Bakula Talks To ISS Astronaut Fincke

"I always thought I could never be an astronaut cause I couldn’t do that kind of stuff," Scott Bakula (Captain Archer) told astronaut Mike Fincke aboard the International Space Station. Bakula, who expressed a sense of disbelief at talking to Fincke while the latter was in orbit, admitted, "I’m more nervous than I am doing interviews or doing my show...everybody here, I have to tell you, was so excited that I’m talking to you today. They all wanted to be in my trailer and be here."

In the full transcript at SaveEnterprise.com, Bakula and Fincke discussed their mutual attention to one another's work - the astronaut said that he's a Star Trek: Enterprise fan, while Bakula revealed that he had been following the progress of the space walks and repairs. "Everybody here is just thrilled with everything that’s been going on with NASA and the whole space program the last couple of years," said the actor. "It's just been very, very exciting.

Fincke said that he really enjoyed the beginning of Enterprise, even the controversial song played over the opening credits. "There was a period there where my flight assignment kept looking further away and after the Columbia tragedy I would watch the beginning of the show over and over, just to get me motivated again. So you guys have really captured what we do really nicely." He said he wished that NASA would make astronaut uniforms look more like Star Trek costumes, though he lamented the fact that real astronauts have less romance than their television counterparts.

The two discussed how cold it is in space and the show's attempts to mimic the reality. Bakula admitted being concerned about his approximation of weightlessness in scenes outside the ship. "I can’t even imagine what that must be like being out there...what an experience that must be," he marveled, learning during the course of conversation that Fincke was bouncing off the ceiling and doing a flip as they spoke. He said that he would like to visit the show, saying, "the stories you guys tell are just outstanding and help inspire the next generation of explorers. And I’ll tell you what, it’s helping to inspire this generation of explorers too."

The two discussed food in space, Bakula's gratitude that the astronauts on Star Trek don't need to wear diapers the way real astronauts do in spacesuits, Fincke's concern that he would have trouble walking back on Earth and the fact that neither sees his children while working, Fincke admitted that his access to television while on the space station was spotty, but said that someone had created a bootleg Enterprise DVD for the astronauts.

Save Enterprise has an audio file of the actual conversation in MP3 format here. The original interview is here.

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