hey adam savage here at udvarhasi and i am in front of an amazing object matt i
know what this object is because i've actually seen it before but tell us what the subject is
well you've probably spent more time with it than i have since you know we just acquired it this is
um you know the helmet from a suit of goliath power armor from the television show the expanse
it was donated by alcon television group and this particular helmet belonged to the character uh
sergeant roberta bobby draper martian marine corps sergeant so um the badass yes exactly amazing i
love that you guys got her helmet well i love it too um you know i'm the curator of planetary
science and exploration that's my sort of main job so mostly what i curate are you know the tools the
experiments the rovers the landers that we use to explore planets but i'm also really interested in
you know how we've used science fiction books television movies games all sorts of things to
kind of imagine what it would be like to have humans on other planets and in particular mars
and so bobby draper with with this marine corps helmet and the whole power armor suit
are a great example of that and i think it also has this great through line to this old
older history in science fiction of imagining these suits if you've ever ever read uh robert
heinlein's starship troopers then you know that he has a very full description in that book
of what a suit of power armor would be like and how essentially a marine or a
infantryman on the ground would be able to have his entire life support system
um you know bobby has weapons built into the suit um she has heads-up displays that come up uh that
give her information inside of the visor may i right yes go ahead and lift it up a little bit
in fact there's a line in in the second book where it says you know a marine has as much
information in front of them so that they can see everything except for what's in front of them
the heads-up displays give them overwhelm them with information amazing and you know in in the
books the the suit is described as being made from titanium and ceramic and weighing close
to 900 pounds wow yes and so the only way that the marine can actually function in the suit
is the fact that it's computer controlled and that it has actuators built into every joint
to every part of the suit and really is able to carry its own weight while augmenting the
strengths of the soldier who's wearing it i love the fact that you can look at an object like this
from a show from the last five years and connect it to science fiction ideas that are 70 years old
well i think that's the incredible thing about you know authors like daniel abraham and ty frank who
right under the name james s a corey who wrote the expanse books is that they are very knowledgeable
about you know how these technologies have been imagined over time in other science
fiction works and so they're very conversant in that language and they you know i wouldn't say
borrow from it they sort of you know are part of that same lineage and come up with their
own spin right on these things that have been developed for all those years in science fiction
it's just on a personal note do you love the expanse oh absolutely isn't it the best it is and
you know i think a lot of people feel that way and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to collect
this helmet from that series you know um not just because it represents this idea so well but
because it's such a loved program so much so that when it was first you know taken off the air off
of sci-fi um the fans basically came to its rescue and helped to bring it to the attention of um of
amazon where it lives now as a streaming show and you know there's the prop collecting community
is so vibrant these days things like this would normally just disappear into a collection so i'm
really glad you guys get to put it on display and talk about that virtuous cycle of imagination and
how that you know some young person watching the expanse today is it could be an aerospace engineer
tomorrow or an astronaut or a conservatory yeah absolutely i mean i i really think that these
suits and other things like these from science fiction really are inspirational they help us to
think about the questions that we need to ask and and the problems we need to solve before we can do
things now i mean one thing from science fiction that still hasn't really become a reality is that
a lot of the science fiction dating back from the 40s and 50s and up to today including the expanse
imagined combat in space right and imagined that we would need ground forces in space not
just ships and so you have all of these sort of very well imagined space navies and space armies
you know heinlein had his mobile infantry from the terran army and in the expanse you have the
united nations space forces and then you also have the martian uh navy and its marine corps
you know ground forces ground troops we just haven't had that in space and you know i'd like to
think hopefully we never actually will need that i totally agree but in terms of imagine how you can
operate uh safely in space and do more in space i think this this helmet and the suit that it goes
with really tell that story right you're protected when you're inside of this suit and it's not a big
bulky suit it is heavy but it's not bulky and it contains everything you need to survive like a
heavy impact um it has like a impact absorbing gel inside of it which we learned from the books so
you know it really is this self-contained vessel that protects the space fairer and so you know i
like to imagine it more for that purpose than than for the military purpose but in the in the context
of the books and then and in a television show you know war between earth and mars is a reality
yeah war with the belters is a reality so you know the suit has that function there now am i
right that these two things here are little lights for lighting the actor's face i think there are
lights yeah and there are also fans in there too i noticed the fans i thought that was really clever
they built the fans in back here to blow across yeah to keep her breath from fogging on the glass
one of the things that was key to bringing this suit to life was of course the actor
frankie adams who does just such an incredible job of portraying bobby draper in the show and so
it's hard to imagine this helmet without seeing her face right inside of it oh so might you uh
i think we're going to have some imagery i think we're going to have some imagery with her in the
suit because we don't want to just display the suit yeah on its own is there anything about this
that surprised you when it arrived when you first got to inspect it in person well i wasn't actually
um i had seen some images of it i had not seen it in person and so seeing it in person with the sort
of battle scars that it has that definitely had an impact on me you know thinking about
the story that's related to the helmet not just the helmet as a piece of imaginary technology
but as a part of a story that a lot of people have really come to love yeah matt thank you so
much it's such a thrill i'm really glad you guys got this in the collection well thank you amazing