Elysia Segal is the producer of public programs at the Intrepid Museum in New York City.

Elysia brings a unique blend of theater and science communication to her role, where she orchestrates large-scale public events and educational programs that bridge the gap between history, science, and entertainment.

Growing up in Orlando, Florida, Elysia was always enchanted by the sonic booms of space shuttles returning to Earth, sparking her early interest in space.

Her journey working in museums to support her life in theater has led her to her role at the Intrepid Museum, where she helps illuminate the scientific and historical facets of space exploration for diverse audiences.

In this episode, you'll discover:In this episode, you'll discover:

• Elysia's unique career path from acting and theater to leading space education initiatives at the Intrepid Museum.
• How her programs at the museum make space and science accessible and engaging for all ages, including the annual Fleet Week and monthly Astro Live shows.
• The impact of storytelling in science education and how Elysia uses her skills to animate the legacies of lesser-known figures in space history.
• Insights into the Intrepid Museum's role in space history, including its involvement in recovering space capsules and its transformation into a hub for space education.
• How her role changed during the pandemic
• Elysia's perspective on the future of space exploration and her role in inspiring the next generation of space enthusiasts through innovative educational approaches.

Quote:

"We have a wonderful program here at the Intrepid geared towards young women getting involved in the STEM, field. And, they get to meet mentors who are doing it. They get to have hands-on experience doing it. I think that's the most important thing, for that generation."

- Elysia Segal

Episode Links:

• Connect with Elysia Segal on LinkedIn
• Visit the Intrepid Museum's official website
• Discover Kids Week at The Intrepid

Credits:

Production by CxS Partners LTD

Executive Producer: Toby Goodman

Audio & Sound Design: Lee Turner

Artwork: Ryan Field

Production by CxS Partners LTD

Recorded in NYC on location at the Intrepid on Nomono Sound Capsule

Join our journey into the world of education and space: https://interastra.space

Elysia Segal:

As a kid, I never would have imagined I'd be here. You know? Because again, oh, it's an asset. It's too hard. It's too difficult to reach. But there's so many other ways to get involved. That's very inspiring. And I think that's the most important thing to share to the next generation is that it's so much more than that. Humans can do so many amazing things, and everyone has a part to play.

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Hi. I'm Elysia Segal and you're listening to Your Business in Space.

I am currently the producer of public programs at the Intrepid Museum in New York City, and that means that I coordinate and produce and host a lot of our, large scale public facing events, things like kids week, which is a week long festival for kids, in during their winter break here in New York, Fleet Week, which happens over Memorial Day weekend in May.

And then also, I host our monthly show, Astro Live, where we interview NASA and other scientists and astronauts and all kinds of different people who are in the space industry to bring it to a broader audience.

So I grew up in Orlando, Florida. As such, my family, myself even, worked at Walt Disney World down there. So I'm all about edutainment, you know, with friends with the characters and all of that. But also, growing up in Orlando, I had the very unique opportunity to hear not only the fireworks from all four parks in my background, but also hear sonic booms when the shuttles arrived.

I actually, remember leaving school in 8th grade. Not leaving, but just going outside at school, when I was in 8th grade from, like, my math class or something and watching, John Glenn go up the second time on his space shuttle.

It was in the distance, obviously, but we could actually see the clouds of it, you know, going up. So the space community was still, you know, very much it bled over into Orlando. I always thought it was absolutely incredible and and very, very cool and like every kid, you know, also wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up maybe, but I wasn't very good at math. And, it just it seemed like it was so far away.

It just seemed like it was something I'd never be able to achieve. It was just one of those things that's, like, oh, that'd be neat to aspire to someday.

But more so than anything, I just thought it was just really inspiring. I just thought it was so interesting to know that there were people like you and me doing this stuff, that we could actually go to the moon, that we had been to the moon, that we could go on to further places like Mars or wherever else.

So, ultimately, I really loved just the human aspect of that, the storytelling aspect of that. And I got very involved in theater and ultimately, you know, was doing drama.

I did a debate, loved communication, and also really found myself loving science research. Again, not the math part, but I was involved in a really great science research program at my school where we would be able to team up with labs in the community and do science research. And I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the International Science Fair twice. My senior year, I went and I actually won first place, and NASA named an asteroid after me.

So I actually have a main belt asteroid called Elysia Segal, with some numbers and stuff added to it.

But it was a really cool program they were running at the time through MIT to inspire kids to want to pursue space things. So I thought that was amazing. That was cool. I get to, you know, to this day, brag that I have an asteroid named after me. But, again, I was like, NASA. Oh, I never how could I ever work for NASA? It's NASA. Right? So I ultimately went on to study, theater at NYU.

You know, always loved performing, minored in psychology and Irish studies, which is a little random, but I studied abroad in Ireland so I could, you know, take that off anyway.

But I again, I I was very involved in theater, but I I always kinda felt unfulfilled. Like, I really loved research. I really loved science. And I was like, how do I combine those 2 into a career?

Well, ultimately, I graduated, pounded the pavement in New York. I got my equity card and, you know, was doing Broadway auditions and commercial everything else like everyone else. And I ultimately found this great survival job, working at a a museum here in New York. It's a transportation museum.

And they had, just every so often, you know, for for school groups and things, had performers who a a performer, really, who would dress up like someone from the past to talk about the 3rd rail. You know, talk about electricity or whatever. I was like, oh, I can do that.

That kinda blends my passions. So I started working there. I worked there just for a summer, and then they were like, oh, we really like you. Let's, you know, stay on. So I stayed there ultimately for six and a half years.

I thought it was wonderful. I could combine those two things.

So I started doing that. And then, lo and behold, the Intrepid Museum, also had a grant for something similar. And what a strange little, you know, niche of skill set. Right? To do that sort of thing. But they were like, oh, you're actually doing exactly what we wanna do here. Which was to use primary sources to have students in underserved communities out here in New York, create their own performance pieces that were inspired by the history of Intrepid.

So the World War 2 era, the space race era, and also, the Vietnam War era. And for those listening, I guess, if you're not familiar with why we're connected to the space race era, the Intrepid Museum is actually an aircraft carrier.

So it is the former USS Intrepid. If you are in Manhattan, it is parked on the west side of Manhattan in the river. If you're going down the highway, you might see a giant aircraft carrier, and that is us. We served during World War 2, through the Vietnam War.

We we serve so many in the New York area and also internationally, and we have so many schools that come through here. We've got a number of historic planes all throughout our decks and on our flight deck. We have a cold war era submarine outside, and we also have, the a British Airways Concorde out on our pier. And we also have the Space Shuttle Enterprise, which is the prototype orbiter space shuttle, and that's up in our shuttle pavilion right now. So the Intrepid Museum reached out and said, oh, this seems like something that'd be a good fit for this, outreach program. So I came in through the education department. I was doing community engagement. I was, leading this program, which we've, actually just now wrapped up.

And then the pandemic hit. And so, of course, everyone had to switch to virtual programming, and I ended up essentially, I I joke, but I essentially became the face of the museum. I did all of I did most of our, educational programming on the Internet. So if you go on YouTube, it's probably me that you're seeing. And I would do a lot of our, our typical family programs that we do on weekends and whatnot, but in the virtual format. And then they realized, well, these are very much public facing programs.

So when we came back from the pandemic, we continued this virtual stuff as many museums did. We used to have astronomy nights that were on-site, so we converted those, into this virtual format as a monthly thing.

So at those, we'd have astronauts and engineers and whatnot come and give talks. And so that has turned into our Astro Live programs. So I host and coordinate and produce those. We partnered with NASASpaceflight.com who, goes out and streams all of these different rocket launches all the time and does amazing stuff too. So now we actually have about 30 to 50,000 viewers each month on these programs where we interview scientists, astronauts, etcetera. And then we have astronomy nights as well now, which I helped to produce too. So we have amateur astronomers that are up on the flight deck showing everyone how to use telescopes, and, of course, we bring in special guest speakers as well for that. In addition to that, I still do theater here as well.

I think what I love most about my job now, as in public programming is being able to just spread all of this amazing space stuff to people on such a large format, on the virtual platform. I love that we are able to reach young and old. We look at the demographics for this, and it actually it skews older. We are a museum that, you know, it's educational, so you'd think that that's a lot of kids. But actually, there's a lot of space nerds out there who love to get into the nitty gritty of all this technical stuff, and they do. They ask the hard questions about the technical stuff to these engineers. And I think when they come on, they aren't expecting that. They're expecting kids to be like, how do you poop in space? And then, of course, the kids ask that.

But now there's a lot of technical stuff too. So I love being able to immerse myself in that too. I've again, I've always loved the science and the research aspect. It's also very cool to say that I get to hang out with astronauts all the time. I mean, like, take pictures with them and stuff. I feel like I've become a little jaded. You know, as a kid, I never would have imagined I'd have so many, you know, astronauts and scientists that I've gotten to meet. And that goes for, you know, during kids week too.

We always bring in NASA divisions to put up put up displays and, you know, talk with everyone. I've gotten to meet so many amazing people from different NASA divisions. And they have really hammered home to me that you don't have to be a scientist or a mathematician or an astronaut to be involved in NASA. I've met so many incredible artists, artists from JPL, for example. I met this guy Joby, whose cat was actually Taters the cat who, you know, had that laser demonstration. But he's the artist that made the travel posters, that they made to help to, you know, promote all of the different exoplanets and whatnot. Artists, communicators, all of these other people that, I'm like, wow, like, that's actually kinda similar to my background with communication and whatnot. So being able to meet them and see them and having the opportunity actually to go down to NASA, see some launches.

I got to see the Artemis launch actually, which was incredible from the press site, which was nuts. But being able to do all of that and also blend it with my communications back on my arts background and show others that, like, look, you don't have to be a scientist or something. You can actually do this too. I think the Artemis program is really inspiring, because up until now, we've never had a woman or a person of color go to the moon. Being able to see and I've learned this from, my research with the Betty Scout program too. You know, the the fact that women weren't even allowed to even be considered to be an astronaut until the shuttle era with Sally Ride, 20 years after Valentina Tereshkova went into space, the first woman in space from the Soviet Union. It's really one of those if you see it, you can be it, you know. I think it's important to have exposure for young women to get involved in STEM.

We have a wonderful program here at the Intrepid that is all, geared towards young women getting involved in the STEM, field. And, they get to meet mentors who are doing it. They get to have hands on experience doing it. I think that's the most important thing, for that generation. And it really is exciting now that we are, I think, partnering, you know, with private companies and whatnot who have the ability to reach further than maybe what NASA can do. I think it really does open the door for just imagining bigger. Now, are imagining what space colonies, you know, would look like. Space hotels.

Right? We have these ideas of how we're going to actually be living on the moon long term, living on Mars long term, getting to Mars long term. And we're seeing it now with the digital age broadcast on the Internet. You can see them you can see SpaceX blowing up, you know, their Starship. You know, obviously, I don't want it to blow up, but it's the testing process. Right? It's the scientific method. You just keep going. And being able to see that in real time in ways that when I was a kid, we didn't get to see that. We didn't really have the Internet, you know, like we do now.

I think that just makes it feel so much more achievable. When I got an asteroid named after me, which still blows my mind, I realized I am part of space. You know? Like, I am actually up there. Like, this is achievable. When I got to go to the press site to see the Artemis 1 launch, I was there. I'm in some of those video clips that you still see of it. Like, that's me. I was there.

I am part of this. And as a kid, I never would have imagined I'd be here. You know? Because again, oh, it's an asset. It's too hard. It's too difficult to reach. But there's so many other ways to get involved. That's very inspiring. And I think that's the most important thing to share to the next generation is that it's so much more than that.

Humans can do so many amazing things, and everyone has a part to play. So right now, we actually just opened a new exhibit up in the Space Shuttle Pavilion called Apollo When We Went to the Moon. Right now, in public programs, I am focused on helping to support that exhibit. All summer long, we are having a bunch of really great programs coming up, guest speakers. We're having astronauts, scientists, many more virtual programs that'll be slated specifically about the moon. That's kind of the immediate focus at the moment, and I also host a weekly show called This Week in Spaceflight with NASA Spaceflight NSF, which is all about space news roundup things. So it's all about all of the current missions and all of the, things that are happening around the world.

I'm Elysia Segal, and you've been listening to Your Business in Space.

All the ways to connect with me are in the links in the show notes. To discover more, head to interastra.space

Transcription by AI