Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson



Lee Hutchinson

When we met Adam Savage on a Friday evening, the Mythbusters co-host was jazzed after spending much of the day at Johnson Space Center, where he got to hang out with engineers and technicians in the robotics and advanced space suit labs. Savage was visiting Houston to promote his new exhibit—The Explosive Exhibition—at Space Center Houston. But during his interview with Ars, he was just as happy to talk space. “This is totally a thing for me,” he explained, doffing his fedora.

Savage spent 14 years building and destroying stuff on the hit TV show Mythbusters. He was driven from an early age to work with his hands and explore the boundaries of human experience by testing, failing, and trying again. In this he feels some kinship with NASA, which he characterized as “a ritualized failure analysis organization.” Both Mythbusters and the space agency, he said, try to game out all of the ways in which something can fail to ensure overall safety.

“It feels very simpatico to me because when I look at NASA hardware I can tell that people built it,” Savage said. “That’s different from when I sit in a modern car. Most modern stuff is made by robots and machines. But there is a tactile element of NASA hardware that is super evocative. I wasn’t obsessed with NASA until I met NASA scientists making Mythbusters, and I realized they were treating me like a peer.” The TV show has visited NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California numerous times to use the facility’s wind tunnels and its iconic Hangar One facility. They were welcomed with open arms.

Savage also loves the notion of constructing devices and materials needed to survive the harsh environment of outer space. “I’m addicted [to] and obsessed with armor,” he said. “And as far as I’m concerned traipsing around in your own atmosphere is about the highest level or armor there could be. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I love all sorts of armor. I collect it, whether it’s SWAT armor or medieval armor, and then I realized the space suit fascination is just another kind of armor.”

Lee Hutchinson







Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

We can understand how a builder of things would geek out at an agency that builds very cool things. But beyond building cool stuff, does space exploration matter? And if so, how would an expert communicator like Savage share that with the public? Although NASA enjoys widespread public support, that hasn’t translated to increased funding for the space agency, which receives slightly less than 0.5 percent of the federal budget. Surveys regularly show that the public thinks the federal government spends about the right amount, balanced against the government’s other priorities.

"It’s a fantastic question," he said. "But I really don't have a good answer because I've never really thought about that." Savage then said, in his view, NASA furthers the human condition because it feeds our desires to explore and learn the nature of things. The space agency helps us understand the universe around us, our place in it, and, through activities on board the International Space Station, how to use space to do stuff. But most importantly, he said, NASA and private spaceflight companies are laying the groundwork for a backup plan. “While the chances of our extermination are infinitesimal, they are zero if we manage to colonize a second sphere in this solar system,” he said.

The space agency and Mythbusters also share a common goal—inspiration. When Mythbusters created The Explosive Exhibition five years ago, Savage and co-host Jamie Hyneman made sure to include many of the props and equipment they built for their TV show. Savage gets nostalgic when he walks past and sees all these things again because he and Hyneman, along with a few helpers, built them all. He loves to show the process of building everything on television because he wants audiences to know that they can do the same thing.

“My goal is that they see how everything was clearly just built by a couple of guys,” Savage said “It’s not super advanced stuff going on. But it is really cool, and maybe a kid will look at that and ask his dad or his mom to help him make it out of plywood.” We'd recommend starting with the Flatus Ignition Seat.

Listing image by Lee Hutchinson