Regina G. Barber

From creating microgravity laboratories and harnessing unfiltered solar power to fabricating large human dwellings in space.

We get into why yesterday's sci-fi could be tomorrow's reality.

I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

So Ariel, during your PhD, you designed a tesserae, which is a self-assembling building unit you created for living in space.

How does this work?

Like smaller versions of them.

Oh, wow.

This name actually comes from like an art process, right?

Where like it's mosaics, I think, in like in Roman times.

Is that where this name came from or is it an acronym?

No, this is what you do when you're in science.

You got it.

You got it.

No.

So what are the hurdles that still exist to like getting this up and running in space?

Your company has also talked about how space structures can be used for things like agriculture or manufacturing.

How would that work?

That is amazing.

So this kind of work would, I assume, require workers.

Do you envision people farming and doing shift work in orbit?