Tim Peake

Yes.

About, you know, we, we just recently had, um, Tim Peake on, on the podcast and asked him, you know, "When do you need an astronaut, and when do you need a robot to do it?" And this generation of exploration and, you know, industry that's coming forward is so exciting because of the scale and, you know, if these alloys can be made up in space as well, the need for that travel goes down massively, and the dexterity of the missions increase.

So-

Yes

So far, Britain has produced three career astronauts.

Helen Sharman, Tim Peake and Dr Rosemary Coogan, who beat more than 22,500 applicants to win her place with the European Space Agency and is now waiting on her first mission to the International Space Station.

Britain's children, however, are pretty confident they'll be joining Dr Coogan up there.

Research by tech education group RM Technology, published in May 2024, found that 57% of children aged 4 to 7 believe they will travel to space in their lifetime.

Hello, I'm Siobhan Holt of PR Week, and in this very special episode of PR Week's sister podcast, The Karma Line, legendary British astronaut Tim Peake reflects on AI, robots versus astronauts, lunar bases and more.

He also ponders the question of why an industry as interesting as space is so bad at communicating.

put a human on Mars today and put our best robot with AI on Mars today, and a human will still do more.

And I wanted to find a platform to talk about the other things.

However...

What are we talking about today, Alice? However, we can't have a podcast series that talks about the UK space sector without, at some point, introducing the, if I may, iconic Tim Peake.

Hello.

Welcome.

I can, uh, I can read a book.

Like, I read a book about, you know, like, Tim Peake, the astronaut, went into ou- you know, off into space.

Yeah, yeah.

Love him.

But let's look back to space, because analog astronaut was a term, until I sort of looked you up, I'd never heard of an analog astronaut.

I mean, I've heard of astronauts, and obviously, as we mentioned when we were doing the pre-chat for this, I actually share a godson with Tim Peake, although he's spectacularly hard to get hold of now.

I've been trying to get him on the podcast for ages, and he's really, because he's just so busy.

um but uh he uh he would be a fascinating guy to talk to on this same topic obviously having been up there and done it but what's an analog astronaut explain a bit more about what it actually is what you do what kind of stuff you've done i mean you've kind of mentioned why you got into it but uh you know just elaborate on it for us

Now, while I can understand the, the priorities that the government will put on security when it comes to space, and also the economics of it, you know, in terms of producing jobs, producing more money from space, which we, we know from the pandemic is, is, you know, one of the few industries [laughs] that kept going and, and, and did well.

What about the sort of educational side of space, which we know from Tim Peake's missions have been extraordinary for the UK, for schools, for children, and for inspiring the, the next generation of not just astronauts, but, but space scientists as well.

Is that still part of the mission or are ...

Uh, 'cause let's face it, we've got quite a few astronauts waiting to go up into space with ESA at the moment.

We've had them all.

Yeah, we've had them all.

And, um, McFall as well, and, um, Tim Peake several times.

Excellent.

Brian.

To what musician did astronaut Tim Peake present a Brit Award live from space in 2016?

Probably not Bruno Mars.

I'm going to go with Elton John.