters is symbolized by the dragon. So a scholar who's helped me a lot is a biblical scholar Robin Perry and is fun but called the biblical cosmos. I think the introduction of the weird, wonderful world of the Bible. He has a great little paragraph that I just want to read and then see how this lands with you. Because he's unpacking again the the meaning of these symbols and the meaning of chaos. Robin says in the Bible, water and sea beasts function as evocative symbols of overwhelming and powerful chaos in doing forces. They remind us that God's creation is good, but not tame. There are forces beyond human control that should be treated with respect.

Because when they exceed their bounds, they are destructive. We just pause the sunlight. I experience sunlight as a really wonderful pleasant thing here in Portland. You were experiencing sunlight. It's something very, very different. Yeah. And so within the atmosphere, it's like it's ordered and it brings life. And then outside of that order, the sun is a deadly lizard. It's a deadly lizard. Okay, so Robin continues,

at a metaphorical level, dragons and wild oceans remain helpful symbols of chaos that can invade communal and individual human worlds threatening order and life itself. Within the Bible, the symbol is used to describe political oppression or the collapse of order in the lives of communities and people. We've been exploring that. Ancient kings are called

dragons, violent kings. At a metaphysical level, Genesis 1 depicts a creation that left to itself would collapse back into chaos. The world doesn't sustain or order itself. It is God who ordered and continues to order reality, but the tendency towards disorder is inherent within the world. And the sea represents, therefore, non-being or literally no thing. That is so bang on right there. I mean, that's true whether you're talking about the weeds in your garden. Yeah. Or like when a cargo, when yet another cargo ship comes up to the space station of limited size and space and we have to figure out what to do with everything. Yeah. And then, yeah, when something breaks on board the space station and we have to figure out what to do with everything. And then, yeah, when something breaks on board

the space station and we have to go fix it. And it's not just the, you know, start your pre-breathing, get your suit on and go. It's the perturbation that goes throughout the entire space station all the way down to our ground teams across the world who have to muster together to bring order back to this situation that, you know,

you wonder how it all gets done. Like, how is it any of us and all of this is here? Yes. Just so unlikely. Yes, yes, yes. And you can't just say, well, it just all worked out. But when you're up there and you see it for yourself through your own eyes, just how miraculous it is that not only are you there and you're safe

and you're being productive, thanks to the hundreds, the thousands of people on the ground who whose job it is to see to it that you do have meaningful work. And then you look outside and and then you're inside of a space station that was completely assembled in space. Yeah, that's well. Yeah, I mean, they didn't, they didn't put it all together here on the ground and plug it all in. and then you're inside of a space station that was completely assembled in space. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, I mean, they didn't, they didn't put it all together here on the ground and plug it all in and check to make sure

electrons from over there, flow over there. No, it all went up into space and that was where the final assembly took place. So amazing. It's like the biggest, most complex Lego set ever. Yes, exactly, 100%. And just going back to the view out the window, when you're done looking at the earth

and just completely, you need a couple of orbits to take it all in. And then you look out at space and you're like, that's amazing. And it can't be over here. And then you look at the space station and you look all around and you see solar rays going around and thermal radiators rotating.

And you know what's going on with those and control moment gyros that are spinning at thousands and thousands of RPMs to keep the space station oriented in just the right way. Okay, oh wow. I mean, these are just some of the real visible aspects, but there's a lot going on behind the scenes

that keep that machine running. Then you, once you're done being like completely and off that, you think about all the people who are on the ground in the control centers and the back rooms. Well, probably at that very moment. Sending commands and monitoring parameters. And it takes a world to run the space station.

And which then raises the fascinating analogy, which is like, well, what is currently happening behind the scenes? That like, of the cosmos. Of the cosmos, like, there's for every complex operation to keep that thing up in space, there's an almost infinite number of operations happening in the universe to make our conscious awareness of even just this conversation right now. in the universe to make our conscious awareness of even just this conversation right now. But just the scale of that, we're so habituated. Yeah. Into our life rhythms, the scale and the immensity of the chaos that is being resisted at

this very moment. Like, we just can't really even take it in. Yeah. But is that kind of what hit home when you were sitting there looking at the blanket, like the blue blanket, like there's a sense of, there's my sense of how ordered things are, it's now a little different. I can see how close to chaos things really are. Mm-hmm. So it's not, it's never far from my mind when I'm looking at the view about the harsh conditions out there.

That seems to always be forefront to me. I mean, from the vacuum of space to the extremes in temperature from plus 200 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit when the sun's up, it's at its extreme when the sun's on the other side, it's at its average. 200 degrees Fahrenheit to negative 100? 200, so just 200, positive 200 to negative 200. So like a 400 Fahrenheit. Yeah, and think about what that does to just metal,

not to mention your own body, but just to the metal of the space station. Yeah. And just knowing from all the training of being in a, you know, a pressurized suit to do space walks and knowing all the emergency procedures that we have to train in order to overcome a problem that exposes us to that. So it's always on my mind.

So then when I get those cohescent moments where I'm just looking at the earth and all it's beauty and grandeur and I see just, then you see that thin blue line, where what appears thin and you're like, that's all there is. I go out there with the pressure I see, and there's visors, two visors. I've got multiple layers on me. I got air pumping in in my suit. I got a CO2 removal system. I got a battery here, battery there, radio transmitter.

I mean, I'm decked out to the hill in order to not only be safe, but function out there and do the work. And then there's this thin blue atmosphere that checks everybody from ultra-high, from the radiation and ultraviolet rays. And then when the sun comes up over the horizon and the beautiful transformation of the horizon as that sun just, like you get hints of it. It's not quite up yet, but you can see things start to change. And you're like, it's coming. It's coming to get so excited to see this. And then as it just. The sun's about the same size as I experience it. Yes. Yeah. In fact, glad you said that, John, because there's a lot of the things that you see here,

you see up there with a slightly different perspective, like the stars for one. Okay. 3D stars. 3D stars. I'm disappointed now that you made me realize I've only ever seen 2D stars. You've only seen 2D stars.

I've only ever looked at the sky and seen the sky in 2D. I do, I do. And I'm a little sad. And I'm sad with you. Yes, yes. So there's 2D stars. And then you know that beautiful kind of sunset that you see, especially if you're in Southern California, there's a lot of smog, then in the orange

and the red. You see that on the horizon. You see that on the horizon. You definitely see that. But you see not only much larger city. Yeah, you see in a whole sphere of the earth. And we're up high enough that you can see the curvature of the earth. You don't see the big ball, but you can see that it's a curve. So you get to see, you know, over 3,000 miles of landmass as you're going over at one time. Because sorry, how high up are you? You're not that high. No, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, we're not. We're like 200 to 250 miles.

So like, I do this in Houston. Like, if I'm in Houston and you're in Austin that's about the distance if you went altitude you know high 50 miles that'd be like a here to see out. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's how far away we are. Yeah. But you're we're well. Three hours of drive there. Believe it or not it takes us eight and a half minutes to get to orbit. Oh wow. Yeah. A couple of. a little faster. A little bit more thrust. And the airways are clear for us to get there. No traffic.

But yeah, the distance isn't too far, but you're just well above the atmosphere that you see. You see things without the filter of our atmosphere. But the sun glint, you know, when you see from an airplane, just the way that the sun as it's moving casts a shadow on the earth as your as your traps you're ever looking out the window. We see that as well where mountains look completely different because of the shade that is created by their peaks and depending water where the sun glint is changing it from blue to like a pearlescent coral color to this kind of opal-lessonness. It's just like it blows my mind away to see that. You're just looking at the earth and all of its beauty and it doesn't look chaotic anymore. It's something that you guys said earlier about the chaos waters, I mean we think about this

that the fact that the earth is 71% covered by water is never so obvious as when you're in space. Wow. And it's interesting that you can be on several orbits where you don't see any land. Oh. You're just seeing water. And sometimes you don't see land

because the clouds are covering it. Oh, that's true. But you're like, yeah, this is what 71% looks like, because it's just a bunch of water. And when I think about the chaos, the chaos waters and the dry land appearing, it's like, it's an oasis to me. And then just that view from space, I was trying to think about this and set it to words that when I would look out and just see ocean, ocean, ocean, ocean of thinking, I'm glad

I'm not there. Like, that's in the middle of what seems like nowhere. And I'd never get that sense anywhere, but from the vantage point of space. Yeah, yeah. While flying through space, I'm glad I'm not in the ocean. I'm glad I'm not in the ocean. I know that this sounds so weird to say.

OK, all right, so that makes me think of another question I want to ask you. So that feeling of waking up to a new awareness that the world that I thought I lived in has just become a lot more wondrous and strange and dangerous, that has to have an effect. And I think one of the effects, the biblical story, is trying to have on our imaginations, is to recover that sense of wonder and the fragility of this whole thing. And so the experience that you've been able to have, there actually has been a lot of

very interesting people who have documented the psychological experience of astronauts. And so there's a guy named Frank White, who I know you've met, but he's done a lot of research interviewing astronauts. And he came up with a term to talk about that mental impact. He called it the overview effect that there's a deep transformation in astronauts' view of the world and reality and other people that happens from getting these experiences that you've had. So you had your own version of this experience.

What does that do? Like, when you come back, do you encounter... what do you see differently? How is it impacted? I'm probably impacted everything, so I'm asking you to quantify something that's like, quantifiable, ineffable. But, you know, when you think about the political challenges of humans getting along, or think about a difficult coworker

How have these experiences shaped how you view other people and how humans do or don't get along down here? What happens there? I think that the those thoughts happen while you're there They start there and travel home with you, but I remember While I was there gazing at the earth and not seeing, you don't see any borders other than those between land masses and the waters. And you don't see the conflict. It looks so peaceful from our vantage point plus the only audio that

you get is the, you know, the ambient noise of the space station. So you don't even hear what's happening on the surface of the earth. And all you see is the beauty and the honest of, again, it's ineffable. You just, it's hard to put it into succinct terms, what that view and the privilege that you have that only a fraction of the human race has ever experienced. You start thinking about, I wonder if more people could see this, believers or non-believers, people who care about the earth, to people who think the earth is there for them, how this would change them. You start thinking of, I think those are the first thoughts that I have. But then it's also, for me, emotional to think about, what am I doing here?

Why do I get to see this? Why is it me that's getting this opportunity to look at this. And if that's not one of the most humbling moments of my life that then brings me back home and has me view myself in light of others, that's where that began. I mean, I think I went through a bit of a transformation after that flight in that alone,

just searching my own heart and what was important to me. Because before I took that flight in particular, I was pursuing a career. And I was newly married, but not, I was geographically single because my husband was serving in our military and a foreign location. And so I was basically living for myself and coming back home from that

flight in particular where I spent six months just being captivated by what I saw at the window not to mention living life and working where I lived and lived where I worked and you know just the chaos of living with people that you didn't necessarily choose to live with, but because of circumstances you're there together as a crew and a team, all of that just forced me when I got home from that mission to kind of look deep into my heart at what it meant for me to be there to be one of the ones to do all of that. And just as far as you know looking out at the planet and how that looks just from just the physical sense, it's both, it's as terrifying to look out the window as it

is delightful. You know, just from the terminator where the sun sets. And there's like shadow cast on the surface of the earth and it moves along the earth just like, you know, this is called. It's called the terminator. It's the... So not killer robot. That's amazing. It's a shadow line.

It's a shadow that's a very good way. It's just this way. I'll write my right side. Is this like a NASA sling or is this like a true? I think it's in the dictionary. Do it in English. Wow. All right.

The terminated. It's the line of shadow. And it's to me, and I've asked other colleagues the same question, how that looks to them and many feel the same way that it's kind of eerie when we see the terminator coming especially if you're you know especially if you're over water because as you see the shadow coming and it's coming you're like oh it's it's almost can you're going to get enveloped in it when the shadow shadow comes, it, unless you're over a highly populated area with lights, it's almost, and for the lack of stars, you would think that you were just

looking at the universe, because it is black. Like the earth disappears. And it's, it's scary, because you're like, where did it go? But you know what's right there. So it's like, and you can't help but look at it, because you're like, I want I want to see what it does, but it's going away. It's, I don't know, it's weird, weird thought, but it's that kind of thing. I just paid attention to this, this feeling I had of, of the terminator coming, then get this when you're, this, basically just picture our continent. And it's, you know, what is it? Like 5,000 miles across, if not more than that. And let's say this blanket of cloud covers the majority of it.

You watch lightning go from one end to the other in a split second. Whoa. Right. And you think to yourself, it's amazing, the maze of lines where if you're here on the earth and you're looking, you see a lightning bolt, bing, bing, bing, bing bolt. It's like you just see these three.

You see it as a system. Yeah, but up there you see you watch electrons float in no time at all and it's like it blows your mind. And you know, so these things just keep happening. Aurora's for a chemist, a P chemist in particular. I'm watching ionization happen. I was in my own vacuum chamber. Aurora is when you're looking at them from the northern latitudes and you see them as,

again, sorry, Titi, you're just watching this swirl of color. When you're up in space and you're looking down at it, it actually has height to it And it's in it's dancing and it's you're almost like in a glass bottom boat looking at the aurora And it's green and yellow and sometimes it's red and blue, but it's mostly green and yellow And how often do you go over that you just depends on how the earth is spinning and how you're and our orbit I'm called a procession or a little orbiddle procession. And so you are at this inclination of 51 degrees. Okay. And as the earth rotates and as we travel,

you go over the same area, kind of like every other two weeks. And so I'm just going to throw a rough estimate about every two weeks you see this. You'll be right. Yeah, and there's been lots of video captured of it. And my goodness, you're just fascinated by the dancing ionization of atmosphere and incoming particles.

Why I'm going on about this is because the other thought I had is how complex this earth is and just those things alone that as the earth turns, everything that's happening on the surface of the earth to weather systems that to us on the ground, we see just a fraction of it. But from space, you see how large it is. And to say, I think we make our world too small sometimes. And with internet and communications being as rapid as they are, and how we can hop on a jet and be halfway

around the world in 15 hours, makes the world seem small. But it's really big. It is really big when you think about how complex it is. And when we start thinking about that the world is so small and that we are in control of it, then I think we, you know, that's where we start to step into that worldly mindset. But keep the world big, keep the planet big because it's to God's glory that it is as grand as it is. And when you you realize that then God seems to lot bigger

than we make him sometimes. So yeah what you're saying is a wider realization of the chaos surrounding the scale of that within and even wider your giving room for a larger view of God's own wisdom and generosity and power is really scaled to your view of the universe isn't it? Wow, that's a fascinating. I was counting on you guys to wrap that up. Yeah, yeah. And but at the same time to think because you know as you're talking about the Aurora's or a storm That also it's speaking to the unified

Right integrated nature of the Oasis the ordered Oasis and that it's like it almost like it's really is more like an organism Like a big floating organism in the middle of the universe Because it's all so integrated, but at the same time, it's just being held there against these forces and lasers that are constantly bombarding it to reduce it back to the nothingness from which it came.

It's really a marvel that there is anything at all, much less this particular set of things. We happen to have it. Yeah. I feel like my vision of the universe has been able to expand a little. As a universe expansion, you understand. Yeah, but then also I think, you know, the biblical story is also trying to expand it for us as well, to help us appreciate both how beautiful and what a gift that is also fragile and on the precipice. And it's somehow holding all of that together in one moment is something the biblical author's

want to instill in us through the story of the chaos waters and the garden. Yeah, I can't wait for this next mission to armed with the deep understanding I have of Genesis alone and to see it with that lens applied. I'm looking forward to that experience. So I didn't have it when I went performing. I mean, I of course, levered, read my Bible, but I wouldn't say that I understood it as a unified story that it is. And so I'm really looking forward to this next mission with that armed with that information. Well, we're thankful that you're going to let us beam in and talk with you. I'm so psyched about that. You can tell us what that experience is like with that on the mind. Yeah, looking forward to that for sure.

Tracy, thank you for riding a letter. Yeah, and reaching out to us, it's been really fun to get to know you and just to share with our audience, everyone listening, you know, this conversation, really, really special. Thank you for coming here to do this and spending time with us. Well, it's been a super pleasure for me and a real honor to come and spend this time with you in this great place where so much creativity takes place and just appreciate you guys taking us all on this journey and that we can, that is so accessible, even from space. Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week, we're wrapping up this series. We'll do one final question response episode for the Chaos Dragon. Today's episode was

brought to you by our podcast team, producer Cooper Peltz, associate producer Lindsey Ponder. Editor's Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Tyler Bailey mixed this episode in Hannah Wu provided the annotations for the annotated podcast in our app. Bible project is crowdfunded nonprofit and we exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. Everything that we make is free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you.

So thank you so much for being a part of this with us. Hi, this is Chandler Wagner and I'm from Asheville, North Carolina. Hi, this is Jenna Postal and I am from the Philippines. I first heard about Bible Project in our church. I used Bible Project as a supplement in my personal devotion and I also used the read scripture app for my daily Bible reading. I first heard about Bible project through the Bible recap, a chronological reading plan and a accompanying podcast. I use Bible project to help set the stage for the book of the Bible that I'm about to read

in the plan and to help reorient myself to the overarching narrative while I'm reading. My favorite thing about Bible project is that it is totally cry-centered and fully saturated in the world. My favorite thing about Bible project is that in this world of distractions, rolling and multitasking, it captures my full attention and it provides me with phrases and frameworks to share with others as I learn more about God. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. We are a crowd-funded project by people like me. Find three videos, study notes, podcast classes, and more at BibleProtect.com. you