Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2222: Astronaut Mike Massimino

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode we had a real astronaut on the show. Mike Musamino came on the show. This guy's amazing. He's first off the first person to tweet from space. That's true. He actually was in

space sent a tweet down and it was on at the time named Twitter. He's done space. I think four space walks. He went up to fix the Hubble telescope in fact in today's podcast. He talks about something that might be of alien origin, no joke, this is really cool. Really cool conversation, really great guy. He just released the book, you gotta check it out. It's called Moon Shot, a NASA astronaut's guide to achieving the impossible.

So we know you're gonna enjoy this episode. Now, this episode's brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is C, they make the world's best probiotic ever. This is the world's best probiotic. So if you like the benefits of probiotics, the pro digestive effects, the anti-inflammatory effects, the skin clearing effects, go with seed. Go to seed.com, forward slash mind pump,

use the code Mind Pump, for 30% off your first month's order. Also, one more thing, we have a three part training series for trainers and coaches. I'm actually teaching trainers and coaches had to be more successful. It's happening. The first one is happening January 15th. And if you want to sign up, it's mindpumptrainer.com. Right now there are openings. So go there before we run out of space. One more thing, we're running a sale on some workout programs right now. Maps, old time strength is half off, and maps OCR is also half off. If you're interested, go to mapsfitinusproducts.com, then go to December, excuse me, go to mapsfitinusproducts.com, and then use the code December 50 for that discount.

All right, here comes the show. Mike, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks. Thanks for having me, Sally. Appreciate it. Look, before we get you guys, before we get going, because so many questions, we have, there's, I need, we need your help to settle a bet. We got a big bet going on. You're right. The bet. And finally, we got to start with this. Finally, we got a real astronaut that we could talk to. So, okay, it's

be huge, bet, huge problem, moon landing, real or fake. No, that was real. There you go. I thought you were gonna ask me something. Oh, we got another one. We're gonna get to do two. No, I think there's a few things you're gonna settle today. No, no, no, that was, that was, I mean, what, let me ask you this, why do you guys ask that question and think it's just in what we're joking? We know we know. We know. We know. We know. Okay, alright. I mean, sometimes people think it's like impossible. They could really never happen.

It was at a conspiracy thing. No, no, no, no. So first of all, a little background on these guys, especially Justin, Justin loves conspiracy theory. Just for fun. It's a lot of entertaining pastime. And I actually had never even heard that as a conspiracy until literally like two months ago.

And they go, have you ever looked into the moon when I'm like, why would I even look into it? Are you sure it happened? And so then they sort of mess in with me and send me all these videos of all the conspiracy theories that were around it. And part of I guess the where it gets some sort of legs is obviously we're in a massive race that time and it would be in the country's best interest to make sure that we won, even to the point where they would potentially fake it.

That's why it's so fun. Whenever there's a little bit where you're like, oh, that could happen. Yeah, it's just, you know, it really did happen. Of course. That was only six years old when it happened. You guys, I don't think we're even way before you guys were. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not. You guys, you guys, yeah. Yeah, I'm just, poor Doug.

All right, so I was the only guy here that was there at the, we able to watch it at least, but no, they actually, they actually really did that. I think looking back on it and knowing what I know about NASA, I think it'd be a lot harder to fake it than actually do it. I bet they might have thought about faking it and you're like, oh man, that's too tough. Let's just go and do it. That's easy. It's how you cover something like that. You know, like someone's gonna, you have 400,000

people working on it. Yeah. That they, you know, they couldn't cover it up. But the thought went through my mind, like, you know, right before launch, looking up at the rocket ship, like, oh, if we want to fake this, I'll be okay with it. You know, I was just, I won't tell any, but, but we got on board and they actually do blast people off into space and you get there and you look back at the planet and you're like, wow. That's crazy. They really do this. The first time, what was that like?

The very first time you look back at the planet, that had to have been a super memorable moment. Yeah, it's really, it really is beyond words. And what really was impactful for me was going out on a spacewalk. So, because when you first get to space, like, see, we're in, this was a spaceship. This would be a pretty cool spaceship, actually, right? But we have some windows and stuff,

and then we launch into space, and we get there and you start floating around, you look out the window, but we're still kind of inside. You're still inside the spaceship. When we went outside, it's now you're going out in the playground, and the whole sky opens up, and you can look around a little bit. So going out in the spacewalk was looking around in the universe, really. You're now not looking through a window and you're wearing life support, you're wearing a big space suit, so you're not wearing regular clothes,

you're out there and you're, it's kind of like being looking at the aquarium, I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium last night, right, beautiful places, you're gonna have to pretty fish, and you're admiring them through glass, or as opposed to being a scuba diver, where you're actually interacting with the environment. So once I got out there, I felt like a real space man.

And then looking at the planet from that vantage point, we were a pretty high, Hubble had a pretty high orbit right when on my mission so we could see the curve of the planet. And when I really had a chance to look, the thought went through my mind was, this is like a view from heaven. This is what you would look down and see our planet. And then that was replaced by another thought, which was, now it's more beautiful than that. This is what you would look down and see our planet. And then that was replaced by another thought, which was, no, it's more beautiful than that. This is what heaven must look like.

I felt like I was looking into absolute paradise. And it's changed the way I think about our planet. I do think we're living in an absolute paradise. I don't know what heaven could be, but I think that I can't imagine any place more beautiful than where we are right now. And just to even like to drive over here, I came up from Monoray taking the drive up to see you guys. Just the beauty, right? It was the highway 101, right? It wasn't even on the coast, but just the farmland and the smells of the planet.

It went through the garlic town there. Oh, yeah. The older I guess, just like the planet is so alive and so beautiful and having all the people around us and the joy that is possible here is really quite remarkable. I do think we're living in a wonderful place. Do you find an experience like that for the people, the few people that have been able to have that experience? Does it make someone more or less spiritual? I don't think it, in my opinion on this, Adam is that, like, whether

or not you're spiritual or religious, I don't know if space changes that. I think it's more, this is my opinion on this, is that what I've noticed is some of my crewmates, because some work, extremely religious, and some work absolutely not believers. I think it didn't necessarily change anybody's opinion. It's just I think the way we look at the world. So if someone is a spiritual person or someone is a religious person, I don't think you have to be religious to be spiritual, you could be whatever you want or not a non-believer, let's say, whatever, I think that's the way they interpret the world. So, some people might see it as God's creation, or some people might see it as a spiritual experience that may or may not include a religious aspect to it, and some people without any

religious thought I can look at it and interpret it in their way. So, I had just my observation with that at least with astronauts. I don't think it's necessarily changed the way people think about it. It's just your belief system I think allows you to interpret things. That's what I was curious about. If it actually would change somebody, somebody that went up there and said, oh, not they don't believe it all. And they're like, oh, my God, how could I not believe or vice versa? Yeah. And I was sitting there for like, oh, that's not what I thought. That I have a notice. Maybe it's just the folks that by the time you get to flying space, you're usually a little

bit older, you know, you're an adult in your 30s at least, maybe 40s more likely and maybe you've already come to conclusions about what you think about things. And I think what you see, when you see these things, I think you're a background of your belief system will help you to interpret it. I think the thing that changed about it, what changed me, the things that changed about me, one thing is I do believe, not that it changed my thinking spiritually, but I do believe we're all living in a paradise, and we need to take advantage of it every moment that we can. The other thing that changed

was when I think of home, it's different now. That changed for me. So when I was a little kid, I grew up just outside of Queens, New York City, so like when I was a, when I was a little kid, I grew up just outside of Queens, New York City and in town called Franklin Square. And we were letting go and anywhere, you know, we would go visit our relatives and in Brooklyn, that was a big deal. The Bronx was even worse because I had to go over a bridge. That was pretty much it. We didn't really go anywhere. So my neighborhood was kind of my world. And in my school, we came our world. And that was my town. And then when I went to college, it was more, more, and when I traveled around the was my town. And then when I went to college, it was more,

in when I traveled around the country a little bit more as I got older, I was more a New Yorker. I kind of identified myself as a New Yorker. Then it became an astronaut. I went to work with the American flag on my arm. I felt like I was an American. You know, I identified home as being United States. But after traveling around the planet over and over again,

when I think of home, now I think of Earth. As I could see the planet and realize that everything that I knew was there, everything that everybody, every human was in that one place. And it takes 90 minutes, an hour and a half to do one complete orbit of our planet. And everything that we know is there. Everything that's happened before has happened there, everything that's gonna happen in the future and our families and so on,

that is gonna focus right there on that one place. And that's a home that we all share. So now when I think of home, I think of Earth. Much more broad. That's kind of weird, yeah, that's that's kind of a weird thing. I think I'm from planet Earth. That's how I think of home. What are some of the biggest misunderstandings

with like space walking and going out there? What are some things that people just don't realize or maybe misunderstand about the process? The first thing that popped into my mind and you guys are a fitness show, but it's kind of hard. It's not like just floating around having fun and it's something that people really want to do. As astronauts, I think it's a cool thing you could do is go out for a spacewalk.

But it is not easy moving around in a space suit that's pretty bulky. The training for it takes place on the water. So I felt like I was, I just got my butt kicked after my first training run in the pool, moving and trying to manipulate that big suit and move around. That was, to me, that was the first thing that sunk in is that this is not an easy thing to do. People always talk about at least the astronauts do, you get the impression, oh, this is fun. This is what you want to do.

And it is. It's awesome, but it's really challenging. And it was challenging for me to get to a level where I was good enough to be able to perform on a complicated space walk mission like the Hubble missions that we had. So that's that's one thing. I think the other thing that that sticks out when I think about it was how well trained we were I think the training we did was 18 hours in the pool underwater training for every hour we did in space. So we thought of every little thing, you were trying to always save a minute here, a minute there.

And we were so well prepared. I didn't necessarily believe that when I was getting ready to go to space. I thought, like, I'm not really ready. You know, I never really believe you're ready for things. But when you're well trained and you prepare, you are, you have to believe that. You have to believe in your training. You have to trust your training, trust the gear that's going to get you there. It's going to help you perform. Trust your team and trust yourself to perform. I don't really believe that that was going to be the... I didn't really believe that I was well-trained, but once I got to space,

I was amazed at how well-trained I was to do the task. I remember looking at the hub on my very first spacewalk, closing a door or a reaction wheel, a replacement reaction wheel spins and points of telescope. And I remember closing the door. And as I was doing that, I realized that's the very first time I had seen the Hubble for real. Because I wasn't with NASA when they built it or launched it.

I'd never seen it, I'd never been to space before, never been to the Hubble before, of course. But yet I felt like I'd done that task a hundred times because I had been so well trained to do it. So there's a huge amount of training that goes into it and maybe the last thing here is, with all that training, there's nothing that can prepare you for what you're gonna see outside of the,

outside of looking at the spaceship and so on which you feel comfortable with, but the view of that planet is just really overwhelming. So I want to know some of those details in terms of how you're able to overcome like some of the dexterity with the suit and I mean, what you're actually responsible for in terms of fixing things and like the knowledge that you have to have in terms of like you said being better prepared even to get up there and be a bit predictive in terms of like possible like things that could go wrong.

Right. Right. So, the things that can go wrong, what we would do is we'd practice like crazy, right? So a lot of the training wasn't just training for us, but it was also training for our support folks for the folks in the control center for the astronauts that would be inside during the spacewalk for the for the whole team. And so the training team was training not only us, but the support team. And you try to think of everything that could go wrong when you're going to go on a mission and do it and do spacewalks and so on.

So you try to imagine everything to go and you have a plan for that. Then you're gonna encounter problems while you're working and training, oh man, I never thought that would happen. And so then you come up with solutions for that. But there's always like, I think there's like a list somewhere in the cosmos of things that can go wrong every day. For us, right? And we try to be prepared for those things, okay,

I'm gonna, I'm prepared for this, this and this. But every once in a while, there's something that we to be prepared for those things, okay, I'm prepared for this and this. But every once in a while, there's something that we're not prepared for that throws us a curveball at work or in our lives. And I think what we need to do is what we did at NASA was rely on the problem solving and the teamwork we did for the training we did to solve the problems we knew about or encountered. In the heat of the moment, you kind of spring into action when it's a new problem. So I had things happen to me.

I don't know if the worst is the right word, but the most significant mistake I made and probably the worst mistake. But it was, they came up with a solution, was when I stripped the bolt while fixing the telescope. Oh. And it was a very complicated repair. It was on the last mission. It was my last spacewalk. It was a complicated spacewalk. We've ever attempted.

We were taking apart an instrument, space telescope imaging spectrograph, which was, was working for many, for a few years, and was able to do things like analyze the, the stars, the, the atmospheres are far off planets. And so they could search for life on other places with the sentiment, the astronomers loved this, the scientists loved this instrument, but it had a power supply failure and they couldn't turn it on anymore. And what we had done up to that point in all the missions, we would just take out a piece of equipment and put a new piece of equipment in. And that's the way we did it.

We never tried to take anything apart because these things were sealed up and buttoned up to withstand space launch and to be in space for a long time. So imagine if you were building something like that, you'd make sure it was really put together well and no one's going to ever mess with it, right? So that's what they did. And so this power supply that had failed was hidden behind an access panel, which had 111 small screws with washers and glue on the staking. So we had to overcome all these things and get that power supply out and put it as the

first time we ever tried anything like this. 100 new tools were invented for this thing and it falls on my day. And the easiest thing I'm going to do is remove a handrail, which had four big screws at two at the top and two in the bottom. It didn't require any new tools. It was my old power tool, one line into checklist 30 seconds, and I go and strip one of the four bolts on the bottom. So it's not coming off.

And I realize that handles that coming off. All those 111 small screws aren't coming out. Power supplies are not going to be replaced. The instruments that come back to life will never find out if they live. I don't know if I don't have to live in the universe and everyone will blame me forever Right, so I'm pressure right now. That's it. I was just like holy crap, but uh, you know, I I fessed up and and the team got Spraying into action and came up with a solution, which was actually very simple just to tear the thing off That's right. I was thinking of like, well, these complicated things, but luckily we had a guy in the back room who was saying, what would I do in my garage? It was loose at the top.

It was Tony. Tony in the back room would do. His name was Jim Corbo, but anyway, his idea was just tear the thing off. It was a Sunday, so most people were not working on Sunday, but the whole team was in different places of the country, close up to the God of Space Flight Center from Houston. They get an instrument out of the clean room and they pull on this handrail with a fish scale, right? We have very much time to figure this out because I'm floating up there with limited life support. The thing tears off, they break this bolt at 60 pounds of force.

So they were measuring to see how hard you now Harder I got to pull that thing to break it to break that bolt at the bottom So is 60 pounds of force at the top and that was no problem We you know, I was I knew I could do that so once that solution came in I knew we could do that We had to tape the bottom of the handle so strap no one to go flying but but the guys in the gym are pretty excited about that but the guys in the gym are pretty excited about that. It does like the greatest. They had a picture on the gym.

You see, you know, you had to be strong enough to pull this pandral off it up. So yeah, we busted it with brute force. So that worked out, that worked out because it wasn't my idea that the team came up with that idea. So you problems arise, but you have a team there to help you. Any possibility that the aliens intentionally sabotage that? No, I don't think, I don't think it was the aliens.

No, I'm trying to think of like a funny thing to respond to. No, I don't think that any to do it. What's the fear with the shrapnel? Explain that because I know you're in spade. There's no gravity. And, you know, I've read articles about, oh, you can have a piece of dirt flying through space. It can go so fast. it can literally destroy it. Oh, yeah, no space debris.

The problem, in fact, my mission, that my second mission, my first mission was on a space shuttle Columbia. And I was the Hubble, and Columbia, the next mission for Columbia, which was in 03, my mission was in 02. So, 10 months later, so Columbia went on its next mission, and it didn't come back. We had that accident in 03, my mission was in 02, so 10 months later, so Columbia went on its next mission and it didn't come back. We had that accident in 03. And so it was because the debris came off of the external tank, which was the fuel tank for the shuttle and hit the wing of the shuttle, while it was taken off and put a hole in the wing. Crude didn't realize that, no one realized

that that happened. They knew the debris strike happened, but the investigation after the accident discovered that there was a hole in the wing that they didn't know about when they tried to re-enter the earth's atmosphere, a lot of heat is generated and took the wing off. So the debris was a problem in that regard, but also when we started looking at that problem, well, we can't have the debris coming off the tank,

but you can also see it breed in space as well. And there's a lot of stuff up there. There's a lot of debris, more and more man-made debris, but also natural, rocks and asteroids, micrometeorites and stuff like that. And at the higher orbit where we were at Hubble, there's actually more stuff up there. So the higher the orbits are, there's more stuff up there because it's at a higher energy and it stays around longer and it'll eventually will be pulled in and will enter the atmosphere.

Burned up or whatever? There's more so we were at a pretty high risk. They actually canceled the mission because we didn't have a safe haven up there as well for if we did get it the brief strike. Whereas on space station, if you sent a shuttle up to the space station and it couldn't come home because it took damage, you could stay on the space station for a while not a big deal necessarily You'll figure out a way to get your home, but it hubble does no life support So if we had a debris strike and we weren't able to repair it

We'd be stuck and so they didn't like that idea they canceled the mission But was able to get back on the books after about a year and a half or so We came up with a plan to have a rescue flight. So if we got stuck, we were going to have a rescue crew that was ready to launch. And we were going to exchange crew from one spaceship to the other. But that's how much of a problem that we talked about the space debris problem. We were concerned about that hitting something going. We're going 17,500 miles an hour.

Yeah, I was going to say so why is it a dangerous problem? Because it's going so fast because you're going so fast. Even with the shuttle accident, we had it with a piece of foam that had no weight to it. We had no weight. A piece of foam? A piece of foam. So the space shuttle external tank is like a big thermospod.

The fuel inside it is cryogenic, so it's like minus 200, 300 degrees Fahrenheit. It's really cold, right? So this thermospodal keeps the foam. It acts like a thermospodal. It's a huge tank that we have for the space shuttle to keep that fuel cold. And the foam didn't always adhere to the metal, especially certain parts of the tank really well. And so pieces over would fly off. But we never thought it could be a consequence because it had no weight. I mean, it absolutely

had no weight. It was so, so light. But a piece of foam came off at the wrong time. And because it was so light, it actually slowed down in the atmosphere. And it was like floated for a little bit. It kind of slowed down. And the shuttle was accelerating. So the relative velocity, when the shuttle hit that thing, was like 850 miles an hour. So you hit something going 850 miles an hour. You're going to know about it. And it was the upper, the leading edge of the wing was built to take temperature, but

not debris. Not impact. So not impact. So that's what happened there. So let's talk, let's back up a little bit. Because astronauts, I mean, I got, when I was young, I was fascinating because to become an astronaut, you have to be a super athlete. You have to be a super scientist.

You have to have, I mean, it's basically like you are picking from such a small group of people and I'm giving you all kinds of compliments. Yeah. Thank you very much. Keep going. I want to, I want to, what was the process? What's the process like of getting selected and like, how does that work? What's that like?

The, uh, it's the hardest thing about being a nationalized again selected because you have thousands of people that want to do that job and they're only going to Be able to pick a handful right in my my astronaut class was the largest one they've ever had tied for another class the 35 Americans were picked but typically they're picking more like 20 or 12 or 15. It's a small number. But thousands of applications are coming in. Now we're upwards of like 15,000 applications coming for those few spots.

And by the way, you don't even apply unless you have all these potentials, right? You can apply, but you won't, so the first step is to see if you're qualified. So there are things that people who have their interest see you can look on the NASA website. This is for the NASA program. So just and eye can apply?

You guys can apply. But you, anyone can apply. But to meet the minimum qualifications, and they've changed this a little bit, but it's a qualifying degree, so a bachelor's degree in science or math or engineering, and then typically for civilians, you also have at least a master degree, quite often a doctor's degree as well, either medical degree or a PhD in engineering or science or something like that,

or some really impressive work experience. So the other route is the military route, and so these are high performing people from the military. They will get nominated by their branch of the military. At least they use, so I think they're still doing it that way. So the military will provide names to NASA to consider. But civilians, just any civilian can send in an application, but if you don't meet those minimum qualifications,

it'll be eliminated pretty quickly. But out of those, let's say, 15,000 or so, about 90% of people that apply will be qualified. They'll meet those minimum qualifications. And then we start reviewing all those applications. And once you get selected, you start becoming part of the selection process. And we always had three people look at every application, two astronauts, and one adult. There's a way we would do it.

So so many things, not to give away personal information on applicants, but sometimes you'd see some guy and you're like, we should get this guy in here just for the kicks. One guy was a net just sketch champion. Let's get this guy in here, you know, and let's see what he can do in a net just sketch. You know, and they're like, no, you know, there are any other reason Mike why you'd want him in there. No, but that just sketch is pretty cool. I know. It was like stuff like that, you'd say like, no. So you always need like one adult, like a manager,

or someone like that, like, no, you can't do that. So anyway, we would go through there. And so you looking through these things, all these applications. So we had say, each one of these little teams of three were given maybe 600 applications to look at. And you come up with the top 10% together. This? This is our top 60, and then you go out and get references on those guys. So the things I would look for was,

you start seeing what you think is important to you for the job, and one thing is, is a person qualified, is that they have the right background and show that they could be trainable to do the job. That's one thing. Then try to look for other things that maybe aren't as obvious. Like one for me was, is this person like a me person? Or is this person a team player?

Right. And sometimes you'd get these applications, which would just extraordinary what these people had accomplished. But it was like, it didn't, there wasn't any indication that they were able to act as part of a team, or another thing to look at for me was passion for the job. Because the job was a job. It wasn't all fun and games and media appearances.

And it was a job. You were working late nights and in the simulator a lot and doing support roles for people and not getting any credit for it, but you need to do enjoy doing that. You need to take pride in helping other people achieve for the program. And the program was what was most important.

So that became a little different. Most of the people seemed like, all right, yeah, they can handle the job, they're qualified to do it. But was what really, I thought, became more important was, is this a person that you would trust? It was almost like picking a family member. This is a person I would trust with my life, with my family's life, with my kids' life.

That's who is this person? And we found people like that. That was the best thing about being a part of the astronaut office was that, that's that was the best thing about being a part of the the astronaut office was that that's the kind of people we typically had. I felt that I imagine that would have ever been around. I imagine that actually would be the hardest like you just the qualifications and education. I would think that would create a lot of God complex, a lot of ego maniacs. And so it's probably the most challenging part would probably be finding a good team player.

Yeah, that's hard to do. Someone you would really trust. And so someone's like, if I make a mistake, and I write about this in the book a little bit about like, when you make a mistake, do you get thrown onto the bus? And we see that in sports teams, and some guy makes a mistake at the end of the game. What happened in the rest of the game?

Where was everybody else that made that play at the end so critical, right? That, you know, do you throw the rest of the game? Where was everybody else that made that play at the end so critical? Do you throw the guy under the bus or do you stick with him? And I've seen you see examples of both, right? That they stick with the teammate and they say, no, it was, you know, can't blame him. He helped get us there. This is what happened him or her or whatever, you know, but or do you throw or do you point the finger and say, yeah, that that play blew it for us. That's not the kind of person I think you want to be around. You want to be around someone when you make the mistake.

They're going to stick with you. And when they make the mistake, you're going to stick with them and you're going to fail or succeed as a team. And that I think is a rare thing to find. We like to think that it's common, but I don't always, I don't know if it is. And so, but that I think was for me the most important thing because it was a team game. It was nothing that was that difficult to do

in the video, it was no one task that just about anyone couldn't do. I think, really, with the enough training, all of us can do those things. I think whatever it was, we might be better at certain things than others, depending on our skill setting background, but it was just so much of it that you couldn't, and not everybody could do everything.

Not anyone could do it. So it was very important to be able to work together and keep the mission in mind, and that was more important than any individual accomplishment. Did you have a favorite teammate? I really like all the folks I flew with on my second flight. Yeah. That was that team on my second flight, they were all my, I probably couldn't pick out one of them. But was it about them?

What was it about them? Yeah, they made it. They had my back no matter what and they still do. They're people I'm closest to in my life. I would say other than my family, my wife and kids, it was like a hybrid of family and friendship, maybe like what you guys have here, it seems to me, where you really, we lie on each other,

when we needed, you have each other's back, I would not hesitate to tell them anything. I knew they would never wanna hold it against me and I would do the same for them and just be there for each other. And we still are there for each other. It's just, to me, it's somewhat remarkable. We can still can support each other

no matter what's going on. What's the testing like at that point? So you make it past, you get selected, and then you got a test, right? They have to test you to see if you can handle pressure or the flight or what does that look like? So the biggest hurdle is getting picked, right? And in there's interview, process and medical evaluation and all that stuff that go into it, background checks,

and all that stuff that take place too. But that's still, all that process is a tough thing to get through, because they're so competitive. But once you arrive, once you get in, it somewhat changes a bit because they want you to be successful, right? So once they pick you, once you're selected, they will do everything they can

to have you be successful in the training, which means if you're having some difficult with some things, you'll get help. Also the mindset of our office, once you get in there, was to help each other. So I was not a very strong swimmer, right, when I was a, I never grew up like in the water very much. I kind of stayed out of it. You know, to me, like, you know, we talked about our Sicilian heritage. We stayed out of the water. You know what I mean? It wasn't. You walk in the water. You want to go somewhere, go over the bridge. You have a tunnel, you have bridge, you have boats, you know, there. My mother

was like, what do you got a swim for? Jesus walked on the water. He said, he to walk, he can say, jumping a water and swim toward me. You know what I mean? There was no, you know, we don't. So I just, I didn't like it. And I was skinny and it was cold in New York or freezing in the ocean. I never really learned to swim. And then I get this letter after we get picked, right? I, you know, we get a phone call and I tell you, oh, we want you to come in. You know, you're still interested in like, yes, of course, you know, and you get, that's all great. And then they send you a packet of info.

And then the packet of info, the, you know, the intro letter was like, congratulations, I'm all excited. And like the next paragraph says, please practice your swimming because you're gonna have to pass a swim test to go through water survival training with the Navy, right? I'm like, what, what, what it is is that

if you bailed out of the space shuttle or in the, we fly high-performance jets to these T-38s, if you have parachute out, if you haveed out of the space shuttle or in there we fly high-performance jets See these T-38s if you have parachute out if you have eject out of one of those things and you land in the ocean Yeah, they got to come get you But you got to stay alive until they can come find you so you have to pass its water survival course at the Navy Provides in Pensacola and in order to do that you have to pass a swim test and they they the reason they warn you for that is because Other candidates have shown up and then they can't swim and then maybe send some back and like teach these people to swim first.

They can't, they'll drown. So you have to pass this swim test. I'm like, oh my goodness, because this thing, the thing I've been avoiding my whole life, I, you know, now I was going to have to perform. They never asked during the interview luckily. I was also glad about that. I think they just assumed like that if you were able to do things like, you know, like a swim should be in the same category as like making a grilled cheese sandwich. Just

about everybody should be able to do it. But so luckily they never asked me about that. I was like, I'd have to say no, but they didn't ask and but they said, you know, you're going to have to practice. So I practiced and practiced and but I still wasn't feeling great about it because you say, you know, my impression was, I'm going to be in a role of these great athletes and these super achievers. And here I'm going to come this, you know, this egghead at, you know, can't swim and, you know, they're going to be in a role these great athletes and these super achievers and here I'm going to come this you know this egghead at you know can't swim and you know they're going to make fun of me and it's going to be a bad a bad experience. Our first week as a group of my astronaut class was mainly administrative stuff and introductory

things and our training was going to start week two. So the Friday of that first week we're about about, we're done with the day, we're in this classroom together. And got named Jeff Aspie who was a Navy pilot who had in the class before us was a great leader. It was a good done really well. And he was in charge of helping us in our training, leading us through it. So he comes in and he goes, all right, you know, first, first week is over now. You know, before you go home for the weekend, I want to remind everyone that we start our training and earnest on Monday, and our first event is the swim test, right?

Some say, like, really, can we get a math quiz or physics test? We do something else. It really is going to be the swim test. And then he goes on to say, who are the strong swimmers in this group? And we had a couple Navy qualified swimmers and some other people raise If canfuls raise their hand in many that they were strong swimmers and he goes more important Who are the weak swimmers and don't lie to me. I need the truth So I'm like, you know, I raised my hand and a few others including Charlie Commodore from ozone park queens another time Who never learned how to swim raises his hand and? He says all right everyone who didn't raise their hand can go home. But everyone who raised

their hands day after class, the strong swimmers and the weak swimmers arrange a time to meet at a pool over the weekend. The strong swimmers are helping are going to help the weak swimmers with their swimming. Oh, that's great. Because when we go to the pool on Monday, no one leaves a pool until everyone passes that test And so that to me was an introduction to where I was now. It wasn't I'm better at this than you are You know, I'm gonna shine and you're not your success was how the team did you could be Michael Phelps and set a world record in that pool But if one of your teammates got left behind You failed and I didn't also did the end now the the motivation for me was I don't want to hold everybody else said a world record in that pool, but a point of your teammates got left behind, you failed.

And I didn't also, now the motivation for me was, I didn't want to hold everybody else back. So we got together over the weekend and helped, that got help, and everyone went to the pool. And we all passed. And what a smart way to train you guys. To be a team. Yeah, okay, so that brings me to another interesting question

related to your training, were there leaders or people that trained you, stood out to you that were just phenomenal? That just that right there seems to me like such a brilliant strategy to bring you guys all together. Did you meet anybody during this process that you admire as their leadership and their ability to train you guys? Yeah, and I think, you know, Jeff's he was Jeff was in it was an astronaut and There were others like that. You know, I commander Scott Altman

The leaders of the astronaut office guys like Kent Raman juror Charlie pre court a lot of the military guys I would say maybe more than others I think though what was cool about the astronaut office is that in the leadership and the culture of taking care of each other Came out of the best things that you might see in the military I think where you're really in this together of taking care of each other came out of the best things that you might see in the military, I think, where you're really in this together and taking care of each other. And that was the culture. And that was the leadership was different. I think everyone has their own personal style based on their personalities and how they

were comfortable. But the idea of caring for each other was most important. It was a moonwalker named Alan Bean. The only 12 guys wasn't going to say Michael Jackson, but not Michael Jackson. Only 12 guys, we used a moonwalker to it, but one of the guys that really did walk on the moon going back to your first question, right?

So he was the fourth guy out of the 12. And Alan told, he gave him, he spoke to my astronaut class and he told us that the most important thing to be a good leader is to find a way to care for and admire Everyone on your team. Yeah, they have to know that you care about them and you admire what they can do And if you find someone that you think you just you can't find anything you like about it Don't think of it as you don't like them think of it as a thing as you don't know them well enough You keep digging till you find something and that was the key to being a good leader.

And I still believe that. That was like the best lesson I learned. So I think I picked up little things from people, different leadership styles. But certainly I think that's the one thing that I think all good leaders have in common is that I felt like, you know, some guys were rough, you know, to kind of be on you all the time maybe.

But I knew that they care, sometimes those of you guys that cared about you the most, that they would be there for you and make sure that you were you would take care of. So I think also though when you talked about the instructors teaching us, so there was, you know, there's the astronauts, but there are thousands of people who supported us. And the instructors are really quite, or quite unique, I thought, and they're in their perspective on things because they weren't gonna get to fly in space.

You know, a lot of them wanted to, maybe, but they just didn't have that opportunity. Every once in a while, an instructor would get picked to be an astronaut, but what they all had in common was that our success was more important to them than anything they had than their own success. And it's, there were certain things that happened to me that made me realize that right before

launch, we were in quarantine and our instructors, our spacewalk instructors came to visit to go over some things with us before we were going to leave to the Kennedy Space Center. So we were still in Houston, but we had a quarantine situation there, building we would go to crew quarters where we would live and eat and it was all clean and you had to be checked by the doctor before it. It's like COVID before it was COVID, you know. It's got for being somebody sick up on the bus. Yeah, you don't want to get a head cold in order so you want to be germ free going to

space. So they put you in quarantine for about a week and a half. Anyways, but they were cleared by the docs to come work with us and go over some things. And Christy Hansen, Tomaskin's, Allis Torres, and I remember, as we were saying in bite of them, Christy was looking at us, like just kind of going over the last few things. And we just looked at her and she looked at me

and she could tell she was emotional and she's just, I just want you guys to be okay and to do well. You could say, we've meant so much to her that our success was so important. We're sitting here in a gym here, right? So it's kind of like a good trainer, right? As a person that is, you know,

your health is there is more important to them than anything, right? It's like, and that's I think is when you can find a trainer like that or you can find an instructor like that or a mentor teacher like that that really feels that your your success is the most important thing in their life that's a special person not many people can do that and that's why I think we had at NASA that's why we were successful was because not just I have to not care each other but also we had people like that, those instructors were there to make us successful.

It was really not as you're talking about thinking of all the people that water survival course we went through in the Navy, these Steve Petty officers would ever help us drill sergeants and stuff. They couldn't be mean to us like they would to the regular army or the regular recruits and so on, but they're very nice to us, but they really wanted us to be safe in our airplanes and our flying. And they were really repassionate about what they were doing. And when you can find a passionate instructor, that's a good thing. I wanted to bring something up that you said off air that I thought was pretty crazy.

Alongside, I didn't know that you didn't really prefer swimming. And yeah, alongside that, you had a fear of heights. Yeah, I don't like heights. I thought you were joking when you said that. No, no, no. How is this possible? Yeah, well, a couple of things there. So I don't like them.

I really, I was a little kid. I wanted to grow up to be like Neil Armstrong when I saw him land on a moon. And then I went like to this mountain Wasn't a really tall mountain, but it was a mountain that we had in New York was a cold high point Or my father grew up near there and so we went up there and it had these these views and I didn't like them I didn't just like I didn't like being up that high. I don't like I still don't like looking over the edge of a building or Bridge, I just don't like it. You know, I just don't like looking over the edge of a building or a bridge. I just don't like it. You know, I just don't like it. But what I what I found out later in life, what I really don't like is I don't like gravity. You can do all that without gravity, you know, because you know, you're

up there and you're like 350 miles above the planet. I'm like, okay, you know, I'm not going anywhere. I'm a gravity. That's a problem. So that's my, my, I got to credit that to my friend, Reed Weisman, who actually pointed that out to me. I was talking to him about that. He's not like heights either and he was saying really what we don't like is great That's true, but that fear of falling is what it is right cuz you will get killed jumping off of things right So so I think that's that's really what it was, but I don't like these things my wife a few years ago For her 50th birthday She wanted to jump out of an airplane It was like one of these life goals that she had

So she goes, I'm gonna jump out of an airplane on my 50th birthday. That's a great idea And then she says it wouldn't be great if we would do it together like put that would be great But that's not happening Not unless the airplane is on fire like I can understand the airplane is on fire and you have a good working parachute And you're pretty sure that things aren't gonna end well If you stay inside then I'd maybe give it a try, but other than that I'm not getting out of the airplane is working. I'm not getting out So yeah, I just don't I don't I'm not a thrill-seeker. What's what's it like being on being strapped to a rocket and going getting out of the atmosphere

I mean so much how many g forces is that I mean I had a Tiny experience on a f16 oh there you go. Yeah, yeah Yeah, I told that oh my god. It was it was insane. It was it was like I it's hard to describe actually But it was like 9.3 G's it's whoa. That's a lot of G. Okay. Yeah, you could pass out with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he threw up afterwards He said he helped me help out and it's hard to get him later I wanted to meet the whole time without throwing up. He's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just,

he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just,

he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, he's just, in our office, Chris Cassidy, his standing challenge to our trainers or gym instructors, was anyone that could make them throw up at a case of beer? And no one could do it. They would run and rag and make them do it. You couldn't do it to this guy.

Wow. But what's a lie? Yeah, so the airplane, that's a lot of G to take, right? We could go up to like five or six Gs in our airplane, but you only can do that for a short amount of time. You know, a second and so, you've got a technique as a try to force the blood back, because your blood would come out of your head.

Yeah. And especially if you're sitting in a jet, and you go into a bank turn like that, you're still sort of, on your turning, but still the gravity force can still take the blood out of your head and you pass out, and that's bad. force can still take the blood out of your head and you pass out, and that's bad. You can get killed, find an airplane with a G-induced lack of consciousness.

So that's, you gotta be careful with that in the airplane, of course, in a high performance jet, and it's uncomfortable. You do when you get one airplane ride? Yeah, one. See if you get another one, because it gets a lot better your second one. I see you're in as much as. Your first one's so level-run, but you really want us to. But you know what I have to say. Because I have on another one, because because it gets a lot better your second one. Your first one is so well, but you really want us to. No, you have to say.

Because they have another one because you'll feel a lot better. Your body will be your brain really is getting trained. So if you'll better, but in a space flight, we go up to three Gs on a launch, but it's sustained for two and a half minutes. And it's at the end. The G forces build up gradually. The max is three on your body, but you're on your back. So now instead of it going through your head, like when you're in a chair and the G-forces build up, gradually, the max is three on your body, but you're on your back, okay? So now instead of it going through your head,

like when you're in a chair and the blood's gonna come out of your head, what is is getting you right in the chest. So whatever your body weight is, multiply it by three, and that's what you got in the chest. So I feel like you're a three big dude, sit in on me. That's what it felt like,

and I go, all right, enough is enough. And that lasts for two and a half minutes. With the shuttle, the beginning of the law, you know you're going quickly. Because the main engine would start up first and they were liquid fuel and you can shuttle liquid fuel engine off just like a car or a lawn mowing cut the fuel. Something happens to stop. Right. We're going to stop, right?

And they did that twice. They had two boards on the pad. After the main engine started, they shut them down and go anywhere we're trying another day. But you have six seconds to make up your mind. Because after that, the solid rocket boosters on the shuttle would like those are the two big white rockets. And you can't turn it off? No, it sticks a dynamite.

So once you like them, you cannot turn them off and you're going. As soon as they light, you move 100 miles an hour before you clear the tower and you accelerate from zero to 17,500 miles an hour in eight and a half minutes. And the G forces at the end, you know, those three Gs, the solid rockets really run rough, so they shake you up, there's a lot of violence. My first, they can't really recreate that. You can recreate G forces. They're speaking in a centrifuge. So we went through that in a centrifuge.

You can recreate that, but the violence in the shaking, you really can't do that. And the first time, you know, they try to warn you, all this gonna be pretty rocky, but the first time I was like, and I had like two veterans on either side of me, and they're like high five in each other over my head. Like, this guy's not good off. And then like after that, on either side of me and they're like high five in each other over my head I just knocked it off and then like after that

They're kind of like you weren't scared where you're Mike and I was like no not me So I wanted to fly a second time so I could sit next to a rookie and make fun of him And it's what that's the idea is like oh, yeah, you know scared But so it's a lot of rock and and then the two and a half first two and a half minutes those after that those solid rockets leave And then it's smooths out. So a liquid rocket will ride a lot smoother than the solid ones. So like for example, the SpaceX vehicle

is a totally liquid fuel rocket, no solids on it. So it won't shake as much. The one that's going to send to the moon, the space launch system has got solids on it. So they're going to shake a bit on the way up. Anyway, once that 8.5 minutes is over, then the main engine's cut and then it gets really peaceful. And it's almost like eerily peaceful, because everything just stops and all the noise,

all the shaking, all the violence, everything's done. Do you feel immediate loss of gravity? Absolutely. Yeah, so you're just like, you feel like it cuts and then you feel yourself just kind of gravity? Absolutely. Yeah. So you're just like you feel like it cuts and then you feel yourself just kind of float up. You're still you're still in your harness but your arms just float up like this. Wow. By themselves. You know, I'm staying down like this because of gravity. So they'll just float up like this. I had a pen on a on a lanyard that floated up next to me. And then you're strapped in still. So you're not going to go on you but you have to

start getting ready. First thing you do is take off your helmet. And I remember seeing Tom Hanks do this in Apollo 13 before he was in Astron. I was like, I wanna do that someday. So he just took off my helmet, put it right in front of me and let go and watch it float there in front of me. So you just said something.

I had a question for you. I'm glad you went that way. Uh, when you watch any space movies, who did the best job and who shit the bed? Like what are the ones that are probably the most accurate that you enjoyed the other ones that you're going, oh that's not. Well Adam, let me first say, I don't really, you know, I don't really, the accuracy of the space movie, if it involves astronauts, doesn't really

matter to me that much, as long as the astronaut looks cool. Like you guys said something, and I let you go on for a little bit, our astronauts are all like, you know, superhuman, great athletes. I'm thinking, okay. But that's what you think. Maybe when they portrayed that way in the movies, you know, they're all these like really fit, smart, great people. Like that's good.

So as long as the astronaut is cool, I'm happy with it. So, so like, you know, George Clooney will, yeah. Cool, you know, yeah, Bruce Will. So he was, yeah,, so those guys were cool. Brad Pitt was your Ryan Gosling, played Neil Armstrong. You know, those guys were all mad Damon, I don't know if I mentioned him,

but you know, these guys, people think like Matt Damon in the Martian, he got impaled by an antenna, right? An antenna went inside him. I don't know if you remember the movie. And he pulls it out and he soars himself up. People think I can do that, you know? I saw that movie, like the next day I was getting some

to eat and whole foods and he gave me like a plastic container for a salad and I got a cut on it and I'm like, run around, my fingers bleeding, you have a, they have a band-aid and run around, you know? I'm thinking people think because Matt Damon can pull an antenna out of his stomach and sew it up and I can do that too. Meanwhile, paper cup freaks me out.

So as long as the Ashtonalik school I'm happy. Matthew McConaughey, not Interstellar, is a little shaky. I like that very much. So I like whether or not it's, and that was a little complicated too. He was always worried, this is not good.

You gotta be cool. The Ashtonalik has gotta be cool. What about the physics? Because I know you gotta be a math physics. I heard interest your question. Yeah. I heard it was just teller was pretty good with the physics. Yeah, like that was can he was in a library and we I thought a movie three times. I got invited to three screens. I'm still not sure what's going

on in the movie. It was like it was a futuristic thing and we can't grow corn anymore. I don't know what was going on in M. I can't I could maybe you can explain it to me. But there was a lot of theories of going through different wormholes or this other stuff. So that you know that's all I can whatever theory or make believe stuff but maybe a little bit over my head. But the one that's most truthful or accurate was the Apollo 13 movie. Okay. Because what it showed was, well, it's based on fact, it was an actual thing that happened, but it also showed the camaraderie with the crew

and with the ground. And we were talking earlier about how the people in the space program wanted you to be successful, and that really portrayed it of how much they cared about the crew's lives, getting them back, you know, failures, not an option, or bringing that crew back alive. You know, that, that was the, the feeling, the sense of purpose that we had in the control center. And that depicted that really well. We had, I was giving a tour, uh,

Joe Torrey and the Dodgers, who was managing the Dodgers at the time were in town for, for, to play to Astros and he brought, he's a big, uh, support of the space program and he brought some of the players and coaches and came in for a tour and Jean Cran's, who's that guy without failure is not an option, helped with the tour to tell him about Apollo. We had a new flight director, scanning Mike Serfen, who's now the program manager for the Space Launch System, going to the moon. But back then he was a flight director,

and he was on console as a propulsion guy when they lost the Columbia. And he was talking about that, and he was saying how he was insured if he wanted to continue in his job when that happened. He's telling the group this that and he was saying how he was unsure if he wanted to continue in his job when that happened. He's telling the group this and I was saying, you know, he wasn't at risk, you know, he wasn't at risk to have anything happen to him because he was in a control center.

But he was as physically upset about that and emotionally upset about it as anybody else, as any other family member or crew member or a friend. And that's, that's what it meant to them, that the lives of those folks that they lost were so crushing to all those folks in that room and that happened. And so they were all about bringing the crew back and supporting the mission. So that's what I, one of the things I liked about Apollo 13 is it showed that. So that was a great one.

The right stuff is my all-time greatest movie. You guys ever seen that one? Oh, which one's that? That's a little before it's that. So I thought that was a great one. The right stuff is my old time greatest movie. You guys ever seen that one? That's a little before it then. That changed my life that one. So that's my old time favorite movie. I don't know if it's the most accurate one, but it's based on a book by Tom Wolf and came out in 1983. 83.84. I can like at the end, you know, I could December 83. And I remember this because I went to see it. I was a senior in college and I had given up because I was afraid of heights and I was kind of scared of a lot of stuff. I was like, I never become an astronaut. I kind of gave up post-pastor.

And how do you become an astronaut? It's impossible. So I kind of crossed it off the list and I was about eight years old. But I went to see that movie when I was a senior in college and brought back those feelings, those dreams that had as a little kid. They never left me. I just thought I could never do it. So this has been like a lifelong thing for you.

It was a lifelong thing, but I never thought I could do it at it. And I thought it was impossible, right, for some of the reasons that we've stated in this conversation. But when I saw that movie, I realized how important it was to me. And maybe I couldn't become an astronaut, but at least I could try to help others go, because I really want to be a part of the space program. That movie is about the original seven astronauts and the test pilot set that came to you. I have seen that movie.

Doug just brought that up. I did see that a long time ago. Did they remake it? I think they remade it. They made it. I think they made another one. They made a TV show out of it. I think that's what it was.

That's what it was. There was a seven-part series they did on'm like HBOers. Yeah, I have a NetEo that did it. Yes. Oh, the right stuff. They made an A-Word concert train at that time going back to the test pilot days like you're breaking a sound barrier. That's really good. It was really good. You know, Mike, you brought up a couple times some of the like the potential risks and some of the Travis I remember as a kid. I was really young. I was in class, and they brought the, they wheeled in the TV to have all the kids watch the challenger. Because there was a teacher on that,

I remember the big deal. And I was really young, I was too young to really understand the impact of that. But I remember the teachers crying, I couldn't figure out, and of course, you get older. The fear of, because I mean, you know, there's no perfect record. Yeah. And with spaceflight, the fail is death usually, right?

Yeah. Yeah. How do you be good or bad? Yeah. How do you deal with the fear or how do they train you with it? Because you're going up and you know, like, okay, this is one of the more risky things that people do. I think for when that happened, that was in 1986.

I was chairman of 1986, and I graduated college in 1984, and I was going to grad school in 1986 to pursue the strain. I was still working in New York City for IBM at the time, and it was a work day when that happened. I was like, we're on noon, like we're school, you guys are in school, like late night, late night, and so on noon. Like we're school, you guys are in school like late night, late night, and so on and so the news came over, you know, and we're in the, I don't know if we have much in it, we don't, we don't, we have the internet at all back then, but it was on like,

you know, the, in the lobby of the building, it was a TV or something like that. We were watching this on. But it, I think, first of all, I think, what it showed, what that showed to me was, when that happened, I was like, wow, this is terrible. But in some strange way, it was like, it is nothing I can do to help. I was doing something else. I wasn't anywhere near the space program. I felt like I wanted to do something to help or do something.

I wanted to be a part of it and made me realize that whatever it is you pick to do in life, you have to really care about. And that I think you should feel strongly about what you do, strongly enough that you're willing to risk your life or at least risk something, take some risk for it because it's that important to you. And so that accident made me realize that to me, the space program, for whatever reason, to me was the most important thing that I could dedicate my life to. And that if that meant putting my life at risk, I was okay with that. There's not too many things I would do that for. Maybe we think our families or our kids or spouses or loved ones we would do that for,

but for something I would do for a job or a program I believed in, I felt like exploring space was worth that risk. So I think that's one thing that helps you go and face these things. I think the other thing is, as I mentioned earlier, when I, when I looked up at the, when I was thinking about the trust part of it, it was when I first looked up at the space shuttle, my very first launch, it was a night launch, and we got out there about three in the morning and the place was deserted,

because they put fuel in that tank right before the launch, and when they do that, they clear the area. So up till that point in my life, when I'd been around a space shuttle, it was always bustling with people, with a lot of workers and stuff. Once they put the fuel in, they get everybody out of it. So this deserted, all the support structures rolled back.

It's got these brightly lit lights on it. This smoke coming off of it, it was water vapor, but it looks like this smoke coming to the other thing is smoking. And it was making these unwirably noises, because I think it was like the cryogenic fuel, the cold fuel, bending the metal of the launch. It was like it was like moaning, right? And the thing looked like it was, and sounds like it was alive.

It looked like a beast, like an angry beast. And so after dreaming about all this stuff since I was a little kid, the thought that went through my mind looking up at that spaceship that night was, maybe this wasn't such a good idea. And I was kind of like, I don't know if I could run for, this is like a six month, my first launch, like six months after

the 9-11 attack. And I remember like, did these security guys with us, like these SWAT guys with these big weapons and things for security? I don't think they're worried about terrorists. I think they would add to make sure we'd get on a spaceship. But I was like, you're gonna run me down, you know, and make me go.

So I just got on and once I got on, I felt fine because I was well trained. So one thing I learned from that is that when you, if you're worried about something, about something, thinking about it is always worse than doing it. I mean, you can psych yourself out for just about anything. And that's one thing I learned. So the way they train is they put us sometimes on purpose,

sometimes by accident, you got yourself in a situation, you start learning things about yourself. Like thinking about it is a lot worse than doing it. There was some situations, like in a year planes we used to fly, we had a couple of things that emergency related where I realized that being scared wasn't going to help. This was another thing that kind of surprised me that I was in a situation where it might be almost like you block it out. That's going to help me right now. It's going to help. This was another thing that kind of surprised me that I was in a situation where it might be almost like you block it out. That's going to help me right now. It's going to hurt. I think being scared can actually hurt you perform sometimes, right? Being nervous is okay. I think that shows that you care about it and you will help you motivate you to do

well. But once it's time to perform, being scared usually doesn't, doesn't help. So it's like, I'm not going to do that. Because that's going to risk my chances of being successful. So let's not be scared. Let's stick to our plan But to move forward I think was the was the building up of trust in the training that we had That if something went wrong we were trained well to react to it that we had good equipment The gear is gonna be there for us whether it's our parachutes or harnesses Whatever the gear is gonna be there trust your gear trust your, as I said earlier to help you and entrust yourself. So it's like you're all taking a leap of faith.

I think a lot of times when you're doing things like that, that could be scary, but remember, if you're in a situation like that, you weren't there, you're not there by accident, you're able to handle that situation, try to, try to, I don't know if remain calm as the right word, but certainly don't try not to panic because that'll hurt you.

And that's what I think what they trained us was how to put any situation. if we remain calm as the right word, but certainly don't try not to panic because that'll be that'll hurt you. And that's what I think what they trained us was how to put any situation so you're not going to panic, you're going to rely on your training and not make a mistake because even the most well trained crews, things go wrong. The accidents happen in training of high performing teams and Navy SEALs and other things. People at a so well trained will still sometimes make a critical error. So you want to recognize your in a dangerous situation and then execute the plan because it's there for a reason and maybe not think too much. Yeah.

So speaking to the training, I want to get into a little bit of the physical training and requirements. What you guys actually did to prepare your muscles for going up into space and then also re-entering gravity and all of that stuff. Like would you have to consider physically before going up into space? I remember when I was at a new astronaut that we talked about these things, people coming back from a flight

or how they performed and so on. The physical part of it is your body's going to go through weightlessness, which is not going to put any load on your body unless you put it on there. Just atrophy, right? If you did nothing, it's really like the ultimate bed rest. It's even worse than that. Even sitting here, we're moving around, we're fighting gravity, you have to sit up right. But in space, you're just float, you're not doing anything.

So if you were not to do anything over prolonged period of time, maybe not a couple of weeks, but if you didn't do anything for a longer period of time up there, your heart would shrink, you would piss out your bone mass, you would lose bone density, muscle mass, you would atrophy terribly. So you have to push them back.

Even your digestion loses gravity to some extent. That's right. Yeah, so that's another story I can tell you about. But about the moon, I asked a moon walker one time what was the best thing about, what was it like on a moon? He says the best thing about it is you can fall, you take a dump. Well, he's got it, yeah.

Cause he got to the minimal gravity. Cause he's got to the minimum gravity. Cause oh, he goes, you might, you don't know yet, you're not a, you haven't flown a space yet, but But you know you when you when you're floating around a space you just can't go, you know And finally get on that moon after a couple days of floating around that one six gravity is just enough so you can let loose You know you're right Yeah, that was it wasn't the guy mentioned earlier that was John young John Young with Tometh. I couldn't believe that. Sweet release.

I was expecting some kind of, you know, something profound. Your unbelievable moment, you know, and he said, well, best thing about him, Mike, was only 12 guys did this. We were flying. He was still an active astronaut when we were, when he told me this and we were flying. He was a pilot and command in front of me. We were flying back from California, from the Ames Research Center, not too far from here.

Any Tometh and that story. But where were you? You started about changing the body. Yeah. So, so you have to research center, not too far from here. Any Tom and that story. But where were you? You started to change the body, yeah. So you have to, you know, that's another thing. You can do, a diet can help a lot with that. But what I remember hearing as a brand new astronaut from one of the crews that came back that said, the better shape you're in going into a flight,

the better shape you're gonna be in coming out. Don't expect to go there and become, that's not a gym you're going to. They do have a gym there, you can work out, especially now in the space station. Yeah, but what you're trying to do, that's just to slow down at your feet. You're just trying to fight it.

Exactly, right, you're trying to maintain or not lose too much. Really, right, at least maintain. Some people actually get the way they've understood the what they've learned about exercise protocols now, they're able to keep people really well fit. That's cool. And sometimes as good as they were and they left,

maybe sometimes a little bit better. That's impressive. There's a two hour exercise period on the space station six days a week and in Vals Cardio, and lift so not lifting, you take all these weights, you got in his gym and fly him in space, you lift him on one finger. Yeah. All of them.

So what is it? It's a schematic. Yeah. What it is is kind of like that. The device they have now on the space station, it's called A-Red, go with the A-Stance World, but it's a resistive exercise device. So it's a device that has, it's kind of a contraption, but it works on pulleys and like springs and the TheraBand sort of technology.

So the TheraBand is really good. We had those, you could at least get a bit of a workout with those things, time against something and workout your shoulders and your arms and you could do stuff like that, but you have to resist against something. You just can't lift weights. So that's what they do now on space station.

But what I remember this is the better shape you're in, going in, the better shape you're in, going to be in. Yeah, there's some pictures up there. I think I'm assuming, so it seems like this might be something where the harder you push, the harder it resists. Is that what this machine, how this machine works? Yeah, you can set it in different ways. Okay, so it's very tunable.

Okay. And you'll train on it on the ground. So you'll have like a prescription. You can get a prescription. Yeah. Of what's going to work for you. But you can get a full body workout. So you can do squats, dead lifts, bench press, curls, everything with this thing.

And plus you have an exercise bike to ride. And also a treadmill so you get your cardio in. So that's really important to do that, particularly on the space station because you're there for so long. Is there like one of you that's kind of running it for everybody else or are you free to do whatever you want? Is there a regimen that you're supposed to follow? There's like trainers up there. They should actually, but the trainers are, again, very dedicated people. And they work with you, they'll work with us, you can also go to the gym every day, right? So to back it up a little bit, when I entered this world of the astronaut office, which again comes from the military culture, but it was, you had to more or less work out.

Like that was part of your job. We had a gym, the astronaut gym that was built for us to use, where they would, you know, there was a guy in there that would do our laundry, right? It was like, they tried to make it as easy as possible. Reserved parking, you go in there, you work out in your gym clothes,

throw them in a bin, they'll be ready for you later this afternoon if you wanna come back. Like that, they tried to make it as easy as possible. It was no excuses. You had time in your day to go do this. They would schedule it, or you want to come back. Like that, they try to make it as easy as possible as no excuses. You had time in your day to go do this. They would schedule it or you'd go after hours. And I remember my very first month at NASA,

we had the safety and health day at the Space Center. And Bob Cabana, named them, I think three times in this interview, I haven't spoken about them for a while, but his ears must be ringing. Bob was the chief of the office at the time, a Marine pilot, and he said, he wrote out an email and he said, anyone caught not exercising will be disciplined.

Like that was your, right? That was that was it. I was like, okay, so we were expected to be fit because it really pertained toward jobs. And what was interesting for me is that I hadn't felt like the need to be fit for my job. Since I was like in high school playing sports. You know, you know, it's like I'll try to be fit and for health reasons, but the motivation became a lot different going

into the office where it was part of our culture. And that's where people would meet and talk and a lot of rumors were exchanged and socializing was done as well. It was a cool place to go as you could work out and talk in the instructors again, back to one of your questions here. I think they would help us with setting up a regiment for us and would work us out in the gym and then kind of set up things we could do on our own too

if they weren't around or if we wanted to just come in on our own and they would also give you things to do in space. So they were they were called acers astronaut strength and conditioning. Astronauts strength, astronauts, the ASCR. So it's astronaut strength conditioning and rehab because they also were in charge when you got back to rehab to rehab you when you got back, particularly from the long missions I was in for today, had a you got to know them really well, they would run with you, they would work you out, they would torment you, but you know, whatever they needed to do to get you ready so that you could perform in space and also recover when you got back. Mike, you know, because to me, it's, it's fascinating because obviously humans evolve the gravity.

So everything on our body, evolve with gravity, digestion, movement, blood flow, brain, our perception of things. I was just gonna ask you, what's it like to sleep and wake up? You don't have the sun rising and setting down. So Katie and Rhythm's all along. Yeah, that's right.

So what's it like to sleep and wake up and what does that feel like? So the sleep part of it, let me go back one second and I'll try not to lose the sleep thought, but just to set it up a little bit, the most profound difference when you get there that you realize immediately is that your vestibular system is not working. Oh. So our vestibular system works on gravity and allows us to do stuff like drive a car, ride a bicycle,

fly an airplane. That's how you get your proprioception. Everything walk around, run, everything is based on that. It all works with our eye movements. When there's a conflict between our eye movements and our regular system, that's when we're adaptable, maybe to get sick, I don't know what that happened in the airplane. If you felt a little bit of nausea, what it is, is that your gyro inside is really getting spun around at nine Gs or whatever those guys did to you,

upside down and you're eyes are seeing something and your brain, that's why I was saying a second flight is good, because your brain has no idea what's going on and it elicits the reaction to that is nausea. We're really not sure why that, we've developed that way, but the same thing like in a car, if you're trying to read sometimes

and you're reading it, when I first moved to New York City where I live now I used to get I try to read in the back of a cab and you know you're getting bounced around and your eyes are saying You're still you're reading but your inner ear is saying no you're moving around and a conflict needs to nausea But you can adapt to that. That's why I was saying any and the jazz is that just through practice? Yeah, you bring because your brain can figure this stuff out right? So it's all right. No, I'm not I don't need to throw up, I'm safe. This is just what's going on. It can adapt to all those things.

So in space, what happens though, is that it's completely shut off, right? So your vestibular is telling your brain, you are not moving, you are perfectly still. As you start moving around the cabin though, now you've got the conflict. The first time they noticed this was on though, now you've got the conflict. The first time they noticed this was on one of the first missions to the moon. Now, that was the first time I had a cabin, a spacecraft, lodged enough that you could float around in. So when you're just sitting in the seat the whole time, like there were in the early flights, not moving around much, they would adapt to it and they didn't do a spacewalk till like a few days later and they

were adapted by then. But they got out of the seats right away, which was unusual before then in the Apollo missions, one of the first ones of the moon, and the guys started throwing up. They were thinking of actually, they didn't know what it was. They were thinking of turning them around. They thought he had some kind of crazy space disease. But what it was, it was this conflict

with the vestibular system. So your brain adapts to that. When I first got to space, if you go upside down, like if you would all, you guys would hold me upside, I'm not asking you to do this, so I know you easily could do this. Turn me upside down for a while, right? I'll know I'm upside down.

My brain knows I'm upside down. But in space, if you go upside down, it's the same. Your brain thinks that the room is rotated. Not you, not me. I feel like I'm perfectly still, cause my... That's so hard.

When I'm looking at your sign in, mind pump and when I'm looking at you guys, you guys would be completely revered. Oh, that's weird. But I'm feeling like I'm sitting here, and that's nauseating, so you usually... That's rude. But now you get used to that after a couple of days.

So now your brain has gotten used to this, right? It shuts off the vestibular system. And you come back to Earth and it turns back on. So like you were talking about sleeping, right? So sleeping in space takes a little bit of getting used to. You're floating, but you're inside of a sleeping bag, which is attached to something, it's attached in this case of the space shuttle,

you get attached to the wall, or if I put mine on a ceiling, because when can you sleep on the ceiling? So are you attached it? And it was like a bed roll, you roll it up when you wake up. So you thought, what'd you get in there? So you're not gonna float around

and wake up your friends or your children. You don't need a pillow, right? Cause your head just, great question. You actually do believe it or not, Sal, because what they found on the early missions is that we're so used to having something behind our head that these guys They're trying to fall they couldn't fall asleep because there's nothing behind their head But if you put a pillow behind your head your head is just gonna float off it

Well, but they they've strapped it to your head It sounds really uncomfortable for the psychological reasons. Yeah, just because we just used to having something behind our head Otherwise you might jerk yourself trying to get out of the guy's kind of sleep. So, so what we do is you actually have a band around your head of just a nice cloth man that attaches the pillow to your head. That is a kind of like wearing a pillow behind your head. So you feel just because that's how we're used to sleep. We generally keep it cold in the space. There's pranks here. I feel like there's

all kinds of stuff. I was gonna say, there's gotta be some stuff we guys met. You guys mess with a new guy when you can stuff like this. You know, spit him around while he's sleeping or detaches. He's sleeping back. He's sleeping back. Just do stuff. Actually, he's kind of disappointing not too much of that.

Yeah. A little bit of that here and there, but it's more like showing him the ropes. There was some silly things like there was a, we detached them in the spacewalk. There was some silly things like they do this. This is like astronaut humor, maybe, or nerd humor, I don't know where it would fall. But like you get onto the astro van to go out to the launch pad and the driver astro for your boarding pass. And all the veterans have like a piece of plastic that says you can board the space shuttle and none of the rookies have it. You guys can't come like oh

really I'm not getting one and say panic because I don't have this joke piece of plastic. It's like little things like that to just kind of but nothing is, but you're, there are a couple things there start I'm sorry to think of them like I don't know if this is a good example, but There's a not much air flow in the in the in space everything float You know that it's not just you that's floating, but the air floats too. So like hot air doesn't rise You don't get circulation. Oh, that's weird. So you can literally move and oh it's hot here It doesn't yeah, it doesn't it doesn't so hot air rise here We get convection air and that's how things cool themselves, you know if you lose like a you know And it's just things sometimes you need a radiator you need a radiator to reject a lot of heat,

but in general, you're a radiator heat, but the only way to do that in spaces is to involve fans. So we have fans moving around to circulate the air, because it won't, it's not going to move at all. And we have a filter, so that will, the air will go through. And so if you're losing something, like you can't find something, it'll end up by the filter event. of a filter, so that will, the air will go through. And so if you're losing something, like you can't find something,

it'll end up by the filter event. Oh, it's gonna go over there. Yeah, so in the morning, you look at the filter and it'll be like, you know, someone's vitamins are in there or someone's watching it up in there, or you're mouthing the underwear, say, hey, no, why did this get over here?

Whatever it might be, I lost my drugs, you know, I wrote it, but that airflow would come up right next to where the pilot was sitting. So it was an inter-between, it was a mid-deck and a flight deck. So that air flow would, that fan would then, you know, and you mentioned earlier, the sort of here, bring that air right where the pilot was. So you mentioned earlier about your stomach might be doing now, the well-re and zero gravity. So I could already guess. Alright, so I don't get it if we want to go there, but no, they're ready. How do you like your guests, right? Yeah. So, uh, and if you did, you could direct. Yeah, so you

would and you being your own step by friend. Is this okay to talk about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Rick, I mean, I asked this. So Rick, Rick, and you're in your own space suit, right? And you get your own circulation. It's gonna come over. Rick Linhantoy is gonna pass out from one of his own, one of his own farts. You know, you're like, met that in Poison and you're just,

because you use by himself and Aaron, he's like, oh my god. So, and you know, he was low-oppression, so your stomach expands. So at the teacher like in a jet, I don't know if they mentioned this here when you were flying, but if you're gonna be in an airplane that's a lower pressure, which you probably were

in oxygen to help with that, you're stomach like a bag of potato chips. He's not expand, so you stomach expands too, and so they tell you, you know, if you got gas, you got to get rid of it. So in space, this is what happens. So if you wanted to play a prank, put the rookie in the pilot seat and then,

for it by the, you know, who get it, who get it. That's a great prank, right? put the rookie in the pilot seat and then and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and

and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and

and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and

and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and

and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and You go every 45 minutes you get a sunrise on a sunset because it's 90. Yeah. So you get 16 sunrises and 16 sunrises. Oh, that's weird. It's bizarre.

So what we've learned, and there's an app that I've done a little work with called Time Shifter that's based on this stuff, that one of our flight surgeons and a doctor from Harvard Medical, they would work this shift with us, the sleep shift with us, because the way you would launch to go to space was the time you would launch was based on your target of where you were headed. So if you were going to a target, if you weren't going, if you're just gonna do an orbital flight,

you could launch it two-thirty in the afternoon. What they would like to do is launch you toward the end of your day, so you would launch into space, do a few things for a few hours, you're not feeling that great anyway because you're getting used to it. Take a sleeping pill if you need it or a nausea medley to take a shot of something called finergan. Take an injection of that in a rear end and that would help you go to sleep and you wake up the next day feeling better. So that was the plan typically, right? If you could pick any time you'd want to launch,

you'd probably be about 2.30 in the afternoon, get some work done, eat dinner, probably want to eat, maybe go to sleep and feel better next day. So if you're going to a target, like to the Hubble or to the space station, there's only a few 20 minutes more or less each day that you can launch from the Kennedy Space Center and get there it judiciously. So it's kind of like it's passing over the launch pad and it poof you go and get it.

If you launch when it's on the other side of the planet, you're never going to get there. So that window is a 20-minute window that moves each day, right? It changes each day. So you pick the day you're going to go to, whoever does that, we're going to go to this place, we're going to go to the space station on this day. There's a 20-minute window when you can go and that could be in the morning or afternoon or a minute a night that you need to launch. And so again, they want you to be at the end of your day. So they will shift you. So for my first flight, which we had like a 6 a.m. flight,

meant we were going to bed. We had a shift to go to bed around 9 or 10 in the morning, right right and then wake up in the evening So they did that by getting us getting our circadian rhythms shifted and it has to do with If you're a coffee drink or a cavern when you can do that and when you can't When you can see light which was interesting because of light there are certain types of lights that'll wake you up sunlight For example wakes you up. So you would have shades or make it dark so you could sleep there in a day and they would have the weird lights in the crew quarters that would

try to make your brain think that you were awake. So they tried to get you on that schedule. Because once you launched, then you tried to more or less maintain that sleep schedule. So you would shift would take place before. You're earlier, you had mentioned how when you, you know, seeing earth, you fell for the first time, like this is my home, earth is my home. Yeah. What's it like working with astronauts

from other countries, international, is there a camaraderie between you? Like you see the guy from Russia, try, wherever. Yeah. And it doesn't matter. We're all, okay. It doesn't.

I'm hopefully gonna see two of my international colleagues on Monday, they're in New York. Davis, Sun, Jacques, who's a Canadian astronaut and Gerhard T. Le just text, he's a German guy that was in my astronaut class. He's a German astronaut. But it goes even deeper than that. You mentioned Russians, you know,

we have this conflict going on over in the Ukraine, and we still on every American mission to the International Space Station. There's a Russian cosmonaut on board, and on every Russian Soyuz to the Space Station, there's an American on board. And that's done because for safety reasons, you need a mixed crew because say you have, if you have all Russians going up here and all Americans going up here, and then there's an emergency that the Americans have to come home and they all evacuate on the same spaceship, they only have Russians on board and there's an American section, right? And the same goes for the Russians.

You got to have, you can't just evacuate all the Russians and all of Americans. So for safety reasons, for safety of operations, we still do that. And it works. I mean, are the space programs are still able to perform just as they always have? The tension between the countries pretty much don't speak about that. We just kind of stick to business. So it shows to me, it shows maybe a good thing about that is that when you have a goal

like that, it doesn't matter where you're from or what your political propignions are about things or whatever is going on with you at the larger levels in your government, you have to get the job done together. Well, it's a big deal because, you know, of course during the Cold War, there was a lot of tension between the Soviet Union and the United States. Yeah. And people don't realize, I think, like, what an accomplished mintous is, and also just working together, because that was an agreement at some point.

And it was really like, hey, let's do this thing together, this thing that we were competing over that was maybe showing our technological power or whatever. And we continue to do it, which is phenomenal. Yeah, absolutely. So they were competing with the Soviet Union to get to the moon. And, but now we cooperate with Russia, with the countries of Europe, with Japan, Canada. They just had a first two astronauts from the UAE fly. They're training with NASA astronauts.

So, you know, there, in some ways, I think we should be working with countries we may not always get along with to hopefully try to understand each other. I mean, what's going on with Russian and Ukraine is a completely different thing. I mean, that's just so freaking horrible that, you know, that's, you know, that's, I don't know if we would be having that same relationship to start that relationship like it is now. I don't know if we would be having that same relationship to start that relationship like it is now. I don't know if that would happen, but we've had this relationship with them for a long time now, for over 30 years, we're even flying astronauts on first space station, me

or they were flying cosmonauts on shuttle. So that relationship was put together in better times and still remains. I don't know going forward what would happen. I doubt that anything would happen if things don't change over there. But right now we maintain that working relationship in space. Do you look at us putting our sights on Mars as another opportunity to create that kind of shared goal with everybody in the world? Is it just, that kind of shared goal with everybody in the world. And is it just, I know, I know like the private sector has come in and kind of been able to, like Elon Musk has really put his sites on that.

But in terms of the rest of the world and us sort of focusing on like a common goal, do you see that as an opportunity for us for humanity? Yeah, absolutely, Justin, I do. And I think, I think it's, as you said, the other player in here is the commercial companies. Because governments, the government's that taxpayers money and have to be good stewards of that and can't do everything they want to do. It was different than the Apollo missions when they went to the moon the first time. We had strong motivation.

Yeah, it was almost like a national defense. That's right. And there's a war competing against the Soviet Union for control of the technological world back then. We had everybody was behind it. It was a big question. Right. By showing how we could do that, by, you know, we meaning the United States could do that,

it showed what we were able to do. You know, it was a peaceful way to show capability, and that was a huge national goal. Once that was done, the support for the program kind of went away. The last three missions to the moon were canceled. They were supposed to have three more landings, and for budget cuts, they stopped them.

So those are these big rockets that are in different places in our country, Kennedy Space Center, Johnson Space Center, and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. Those are real moon rockets, the Saturn Vs that never went to the moon. They were supposed to go to the moon and they didn't go for budget cuts.

So once that goal was attained, that was kind of it. We've been in that mode where the space program is an important thing for the country, but it's not as important. There's other things we have going on that keeping people fed and alive and healthy and these other things that we spend our money on, right? So, I think what's been helpful is with these private companies now, finding ways that

they can make money or think they can make money on in their business plan, that there's private investment now. And I think that combination of not just United States, but all the other countries around the world, some of which are very wealthy too, that want to be players, along with these private enterprise. I think that's the only way to go

is to get everyone involved to do something like that. I think it's, I mean, you're supporter because, if we could find a way to turn these endeavors into profit, then it's not just a waste, I would say, of resources, even though we may have this drive to sports tourism, right? Well, I mean, I know with Elon, I mean, they've cut the cost of launching satellites in the space, like, yeah, thickently through their technology, which could have some profound benefits.

So I'm all for it. Any fears around that? Because I don't do they follow the same regulations or it's pretty heavily regulated, right? They have to pass so many tests and show so many things before. Or is it not? It is and it isn't.

It's a single of cell. The government did some interesting. I think first of the purpose, one of the purposes of our government that I think that I saw at NASA, that like our administrators and our leadership had, was that we were supposed to help the country in any way we can. And that includes economically, that if there's a technology that NASA,

the government can develop, and then hand over to private enterprise, like airplanes, a lot of airplane development was done for military reasons in the World War I, first, and then even World War II, we started experimenting with jets and breaking the sound barrier afterwards and so on. Turning that over to commercial enterprise, now we have this thriving commercial airline business. And the hope is that something that can also happen with space travel. So I think that that's part of what the government should be doing is encouraging these things. I'm sorry, you're questioning though, is that how that even started? Oh, just started the regulations. Oh, the regulations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, thank you for reminding me. So what's interesting about it, I think, is that there actually was no real regulation put on these commercial companies. They, the FAA is for flying, for aviation, Federal Aviation Administration. They kind of regulate that.

NASA was the only game in town for launching people into space, but the government kind of gave them a pass on regulations, but I think that expires like pretty soon, that that kind of, it may be extended, but they didn't want to over-regulate them to kind of- A cost amount to stunt the growth. But if you over-regulate them to kind of... That cost a month. To stunt the growth. But if you over-regulate, nothing's going to happen. Yeah.

So they didn't want to regulate too much, but they're kind of keeping a watch on what's going on. Well, there's a lot of motivation for them not to screw up. That is the other thing. Yeah, it screws up once. That's it. You kill somebody that's it. You know, and it's...

Nobody wants to do it. It's also the press behind it. It's kind of like driverless cars. People get hurt on, with people driving a car. All the time. All the time. But as soon as a driverless car, it hurts someone, we don't trust these things anymore, right?

And they may still be much safer than people driving. I don't know if that's true. And I'm just strong crap out there. But in this case, as soon as you kill somebody, then it's not funny games anymore. Particularly if you kill a civilian or a paying customer or someone like that, this panic would be that much tolerance for it. So for them to be successful in their business,

they have to, they got very, very limited. Not a lot of people. But they are much safer, for example, the SpaceX vehicle is, I mean, the space shuttle was pretty dangerous for a number of reasons. We had those two major accidents. We had where we lost the crew and the vehicle. Seven people were killed on each one of those accidents, Challenger.

We referred to with the Christopher McAuliffe was on board and then the Columbia one. After I was an astronaut, we, after my first flight on Columbia, we lost Columbia on the next flight. The whole crew and the vehicle gone. Shuttle was dangerous. We, that was calculated at the odds of getting killed, like total loss of life and vehicle was one out of 75, right? So now one out of 75, like if you had a, if you were taking a bet to make money and you had a 74 out of 75, you probably sure. your life if your life it's not you know it's all right I'm probably going to be okay but that's not the kind of risk that the government even

would want to take course people it's more like one out of 1500 was the number sort of like as an acceptable risk so it was a it was a great risk going on the on the space shuttle risk. So it was a great risk going on the space shuttle. I'm not sure what the odds are for the space-ex vehicle, but it is much safer. The automated systems help. The technology we had with the space shuttle was the crew handling almost everything. So even the emergencies had to be handled. Most of our training for the shuttle for working the spacecraft was working emergencies, right? Which we're never going to happen as you I think you mentioned a minute ago, right? It's either going to be a good day or a bad day and so

You never did stuff's never gonna happen, but we had to know every electrical failure hydraulic failure engine failure cabin issue all the stuff had to be worked by the crew. The pilot on my first flight, and the pilot's got most of this training. We had some of it as admission specialists, but we were doing space walks and other stuff, but the pilots, the test pilots we had were trained on this stuff, and I asked them, how much of our training did you not use on our flight? He said 99.99% of his training.

He did not use at all. So now it's handled, most of it's handled, including the emergencies, by the automated systems like they have AI and all this other stuff that we've got going in these spaceships, which actually makes it much safer because it's gonna handle all those problems without the crew having to get involved.

Also the way the system is built, it has its own, like, ejection system, an abort system where it can separate from the rocket. The shoulder is no way to get out of it. And we had no, we didn't have an abort option until after the solid rocket boosters left. So you had nothing you could do for two and a half minutes. Whereas with this system that they have now, you can separate from the launch vehicle. So if there's a problem with the vehicle, you can get the crew away from the launch vehicle in the cabin. The spacecraft can separate. So for that reason alone, it's much safer.

So it's a safer way. It's reusable. They're able to return the boosters and use them over and over again. You mentioned how it's allowing more people to go, you don't have to be a fully trained astronaut, and even for astronauts, it requires less training to go so you can concentrate on other things. I teach at Columbia, University in New York City. My students have had two experiments in space. They didn't want to go to the space station for a month. Imagine doing it when I was, even just a couple of years ago, that would have been possible,

but they flew a biomedical experiment on the space station for a month. I imagine doing it when I was, you know, even just a couple of years ago, that would have been possible, but they flew a biomedical experiment on the space station for a month, and then it was returned on a SpaceX vehicle and they were able to analyze the data. What are they trying to do with this stuff? What are they trying to study up there, the effect of radiation or zero gravity? All types of things. In this case, it was looking at the way antibiotics and medicines work in zero gravity. And so at things, they're studying disease, it's kind of an interesting thing in space, the way that different bacteria will generate themselves, right? They'll do it differently. they do it quicker in zero gravity for some reason but that's what happens so they're able to study like the effect of medicine

the how things how germs will populate they can do that differently let's say better maybe in space things behave differently in space so mixing, you can't necessarily mix everything that you'd like to in gravity and on earth, because things have different weights to them. They'll separate, they won't combine the way you want to, but they can do that in space. Oh, interesting. So they can develop things that you can't even imagine here on earth and you could do that in space. One good thing I think about these opportunities for private citizens, let's say people who want a career ashrant to go is that a research, some of people want to go to take a look around, they want a Twitter contest, they get a birthday present for $18 million and that's something

they held, they say, alright, there's like for tourism. But there's also the opportunity now to fly researchers who are doing research into cancer or DNA or whatever it might be. They don't have the time really to take seven years out of a life, to go first we'll go through the NASA selection process, get through all that stuff and do their experiments 15 years later.

So when it does give us the opportunity now with the less training involved, that you could fly an expert who has an idea of something that they wanna do in space either they can train the astronauts to do it or they can even go themselves to perform those studies or those experiments and companies are interested in doing this as well

for economic benefit to use space as a place to as a laboratory to maybe come up with new technologies and new procedures and new new drugs or whatever it is that they're new pharmaceuticals or whatever there is they're looking at but also as a way to develop those for for economic benefit as well. So that's opened up now with the privatization of it. Mike, how do you guys deal with the are you you exposed to a lot of radiation up there, right? Just because you're out of the atmosphere and is there any preparation? Anything you have to do or they just say, hey, we're going to try and block as much as we can.

Pretty much they're trying block as much as they can. So the higher you get, the higher altitude you get, like even on earth. Yeah, in the corner, right? When you're in a plane, you're going to get more, hopefully the plane is protecting you. But so that, you know, that's why you, when you're up on a mountain a plane, right? When you're in a plane, you're going to get more, hopefully the plane is protecting you. So that's why you when you're up on a mountain even, right? So when you're up on a mountain top, you've got to be more aware of the sun exposure you have than when you're down at sea level. So the higher we get up to the thinner the atmosphere that protects us is, that's where we're going to we're susceptible to more radiation, right?

When you get to space, you're above the atmosphere. The radiation belts we have do protect us, but you're going to get a much bigger dose in space and you're going to get even in an airplane or below. Where we were at Hubble 100 miles higher than space station, we got a significantly higher dose. They just track it is what they do. So they try to protect you as much you can in the space suit, significantly higher dose, they just track it is what they do.

So they try to protect you as much you can in the space suit, in the spaceship itself. You still protect it from the radiation belts of our planet that kind of acts like a four-sheel to absorb most of that radiation. You always have a dose similar on you when you're in space so they can measure it. So you can see, oh, I'm getting too much. Well, you can't see it. It's a piece of plastic that you kind of hand in. And then I don't know what's going on. No, if I have a problem that's supposed to tell me. But I have, sometimes I wonder, but you better, better, better, just, you know, know some of these things. I had a snoopy toy when I was a kid, right?

A Snoopy toy that I had as a kid when I was watching the alarm showing on the moon and it was to play with them and pretend like I was an astronaut and I brought them to space with me, right? So he's a space, right now he's at the Charles Schultz Museum, they're having a Snoopy and Space exhibit up in Santa Rosa. So the Snoopy flew in space with me.

So the Intrepid Museum in New York wanted to have him on display for a little bit. So I said, yeah, sure, but he's kind of easy. I had a rough life snoop. I got him when I was nine. And his help, I'm no, I think that when I was six, I got him. In 1966, he was a drop them on a concrete, his helmet broke, then his leg broke. You know, he's kind of been rough. He's had a rough life. He's old. He's like, oh, this is a little zion.

So I said, you know, he's kind of broken up. I said, gluing back together, go, no, no, we'll take care of him. We're a museum. So again, I'm at the in Treppin Museum, and I get a call like a couple weeks later, go, Mike, we're looking at your snoopy and, you know, he's got the broken leg,

but he's also got a broken arm. I'm like, really? And he said, he's, and his little tail, his little tail's broken. And his space suit is like, all kind of like, you know, it looks like it's kind of been warned, but not in a normal way. And the only thing we can think of is, was he exposed to a lot of radiation.

Oh, and I'm like, well, yeah, he wasn't, he wasn't, he wasn't, space with me. And like, well, that must be it. And they go, yeah, that's what's radiation exposure. It's like, you know, that's what we see. And I go, what are we gonna do? And I go, oh, no, no, we can fix them. We just, we never saw anything like this before. That's what we suspected. That's what it seems like. And I go, okay, we gonna do? And I go, oh, no, no, we can fix them. We just, we never saw anything like this before.

That's what we suspected. That's what it seems like. And I go, okay, so I hang up the phone, I'm like, what about me? I was out on the spacewalks, which were even worse and stupid wasn't with me on nose. And I tell you what, my hair was not white when I went to space.

You kidding me? I'm so, I had regular call at head. And then I come back, I'm like, I know it's not going right. I was like, yeah, and I was on a, I was going to go on a T 38 and a flight. I was going, what's going on with your hair, man? You know, a couple of weeks ago,

it wasn't eight, so I don't know if they're not telling me everything. That might be, that might be part of it. I was going to go simmer in his piece of plastic. It was in our flight suit when we launched. It was in the checklist to remove it from this pocket we had to put in our in-flight garment. So whatever shorts you're wearing, a pants you're wearing, it's always got to be with you. And when you go on a spacewalk, we had a cooling garment, we would wear a really cool

pair of long underwear with tubes to keep us cool with water to go over it. We had a little pouch to put that, that, that those similar in. So then you would, then you'd put it back in your launch suit when you came home and he would get it from you on landing and he'd read it and then I didn't hear anything from then. So I think it's okay. But suppose that he tracked it because you can't, you know, based on your age and your gender and these other things

there's only so much radiation. You know, if some people get treated with radiation for cancer and so on and that's part of their lifetime. You have a lifetime limit apparently. And so it's supposed to be. So you can't get X-rays anymore. It's basically.

I don't know, I'm still getting them. They haven't told me anything. So I don't want to know. I think I'm all right. Do you see anything weird up there? I was just gonna ask. Yeah, anything, are you allowed to say? I'm not asking you about fast-roving know, I can tell you anything here, right?

So I'll tell you, it's cool stuff I saw that I understood what it was. Like, micrometeorites coming in below you. Okay. So you're after it. It's like, you know, like a shooting star is the over your head. Sometimes if you're lucky to see them at night,

rare to see those. Like I saw those looking down, looking down from space, you seem shooting, it's just like a shot, like a below you coming into that. And it's pretty cool. Thunderstorms at night. Oh yeah, it really cool. That's got to look weird. It's like over like the ocean.

Most of our planet is ocean by the way. I think we know that, right? You learn that, it's like two thirds or three quarters. I think it must be growing because you look over to, when you're out there, it's mainly water. You're over. And then the first time looking out the window, we're coming over the Indian Ocean,

what we hit Africa. After all this water, water, water, bang. Like great, you know, Africa, big continent. It was like gone in a blip and you're over water again. It's like, oh, water. If you're in space and someone asks you, where are we? The easiest thing to say, the best thing to say is over to Pacific, because that's probably where you are, because it's so, it's mainly water that we're over. So you see the thunderstorms at night

over the ocean, there's like probably no one down there, maybe there's a boat and a mill out there, but they're happening and you can't see any, because the cloud, the cloud's kind of dark and everything. So you don't see any reflection of the moon or anything on the ground. But you'll see the the lightning go off in it like a very bright orange yellow red kind of color. And it will light up the clouds and you'll see all the veins in the clouds below you. Really cool color and you see that and it kind of like you can see like shake. And then it's not just one. It's like multiple and it's almost like they're communicating. It's like the boom boom boom boom boom. And it kind of like, you can see like shake. And then it's not just one, it's like multiple. And it's almost like they're communicating. It's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And it'll stop. And then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, they'll go out. It's because they kind of, and that was pretty cool. Seeing the stars at night, stars don't twinkle in space. Stars twinkle on earth because it's the light's that's from the atmosphere. Twinkle, twinkle, little star was written by a dude on earth.

It doesn't make sense. They're perfect points of light. So those are like really cool things, but you kind of kind of understand what you're looking at. Sunrise or sunset, every 45 minutes, you'll go through that transition and it's a huge transition in heat as well. So in the sun direct sunlight, it could be a couple hundred degrees above zero and in the darkness, it's the darkest dark I've ever experienced And so when you're doing the walk outside you're gonna get heat You have cold you're kind of the the space suit and the shuttle regulates that so it

Doesn't make it that drastic and you do have but you do have temperature control Mm-hmm. You're typically more concerned about overheating because your body is working and you're inside it enclosed Space suits or you have you have your cooling on pretty significantly to keep you cool. But as you're coming around for more every 45 minutes, you'll feel the warmth of the sun, for example, before you'll see it. And it's kind of when you go through those transitions, it's kind of like you're in the ocean or a lake and you get like a cold or a warm current, you feel it down on your bones. That's what it's like.

So you'll feel the warmth of the sun before you'll see it. And then you just wait a second and you'll see the sun. I remember the first time I saw the sun in space, I realized the first time I was looking at the sun in a black sky, which is kind of cool. And then you look back at the earth and you can see this transition between night and day. We call it the terminator. It's the day night line and it's moving. Like it's just tracking across the planet.

And what that is, it's the rotation of the earth that you're looking at. And it's really slowly, slow and steady, but doesn't hesitate, doesn't hiccup, just keeps moving. And I got the sense of permanence to that motion. That's what hit me was that this has been going on for a long time. And it's going to be going on for a long time after all of us are gone. This ballet between earth and the sun and the moon and the stars. Now this is there was a permanence to it.

So while that was cool stuff, but I kind of understood what I was looking at. But it was something I saw guys. Would you say? That uh, come on. That uh, no, I'm serious. This is something, and I haven't even, I think my jackrofer's second. Yeah. I don't know.

It's getting real hard. Yes, it's getting real hard. I don't know if I can get into this stuff. But it's something that I've only really thought about the last couple of years. This is a weird thing, I think. And I've got the guy who I was out there with, was his name, the guy who was out Space War through was Jim Newman.

And it was my first Spacewalk. And we were at God ahead, we did, the Spacewalk, that Spacewalk weren't really well. And so we got more stuff to do at the end, which delayed us and made it longer, which was fine because we were happy to stay out there. But we were doing like a test of these latches on the telescope with a power tool.

They wanted to read the, it was like a get ahead thing. They wanted some data on what the torque was like, so they want to break the bolts, and they were, it was kind of like a little experiment on how the telescope bolts were doing on these door latches, and whether or not we had to try to repair them. So we're doing, we're doing some turns with this power tool and then we're reporting down to the ground

Okay, we got this much torque on this one And we're kind of waiting around nothing was going on and we're going through one of these transitions It just so happened we were in darkness and we were coming over California and Newman was from He grew up in San Diego and he's hanging off the edge of the telescope and as we're going into the sun We see the terminator moving across right where California was right coming out of like Arizona and Nevada And now going over to California and Newman's like good morning California

We're kind of like this kind of I'm looking at him. I can see him looking kind of cool And then he comes up next to me. We were waiting for our other instructions and I look right in front of me And I've got what I need you to do what I really need to do is look at my helmet camera because I bet this camera my helmet camera tapes There's a blob of maybe this is gonna. I'm hope this doesn't like disappoint you guys It's not like an alien There was a blob of some black Car or so. I don't know what look like tar to me, right? Like a black weird looking tar thing that was like tar to me, right? Like a black, weird looking tar thing

that was stuck to the telescope, right? Maybe about the size of a quarter, let's say, but like I'm a rocky looking stuff. I've seen enough sci-fi movies to tell you not to touch it. Yeah. That's exactly what I did. So I'm looking at this thing and I'm like, ooh, it's gonna go on your finger.

I'm not, I don't know what the hell that is, right? And I like, so I didn't want to say, do it when, look at that. So I'm like, you know, get his attention and I point to the, and he looks over at this and he looks at, we can see each other through our home and things like, I'm like, I don't freaking way, just leave it there, right? And then we went on with our task and went inside and never talked about it.

That was 20 years ago. And I only remembered that like about it, I don't know, maybe a year ago, I was like, someone asked me that question and I'm like, nah, I didn't really start. Oh, what about that tar? You know, I think you would think if you were a curious person, maybe you would, you should have, I don't know.

Scooped it up. Done something, yeah, but we wouldn't want any part as like this, not on a checklist. We're not messing with that. You know, I knew it was, we're not looking for alien tar, but I don't know what that thing was because if it was a checklist, we're not messing with that. You know, I knew it was, we're not looking for alien tar, but I don't know what that thing was, because if it was a rock, it would have probably,

it would have put a whole, there's plenty, there's like holes in the, or dings, dents in the, in the telescope. Yeah, boom, boom, but this thing stuck. It was, it was like, like, so it was going that, it's fast as we were saying earlier. So I don't know, I think maybe in my retirement, that's where you think about what you said

about even the foam, how the foam could penetrate. Yeah. So, right. What kind of bad would we get on there? What was this thing? It wasn't launched like that. Yeah. I don't know what, maybe it's not there anymore, man.

I don't know what that was. Aliens, I think. I don't know what it was, but I know, man. I don't know, I don't know what that was aliens, I think. I'm worried about you. I don't know what it was, but I know exactly when it happened, I need to find, I need to look at my, I got all my tapes, I should go home and do absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I got all my, I'm gonna wait.

I'm gonna see that. I'm gonna see that. I think it was right in front of me. Great, the same. Yeah, just took your tapes away. Yeah. I'm gonna go home and do that. Yeah, I'm gonna do that.

How far away are we from commercial flights to space, you think? First of all, is that good enough for a weird thing to say? I was just, I was, I was, I wasn't like, I didn't see, you know, ET show up or anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, but how far are we from what now? Commercial space flights. Well, we have them, you know, Jeff Bezos and Captain Kirk

and William Shatton went to space. So those are, what do you mean by commercial, do you mean like tourism? Like, I have a person. Yeah, I can add like one of us to say, hey, we want to pay whatever the ticket is and we can go. Yeah, well, if you've got like millions of bucks,

you can try that, I guess. It's a lot of money. So we have a bet. This is a real bet. Yeah, good. This is a real bet. The bet is that, because we had this big old argument on the podcast ones that I said they'll have machines

that'll wash your dishes for you, not a dishwasher, but an actual roll-up. A washer dish for you. And he says, that's not gonna happen for a long time. He says, we're gonna have affordable commercial flights in space before that. So we're like, made this huge bet. Oh, what do you think?

What do I think? I think, I think space flights might come first. And the reason, no, the reason I'm saying that though, it's not because I think either one is possible. I'm just wondering which one would have the, financial benefit for whoever's making these things. You know what I mean? And I think like space flight has always been prohibitive

because it's too freaking expensive. And it's just not possible for anybody to be able to build a rocket ship unless they were a government. So I think that I'm just, I'm not a, you know, I'm not an investment guy or anything like that for Shark Tank or anything. But I'm thinking like, I'm just wondering it seems like that's going to take a lot of technology. I'm not sure.

So what led the debate for me was like a dishwasher with people really needed, but it was affordable, but to have like a robot, I don't know. That's not expensive. We had a kid in here one time that was, forget what his degree was, he was going to, but they were doing a lot of stuff on AI technology. And he says that there's a huge challenge for the robot to be able to distinguish whether the dish is even dirty

or not. And so we can make things that pick up the, put it down, but to recognize a dish that's dirty versus a clean one, and like that, that we're a lot further away from that than I think a lot of people realize. And so that started this debate, and then that's where it's self, and I said, no, we're gonna have commercial flights

of space before we'll have a dish washing robot inside the house. Yeah, we might, I mean, because there is the company is like Blue Origin Jeff Bezos, his company in SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's company. They're economically motivated to do these things and it's available now. It's expensive still. But so the price has to come down. For them to be economically viable, the price has to come down. They realize that. Which innovation technology?

Yeah, right. So I'm from that standpoint, the technology need to do the dish washing thing. I'm not sure if the payoff is there yet. I think that the price has to come down. The price of spaceflight has come down. Even though it's ridiculously expensive. So you, you by far are the, have the highest education out of anybody else we've had on this podcast. So we're going to go and take you as an authority.

Yeah. And that's where I'm going to take that as a win for me. Maybe a little step above, but it's gotta be proven still. What's the transition been like to go from aspirin, cause that's such a peak, right? Such a pinnacle. What's the transition to go from aspirin out to now? You're not flying in space.

You said you're teaching. Has that been tough or? I miss it. I think the worst of it was probably right after leaving. There's a chapter in my book I told about knowing when to pivot. I flew in 2009 and I was still in active astronaut. It was the show program ended a few years later. I was hoping maybe I might get assigned to one of those last shuttle flights, but the

timing didn't work out. And I was offered a year after my first pilot's flight. I was offered by my good friend and the chief of the office, my name is Peggy Wittsen. So you offered me a chance to replace a guy to go to the ISS on a Soyuz, on a Russian vehicle. And I was, was it, like, well, I wanna put you on this flight. You're gonna replace them now. And it's like, let me give me some time to think about it, right? So she's like, take the evening

and let me know tomorrow morning. And so I talked about it at home and I thought about it and I went in and said, that's the timing's not right. You know, it was, what was going on in my personal life So I talked about it at home and I thought about it and I went in and said, that's the timing is not right. You know, it was what was going on in my personal life and the ages of my kids and I had already flown in space a couple times. I think really when I think about that, the decision to turn it down was more that I felt satisfied in some way of what I had done.

I never thought that that would be possible in my space career. And I think I was ready for something else. At that point, I had been an astronaut for 14 years. So I hung around another four years and did stuff in the office until I found what I really wanted to do next, which was to become a university professor and to write and speak and do things that could could educate and Spires what the hope was and talk to you guys stuff like that right and

but that that was That was really tough to give up on a dream job that I worked so hard to get and then got and then Loved it most most most of it was was absolutely wonderful, but to face the the for me and for me it was I think it's I've had enough and it was really hard to admit that. I mean some one of my colleagues who's much older than I am is still there. His name is Don Pettit. He was in one of my classmates. He's going to fly in space and turn 70 years old in space.

Wow, that's cool. Imagine he's going on a long direction in another one. And he's hung in there. So, you know, some people do that. And I think about, well, you know, should I have done that? I think a lot of it had to do what was going on personally, how I felt about things and I just felt like I couldn't commit to that flight at that time.

And then once I turned that flight down, I was like, what am I doing? What am I telling myself? But sometimes you think you're gonna act or behave a certain way and then a decision is put in front of you and you make it and you're like, whoa, okay, that's kind of, that surprised me that I know I was gonna say that, what does that tell me about what I just did?

I think, I think so. I don't know if this is, and I'm still learning about things, you know, but in general, but I think that when we're faced with a big decision in life, whether it's something in our personal life or relationship or job opportunity, when it's huge, there are times where those come a few times in our life. it's not a no-brainer. Like for me, becoming an astronaut was a no-brainer. Like there was no doubt in my mind I was saying yes to that.

But I think a lot of other things we do is kind of like, you know, there's always regret or should I do this. I think some decisions is always gonna be regret in one way or the other. And I think you wanna think this way but I feel like looking back on it what I did is I tried to minimize the regret I would have. There would be regret if I would have, I left and I experienced that regret of saying,

I should have stayed in there longer and maybe tried for another space flight. But there's also regret if you stayed too long because you're not giving your chance to do something else. So those decisions are the tough ones to make. And once I turned down that flight, which I had to do quickly, because I was given that that timeline, I started thinking about, well, what do I want to do next? And that's when I had worked as a professor before. I was at Georgia Tech the year before. I was selected as an astronaut.

I was doing some adjunct work over at Rice University in Houston, and then I was made an offer to return to where I went as an undergrad and come back home to New York at Columbia. And that was a good move, I thought. It was a chance to be in a media capital, a chance to go home, get good pizza again. So, and that's what I decided to do. But these are not these are not easy decisions to make. It's hard to know when it's time to move on. You know, when it's when you've you've gone from one phase to the next Allen bean who I've mentioned earlier the fourth kind of moon who talked about leadership and other things

became a mentor of mine. And when he left, he walked on the moon, then he was on Skylab for a long duration flight that was back in the 70s. And then he was thinking about what he wanted to do. Should he stay for another flight or should he do something else? He was an artist. He is an artist. At that time, he'd surpassed now. He's gone, but he was very artistic.

He was able to paint, and he decided to dedicate the next phase of his life to painting. And he said, never look at anything as an ending. Look at as that next phase. And what he did very successfully was paint his experiences as an astronaut, his experiences on the moon. No one can communicate the way he can about what it was like to have the experiences he had,

particularly those on the moon. I mentioned he went to Skylab, but his paintings are all about the moon and his camaraderie and his friendships and depicting all these. It's quite, quite extraordinary what he was able to do. And so I felt like I can't paint. I can't draw a stick figure. I just can't. But I felt like I could help tell the story

of these experiences through writing like, like with the book and with my teaching and doing things like talking to you guys. So my thanks for listening. Yeah. I don't know if it's I've one last question. I just could. It's personal. Yeah. I don't know if it's, I have one last question. I'm just gonna say that's personal itch. I don't know if it's too personal or not. But I'm curious. Yeah. Do they pay astronauts well? Can you get rich in astronauts?

No. No. No. I mean, with such a high education and stuff like that, you guys could go do so many other careers and make a lot of money. You obviously then choose to do that, not because of that at all.

No. Now you can't, you're actually, you're paid as a government employee. That's like I say. You're on the government pay scale. Yeah. So you're a GS, there's like a GS, the government service, I think it still works this way. It goes like from one to 15, 15's the highest, and then there's steps within there like one to 10. So you can get up there, I forget where we were hired. We were pretty high on the government service level, especially if you get a few years of experience, you kept getting promoted,

but no, you're not making all that much money. You're paid comfortably. Yeah, you're paid like any other government employee. Okay, so. But you could work your way up though. You could work your way up to the top of the, or near the top of the government pay scale. But nobody can Google that to find out.

Nobody's doing it to get rich. No, you're in it for, you have a month, and there are many opportunities to do that more than, especially with the education, other things you have going on. You're not gonna, no. And we also didn't get like any, we didn't get paid overtime. also didn't get like any,

we didn't get paid overtime. We didn't get any comp time. We did not even get hazardous duty pay. Oh, what? Right, which was interesting because like, when we were flying, the guys who were working in our jets to put us in, they got hazardous duty pay. People have put us in the spaceship,

they got hazardous duty pay. But you're in the same place. But you got, we didn't get hazardous duty pay. That's kind of funny. The only thing, the only extra, we did get a flight bonus. And so it's a government program, right? I'll tell you about our flight bonus.

Our government program, part of it is like, when you go on travel orders, when you go travel, you're on orders, right? You're traveling for the government. So, so you're going on a business trip, we're gonna come out here to San Jose, it would be, you know, from Houston to San Jose and return. That's your trip, you're going to return back home.

You're going to be gone these days, lodging cost, they'll give you money for lodging. They'll take, this is what, per diem, you get food. Some of the stuff you, you know, per diem for us, blah, blah, blah, you know. So transportation, airfare, all that. So that's a transportation, airfare, so all that. So that's what the government is paying the St.

Johannes trip. Okay. Going to space, I get called in from the secretary, and she goes, Mike, you need to sign your travel orders. Like what travel orders? Because for your space flight, I think this is a joke. Cause no, it's a government operation. You get travel orders. It says from Kennedy Space Center, Florida

to lower Thoroughbitt End return. I was very happy to see the end return At least the government's trying to get me back, right? So the lower Thoroughbitt end return and then I'm reading resident Transportation provided you're going on a spaceship Food provided they're gonna feed you orange T lodging provided lodging provided lodging for everything's provided pump pump pump pump pump pump everything's like zeroed out at the bottom miscellaneous and incidental expenses

$3 per day I'm sure like some you know, so what is that? Well, they always go on travel you would get like money to, you know, what is that? Well, they always let it go. If you go on travel, you would get like money to, you know, meal money like $40 a day or whatever they were gonna pay you, right? And that's what it was. And you'd get a check for that when you got back.

They didn't necessarily need to be sheets unless it was something big or something. But it was instant, I never even noticed, but I know all the government travel orders is miscellaneous expensive. So it's like a chewing gum or, you know, I don't know, something you needed to give a tip to somebody, whatever it was, $3 a day. And they could not zero that out.

I don't know why they didn't, but I'm sure they tried with great effort at the government accounting office, but they did not. So you got to check for $3 a day, for every day you were in space, and it was considered a reimbursement, so it was tax-free. That's a tax-free $3 a day per day. Big ball in the ass of bonus. Mike, this has been awesome.

Yeah, really appreciate it. Thank you for stopping by. Thank you. Yeah, great conversation, great time. Hope people check out your books. Yeah, thanks very much. Yeah, moonshot goes on sale December time. Hope people check out your books. Yeah, thanks very much. Yeah, Moon shot goes on sale December 5th

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