 Today's episode, we had a real astronaut on the show, Mike Massimino 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 spacewalk. I think four spacewalks, and 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 got to check it out. It's called Moonshot, a NASA astronauts guide to achieving the impossible. So we know you're going to enjoy this episode. Also one more thing. We have a three part training series for trainers and coaches. I'm actually teaching trainers and coaches how 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 But right now there are openings, so go there before we run out of space. Today's giveaway is Maps Anabolic Advance. Here's how you can win that. Leave a comment below this video, the first 24 hours that we drop it, subscribe to this channel, and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. We also have a sale going on. Maps old time strength is 50% off, and Maps OCR is also 50% off. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. Mike, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, Sal. I appreciate it. Look, before we get going, because there's so many questions, we need your help to settle a bet. We've got a big bet going on. You go right to the bet. We've got to start with this. Finally, we've got a real astronaut that we can talk to, so, okay, this would be a huge bet, a huge problem. Moon landing, real or fake? No, that was real. There you go. I thought you were going to ask for something else. We've got other ones we're going to get to know. There's a few things you're going to settle today. No, no, that was real. I mean, let me ask you this. Why do you guys ask that question? We're joking. We're joking. Sometimes people think it's like impossible. It could really never happen. Was it a conspiracy thing? No, no, no. First of all, a little background on these guys, especially Justin. Justin loves conspiracy theories. Just for fun. We share 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 landing? And I'm like, why would I even look into it? Like, are you sure it happened? And so then they started messing with me and sending me all these videos of all the conspiracy theories that were around it. And part of, I guess, where it gets some sort of legs is obviously we're in a massive race at 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, you know. Yeah, it's just, you know, it really did happen. Of course. Man, I was only six years old when it happened. You guys, I don't think we're even way before you guys. Doug was only 35 when I heard that. Yeah, you guys. Poor Doug. All right, so I was the only guy here that was there to be able to watch it at least. But no, 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. Yeah. And you're like, oh man, that's too tough. Let's just go and do it. That's easier. It's hard to cover something like that. You know, like someone's going to have 400,000 people working on it that 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, well, if we want to fake this, I'll be okay with it. I won't tell any, 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. It had to be emotional, right? Yeah, 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, say we're in, if we were, this was a spaceship. This would be a pretty cool spaceship actually, right? Yeah. 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 know, you're still inside the spaceship. When we went outside, it's now you, you know, like 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, in the universe, really. You know, 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 in your, it's kind of like being a, looking at the aquarium. I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium last night, right? Beautiful place looking at the pretty fish and you were admiring them through glass sort of, but as opposed to being a scuba diver where you're actually interacting with them environment. So once I got out there, I felt like a real spaceman. And then looking at the planet from that vantage point, we were pretty high. Hubble had a pretty high orbit, right? One of my missions so we could see the curve of the planet. And when I really had a chance to look, the thought, the thought went through my mind was, this is like a view from heaven, right? 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 heaven must look like. And 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. And 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 like the drive over here, I came up from Monterey taking the drive up to see you guys. Just the beauty, right? It was on the highway 101, right? It wasn't even on the coast, but just a farmland and the smells of the planet. We went through the garlic town there. 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 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 with some of my crewmates, because some were extremely religious and some were absolutely not-believers. And I think it's not that... 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 or 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 can look at it and interpret it in their way. So just my observation with that, at least with astronauts, I 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, they don't believe at all and they're like, oh my God, how could I not believe? Or vice versa. Now all of a sudden they're like, oh, that's not what I thought. That I haven't noticed. Maybe just the folks that, by the time you get to fly in space, you're usually a little bit older. 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 when you see these things, I think your background or 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. When I was a little kid, I grew up just outside of Queens, New York City, in a town called Franklin Square, and we really didn't go anywhere. We would go visit our relatives 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 my school became my world and that was my town. And then when I went to college, it was more, and 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 I became an astronaut. I went to work with the American flag on my arm. I felt like I was an American. I identified home as being the United States. But after traveling around the planet over and over again, when I think of home now, I think of Earth. Because 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 going to happen in the future and our families and so on. That is going to 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 a weird thing. I'm from planet Earth. That's how I think of home. What are some of the biggest misunderstandings with 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 the coolest thing you could do is go out for a space walk. 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 just got my butt kicked after my first training run in the pool trying to manipulate that big suit and move around. 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 one thing. I think the other thing that sticks out when I think about it was how well trained we were. 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, you 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. And I was, I didn'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 Hubble, my very first spacewalk, closing a door to a reaction wheel replacement, reaction wheel spins and points the 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 in space before. I'd never been to the Hubble before, of course. But yet I felt like I had 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 going to 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 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 possible things that could go wrong. Right, right. So the things that can go wrong, what we would do is we'd practice like crazy. 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 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 spacewalks and so on. So you try to imagine everything to go wrong and you have a plan for that. Then you're going to 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. And we try to be prepared for those things. Okay, I'm prepared for this, 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 they came up with a solution was when I stripped the bolt while fixing the telescope. 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, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which was working for a few years and was able to do things like analyze the stars, the atmospheres are far off planets. And so they could search for life on other places with this instrument. 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 gonna 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 in 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 gonna do is remove a handrail which had four big screws two at the top and two in the bottom. It didn't require any new tools. It was my old power tool. One line in a checklist, 30 seconds and I go and strip one of the four bolts on the bottom so it's not coming off. And I realized that handle's not coming off all those 111 small screws aren't coming out. Power supply's not gonna be replaced. The instrument's not coming back to life. We'll never find out if there's life. We'll never find out if there's life in the universe and everyone will blame me forever, right? Where's your blood pressure right now? That's exactly. I was just like, holy crap. But I fessed up and the team got sprang into action and came up with a solution which was actually very simple just to tear the thing off. That's how I would have done it. I'm genius. That's right. I was thinking about all these complicated things that we had a guy in the back room who was saying, what would I do in my garage? It was loose at the top. That was Tony. Tony in the back room would do it. His name was Jim Corbow. But anyway, his idea was just tear the thing off and it was a Sunday. So most people are not working on Sunday but the whole team was in different places of the country. Calls up to the Goddard Space Flight Center from Houston. They get an instrument out of the clean room and they pull on this handrail with a fish scale. We're not 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 down. How hard do I got to pull that thing to break it to break that bolt at the bottom? So it was 60 pounds of force at the top and that was no problem. 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 handrail so Shrapno wouldn't go flying. But the guys in the gym were pretty excited about that. They thought there's like the greatest. They had a picture on the gym. You see, you know, you had to be strong enough to pull this handrail off and 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 problems arise, but you have a team there to help you. Any possibility that the aliens intentionally sabotage that? No, 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 anything to do with that. What's the fear with the shrapnel? Explain that because I know you're in space. There's no gravity. And, you know, I've read articles about oh, so you can have a piece of dirt flying through space. It could go so fast. It could literally destroy a machine. Oh yeah, no space debris is a problem. In fact, my mission that my second mission, my first mission was on Space Shuttle Columbia. And I was to Hubble in 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. 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 a wing. Crude didn't realize that. And no one realized that that happened. They knew that the debris strike happened. But the investigation after the accident discovered that there was a hole in a 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 debris was a problem in that regard. But also, when we started looking at that problem, well, we can't have debris coming off the tank. But you could also hit debris 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, micrometer rights 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 orbit, so there's more stuff up there because it's at a higher energy and it stays around longer. And it eventually will be pulled in and we'll enter the atmosphere. Burn 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 if we did get a debris 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. It's not a big deal necessarily. You'll figure out a way to get your own. But at Hubble, there's 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 so dangerous? Because it's going so fast. Because you're going so fast. Even with the shuttle accident we had, it was a piece of foam that had no weight to it. We really had no weight. A piece of foam? A piece of foam. So the space shuttle external tank is like a big thermos bottle. The fuel inside it is cryogenic, so it's like minus 200, 300 degrees Fahrenheit. It's really cold, right? So this thermos bottle keeps this, the foam acts like a thermos bottle. So 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 of it would fly off. But we never thought it could be of consequence because it had no weight. I mean, it absolutely had no weight. It was 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. It kind of almost 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 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 back up a little bit. Because astronauts, I mean, when I was a young girl, I was fascinated 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. What was the process like of getting selected? And like, how does that work? What's that like? The hardest thing about being an astronaut is getting 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? 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. Thousands of applications are coming in. Now we're upwards of like 15,000 applications come in 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 level, the first step is to see if you're qualified. So there are things that people, if they're interested, you can look on the NASA website. This is for the NASA program. So Justin and I can apply? You guys can apply, but 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's degree, quite often a doctor's degree as well, either a 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, 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, you'll be eliminated pretty quickly. But out of those, let's say 15,000 or so, about 90% of the 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. This is the way we would do it. So some of these 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 Netsha sketch champion. Let's get this guy in here. Let's see what he can do in a Netsha sketch. And they're like, no. Is there any other reason, Mike, why you'd want him in? And they're like, no, but Netsha sketch is pretty cool. It was like stuff like that. So you always need like one adult, like a manager or someone like that. No, you can't do that. You go through there. And so you're 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, right? 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 just start seeing what you think is important to you for the job. And one thing is, is a person qualified? You know, that they have the right background and show that they could be trainable to do the job. That's one thing. Then you 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 were 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. 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 needed to enjoy doing that. You needed 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, they can handle the job, they're qualified to do it. But what really I thought became more important was is this a person that you would trust? It's 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. 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 the kind of people we typically had. I felt that they were the best people I've ever been around. I imagine that actually would be the hardest. 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. 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 under the bus? And we see that in sports teams, some guy makes a mistake at the end of the game. What happened to 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 them? And you see examples of both, that they stick with the teammate and they say, no, I can't blame him. He helped get us there. This is what happened. Or do you throw, or do you point the finger and say, yeah, 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. But that I think was, for me, the most important thing, because it was a team game. There was nothing that was that difficult to do individually. There was no one task that just about anyone couldn't do. I think really, with 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 set and background. But it was just so much of it that you couldn't, and not everybody could do everything. Not anyone, 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. I would say that's my, that was, that team on my second flight, they were all my friends. I probably couldn't pick out one of them. But was it about them? Well, was it about them? Yeah, that makes me. They had my back no matter what and they still do. They're the people I'm closest to in my life. I would say they're 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 needed. You have each other's back. I would not hesitate to tell them anything. I knew they would never want to 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? 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 then 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 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 something, 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? I never grew up liking the water very much. I kind of stayed out of it. To me, we talked about our Sicilian heritage. We stayed out of the water. You know what I mean? You walk in the water. If you want to go somewhere, you go over the bridge. You have a tunnel, you have a bridge, you have boats. My mother was like, what do you got to swim for? Jesus walked on the water. He said, Peter walked. He didn't say, jump in the water and swim toward me. You know what I mean? So I didn't like it. I was skinny and it was cold in New York. I was freezing in the ocean. I never really learned to swim. And then I get this letter after we get picked, right? We get a phone call and they tell you, oh, you're still interested. I'm 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 intro letter was like congratulations. I'm all excited. And then like the next paragraph says, please practice your swimming because you're going to have to pass a swim test to go through water survival training with the Navy, right? What it is is that if you bailed out of the space shuttle or in there, we fly high-performance jets, these T-38s, if you parachute out, if you eject out of one of those things and you land in the ocean, they got to come get you. But you got to stay alive until they can come find you. So you have to pass this water survival course that the Navy provides in Pensacola. And in order to do that, you have to pass a swim test. And the reason they warn you for that is because other candidates have shown up and then they can't swim and the Navy sends them back and like teach these people to swim first. They can't, they'll drown. So you have to pass a swim test. I'm like, oh my goodness, because the thing I've been avoiding my whole life, 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 that if you were able to do things like, swim should be in the same category as like making a grilled cheese sandwich. Not everybody should be able to do it. But so luckily they never asked me about that. I was, 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 but I still wasn't feeling great about it. Because you say, you know, my impression was I'm going to be into all these great athletes and these super achievers and here I'm going to come this, you know, this egghead that, 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 in 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, we're done with the day and we're in this classroom together and a guy named Jeff Ashby who is a Navy pilot who had in the class before us was a great leader, 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 week is over now. You know, before you go home for the weekend, I want to remind everyone that we start our training in earnest on Monday and our first event is the swim test, right? So I'm saying like really, can we get a math quiz or a physics test? Can 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 raised, if Canful's raised their hand meaning that they were strong swimmers and then 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 Commoda from Ozone Park Queens another Italian kid 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 hand stay 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 the 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 going to 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, and now the motivation for me was I didn't want to hold everybody else back. So we got together over the weekend and I got help. And we went, everyone went to the pool. 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 that stood out to you that were just phenomenal? 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, there's, he was, Jeff was an astronaut and there were others like that. I mean, my commander, Scott Altman, the leaders of the astronaut office, guys like Kent Rominger, Charlie Precourt, a lot of the military guys, I would say maybe more than others. I think 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 and taking care of each other. And that was, that was the culture. And that was the, the leadership was different person. I think everyone has their own personal style based on their personalities and how they feel comfortable. But the idea of caring for each other was most important. It was a moonwalker named Alan Bean, the only 12 guys walking on the moon. I was gonna say Michael Jackson, but... Not Michael Jackson. Only 12 guys. Well, he was a moonwalker too, but, you know, 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 came and 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. You 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 is that you don't know them well enough. And keep digging till you find something. And that was the key to being a good leader. And I still, I still believe I 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 cared, sometimes those guys cared about you the most that they would be there for you and make sure that you were taking 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. Sure. And the instructors were really quite, were quite unique, I thought, in their perspective on things, because they weren't going to 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, 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, 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, a 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 was like COVID before there was COVID. Yeah. You know. Because God forbid somebody sick up. God forbid, yeah, you don't want to get a head cold in orbit. So you'd want to be germ free going to space. Right. So they put your quarantine for about a week and a half. Anyways, but they, they were cleared by the docs to come work with us and go over some things. And Christy Hanson, Tomas Gonzalez Torres, I remember as we were saying goodbye to them, Christy was looking at us like just kind of going over the last few things. And what it just looked at her and it could tell she was emotional and she's just, I just want you guys to be okay and to do well. You could tell we meant so much to her that our success was so important. You know, 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? 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, a 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, our astronauts took care of each other, but also we had people like that. Those instructors were there to make us successful. And it was, it was really, now you're talking about thinking of all the people that water survival course we went through in the Navy, you know, these chief petty officers would ever helping us drill sergeants and stuff. They couldn't be mean to us like they would to the regular army over the, you know, their regular recruits and so on. But they're very nice to us, but, but they really wanted us to be safe in our airplanes and our flying. And, and they, they were, they really were passionate about what they were doing. And when you can find a passionate instructor, that's a, that's a good thing. I wanted to bring something out that you said off air that I thought was pretty crazy. Alongside, I didn't know that, you know, you didn't really prefer swimming alongside that. You had a fear of heights. Yeah, I don't like heights. I thought you were joking when you said that. How is this possible? Yeah. Well, a couple of things there. So I don't like them. I really, when 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. It wasn't a really tall mountain, but it was a mountain that we had in New York was called 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 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. Yeah. Because you know, you're up there and you're like 350 miles above the plan. I'm like, okay, I'm not going anywhere. It's the gravity that's the problem. So that's my, I got to credit that to my friend, Reed Wiseman who is great. That's true. But that fear of falling is what it is, right? Cause 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. 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 going to 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, boy, that would be great, not unless the airplane is on fire. Like I can understand if the airplane is on fire and you have a good working parachute and you're pretty sure that things aren't going to 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 airplanes 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 getting out of the atmosphere? I mean, so much power and how many G forces is that? I mean, I had a little tiny experience on the F 16. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So it was like that. Oh my God. It was, it was insane. It was, it was like, it's hard to describe actually. But it was like 9.3 Gs. Whoa, that's a lot of G. Okay. Yeah, you could pass out with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He threw up afterwards. He's failing to tell that. And it's hard to get in way later. I made it the whole time without throwing up. He said to me when he came back, I said, what was it like? Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. It was like basically somebody crushing me. Yeah. That's what I felt like. That's a lot of G. But the throw up thing, we had a Navy seal in our office. Chris Cassidy, his standing challenge to our, our trainers, our gym, our gym instructors, was anyone that could make them throw up had a case of beer and no one could do it. They would, you know, they would run and rag it and make them do it. He couldn't do it to this guy. Wow. That's a big mistake. Right. We could go up to like five or six Gs in our airplanes, but you only can do that for a short amount of time. You know, a second or so, you've got to technique is to try to force the blood back because your blood come out of your head. Yeah. And especially if you're when you're sitting in a, in a jet and you go into a bank turn like that, you still sort of, and you're turning, but still the, the, the, the gravity force can still take the blood out of your head and you pass out and that's bad. You can get killed, but you've got to, you've got to be careful with that in the airplane, of course, in a high performance jet and it's uncomfortable. Usually when you get one, you got one airplane, right? Yeah, one. See if you get another one because it gets a lot better. Your second one, your first one is so level one, but you really want us to, but you don't want us for the second one. Because you say, how about another one? Because you'll feel a lot better. Your body will, your brain really is getting trained. So, so it feels better. But in a space flight, we go up to three Gs on a launch, but it's sustained 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 going to come out of your head, what it is is getting your right in the chest. So, so whatever your body weight is, multiply it by three and that's what you got in the chest. So I felt like you were three big dudes sitting on me. That's what I 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 launch, you would start up first. And they were liquid-fueled and you can shut a liquid-fueled engine off just like a car or a lawn mower and cut the fuel. Something happens, boom. Right. We're going to stop, right. And they did that twice. They had two boards on the pad. After the main engine start, they shut them down and go anywhere or try another day. But you have six seconds to make up your mind because after that, the solid rocket boosters on the shuttle would light. Those are the two big white rockets. And you can't turn that dynamite. So once you light them, you cannot turn them off and you're going. As soon as they light, you move a hundred 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 in a centerfuge. So we went through that in a centerfuge. You can recreate that. But the violence and the shaking, you really can't do that. And the first time, you know, they try to warn you it's going to 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. These guys knocked it off. And then like after that, they're kind of like, you weren't scared. Were your mic 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 that's what I did. But so there's a lot of rock. And in the two and a half, first two and a half minutes, those after that, those solid rockets leave and then it 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 fueled rocket. No solids on it. So it won't shake as much. The one they're going to send to the moon, the space launch system has got solids on it. So they can, they're going to shake a bit on the way up. Anyway, the once that eight and a half minutes is over, then the main engine's cut and then it gets really peaceful. And it's almost like eerily peaceful. Like, because everything just stops and all the, all the noise, all the shaking, all the violence, everything's done. Do you feel immediate like loss 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 still, you're still in your harness, but your arms just float up like this by themselves. Arms stay down like this because of gravity. 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 any, 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 I was an astronaut. I was like, I want to do that someday. So I just took off my helmet and put it right in front of me and let go and watch it float there in front of me. You just said something. I had a question for you. I'm glad you went that way. When you watch any space movies, who did the best job and who, who shit the bed? Like what's, what are the ones that are probably the most accurate that you enjoy and the other ones that you're going, oh, that's no. Well, Adam, let me first say, I really, you know, I don't really get 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. You guys, you guys said something here. 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, there are 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 was cool. Bruce Willis. Yeah. Yeah. Bruce Willis, so he was, yeah, you know, those guys were cool. Brad Pitt was your Ryan Gosling, played Neil Armstrong, you know, those guys were all cool. Matt Damon, I don't know if I mentioned him, but you know, these guys, you know, people think like Matt Damon in the Martian, he got impaled by an antenna, right? I don't know if you remember the movie. Yeah. And he pulls it out, he sews himself up. People think I can do that, you know. I saw that movie, like the next day I was getting something 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. You know, my fingers bleeding, you have a bandaid and run around, you know, but 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 cut freaks me out. You know, it's a little shaky. I didn't like that very much. You know, so I like, you know, whether or not it's, that was a little complicated too. He was always worried like, this is not good. You got to be cool. The action has got to be cool. What about like the what about the physics? Like, because I know you got to be a math physics. I heard interest in your question. Yeah. I heard interest teller was pretty good with the physics, right? He was in a library and I saw that movie three times. I got invited to three screens. I'm still not sure anymore. I don't know what was going on in that movie. I can't, 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, whatever theory or make-believe stuff, but maybe a little bit over my head. But the, the one that's most truthful or accurate was the Apollo 13 movie. Okay. Because I, what it showed was, well, it's based on fact, it was an actual thing. 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, no 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, really well. Um, we had, I was giving a tour, um, Joe Torrey and the Dodgers who was managing the Dodgers at the time were in town for, for to play the Astros. And he, he brought, he's a big, uh, support of the space program and he bought some of the players and coaches and came in for a tour and Gene Kranz who's that guy without failures, not an option helped with the tour and told him about Apollo and we had a new flight director. It's kind of Mike Serifin 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 we, when they lost, the, um, the Columbia and he was talking about that and he was saying how he wasn't sure if he wanted to continue in his job when that happened. He's telling the crew 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 and he was as visibly upset about that and emotionally upset about it as anybody else as any other family member or crew member or friend and that's, that's what it meant to them that the lives of those folks that they lost was so, was crushing to all those folks in that room and that happened. And so they were, 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, it showed that. So that was a great one. The right stuff in the movie. You guys ever seen that one? Oh, which one is that? That's a little before it's done. That changed my life, that one. So that's my all-time favorite movie. I don't know if it's the most accurate one, but it's, it's based on a book by Tom Wolf and came out in 1983, 83, 84. Kind of like at the end, like December of 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 and I kind of gave up and I crossed it off the list when I was about eight years old. But I went to see that movie when I was a senior in college and it brought back those feelings, those dreams I had as a little kid and 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 him. I thought it was no 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 become an astronaut 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 before. I have seen that movie. Doug just brought that up. I did see that a long time ago. Did they remake it? I feel like they remade it. They made, you know what, I think they made another one. They made a TV show out of it. Is that what it, I think that's what it was. There was a TV show. There was like a seven part series they did on like HBO or something. Yeah, yeah. I haven't seen that. It was Nat Geo that did it. Yes. Oh, the right stuff. They were concentrating at that time going back to the test pilot days It was actually 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 travesty. I remember as a kid, I was really young. I was in class and they put up, they brought the, they wheeled in the TV to have all the kids watch the Challenger. Yeah. Because there was a teacher on that. I remember the big deal. Yeah. And I was, 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 as you get older. Cause I mean, you know, there's no perfect record. Yeah. And with, with space flight, the fail is, is death usually, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's usually good or bad. Yeah. How do you deal with the, like the fear or how do they train you with it? Cause you're going up and you know, like, okay, this is one of the more risky things that, that people do. I think for, when, when that happened, that was in 1986. I was Jeremy of 1986 and I was, I had graduated college in 84 and I was going to grad school in 86 to pursue this dream. But I was still, I was working in New York City for IBM at the time. And it was a work day when that happened. And, and I was like, we're on noon. Like we're school, you guys are in school like late, late morning, some of us. And so the news came over, you know, and we're in the, I don't know if we have much, we don't be on the internet at all back then, but it was on like, you know, the, in the lobby of the building 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, this is terrible. But what, in some strange way, it was like, there's nothing I can do to help. You know, I was doing something else. I wasn't anywhere near the space program. And I felt like I wanted to do something to help or do something. And I wanted to be a part of it. And it 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, 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. I mean, we think our families or our kids or our spouses or loved ones we would do that for. But at first, 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, 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 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 and 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. There's smoke coming off of it. It was water vapor, but it looks like there's smoke coming. The thing's smoking. And it was making these unworldly 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 sounded 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 my first launch, like six months after the 9-11 attack. And I remember they had these security guys with us, like these SWAT guys with these big weapons and things for security. I don't think they were worried about terrorists. I think they would have to make sure we'd get on a spaceship. You're going to run me down 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 if you're worried about something or scared about something, thinking about it is always worse than doing it. I mean, you can psych yourself out for just about anything. Totally. 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 were some situations, like in the airplanes we used to fly, we had a couple of things that were emergency related where I realized that being scared wasn't going to help. Another thing that kind of surprised me that I was in a situation where it might be almost like you block it out. It's not 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 it will help you motivate you to do well. But once it's time to perform, being scared usually 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 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 going to be there for us, whether it's our parachutes or harnesses, whatever the gear is going to be there, trust your gear, trust your team, as I said earlier, to help you and then trust 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 that situation like that, you're not there by accident. You're able to handle that situation, try to, I don't know if remain calm is the right word, but certainly don't try not to panic because that'll hurt you. And that's what I think they trained us, was how to put any situations 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. I mean, accidents happen in training of high-performing teams and Navy SEALs and other things. People that are so well-trained will still sometimes make a critical error. So you want to recognize you're in a dangerous situation and then execute the plan because it's there for a reason and maybe not think too much. So speaking to the training, I want to get into a little bit of the physical training and requirements and 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. What do you have to consider physically before going up into space? I remember when I was a new astronaut they would talk 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? Yeah, if you did nothing, it's really like the ultimate bed rest. It's even worse than that. Like you're not sitting here, right? We're doing, we're moving around, we're fighting gravity. You have to sit upright. But in space, you just float. You're not doing anything. So if you were not to do anything over a prolonged period of time, maybe not a couple 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. Even your digestion uses 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 follow, you take a dump. Because he got to the minimal gravity. He goes, oh, he goes, Mike, you don't know yet. You're not a, you haven't flown in space yet, but when you're floating around in space, you just can't go. And finally get on that moon after a couple of days of floating around, that one-sixth gravity is just enough so you can let loose. This is what he tells the best thing about it. I feel like that's enough evidence right there that we didn't end it. Yeah, you're right, exactly. It wasn't the guy I mentioned earlier. That was John Young with Tom Nath. I couldn't believe that. Sweet release. I was expecting some kind of, you know. Something profound. Unbelievable moment, you know. And he said, well, best thing about him, Mike, because 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 commander in front of me. We were flying back from California, from the Ames Research Center, not too far from here. And he told me that story. But where were we? You thought about changing the body yet. So you have to, you know, that's another thing. You can do, 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 going to be in coming out. Of course. Don't expect to go there and become, that's not a gym you're going to. They do have a gym there that you can work out, especially now in the space station. Yeah, but what are you trying to do the whole time? That's just to slow down. You're just trying to fight it. Exactly, right. You're trying to maintain or not lose too much. Yeah. Just maintain. Some people actually get it the way, 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 when they left, maybe even sometimes a little bit better. That's impressive. But there's a two hour exercise period on the space station, six days a week. And it involves cardio and lift. So now lifting, you take all these weights you got in his gym and fly them in space, you lift them on one finger. Yeah. So what is it? So yeah, what it is, it's kind of like that. It's the device they have now on the space station. It's called A-RED, I don't know what the A stands for, but it's resistive exercise device, right? Okay. 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 work out your shoulders and your arms and you could do stuff with it, but you have to resist against something. You just can't, just can't lift weights. So that's what they do now on, on space station. But what they, what I remember this is the better shape you're in going in, the better shape you're going to be in. Yeah, there's some pictures of it 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, you'll have a prescription. Yeah. Of what's going to work for you, but you can get a full body workout. So you can do squats, deadlifts, 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? Are they flying trainers up there? Well, they should actually, but the trainers are, again, very dedicated people. And they work with you. They'll work with us. You're supposed to 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 you had to more or less work out. That was part of your job. We had our gym, the astronaut gym that was built for us to use where there was a guy in there that would do our laundry, right? They tried to make it as easy as possible. Reserve 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 want to come back. They tried to make it as easy as possible. There was 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, I've named him, I think three times in this interview, I haven't spoken about him 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? And I was like, okay. So we were expected to be fit because it really pertained to our 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, it was 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 like a cool place to go because you could, you could work out and talk and the instructors came 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. Astronaut strength, the ASCR, astronaut strength conditioning and rehab because they also were in charge of you when you got back. To rehab you. To rehab you when you got back, particularly from the long missions that was important. So they had a, you got to know them really well. They would run with you, they would work you out, they would torment you, 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 fascinating because obviously humans evolve with gravity. So everything on our body evolve with gravity. Digestion, movement, blood flow, brain. Our perception of things. I was just going to ask you, what's it like to sleep and wake up? You don't have the, the sun rising and setting, the circadian rhythm's all off. Yeah, that's right. So what's it like to sleep and wake up and what does that feel like? So the sleep, the sleep part of it, let me go back one second and I'll try not to lose the sleep part, 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 and it all works with our eye movements and when there's a conflict between our eye movements and our vestibular system, that's where we're adaptable maybe to get sick I don't know if that happened in the airplane if you felt a little bit nausea. What it is is that your gyro inside is really getting spun around at 9 Gs or whatever those guys did to you upside down and your eyes are seeing something and your brain, that's what 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 try to read in the back of a cab and 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 that conflict needs nausea but you can adapt to that that's what I was saying in the jet. Is that just through practice? Yeah, your brain because your brain can figure this stuff out, right? It's all right, no, I don't need to throw up I'm safe this is just what's going on you can adapt to all those things so in space what happens though is that it's completely shut off 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 one of the first missions to the moon and that was the first time I had a cabin a spacecraft large enough that you could float around in so when you're just sitting in the seat the whole time like they were in the early flights not moving around much they would adapt to it they didn't do a space walk till like a few days later and they were adapted by then but they got out of their seats right away which was unusual before then in the Apollo missions one of the first ones to 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 it was 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 if you guys were holding me upside I'm not asking you to do this because I know you easily could do this turn me upside down for a while 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 because my so it was like this when I'm looking at your sign in mind pump and when I'm looking at you guys you guys would be completely reversed oh that's weird but I'm feeling like I'm sitting here and that's nauseating so you usually that's true but now you get you said 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 in this case of the space shuttle you get attached to the wall I put mine on the ceiling because when can you sleep on the ceiling so you would attach it and it was like a bed roll you roll it up when you wake up so you float you get in there so you're not going to float around and wake up your friends you don't need a pillow right because 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 they couldn't fall asleep because there was nothing behind their head but if you put a pillow behind your head your head's just going to float off it so what we do is well they strap it to your head it sounds funny 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 touch this right you know guys couldn't sleep so what we do is you actually have a band around your head just a nice cloth band that attaches the pillow to your head that is funny so you're kind of like wearing a pillow behind your head a trip so you feel just because that's how we're used to sleep we generally keep it cold in the space I feel like there's pranks here I feel like there's all kinds of stuff I was going to say there's got to be stuff like this you know spit him around while he's sleeping or detach his sleeping bag snicker bar just stuff actually it's kind of disappointing not too much of that you know a little bit of that here and there but it's more like showing them the ropes there was some silly things like there was 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 on to the astro van and go out to the launch pad and the the driver asks you 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 it's like oh you guys can't come I go really I'm not getting on it's Hispanic because I don't have this joke piece of plastic it's like little things like that but nothing is there are a couple things there I'm starting to think of I'm like I don't know if this is a good example but there's not much air flow and in space everything flows 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 oh it's hot here it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't so how do you arise do we get convection there and that's how things cool themselves you know if you know it's like you don't sometimes you need a radiator to reject a lot of heat but in general because it won't it's not going to move at all and we have a filter so 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 eventually so in the morning you look at the filter and it'll be like someone's vitamins are in there or someone's watch ended up in there or you find the where say hey why did this get over here whatever it might be I lost my draws right next to where the pilot was sitting so it was it was a mid-deck and a flight deck so that air flow that fan would then you know and you mentioned earlier the sort of air bring that air right but where the pilot was so you mentioned earlier about your stomach might be doing well in zero gravity so I can already guess alright so out again if we want to go there but with air ready you might get gas right so and if you did you can direct it right right yeah so you would and you'd be in your own stick my friend is this okay to talk about yeah so Rick so Rick Rick and you're in your own spacesuit right you get your own circulation it's going to come over you had Rick Linnanthory is going to pass out from one of his own one of his own farts you guys are like methane poisoning because you buy himself an air and he's like oh my god so and you know it was lower pressure so your stomach expands so what they teach you like in a jet in an airplane that's a lower pressure which is probably where you're probably wearing oxygen to help with that your stomach like a bag of potato chips oh right so your stomach expands too and so they tell you you know if you got 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 fart by the you know they'll get it they'll get it see that's a great prank right that's a great prank yeah stuff like that you can do yeah is your circadian rhythm thrown off though or is it easy to just fall asleep when you're supposed to and wake up? no well circadian rhythm is more every 45 minutes you get a sunrise and a sunset cause it's 90 so you get 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets oh that's weird 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 they would work this shift with us this sleep shift with us because the way you would launch to go to space was based the time you would launch was based on your target of where you were headed so if you were going to with target if you weren't going if you're just going to do an orbital flight you could launch at 2.30 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 cause you're getting used to it a nausea maybe you should take a a shot of something called finnigan take an injection of that in the 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're probably about 2.30 in the afternoon get some work done eat dinner probably want to eat maybe go to sleep feel better next day so if you but 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 expeditiously so it's kind of like it's passing over the 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 right 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 space station on this day there's a 20 minute window when you can go and that could be in the middle of the night that you need to launch and so they 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 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 caffeine when you can do that and when you can't when you can see light which was interesting because light there are certain types of lights that will wake you up sunlight for example wakes you up so you would put they 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 make 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 try to more or less maintain that sleep schedule so the shift would take place before 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 what's it like working with astronauts from other countries international is there a camaraderie between you like you see the guy from Russia wherever and it doesn't matter we're all okay it doesn't I'm hopefully going to see two of my international colleagues on Monday they were in New York Davis son Jacques who's a Canadian astronaut he's a German guy that was in my astronaut class was 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 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 then you only have Russians on board and there's an American section and the same goes for the Russians you can't just evacuate all the Russians they only have Americans so for safety reasons for safety of operations we still do that and it works I mean 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 what your what your political opinions are about things or whatever is going on at the larger levels in your government you have to get the job done together well it's a big deal you know of course during the cold war there was a lot of tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and people don't realize I think like what an accomplishment this is and also just 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 absolutely so they were competing with the Soviet Union to get to get to the moon but now we cooperate with Russia with the countries of Europe with Japan Canada they just had first two astronauts from the UAE fly and they're training with NASA astronauts so you know they're 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 Russia and Ukraine is a completely different thing I mean it's just so freaking horrible 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 that would happen but we've had this relationship with them for a long time now for over 30 years we've been flying astronauts on first space station Mir 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 the name thing 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 and is it just I know like the private sectors come in and kind of been able to like Elon Musk has really put his sights 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 can the governments that taxpayers money and have to be good stewards of that and can't do everything they want to do it was different 30 Apollo missions when they went to the moon the first time we had strong motivation it was yeah it was almost like a national defense against the Soviet Union for control of the technological technological world back then and we had everybody was behind it right by showing that we could do that by you know we meaning the United States could do that it did 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 more landings and for budget cuts they stopped them so those there's 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 5s 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 and we've been in that mode where the space program is an important thing for the country but it's not as important as other things you know keeping people fed and alive and healthy and these other things that we spend their 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 the 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 Mars I think it's I'm a huge supporter because if we could find a way to turn these endeavors into profit yeah then it's not just a waste I would say of resources even though we may have this drive to explore tourism right well I mean I know with Elon I mean they've cut the cost of launching satellites significantly through their technology which could have a profound benefit so I'm all for it absolutely but any fears around that because I don't do they follow the same regulations or it's pretty heavily 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 interesting enough Sal the government did some interest I think first the purpose one of the purposes of our government that I think that I saw at NASA and like our administrators and our leadership had was that we were supposed to help the country in any way we can it was a technology that NASA or 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 a 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's something that can also happen with space travel so I think that that's part of what the government should be doing is is encouraging these things I'm sorry you questioned though oh just are the regulations oh 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 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's 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 cut costs 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 everybody that's it nobody wants to do it it's also the the press behind it it's kind of like driverless cars people get hurt with people driving a car all the time but as soon as a driverless car hurts someone we don't trust these things anymore and they may still be much safer than people driving I don't know if that's true and I don't just throw them crap out there but in this case as soon as you kill somebody then it's not fun and games anymore particularly if you kill civilian or someone like that there's probably not going to be that much tolerance for it so for them to be successful in their business they have to they you know they got to not hurt people but they are much safer for example the SpaceX vehicle is much 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 after I was an astronaut after my first flight on Columbia we lost Columbia on the next flight the whole crew and the vehicle gone shuttle was dangerous that was calculated at the odds of getting killed like total loss of life and vehicle was one out of seventy five gosh so now one out of seventy five like if you had taken a bet to make money and you had a seventy four to seventy five you probably would have caused your life but if your life it's not alright I'm probably going to be okay but that's not the kind of risk that the government even would want to take with people it's more like one out of fifteen hundred was the number sort of like is an acceptable risk so it was it was a great risk going on the on the space shuttle I'm not sure what the odds are for the like the SpaceX vehicle but it is much safer the automated systems help the the crew handling almost everything Wow so it was even the even the emergencies had all be handled most of our training for the shuttle for working the spacecraft was working emergencies right which were 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 this stuff's never going to happen but we had to know every electrical failure hydraulic failure engine failure all this stuff had to be worked by the crew the pilot on my first flight and the pilots 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 your of our training did you not use on our flight and 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 that they have AI and all this other space ships which actually makes it much safer because it's going to 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 shuttle there was no way to get out of it 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 and 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 from the launch vehicle in the cabin the spacecraft can separate so for that reason alone it's it's much safer so it's 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 there's 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 had one go to the space station for a month imagine doing it when I was even just a couple 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 space x vehicle and they were able to analyze the data what are they trying to do this stuff what are they trying to study up there the effect of radiation or zero gravity all types of things in this case the way antibiotics and medicines work in zero gravity so things studying disease is kind of an interesting thing in space the way that different bacteria will generate themselves 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 how germs will populate they can do that differently let's say better maybe in space things behave differently in space so mixing materials you can't necessarily mix everything that you'd like to in gravity 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 so they can develop things that you can't even imagine here on earth and you can do that in space one good thing I think about these opportunities for private citizens let's say people who aren't career astronauts to go is that some people want to go to take a look at the view look around they want a twitter contest they get a birthday present for $18 million and that's something like tourism but there's also the opportunity researchers who are doing research into cancer or DNA whatever it might be they don't have the time really to take seven years out of life first of all go through the NASA selection process get through all that stuff and do their experiments 15 years later so what it does give us the opportunity now with the less trainee involved that you could fly an expert who has an idea of something that they want to do in space they can train the astronauts to do it to perform those 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 drugs or whatever it is that they're new pharmaceuticals or whatever they're looking at but also as a way to develop those for economic benefit as well so that's opened up now with the privatization of it to a lot of radiation up there just because you're out of the atmosphere and is there any preparation or 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 try and block as much as they can so the higher you get the higher altitude you get like even on Earth when you're in a plane you're going to get more hopefully the plane is protecting you so that when you're up on a mountain even so when you're up on a mountain top you've got to be more aware of the sun exposure you have on a sea level so the higher we get up the thinner the atmosphere that protects us is that's where we're going to we're susceptible to more radiation, right when you 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 as you can in the space suit in the in the spaceship itself you're still protected from the radiation belts of our planet that kind of acts like a four shield to absorb most of that radiation you always have a dosimeter on you when you're in space so they measure it so you can see well you can't see it it's a piece of plastic that you kind of hand in and then I don't oh you don't know what's going on no if I have a problem they're supposed to tell me but but I have sometimes I want anxiety that way well sometimes I wonder but it's better better Justin you know know some of these things sometimes yeah right 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 song on the moon and I used to play with him and pretend like I was an astronaut and I brought him to space with me right so he's a space right now he's at the Charles Schultz museum they're having a snoopy frozen that's great 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 got he's had a rough life snoopy I got him when I was nine and his no I think when I was six I got him in 19, six and I was six years old dropped him 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 almost as old as I am so I said you know he's kind of broken up so I got him at the at the intrepid 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 his little tail his little tail is broken he goes and his space suit is like all kind of like you know it looks like it's kind of been worn but not in a normal way and the only thing we can think of was he exposed to a lot of radiation and I'm like well yeah he was he was in space with me I'm like well that must be it it's radiation exposure it's like you know it's what we see and I go what are we going to do and I go I don't know we can fix them we just we never saw anything like this before that's what we suspected that's what it seems like we're like okay so I hang up the phone like what about me I was out on the space walks which were even worse and Snoopy wasn't with me on nose and I tell you what my hair was not white when I went to space you're kidding me I had like regular colored hair and then I come back I'm like you know going to T-38 and the flight I was going what's going on with your hair man a couple of weeks ago so I don't know if they're not telling me everything that might be part of it but it goes similar to this 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 or pants you're wearing it's always got to be with you and when you go on a space walk we had a cooling garment we would wear with tubes to keep us cool with water to go over it we had a little pouch to put that that dosimeter in so then you would then you'd put it back in your launch suit when you came came home and it would get it from you on landing and they'd read it and then I didn't hear anything from then so I think it's okay but suppose that they 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 we've had some people get treated with radiation for cancer and so on and that's part of their lifetime you have a lifetime limit apparently so they're supposed to keep track of it so you can't get X-rays anymore 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 alright do you see anything weird up there I was just going to ask anything are you allowed unusual fast moving objects I can tell you anything here right so I'll tell you cool stuff I saw that I could see meteorites coming in below you right so you're out there floating around it's like you know like a shooting star see 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 see them shooting it's just like a shot like it below you coming into the atmosphere that was pretty cool thunderstorms at night oh yeah that's gotta look weird especially like over like the ocean most of our planet is ocean by the way I think we know we know that right you learn that it's just been growing because you look over the 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 we hit Africa after all this water water bang like great you know Africa big continent was like gone in a blip and you're over water again it's like all 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 the thunderstorms at night over the ocean there's like probably no one down there maybe there's a boat in the middle out there but but they're happening and you can't see because the cloud the clouds 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 lightning go off and it like a very bright orange yellow red like shake and then it's not just one it's like multiple it's almost like they're communicating it's like boom boom boom boom and it'll stop and then boom boom boom they'll go off it's because they kind of that was pretty cool seeing the stars at night stars don't twinkle in space stars twinkle on earth because it's the light from the atmosphere twinkle twinkle little star was written by a dude on earth perfect points of light so those are really cool things what you're looking at a sunrise or a sunset you'll 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 so when you're doing the walk outside you're going to get heat hot cold you're kind of the space suit and the shuttle regulates that so it doesn't make it that drastic temperature control you're typically more concerned about overheating because your body is working and you're inside an enclosed space suit so you have usually you have your cooling on pretty pretty significantly to keep you cool but you as you're coming around from 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 if you're in the ocean or a lake and you get like a cold 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 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 all that was cool stuff but I kind of understood what I was looking at but it was something I saw guys would you see that come on now I'm serious I haven't even can I take my jack roll for a second yeah it's getting real fine get into the good 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 was out there with was his name the guy was out Spacewalk was Jim Newman and it was my first Spacewalk and we were got ahead the Spacewalk that Spacewalk 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 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 didn't 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 reporting down to the ground okay we got this much torque on this one and we're kind of waiting around and nothing's going on and we're going through one of these transitions that 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 Newman's like California we're kind of like this kind of and I'm looking at him I can see him looking kind of cool and then he comes up next to me we're waiting for another instructions and I look right in front of me and I've got what I really need to do is look at my helmet camera because I bet this camera on my helmet camera tapes there's a blob of maybe this is going to I hope this doesn't like disappoint you guys because it's not like an alien or anything but there was a blob of some black tar or I don't know it looked like tar to me right like a black weird looking tar thing that was stuck to the telescope right maybe about the you know the the size of a quarter let's say but like I'm a rocky looking 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 it's going to go on your finger I don't know what the hell that is right so I don't want to say Newman look at that so I'm like you know get his attention and I point to he looks over at this and he looks we can see each other through our helmet and he's like I don't frickin 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 I'm like nah and they really started to say whoa what about that tar you know like you would think if you were a curious person maybe you would not on a checklist we're not messing with that you know I 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 broken it would have put a hole there's plenty of there's like holes in the or dings dense in the in the telescope boom boom but this thing stuck stuck it was it's like a so it was going that as fast as we were saying earlier so I don't know I think maybe in my career when you think about what you said about even the foam how the foam could penetrate like so right what kind of battle this thing get on there what was this thing it wasn't launched like that mm-hmm yeah I don't know what maybe it's not there anymore maybe I don't know what that that was aliens I think yeah I don't know what it was but I know exactly when it happened I need to I need to look at my I got all my tapes I should go home and do absolutely absolutely I want to see that I think it was right in front of me how far away are we from commercial flights to space you think first of all yeah was that good enough for a weird thing to say that was great because it wasn't like I didn't see you know E.T. show up I'm sorry but how far are we from what now commercial space flights well we have them you know Jeff Bezos and Catten Kirk and William Shatten went to space so those are by commercial do you mean like tourism 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 this is a real bet this is a real bet the bet is that because we have this big 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 robot wash your dishes for you and he says that won't that's not going to happen for a long time he says we're going to have affordable commercial flights in space before that so we're like made this huge bet uh what do I think I think I think I think space flights might come first and the reason no the reason I'm saying that though is not because I think either one is possible I'm just wondering which one would have have the 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 fricking expensive and it's just not 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 the I think like a dishwasher people really needed but and it was affordable but to have like a robot I don't know that sounds expensive we had a kid in here one time that was I forget what his was going to they were doing a lot of stuff on AI technology and he says that the there's a huge challenge for the robot to be able to distinguish whether the dish is even dirty or not and so like we can make things that pick up them put it down but to recognize a dish that's dirty versus a clean one like that that were 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 out and I said a dish washing robot inside the house I mean because there is the company is like Blue Arch and Jeff Bezos's company and SpaceX Virgin Galactic Richard Branson's company they're they're economically motivated to do these things and it's it's available now it's just it's expensive still but so the price has to come down for them to be economically viable the price has to come down and they realize which innovation technology yeah from that standpoint the technology need to do the dish washing thing I'm not sure if the payoff is there yet you know I think that the price has to come down like the price of space flight has come down yeah even though it's ridiculously expensive so 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 there you go man throw me out there sure until someone else with multiple PhDs and masters comes on here comes in here to debate yeah yeah I'm going to take that as a win for me gave you a little step above but it's got to be proven still what's the transition been like to go from astronaut because that's such a such a peak right such a pinnacle what's the transition to go from astronaut to now you're not flying in space you said you're teaching yeah has that been tough or um I missed it I think the worst of it was probably right after leaving there's a chapter in my book I talked about knowing when to pivot and I was so I flew in 09 and I was still an active astronaut that was the shuttle program ended a few years later and 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 by last flight I was offered by my good friend the chief of the office my name is Peggy Whitson so you offer me a chance to replace a guy to go to the ISS on a Soyuz on a Russian vehicle and you know I was like I want to put you on this flight you're going to replace them like now and I said I got let me some time to think about it right so she said take 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 the timing's not right it was and the ages of my kids and I had already flown in space a couple of times I think for I think really when I think about that the decision to turn it down was it 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 did stuff in the office until 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 inspire 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 of it was 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 imagine he's going on a long direction another one and he's hung in there so 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 and I just felt like I couldn't commit to that flight at that time and 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 going to 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 kind of that surprised me that I know I was going to say that what is that telling me about what I what I just did well 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 we're faced with a big decision in life whether it's something in a personal life or a relationship or a job opportunity when it's huge there are there are times of those come a few times in our life and it's not a no-brainer like for me becoming an astronaut was a no-brainer like there was no there was no doubt in my mind I was saying yes to that but I think a lot of other things that I do it's kind of like you know there's always regret or should I do this I think some decisions there's always going to be a regret in one way or the other and not that you want to 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 a 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 fight but there's also regret if you stay too long because you've not given you a chance to do something else so those decisions are the tough ones to make and you know 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 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 go back home to New York at Columbia and that was a 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 you know 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 when it's when you've you've gone from one phase to the next Alan Bean who I mentioned earlier the fourth guy on the 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 he was thinking about what he wanted to do should he stay for another flight or should he do something else and he was an artist he isn't at that time he's passed now he's gone but but he was 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 as an ending look at as that next phase and what he did very successfully was paint his experiences as an as an astronaut his experiences on the moon no one can communicate the way 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 depicting all these it's it's quite quite extraordinary what he was able to do and so I felt like I can't paint I can't even 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 excellent thanks for listening I don't know if it's I have one last question just because it's a 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 an astronaut 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 no you can't you're actually you're paid as a government employee that's all you have to say so 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 1 to 15 15 is the highest and then there's steps within there like 1 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 you're not making all that much money you're paid comfortably you're paid like any other government employee okay so you could work your way up though you could work your way up to the to the top of the or near the top of the government pay scale but you can google that and find out nobody's doing it to get rich no you're in it for there are many opportunities to do that more than especially with the education other things you have going on you're not going to no and we 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 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 the people that put us in the spaceship they got hazardous duty pay you're in it 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 say you're going on a business trip we're going to come out here to San Jose it would be you know from from Houston to San Jose and return right that's your trip you're going to return back home you're going to be gone these days lodging cost you know they give you money for lodging you know that this is what per diem you know you get food and some of the stuff you you know you per diem blah blah blah you know so that's all transportation, airfare all that that's what the government is paying to send you on this trip okay so you're 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 she goes for your space flight like this is a joke she goes no this is a government operation you get travel orders it says from Kennedy Space Center Florida to low earth orbit end return I was very happy to see the end return you know at least the government's trying to get me back right so it's a low earth orbit end return and then I'm reading transportation provided you're going on a spaceship food provided they're going to feed you orange lodging provided lodging provided lodging everything's provided bump bump bump bump bump bump everything's like zeroed out at the bottom miscellaneous and incidental expenses $3 per day so they couldn't I'm sure like some you know some what is what is that they would go on travel you would get like money you know for you know meal money like $40 a day or whatever they were going to pay you right and that's what it was and you'd get a you'd get a check for that when you got back they didn't necessarily need seats unless it was something big or something but it was I never even noticed but 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 but they I'm sure they tried with great effort at the government accounting office but they did not so you got a 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 baller miscellaneous Mike this has been awesome yeah really appreciate it thank you for stopping by thank you great conversation great time hope people check out your books yeah thanks very much Moonshot goes on sale December 5th awesome thank you Mike