Astronaut Jerry Linenger has looked down upon Earth from space, but as he prepared to speak to the crowd at Nerd Nite, NatGeos annual event at Comic-Con 2017, he saw something hed likely never seen before.

A mermaid. With a trident. Sitting up front to watch his talk.

Perhaps due to the incredible things Linegers done as an astronaut who lived on the Mir space station for nearly 5 months and survived a fire on it, Linenger took everything the loud music, swirling planetary lightshow and costumed crowd in stride.

I learned a lot about living in isolation and being off the planet removed from mankind, said Lineger, who spent 2 years prior to his time on Mir living in Russia learning the language before going up.

There were other challenges, too.

I had a little one-and-a-half-year-old and my wife was pregnant. We had the worst fire ever in an orbiting spacecraft, and during that fire my survival instinct kicked in, Lineger said, adding that during the fire he was determined he would get home to his son. That parental instinct, survival of the species, kicked in.

Lineger was on hand, along with JPLs Bobak Ferdowsi and Mallory Lefland and fellow astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, to talk about NatGeos series Mars and One Blue Planet while guests ate, listened to a DJ and watched a dancer in a flight suit perform inside a clear inflated ball.

Hoffman, an astronomer and MIT professor who repaired the Hubble Telescope during one of his five Shuttle flights, spoke to the crowd about the elements of a Mars mission.

Afterward Hoffman gave a short interview in which he said what had been most memorable about his work in space: Fixing the Hubble.

That was incredibly satisfying, because that was such a complicated mission he said. Many people thought it was too much, but we actually did it. And of course it worked.

Did he miss anything during his time in space? Since he was busy and the shuttle missions werent longer than a few weeks, he says he didnt really miss the Earth. Other than wanting to see his family and friends, there was only one thing he could think of hed missed.

To munch down on a nice, crunchy salad, he said. All the space food is really mushy.

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Astronaut describes surviving fire on the space station during Comic-Con 2017's NatGeo Nerd Nite - OCRegister