On Episode 215 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and guest co-host Susan Karlin talk with bestselling sci-fi/sci-fact author Dr. David Brin.

If you've seen "Disclosure Day" or "Age of Disclosure," you're going to want to join us for this fascinating discussion. Long known for his universe-spanning visions, storytelling skills, and occasionally contrarian viewpoints, Dr. Brin will not disappoint! Our discussion ranged from reactions to Spielberg's "Disclosure Day" to why people believe in AI and more.

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Space news of the week

• AiLIEN MINDS

Model Falcon 9!

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About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.

Apple TV’s "For All Mankind" spinoff series, "Star City," places viewers directly behind the scenes of the hush-hush Soviet space program community in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s to witness all the harrowing missions, love triangles, espionage, sabotage, interrogation, and torture of those turbulent times. And believe us, there’s more than a little truth behind this alternative-history re-enactment.

Priya Kansara (who also voiced Ryan Gosling's AI spaceship in "Project Hail Mary") portrays Lakshmi Chadha in the absorbing new series. A gifted Indian aerospace scientist, Chadma, is recruited to Star City for a special, under-the-radar project by Rhys Ifans’ Chief Designer for the risky Venera-7 mission to Venus.

Josef Davies plays a younger version of Sergei Nikulov, a rocket engineer working at Soviet Ground Control, a character previously portrayed by Piotr Adamczyk in "For All Mankind." In that series, Nikulov becomes the director of Roscosmos and develops a relationship with Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt) during the Apollo-Soyuz program that leads to costly secrets shared and a very bad outcome.

Both Kansara and Davies both play pivotal roles in the show’s experimental Venera-7 deep space expedition and we spoke to them about crafting their roles. "I was very excited to play a much-loved character which people already know," Davies tells Space.

"But also to dive into it because this show has its own completely different identity. To be able to play that character that feels familiar but tells a lot more of the story to people who are interested in him and the world he came from.

"The whole experience has been incredible and something I hope continues for a very long time. I loved it deeply. Finding every moment of that character and really being able to have the reins to take control of it and play with it is my favorite part of the whole thing."

Kansara considered it a supreme privilege to play Lakshmi and to conjure up the character’s confident demeanor and innate determinism.

"She never questions her own ability even if the situation is not what was expected or somebody else doesn't believe in her," she reveals. "She really believes in herself. And when presented with a challenge she takes it head on even if it's terrifying."

"I really respect that strength that she has," continues Kansara. "It was so much fun to play and to explore that journey with her. The circumstances are so intense. Just some of the scenarios that are thrown at you, you’re like, 'I don’t have a relatable thing. This is not like life that we’ve experienced.' But it was fun to play with that as well."

Both Davies and Kansara had specific costumes touches that allowed them to create layered performances in their "Star City" episodes.

"The watch was a big one for me because it felt like it was mechanical," Davies mentions. "Everything was about precision and timing and all that. So that helped and it felt like an anchoring. Also my tie. I always liked for it to be a little bit too tight so I could feel it. That helped me get into that space. Honestly the whole thing was an amazing six months."

To stand out amid the drab colorless environment of Star City, costumers thankfully brightened things up for Lakshmi’s wardrobe.

"Lakshmi naturally had a little bit more color in her clothing because we wanted her to feel and look like an outsider," Kansara adds. "That was really important in terms of me walking into these bleak spaces. That physical reminder of me being someone who’s from the outside. The other thing was the Sindoor that I wear on my head, which is the red powder that symbolizes a married woman for Hindu and South Asian women. I wanted a piece of her that she can’t let go of. That’s hugely important. To put that on every day was a real grounding for me.

"We laughed a lot on set, we had so much fun filming together. It was amazing."

"Star City" season 1 is streaming now exclusively on Apple TV.

Emmy Award-winner Barrie Gower has helped created some of the most memorable beasts and creatures in the entertainment sphere, including "Stranger Things"' Vecna, "Game of Thrones"' chilling White Walker, the Night King, and the freaky fungus mutants of HBO's "The Last of Us."

For director Travis Knight’s sci-fi fantasy film, "Masters of the Universe," Gower called upon all of his veteran skills to provide special makeup and prosthetic applications for Jared Leto's Skeletor and his entire band of weird henchmen, plus He-Man's gang of crazy companions. From iconic characters like Spikor and Moss Man to Goat Man and Trap Jaw, Gower’s ace crew was tasked with bringing these monsters to the big screen.

"We got contacted a few years ago about 'Masters of the Universe' in 2018 or 2019," Gower tells Space.

"It was with a different director at the time and a different studio. It was two writer/directors, the Nee Brothers, who co-wrote the screenplay for this latest integration."

"The project changed studios two or three times and eventually they came back to us and the timing was bang on," explains Gower. "They’d enlisted Travis Knight and his vision was quite different to the original take, which was very high tech, very clean, very Marvelesque. Travis was a huge fan of He-Man and the '80s cartoon, the toy line, and the whole IP and franchise. His passion and love was really trying to do this film project justice and make it as true as possible."

The master plan was to still give the $200 million feature a fun modern spin, but Knight was interested from a character perspective of creating full-sized human equivalent action figures.

"He wanted the world to be ultra colorful, ultra bright, and have this sense of awe and eye candy. We went through the characters to decide what would be practical, what would be purely digital, and what would be a combination of the two. Because of Travis’s background with Laika Studios he was very much into the practical techniques."

That was all music to Gower's ears and his BGFX team began the process of bringing the menacing egomaniacal antagonist called Skeletor to life.

"Originally Skeletor was going to have some sort of decorative golden mask in the shape of a skull with possibly some kind of disfigured makeup underneath," he notes. "But Travis said we’re doing Skeletor properly. He’s going to have a skull for a talking face and a blue muscular body. And this is the prefect example of a combination between practical and digital effects.

"He was set on the idea of creating a practical muscle suit for Jared, and his head would be animated digitally. We had a scan of Jared's head that we reduced and classically sculpted the skull based on the concept art, then we 3D scanned that for a digital file which we shared with the visual effects department for them to use as an asset to animate."

Creating this blue-hued Skeletor muscle suit was quite a complex job that included upper and lower body appliances crafted out of foam latex.

"It was using a lot of Jared’s muscle tones that we over-exaggerated and sculpted in more muscle sets and tones, but kept everything relatively anatomically accurate," adds Gower. "Then we went through a lot of testing and paint schemes. We originally did some silicone work, which is one of the most commonly used products in the prosthetics industry now because you get a beautiful translucency with it. But it’s very dense and non-porous and very heavy. So Jared would have been walking around with pounds and pounds of rubber on him. We did R&D and it was going in the right direction but we were running out of time, so we reverted to foam latex."

Jared's otherworldly outfit consisted of a foam suit, skeletal silicone gloves that fit over his hands, a foam latex collar, and then a hood fabricated by the costume department.

"We'd actually built two suits based on Jared. It was on a January morning and we met him at a hotel near the London airport," Gower recalls. "We had a very small window of time before filming so we were praying we weren’t going to have many adjustments to make. Jared came in, we got the stuff on him, and he was really lovely with us. Very funny, very jovial. He had just stepped off a plane!

"It went really well, just a couple tiny adjustments. We had a small team looking after him with his suit every day. Usually with prosthetics if you’re gluing it over the entire body you’re looking at seven or eight hours to do an application each day. Apart from times where we had to glue a few things on him here or there, we actually got him into his suit in about 15 minutes. He was a joy to work with. He was a lot of fun on set and there was this charismatic presence every day."

"Masters of the Universe" is currently in theaters everywhere.