Ariel Ekblaw

speaker

1,219 appearances 5 recordings 4 series first heard May 2025 last heard 26 Jun

Ariel Ekblaw’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson · The Future of Space Stations with Ariel Ekblaw · 29 May 2026 podcast

So this is the crux of NASA's plan that just got reannounced with ignition.

So we have Jared Isaacman, new NASA administrator, exciting times.

They are going to double down on this idea that the new commercial space stations who are going to replace the International Space Station, first they attach to the existing ISS, they build up their modules, and then it's like the phoenix rising from the ashes of the ISS.

The remainder of the ISS that's not going to be –

kind of consumed and built into the future, the remainder of the ISS will be de-orbited.

It's a cool plan.

This is what I'm really passionate about.

How do we start to build things way bigger than the International Space Station, where each module could only be as big as your biggest rocket?

We are talking flat.

We're talking Ikea.

In some sense, even further back.

So it's like this vision from science fiction of how do you have massive structures that are way bigger than your biggest rocket payload fairing.

And there's this idea from Buckminster Fuller, so even well before the International Space Station was designed, of buckyballs, geodesic domes.

Why do we love spheres in space?

Because for a given surface area, you're optimizing for all that volume, most efficient shape.

Spaceballs.

Self-assembling spaceballs.

Yes.

3D printing.

Yes.

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