Howard goes up into space at the end of, uh, season five
and begins season six in the space station for the first few
and progressively starts to get a little more stir-crazy.
A little more hirsute. And misses Earth and, uh...
Howard!
Not his mother, but she tracks him down in space.
And he misses his wife, and gravity.
And I think we pulled it off. I think we earned it,
which I guess is sort of rare in a sitcom.
It was believable that this little guy, uh, is gonna get married
and shoot up into space moments after...
and kind of be there for, uh, the duration.
So, yeah, it was probably, I think, unprecedented.
Ignition sequence start.
Six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.
All engine running.
Lift off! We have a lift-off.
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Howie?
Hey. There's my beautiful bride.
-How are you? -I'm amazing.
This is even better than I dreamed.
I look out the window
and it's all so unbelievable.
People thought we really went to the space station.
There was a moment where I feel, like, in the writers' room
they discussed like, "We could just send Simon
He's small, just shoot him up there."
So don't give anyone any ideas.
Hey, look, this pen is floating.
How crazy is that?
We had to do all of our own slo-mo kind of non-gravity acting
which was a challenge because it's like acting underwater.
And then there were special effects.
We were on, like, a pulley and a bicycle seat,
and there was some chafing.
Still slowly recovering
but otherwise, yeah, it was unlike anything I've really done.
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We did it! We're on the ground. We survived!
That was just the parachute.
We still have another six miles to go.
One of the astronauts in the scene
is actually an astronaut. Mike Massimino.
He kept saying what a flashback it was for him
and how the room was the same
and even crew members on the set,
that it reminded him of crew members there.
The set we had, experts got involved with helping them build that
so it really looks exactly like the real thing.
I got a little bit involved with helping them set this up
and quickly they got over my understanding of it
because they wanted real detail of the spaceship dimensions
and, uh, exactly the way everything looks.
And they looked at lots of pictures and video and they talked to lots of people.
-What's wrong? -Nothing.
Everything's fine.
Howard.
The other astronauts are being mean to me.
We give him a bit of a hard time on the show
you know, as the way the script's written.
And we would give him a hard time if he was really an astronaut,
but it would be all in fun.
But I think Howard would make a pretty good astronaut, actually.
He's a fun guy, his character's kind of funny,
he seems like a good guy.
Basically, you want someone you don't mind hanging around with
for, really, a few years.
You're not always in space, you're training for a few years
and you wanna do the job, but you want someone
that's going to be fun to be with in a confined area for a while.
Hold, hold! Stop. Hold.
I haven't heard screaming like from Howard,
so that's probably the biggest difference.
He seems to be a little more emotional than what you would expect.
Let's let that last scream go a little longer, if you can.
-You want us moving around a little bit? -Yeah. Let's just, you know
Now I can say, "I'm not really an astronaut anymore,
but I play one on TV." I can say that.
But I'm still an astronaut, so I'm not sure how to phrase it.
Bernadette said you guys are all sick of me talking about my trip to space.
Is that true?
-Yes. -No.
The show when Wolowitz comes back
a lot of people won't necessarily care about him being back.
It's like everyday life still went on while he was away.
Boy, it's nice to sleep in a bed with gravity again.
Any thoughts on where we should get dinner?
Anywhere but the space station.
I was thinking about wearing my NASA jumpsuit as a costume
but everyone would be like,
"Where's your costume? Why are you wearing work clothes?"
I went to space. Space, space, space!
Are we clear to jettison that nightgown?
Okay, we need to talk.
But that, I think, is an accurate depiction, when you come back and it's...
Life went on while you were gone
and now it's your turn to readjust to it when you get back.
Two weeks ago I was an astronaut.
Yeah, well, now you're a Smurf. Keep walking.
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I did not meet Buzz Aldrin, urn, actually
he had a very strict schedule on Earth here
but I did get to see his moment, and it was poignant.
-Quiet, please, gang. -Quiet backstage, please.
And camera, action.
Here you go.
It's a Milky Way.
I'm an astronaut.
This one's a MoonPie.
I walked on the moon.
What have you done?
All of the astronauts we've met through the show
You talk about physicality
Watching these guys, there is a worldliness about them that is untouchable.
And they all have the same astronaut stance.
Kind of like Buzz Lightyear.
I swear to God, they all have just this,
bravado about life.
There was something you can't touch but can feel when in their presence.
Which was... It was a dream.
Well, it takes a lot more preparation to go into space.
Years of preparation.
And, uh, you don't get to retake things.
You get one take and it's gotta be right.
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Houston, Atlantis. Roll program.
Roger. Roll, Atlantis.
Five hundred and twenty-eight people have been into space.
That's a pretty big number.
Sixty seconds. Lights on.
But only 24 people have reached the moon.
Okay, engine stop.
And of those 24, only 12 walked on the surface of the moon.
Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
And I was one of the first two.
Now, that's a pretty small number.
Space walking is the coolest thing that I've ever done.
It is an incredible experience.
When you first get to space and you look out the window of the shuttle
your view is constrained.
And once I got to space walk on the Hubble Space Telescope
I could look and see everything.
I could see the Earth in its entirety.
Could see the curvature of Earth.
It took up my whole field of view
but I could see it as a gigantic planet right in front of me.
For me, that first reaction when I really had a chance
to look at it from my space walk
was just to turn my head because I felt like,
you know, this is too beautiful
I'm not supposed to see this.
You know, I was more or less overcome by what I was looking at.
And I looked a second time and I started to tear up a little bit
from the... Just the beauty that I was seeing.
And then I got worried.
If you get water inside your suit you can cause trouble,
you could short something,
and if I did that, there'd be an investigation and they'd ask me what happened.
I'd have to admit I was crying.
We gave Wolowitz the name Froot Loops, I was gonna get the name Cry Baby.
So I immediately got myself under control and looked a third time
and what went through my mind was:
"This is what heaven must look like."
I really felt I was looking into paradise, viewing our planet.
That's how beautiful it is.
There aren't words to describe it
but that was my emotion, uh, looking at it from space.
I've been lucky enough to be into space twice.
One in a two-person Gemini spacecraft, and of course Apollo 11
that was given the chance to make an attempted landing
and we were very successful as we landed on the Sea of Tranquility
and were there for about 20 hours, outside for about two and a half hours
walking around on the magnificent desolation of the surface of the moon.
That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
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My advice to anyone going into space is
it may turn out to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
And since it is such a rare thing
enjoy every moment of it and be curious about everything you see.
Think very carefully about everything that you do
so that you can remember, come back
and then tell your friends all about the fun it was in space.
Hi. I'm astronaut Rick Searfoss.
I flew the space shuttle three times, twice as a pilot, once as a commander.
Now I'm the chief test pilot for a company called XCOR Aerospace.
And we're on the verge of having the ability
with our Lynx suborbital space plane
to take folks like you into space.
-Who wants to go to space? -Who wants to go to space?
Yes, the Big Bang Theory
is sending a fan to space.
That, I also think, is unprecedented. We did that at Comic-Con.
We actually had sort of a-- Like a raffle kind of system.
So I got this right, one of those envelopes has a ticket that gets you into space?
-Absolutely. -Come on!
-Oh, my God! -Yeah!
Wouldn't it be horrible if this was all a joke?
We were like, "Buzzinga," and, like, nothing happened.
I think it was so shocking that people literally were kind of waiting for us to say:
"Okay, just... Obviously you can't send a person to space." But it's true.
-Oh, my God. -Oh!
We have a winner.
There is a girl who's been training and is going to
go up in this sort of commercial... This new program.
I am sort of happy it's not me
uh, because pretending to do that in Burbank
is a little less scary than doing it near the sun.
-Congratulations. What's your name? -Mercedes.
Great. You're going to have a life-changing experience.
- I can't wait to fly with you on board Lynx. - Oh, my gosh.
Unfortunately, they don't have the means of getting her back, but... No. Ha, ha.
The Big Bang Theory, going where no sitcom has gone before.
You know, when I grew up we didn't use the word "cool"
but today what is cool is to think about space.
And one of the things that we've learned to think about
is the beginnings of time, the beginnings of the universe
that came about with the big bang theory.