*Nobody is supposed to be an astronaut, an engineer and also an artist, and I would not claim that combining those roles is the most efficient way to do any of those three things. But there is something endearing about anyone who would perform such a far-fetched career move. It's like the closely managed, carefully engineered fantastic. It's like a profound awkwardness with bursts of the sublime. My heart is with creative efforts of this kind. I make a point of appreciating them.
*Also, when you listen to Nicole Stott here, although it sounds very NASA and is delivered by NASA, you should have a slow, dawning realization that – if you are a working artist, Nicole Stott is the ultimate backyard barbecue guest. As a painter, she's not Artemisia Gentileschi, but Nicole Stott is a genuinely capable technician: she could literally slaughter a live pig, cut the beast to pieces and place the chops on the grill while no one else knew what was going on. All the other artists are, like, discussing Mondrian and Warhol, and she's like: "I saw the planet, and, in point of fact, that was a planet down there." She is an engineer, and otherworldly because she is otherworldly.
