The reality of space travel I think is somewhere in the middle. We will get there, it will be hard, it will take a long time, and in the end, the most extraordinary thing we will find when we get there will be ourselves.

I would say that working with Ridley Scott makes the process of directing much more terrifying.

I will never probably have the mathematical foundation to truly understand what string theorists are talking about, but it feels good, just for its own sake, to get as close to an understanding as you can.

Now with the international space station generating a bunch of video, and Space X and other companies pursuing private space flight, I think it's on all of our radars much more than it has been since the moonshots. The science of filmmaking is making these visions possible now.

I try to keep up, and the scientific perspective is always part of my creative approach.

I never stopped loving the deeper sciences, and I read as deeply into lay science as I can.

You need a human story to intersect those points of interest with real stakes on the line, and then things start to be fun, where you can see the ramifications, you see the impact on people's lives of big changes - like taking a man of science, like a surgeon, and robbing him of his understanding of the universe and forcing him into a newer and wider understanding.