The Infinite Monkey Cage - Astronaut Special

Episode Date: July 10, 2017

Astronaut SpecialBrian Cox and Robin Ince transport the cage to Trondheim Norway, host of this year's Starmus Festival, for an extraordinary gathering of astronauts. They are joined on stage by NASA astronauts Sandra Magnus and Terry Virts, ESA astronaut Claude Nicollier, and Apollo 16's Charlie Duke, one of the last people to have walked on the moon. They talk about their personal journeys to fulfill their long-held dreams, and literally reach for the stars. They hear from Charlie Duke about the extraordinary Apollo missions he was part of, including his role as Capsule Communicator for the very first moon landing, before taking his own first steps on the lunar surface as part of Apollo 16. They explore the different experience of astronauts from Charlie's era, and those who now become residents of space, spending months and months aboard the International Space Station, and the challenges each mission brings. And Claude Nicollier describes his epic spacewalk to repair the Hubble Telescope. Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

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This is the BBC. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And welcome to the podcast version of The Infinite Monkey Cage, which contains extra material that wasn't considered good enough for the radio. Enjoy it. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox.

And we are in Trondheim for a very special edition of The Infinite Monkey Cage. Normally on Monkey Cage, Brian believes he has kind of parity with the guests. You know, he's done similar research or has a similar breadth of scientific knowledge. But not today, because despite some of the heights that Brian has been to, yeah, he's been up 60,000 feet in an English electric lightning. I myself have spent quite a lot of time up in the loft,

but never have I been to the same dizzying heights of our guests because our guests have orbited the Earth and stood on the Moon. Yet. Well, we haven't got there yet. I won't become an astronaut because I'm slightly wary of glass elevators. I really am genuinely in awe today, by the way. This is just such a fantastic panel. So, today, what are we going to be exploring, Brian?

Well, we will be exploring the subject of human spaceflight with a panel consisting entirely of astronauts, and they are... Hi, I'm Sandra Magnus. I have flown in space three times. I had two short-duration missions, one in 2002 to the space station. I lived on the space station for four and a half months, so I consider myself a resident of space. And then I was on the very last shuttle mission, ST half months, so I consider myself a resident of space. And then I was on the very last shuttle mission, STS-135, in July of 2011. Well, hello everyone. I'm Claude Nicollier. I'm a Swiss citizen. I was an ESA astronaut, ESA for the European Space Agency. I was selected in the first group of ESA astronauts in 1978.

I was sent to Houston and spent 25 years over there, but I spent only 43 days in space. So you understand the ratio is quite startling. But I had the great privilege of going towards the Hubble Space Telescope on shuttle flights, including the very first service ignition, which saved it in the sense that we fixed the optics. So since that time, it became a very useful and very wonderful instrument. Hello, everyone. I'm Charlie Duke. I was an astronaut picked in 1966. In 72, I was selected

to go to the moon, and I spent three days on the surface of the moon with John Young on Apollo 16. We were an 11-day mission, so I'm probably the guy up here that had less time in space. But if you get one flight, going to the moon was the one you wanted. I'm Terry Vertz. I flew on the space shuttle Endeavor where we delivered Node 3, which is a living module on the space station, and also the Cupola, which is the coolest module on the station. It's a seven-windowed observatory. And then

a few years later, I flew on a long-duration mission. I was in space for 200 days on that flight, so about seven months overall. But Charlie, I'll trade you. No. This is our panel. What an incredible panel.

Charlie, you got your wings with the US Navy. Was it 1958? In 1959, actually, but I went to the Naval Academy, but I deserted for the Air Force, and I was an Air Force pilot for 29 years. But this is, what, three years before Gagarin flew. So when you first, you started flying, there was no such thing as an astronaut. Was Gagarin the motivation for you? What gave you the idea?

When I was in Germany as a fighter pilot in 1961, when Yuri Gagarin went up, and then shortly thereafter was Alan Shepard. And then a couple weeks later, President Kennedy announced, we're going to go to the moon, and we're going to land on the moon, and we're going to return safely by the end of 1969. And everybody in our squadron said, yeah, sure, 15 minutes in space, we're going to go to the moon. Back then, those here old enough can remember 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It blew up rather than lift it off most of the time. And so I didn't think we were going to make it. But I went back to MIT to get a master's degree. And I was working on the Apollo guidance and navigation system. And I met some astronauts, some of the third group of astronauts. And they

were so gung-ho and so excited about this job. I made it a deal. How did I get that job? And they said, well, go to test pilot school. So I did. And that was the motivation, really, was meeting these earlier astronauts like Charlie Bassett and Don Isley and some of the other early third group. Terry, out of the panel, you, the one who's most recently been into space, how much has the selection process changed in terms of how you can become an astronaut and the process of becoming one? You know, one of my favorite movies is The Right Stuff. We actually watched that the night before my first shuttle launch. And it's really funny scenes about the different things that go through in selection. And it was amazing to me how similar it was. Some of the crazy stuff they don't do anymore, but it's still a very in-depth medical process that they go through.

And there's some interviews that they try and trick you up or they want to see what kind of person you are. But it's a lot like the right stuff even still today. Now, the pool, we just had a class over 18,000 people applied. And before I left NASA, I actually worked a class, over 18,000 people applied. And before I left NASA, I actually worked to help sort through some of those people. And the pool is much broader now than it used to be, but in a lot of ways, it's still the same. So Charlie and Terry, you're the, what you might say the traditional route into being an astronaut, which is a test pilot in school. But I know, Sandy, you didn't take that route, did you? You came through engineering.

pilot school. But I know, Sandy, you didn't take that route, did you? You came through engineering. Yeah, actually, I was worried about my eyesight, because my left eye is right on the borderline of what NASA was taking. And so I knew when I was in college that I couldn't go through the military, because I had no chance of being a pilot, even at that point, I don't think they were really having women fly, fighters. So I was always interested in science, so I studied physics first. When I was in high school, I didn't know engineering existed, so I naturally gravitated to physics, and then I discovered engineering

and eventually studied that as well. So I decided that my route to the core was going to have to be through the science and engineering fields, which was great, because that's what I was interested in in any way. And then you applied to become an astronaut through a, it's a public sort of a call for astronauts, isn't it? Yeah, that NASA announces, hey, we're going to hire astronauts, and next year, please apply if you're interested, and of course, when I applied, it was before the internet, so I basically called Johnson Space Center,

I asked for the astronaut selection office, and I said, please send me an application. You said before we started that it was middle school. There was a point where you suddenly went, this is my ambition. Was there anything, a particular event, a particular thing that you saw? You thought, yeah, that's astronaut. That's what I'm going to be.

It's funny they asked me that in the interview as well, and I didn't have a good answer. I was five when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, so I really don't remember it very much. I remember my parents putting this in front of the TV, but I think it was just the idea of exploring and being on the edge of what people can do, and of course, who doesn't want to see the Earth from space?

That just really captured my imagination, and it stuck. It's like, I've got to go do this, and I decided to try, because you never know unless you try, and yeah, it's like, maybe it could happen, and it did, so I was very, very fortunate. Now, I know, Claude, that Sandy said you started in physics. You also started in physics and astrophysics, didn't you? I'm tempted to say what went wrong for you. Something went very, very, very wrong. Well, it's true. I studied physics and astrophysics in respectively Lausanne University, Switzerland and Geneva. I was at the same time a fighter pilot in the Swiss Air Force because in Switzerland we do this as a part-time activity. I flew Hawker Hunters for 22 years, which is wonderful.

And in a way, both skills helped me in the selection of the first group of ESA astronauts in 1978. When the Apollo program took place in the 60s and early 70s, I was in my mid-20s. I had finished my studies. I was a fighter pilot. But for me, it seemed like becoming an astronaut for a European and a Swiss citizen, it was impossible because that's something that the Soviet Union was doing and the

Americans very brightly with the Apollo program. And it's only after 1975 when ESA or the European nations were invited to participate in the shuttle program in the form of the space lab contribution, a space laboratory within the payload bay of the shuttle. And at the same time, the U.S. invited ESA to provide astronauts,

and immediately I thought, well, that's something I want to do, and I devoted all my efforts to be successful on the first election, which happened in 1978. And it's true, I was in a way not loyal to astrophysics. I had studied a PhD and I never finished it. But in a way, I became loyal again to astrophysics when I

had the opportunity to go and fix Hubble, or let's say help fix Hubble with my colleagues because that was a service to astrophysics, but in a different way than doing research in astrophysics. You mentioned Hubble there. Were you aware of the importance of that mission at the time? I mean, obviously, it's a very expensive piece of hardware,

but the impact that that telescope has had on everybody, I think everybody has seen those images. Was that in your mind? Because that was all in the future, of course. You didn't know what that instrument was capable of. Yeah, of course, the first servicing mission when we had that pretty significant optical problem so the telescope was unable to get sharp pictures of

celestial objects. We were aware of the fact that the first servicing mission, STS-61 the 61st shuttle mission during the whole preparation we were aware of the fact that this is an important mission, and NASA made it pretty clear that there was no... Failure was not an option for this mission.

There was quite a lot of pressure on us, but at the same time, we had some priorities because NASA wanted to be sure that we were going to be properly trained to do this very important mission. NASA could not tolerate another failure. There was a failure, not failure, but a mistake of sending to orbit a $2 billion telescope with the wrong shape of the primary mirror.

So it was important to be successful in the fixing of that problem, which was the installation of an optical corrector. We could not exchange the primary mirror of the telescope. We were well aware of the importance of the mission. Charlie, thinking about the idea of failure is not an option, you were, before Apollo 16, you were at CAPCOM on Apollo 11, which is basically direct communication with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during the landing. And reading about that, it sounds like that landing on the moon, there was a level of jeopardy that last minute before actually getting the module down.

Can you explain a little bit what was going on? Well, we had a series of problems on the descent of Apollo 11. First, we had communication problems which was causing data dropout, so we had to orient the spacecraft to different attitudes to get proper communications. Then we started having computer overloads. We had a rudimentary computer, but it was the best we had back in those days. But it was overloading and telling everybody that, hey, I got too much to do and I'm dropping off this job or whatever. So those problems persisted on the way down, but we had to make a decision, were we go or no go? Well, fortunately, we had two guys in mission control who knew what was wrong,

and they said we're go flight. And so we continued on, and then we found that our trajectory was incorrect, and we had targeted them into an area of the moon that was unsuitable for landing. them into an area of the moon that was unsuitable for landing. So Armstrong had to level off and fly horizontally for a couple of kilometers probably, and then pitch up, slow down, and then start down for a landing. Well, that took a lot of extra fuel. So now we're getting to minimum fuel. And I forgot exactly what percentage was minimum fuel, but it was the last two calls we made from mission control was 60 seconds. And that meant he had 60 seconds to land. Then I called 30 seconds and they still weren't on the ground. And so things were really tense in mission Control.

You know, they were close, but were we going to make it? And fortunately, we didn't get to the abort call. We landed with 17 seconds before that call. That didn't mean we were 17 seconds for fuel, but it meant that that would be the abort call in 17 seconds. But we heard contact, engine stop, and great sigh of relief in mission control because it was really tense. Are we going to make this? And sure enough, Neil Armstrong was cool, cool, cool. And he came back a couple of seconds after the touchdown

and said, Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed. Well, I was so excited, I couldn't even pronounce Tranquility. It came out twang. And then I corrected myself, and I said, Roger, we copy you down. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. And it was a big sigh of relief in mission control, of course. And you actually, I didn't know, but just we were talking earlier, and you said that on your mission, Apollo 16, you were very close to aborting that mission. Not quite 17 seconds, but close to not landing. We were one hour before landing on the far side of the moon,

and Mattingly and the command module had to change his orbit, which required the ignition of the main engine. Well, the main engine had a problem, and it sounded severe to us. And so John says, abort the burn, and that meant no landing. We were an hour before landing on the front side. So if your heart could drop to the bottom of your boots in zero gravity, ours did. You know, we were an hour from landing, and eight miles beneath us was our landing spot, and they'd about to say, come home.

So it would have been a very bitter pill to swallow, but fortunately Mission Control looked at the data. It took them four hours, but they made a workaround for Mattingly, and so four hours later they gave us a landing, a go for landing, and then two hours later we came back around and landed. So it was very close to us. It wasn't life-threatening, but it was just a mission abort situation. From absolute disappointment to elation in an hour.

We were. mission abort situation from absolute disappointment to elation in an hour we were and then uh then we were late landing and so we had a uh the flight plan had land had us land power down the spacecraft put on our backpacks and go out and explore well mission control said well now let's see here we've. By the time you get out and get back in, you'll be awake 35 hours, and we don't want you to make a mistake. So we're going to change the plan, and we want you to go to sleep first. Well, can you imagine four hours after landing on the moon and said, go to sleep? So we said, all right. And so we took off our suits and put up some hammocks. But there was very little sleep that night, at least by me. John went right to sleep. He was amazing how he could just change his mode, if you will,

but I couldn't get to sleep for four or five hours. I couldn't get to sleep last night just knowing I was going to meet four astronauts. So it was, can I just say you were saying when we were chatting before about the giddiness of you know you're on the moon you are larking about and you said because of course 1972 was also the Olympics on Earth as well

and you did towards the end of your time on the moon went oh we haven't done any moon Olympics yet can you say a little bit about the moon Olympics? We had decided that at the end of every Apollo flight, somebody did something unique. Apollo 14, Alan Shepard hit a golf ball. And on Apollo 15, there was a hammer-feather trick.

Drop a hammer, drop a feather, and they both hit the moon at the same time. So Newton's gravitational laws work. And so we were going to do the Moon Olympics because there was an Olympics in Munich that year. So we were going to do the high jump. We planned high jump and then a broad jump. But we were running behind schedule, and Houston was pushing us. And so I said, get ready to get back inside, guys.

And John said, well, we were going to do the Moon Olympics. And he starts to bounce. And so I started bouncing. And so I jumped, and I was probably three or four feet over a meter off the moon. But when I jumped, I straightened up, and my center of gravity went backwards, and over I went backwards. And that was really scary because the backpack is not designed for an impact onto the moon. It has all your electrical systems and all of your oxygen and regulators, and if it breaks, you're dead. So I started scrambling to try to break my fall, which I was able to do,

and it bounced on my back, and my heart was just pounding. And John came over and looked down, said, you okay? And I said, I think so, help me up. So he helped me up, and my heart was just pounding. And I checked everything out, and I was okay. I'd survived this high jump record, and then I looked up, and the TV camera was pointing right at me, and my wife Dottie was in mission control, and she said mission control was really, really upset. So no more high jumps on the moon. Sandy, I wanted to ask you, because your experience is very different. You've spent 150 days in space.

Yeah. So, I mean, actually following on from what Charlie said, is it different now? I mean, do you get that? How has it changed in your opinion? How is it different to have long duration space flights? And also, did they allow you to do the Olympics and things now, or are they a bit more careful after Charlie? Don't do that. On the space station, they don't always see everything that you're doing. Right.

So you're probably doing some things that would be upsetting to them if they could see it, but hey, the cameras are off. It's a little bit different. The difference between a... I can't speak to the moon, but a shuttle mission. So it's a little bit different. You know, the difference between a, I can't speak to the moon, but a shuttle mission is very much like a sprint. It's very choreographed.

Every 15 minutes, you've got something you've got to do. Inevitably, you're getting behind. There's contingency plans on top of contingency plans when things go wrong, because you're only there for a short period of time and you have a lot to get done. So it feels very much like a sprint. When you live on the space station

and you're there for months and months and months, and Terry can talk to this as well, it's a marathon. You can't work at a sprint pace for months and months and months. And oh, by the way, if something breaks, you're going to be there next week, next month, and so forth. So everybody can slow down. And you can have a normal lifestyle because it really is, living on the space station really is moving to space. I mean, I wasn't kidding when I talked about myself as a resident of space. You adapt to a whole other level. Your days flow into the same rhythm that you have here on the ground. You know, you get up, you go to work, you go home. It happens to be the same place, so you don't have to go far,

but you develop this sort of rhythm of life. You're just doing it in microgravity with this beautiful view out the window. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Is it different, Terry? I suppose you have a lot more time to think as well in that case. I assume that on a mission like Apollo 16, your timeline is pretty full, and your adrenaline is there all the time. When you get that time to relax and think about your situation, does that add to the enjoyment, or does it add partly to the realization of where you are in this hostile environment? Before I did my long duration, everybody said the shuttle's a sprint and the station's a marathon.

And after a few weeks during my station flight, I remember thinking, well, I've been sprinting for weeks. When do I ever slow down? It just seemed like I was always busy. But the thing that I did in my free time was take pictures. I like to take pictures of the Earth. And while I was there, we were filming an IMAX movie. It's called Beautiful Planet. And it was filmed on our spare time. NASA never scheduled time to film this movie. So I basically took my spare time to film the movie. But thinking about the Olympics, Charlie,

I was there during the Canadian Olympics, and Suichi Noguchi, one of the Japanese astronauts, brought skis, so we would do ski jumping and keep on floating. And then on my second flight, there's an American football player named J.J. Watt, and if there's any Americans, you know who he is, and if there's not, you don't know who he is,

but he's really famous, and I was doing a video conference with him, and he had just set a high jump record for how high he could jump. And I said, JJ, I heard you set this record. I said, watch this. And I jumped up, and I went into this other Japanese module about five meters up and floated down. And he was, you know, impressed.

So a few months later, I met him after the flight, and he said, Terry, you want to do that high jump thing again? And I was like, oh, man, my back hurts. I can't do it. Terry, I don't know about you, but one thing you do spend a lot of time, you know, in the spare time in the space station, it's looking for stuff. Oh God, yeah. Because think about... I spend the time in my hotel room looking for where's my room key, but in space. When you think about moving into a house that somebody else unpacked for you and the closets are kind of scattered all over the place and you're not quite sure

what's in what closet. So you spend a lot of time actually tracking things. Well, in a way, the secret to find things in space is Velcro. A table is totally useless in space because this glass of water stays on the table and the water also

is in the bottom of the glass and stays there because of gravity. Without gravity, a table is totally useless and we replace it with Velcro. Most of the object, at least in my experience in shuttle flights, most of the object, whether it's the lens of the Hasselblad camera or the body of the Hasselblad camera or

food containers where you prepare your scrambled eggs. There are Velcro patches, and there are pale blue Velcro patches everywhere. And whenever you have prepared something, you want to find it again, you put it on Velcro on the wall, on the ceiling. Velcro is the secret. Without Velcro, no human space flight possible. Can I tell a story about losing things in space? On our flight on the second day, Ken

Mattingly, the command module pilot, lost his waiting ring. And this volume was 300 cubic feet, so it wasn't a very big spacecraft, but this waiting ring had disappeared. So we went to the moon, and John and I landed on the moon. Three days later, we came back, and now it's the seventh, eighth day of the mission, and he's still looking for this wedding ring. The ninth day of the mission, we're on our way home, and we have a spacewalk, EVA, we call it. Mattingly gets out, and then I get out, and I'm tending his lifelines, and I look over here, and there's the earth 180,000 miles away, and the moon's back over here about 50,000 miles. Really amazing view, if you will. Then I get back inside in what was called the lower equipment bay, and Mattingly's now three meters out working on a biological experiment with his back to me,

and it's just brilliant sunlight. And all of a sudden I get this glint, and I look over, and there's his wedding ring floating out the hatch. And I said, man, there it is. And I reached for it, and I missed it. And so the relative velocity just took it out of the hatch very slowly, and it kept going out. I said, it's going to hit him on the back of the head. It's going to hit him on the back of the head. And sure enough, I don't know, a couple of minutes later, it hit him on the back of the head in a round helmet and a round ring.

And it took a 180-degree bounce and came back towards the hatch. And about two minutes later, it floated back inside and I grabbed it I just I just it was the beginning of that story though which was the two things that you did as well when you just went we went to the moon and we came back from the moon and it's just the the nonchalance of saying that. And then when Brian said to you, so you spent 150 days in space, you went, yeah. And there's something that is quite remarkable, I suppose, at the fact that that's just part of the story. But when you were spending 150 days in space, that's obviously a very different experience to having a three-day movie. experience to having a three day movie

is there a point where it does as you were saying you're just thinking I've lost things I need to do this and it almost does become a job, a mundane job because I would just think I'd be up there the whole time going I'm in space I'd get nothing done, there's the earth

I'm in space it's funny because you do normalise to it it becomes okay this is my life. I get up and I float over here and I talk to all these people on the ground and then I float over there and I do this. And it becomes very normal. And I remember after I'd been on station for,

I don't know, a month and a half or something, I realized I had sort of adapted so that this was normal and I had to stop and go, wait a minute, this is not normal. You're living in a tin can full of air, circling above the Earth, you know, every 90 minutes. I don't know about you guys, but this became normal, Terry. Just, okay, another day on space station. Does it become normal, routine?

You're so, like I said, you're so busy doing all this stuff, and then you look at this view that is just indescribable. I mean, literally, you can't describe the views with words. And then it's like, wow, I can't believe this, but I've got to get back to work. You have to be everything because we say astronauts, but you built that thing.

So you have to be a construction engineer. My favorite part of being an astronaut was doing everything. And whatever you think you're good at, when you get to the astronaut office, there's somebody or ten people better than you at whatever it was you thought you were good at. But I got to be the crew doctor, and I was the dentist. They tell me I replaced the first filling in space. And the scariest thing I did, I flew with a lady named Samantha Cristoforetti,

and I know many of the Europeans here have heard of Samantha. She's very well-known. And she wouldn't allow me to launch before I knew how to style her hair. So I had to go to the lady's hairdresser. And for two and a half hours, her poor hair cutter taught me how to do lady's hair. And for men, you put the number two thing on and it's done. So that was the scariest thing I did. We did like a real hairstyle in space. Wait, Terry. It was a little bit of everything. Thank you for doing that because I didn't let the guys cut my hair while I was up there because I was afraid of what was going to happen.

I know. Normally women just let their hair grow or they do a trim. So I think I did the first real woman's haircut. Let's give Terry a round of applause. I love the idea of landing. You've just come back from space, and the first thing someone says, have you done something to your hair?

Well, for me, as opposed to Terry and Sandy, space never became really normal, because, you know, 43 days in space in four flights means on the average 11 days per flight. And I never worked on my hair, by the way. Didn't have the time in short flights, and there was no reason anyway. But the missions were wonderful. There's no relationship between being long time in space

and having pure satisfaction or pleasure in space. And for me, the fact of working on Hubble, this absolutely superb instrument, as well for the public as for the astronomers, was a huge pleasure. For me, in fact, the deepest satisfaction of being in space was doing things that were very meaningful. The views of the Earth, the weightlessness, the views of the sky, which were very touching for me, were extras that were wonderful,

but the main thing was work on a scientific instrument on Hubble, which is an extraordinary treasure for humanity. Can I ask you a question that often gets asked is why we do this? So in particular, human spaceflight. So beyond the, well, just that simple question, when asked this, and I'm sure you are, why do we do human spaceflights? I'm sure you are. Why do we do human space flights? You know, it's funny. When people ask us, and by us I mean either astronauts or those of us that work in the aerospace industry, why, we tend to start talking about how and what, right?

Oh, well, we're going to go to Mars. Oh, we're going to build this kind of spaceship. And those are not really why answers. Those are how and what. The why, I think, and this is always a toughie because you talk to people outside of the space industry and they want concrete answers. The why is, I think, quite fundamental. We're curious as human beings. We're explorers as human beings. And we've been expanding our frontiers on the Earth

for centuries, right? And now it's time to go and expand our frontiers off of the Earth. And I think it really comes down to something that simple. It helps us grow as human beings. It helps us grow as a species. It's a natural curiosity that we have that makes us unique. Unfortunately, when you go talk to funding agencies, that doesn't resonate so much. I think it resonates a lot with the general public. And so you can then have conversations about all the practicalities of the technology spinoffs and how

the exploration that we're doing in space actually any exploration whether it's in space or under sea helps develop technologies and techniques and relationships and things that benefit people on Earth. I think if you look at the space station program one of the intangible benefits of the space station

program that we really don't talk about much is the fact that you've got 16 countries who have been able to work together for over 20 years to do this incredibly complex project despite any other tensions that are going on around that project. That's huge. After my first flight, I was in space. I landed. I was really dizzy. We went through these medical exams, got reunited with my family. And I finally made it back to astronaut crew quarters, which is like a hotel room. So whenever you get to your hotel room, you turn on the TV.

So I turned on the TV. The news channel was on. And I watched it for a few seconds. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I turned it off. Like, we think this is important was the thought. A few minutes ago, I saw I was in space. There's the universe and the earth. And now this is what people, this is what, I mean,

this is what we think is important. It really struck me of just how silly a lot of stuff is kind of in our daily lives. And I was thinking that 500 years from now, people are going to know Charlie Duke's name and people are going to think that the space station was our first steps into the cosmos. And they're not going to remember whatever the policy for this thing or that thing. And like Sandy said, you know, the mission of the space station is science, and we have all these engineering, technical, you know, all of our NASA awkward engineers have all this stuff. But when I was in space, the Ukrainian Civil War was going on. Russia had annexed Crimea. The West had put sanctions.

It was not all-time low, but it was pretty low between the West and Russia. And I was flying there with my cosmonaut friends, who I love. Before launch, we did a toast, and I was like, you guys are my brothers, you know. And we were like, there's this thin little piece of metal, and there's death right on the other side. And here we are trying to survive together. You know, they're like my brothers up there. And all this stuff was happening on Earth. And so, yes, science is important in these technical things. But the space station has been, I think, the best example of how people can, you know, Charlie's missions was born out of competition. But now we've become, you know, able to work together. So there's really some

big picture stuff that can get lost in the daily minutia. Well, I see personally human access to space as a Darwinian evolution. You know, this is a step in the evolution of human that will lead us to a situation where we have a better survival possibility long term. Pretty much like part of life left the water about 300 million years ago and went on land.

This was in a way a biological necessity and I think going to space is in a way a biological necessity. We can't avoid it. It happens because it gives us long term and a higher chance of survival to humanity. When I say long term, I mean decades, centuries or millennia. Do you think that... Is Mars the mission of... Is that the correct point to be directing our next grand ambition?

Well, I think it's a logical step because beyond the moon, this is really the celestial body that, on one hand, is really interesting and is accessible. It really is accessible. It takes a long time. It's not totally obvious that it's easy to settle there and get proper protection from cosmic radiation and other environmental challenges. But it is really definitely the next, quote-unquote, easy step into the solar system. Charlie, I suppose Apollo is probably one of the more well-defined space programs in that, as you said earlier, Kennedy defined it.

But the broader question that we've asked there is why we do these things. You must have thought about that a lot. Well, I think Sandy, in my view, has the answer. We're made with an inquisitive nature. There's this desire to explore that's within us. And, you know, whether you do it on the micro level or the macro level, what's down underneath the ocean? You know, let's go see. And so the bathysphere.

And let's go out into the moon. And it might have been a decision, a political decision at first, but it turned into one of the greatest scientific endeavors in a search for not quest for knowledge. And I think we'll see the same with the Mars. It's just the Mars is there. And sooner or later, I think we'll put human beings on the surface of Mars. I might not be here for it, but that inquisitive, let's go see and let's go do it. And I don't think we can ever suppress that desire to, what's this all about?

Let's go explore. Let's go experiment. How do you feel, and this is really for everyone, but the idea, we sometimes will read articles or see people imagining the idea of us living in space, obviously on planet Earth in some ways in space, but living beyond the planet Earth and we have ideas of terraforming Mars and

we're on a planet that's actually pretty much designed for life and we're not always doing that well. How much do you think that there is a possibility that we would see a future where people were born and lived their life beyond the planet Earth? I think we will.

Again, I mentioned before that this is a step in the evolution in the Darwinian sense, and it gives us more options in the long-term future. Terraforming Mars, of course, is going to be very, very difficult, sense and it gives us more options in the long term future terraforming Mars of course is going to be very very difficult but we cannot exclude that it could be done someday 200 years, 500 years I don't know but

having access to space whether it's with robots or telescopes, scientific instrument human beings, colonies, gives us more options in the future for survival of humanity. And the only way we can figure out whether we, as humans, can become a planetary species or be stuck on planet Earth,

surface of planet Earth forever, is to just go there and evaluate the possibilities of living long-term on Mars and living from the land. We need to go there. And I'm convinced this is a major step in the evolution of the Darwinian sense. I completely agree, Claude. One of the duties you have as a NASA astronaut after your flight is you go to talk to politicians, congressmen, senators, presidents

sometimes. And after my last flight, I talked about 20. And the point that I made to each of them was we all want to go to Mars. We were on the journey to Mars. And I said, the problem is not the rocket science. The problem is the political science. And they all nodded. Everybody, their eyes lit up, and they totally got it and they pointed the finger yeah but the guys on the other side of the party if they would only blah blah blah you know and I'm like you're not getting the point so America had this idea of manifest destiny and we're moving west and we're expanding and I think that we should go to Mars but you can't just get there with words you need a real plan. It needs to, like,

actually have steps, and you need to stick to it, which is really hard in the American two- and four-year political cycles that we have, and it needs to be affordable. So I agree that we should be doing these things, but unless we come up with actual steps and actual architecture, like in The Martian, I love the movie The Martian, but this spaceship appeared and took them to Mars, right? And that's like the minor detail in the movie is how, you know, you've got to build that spaceship. So anyway, we should be going there, but we need to come up with a plan that we can stick to like we did with Apollo. Do you think it will be different to Apollo in the sense that it will be a public-private

partnership, a big partnership amongst nations? Is it too big for a single nation and a single government? My view, you know, America could do it, but we have the short attention span that it won't happen. The space station famously, I think it was 93, 94, it passed Congress by one vote.

I mean, like, 250 to 249, something like that. And the only reason it did is because it was an international space station. So if we did not have that international partnership aspect, it would have been easy to cancel. And in recent years, we've seen big NASA plans canceled, but they were American-only plans. So I think internationally, it can be more effective,

and you bring in other nations. There's a lot of benefits to that. But one of the most important benefits is it's harder to cancel. And international plans, you're not dating, you're kind of married, right? And it's harder to cancel that than it is dating. And actually, that's true for all of the international partners on the space station program. It's not just America. Every country has gone through its ups and downs with support in that particular country.

And because the actual what drives the International Space Station program, they're treaty-level documents. They're not just agreements between space agencies. They're actually agreements between governments, and that's added a lot of stability. And I agree. It's going to be an international effort, and it's going to involve public-private partnerships

because we're at this very interesting point in the evolution of space exploration where there are a lot of companies globally who feel like they understand space now and that they have access to the technology and we've got some people with a lot of money who are interested in developing businesses that they want to do things in space.

And those things are necessarily going to be independent of government at some point. And so if you design a really intelligent space program, you can figure out how to help those companies succeed while still pushing the bounds of what governments are doing and the explorations going further. So one would hope that that would be a comprehensive program. We have a lot of people who listen to this program

who are still at school, who are still making choice about what subjects to take. I wonder if we could just finish with those people who are listening to this who have the same dreams that you had when you were at school and thinking, I want to fly and then eventually want to be an astronaut. What advice would you give to those people who are at school thinking, I'm beginning to think astronaut's the way to go? Well, I would say, regardless of what your dream is, certainly astronaut is way cool,

and I highly recommend it. But regardless of what your dream is, certainly astronaut is way cool and I highly recommend it, but regardless of what your dream is, you need to go for it. You owe it to yourself to find that passion and find that interesting thing that you want to go do and do it. You don't want to look back on your life and say, what if? What if I would have decided to be an astronaut? I wonder if I could have done that. You don't want to do that.

Time is your most precious commodity. You need to spend it wisely. You need to spend it doing things that you are passionate about. Don't be afraid to try. Don't put limits on yourself. You can do it. Claude? Yeah, well, very much in the same direction. Be ready to take risks, but risks which are reasonable risks. Bungee jumping is fine as long as you are sure that the equipment is in proper order. Obviously, the direction of work and studies, the preferred ones are science, engineering, medicine, aviation, test flying, for instance. Pursue activities where you have to manage risk,

mountain climbing, parachute jumping, aerobatics flying, instrument flying, these kind of activities in parallel with your studies and your work as a professional. I can see a lot of parents listening. No, no, no. Charlie, what would you... Well, I agree with those two persons. I think that I talk to young people a lot.

My grandkids are in middle school and grammar schools. And so I say, you know, dream. Dream big and take care of yourself. If you want to be an astronaut, you've got to be in shape. You've got to have a good body. And develop your mind. Pick a subject that you're going to like, that intrigues you, whether it's physics or medicine or engineering. Those areas, I think, are very important for spaceflight careers.

space flight careers. But pick something that you like, because the day you get your degree and you've picked a career that you really don't like, but you're going to get in the space program, all of a sudden the space program is canceled. So you got an education that you hate. So pick something that you like, and if you never get picked for an astronaut, you'd have a career that's challenging, rewarding. My first book that I ever read when I was five in kindergarten was about Apollo, what Charlie was doing with his colleagues, and it was so awesome. I just fell in love. I wanted to be an astronaut, but that's crazy. Nobody gets to be an astronaut. I mean, that's like a ridiculous dream, but so I learned what you needed to be a test pilot was a good thing, and so I kind of did the steps along the way. I did everything you needed to do,

which I loved anyway. I would have been happy being a test pilot, but, and I was always told no one gets to do that. That's a crazy dream. Think about reasonable stuff. These other guys are a lot smarter than you. These other guys are better looking than you. And, and, but I was like, you're right. But I kept on applying, and I got very lucky and got picked. So what I tell kids is don't tell yourself no. Like Sandy said, unless you throw your name in the hat, you're going to spend the rest of your life going, man, I wish I would have tried that.

And if someone else tells you no, that's fine. You can try harder, pick something else, whatever. But don't tell yourself no. That's what I tell them. You know, I think people do that because they're afraid of failing, right? So it's really easy to come up with excuses. Oh, I can't do that. I would never get to do that.

And so sometimes we're our own worst enemies. The biggest failure is not trying. Exactly. That brings us to Samuel Beckett. Fail, fail again, fail better. Thank you very much to what a fantastic panel here in Tron Times. Thank you very much to... What a fantastic panel here in Trondheim. So thank you very much to Sandy Magnus, Claude Nicollier, Terry Burtz and Charlie Duke.

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