I'm a space lawyer. I'm an educator（教育家）. I study space law. I'm a mom. I'm an avid（ 渴望的） reader. I'm a damn（非常） fine baker.

  But of all the things that I am, one thing that I'm not is a physicist. Now don't get me wrong. I support STEM（茎） education. I'm an advocate（提倡者） for scientists. I'm just not the sort of person who goes to things like physics lectures for fun. Until that time that I did, and it kind of rocked（摇动） my career.

  So back in 2018, my brother's graphic（绘画似的） novel club, that's a book club where we read comic（可笑的） books, saw this event come up at the University of Nebraska library system. It was called The Physics of the Flash（闪光）. And it was a talk by professor and physicist and super（特级的） nice guy. Dan Cleese, all about the superhero character, The Flash, and the physics of how his superpowers worked in the comics and in the movies. And we went, and it was fun, and it was silly, and I learned（学习） some physics. Me, the person who literally（照字面地） just told you, "I don't go to things like physics lectures for fun."

  That got me going. People also don't want to go to law lectures. What if I, too, could trick people into learning space law through pop culture? So I went to the librarians at the system and I said, "Space law, pick me. I'm your next great topic." And they said, "Love the enthusiasm（热情）. What is space law?" And that's a very fair question. So I'm going to tell you what I told them.

  Space law are the laws and regulations（规则） that govern（统治） what humans do here on earth to get up into space, think rocket（火箭） launches（发射）, and the laws and regulations（规则） that govern（统治） what we do when we're operating in space, like a communication satellite（卫星）. They said, "Oh, yeah. All right. That makes sense. What pop culture reference do you think you'd like to use?" And I thought about it, and of course I had to take place in space. I was just on brand for space law. But then I thought about how law school is taught. We give students stories, fact patterns. Usually we call them hypotheticals（假设的）.

  And we ask them to spot（认出） all of the legal issues. And often, the zanier（滑稽的） of those stories, the better. The more legal issues for them to spot and think about how they interact（互相影响）. So I thought, "Well, what takes place in space and has got a bunch（束） of wild stories?" There was a pretty obvious fit（合身）, and it was Star Trek（艰苦跋涉）. So I set it up as a comparative（比较的） law exercise, and that's just what it sounds like. You take two bodies of law, and you compare them.

  So in this example, I took the 1967 Outer Space Treaty（条约）. That's very real. And I compared it to Star Trek's Prime Directive（指示）. Those are both the main governing bodies of law that say what humans can do in space. Next, I looked at the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs, and I compared that to Star Trek's United Federation（联合） of Planets. Both organizations focused on international or intergalactic（银河间的） cooperation（合作） in space.

  And it was fun, and it was silly, and I definitely tricked them into learning some space law. But it grew. A few months later, I get this call from CBS, like the broadcast（广播） network, CBS. And they said, "Hey, we saw the talk on YouTube. Would you want to fly out to Las Vegas and give it at the officially licensed（许可） Star Trek（艰苦跋涉） convention（习俗）?" Of course. So I get on the plane. I go to Las Vegas.

  I give this same silly comparative law talk between Star Trek and real-world space law. But with the Star Trek super fans, things got deeper. So I already mentioned the Prime Directive.