 Well, welcome to the show, Mike. I believe you're our first astronaut in 17 years. Really? Yes. I'm very, uh, very happy to be the first guy. Uh, it's all, it's all uphill from here. There's a lot of good astronauts out there. So maybe we'll see who else can join you, but thank you for having me. We thoroughly enjoyed the book. And I know growing up, Johnny and I had friends who wanted to be astronauts. It was a common thing that kids wanted to be back in the day. Now we hear YouTuber, podcaster, content creator. When did you know that you wanted to be an astronaut? I'm old enough to remember Neil Armstrong on the moon. So I was in, you know, July of 1969. I was six years old and I saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. And I not only wanted to be an astronaut, I wanted to be Neil Armstrong. I had so much. I want to be that guy. I want to do that. And all those guys, you know, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin and Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell. They were all my heroes, John Young. So I knew all those astronauts like I knew baseball players back then. And, you know, it's kind of cool. I've gotten to know most of them now. So by this time, a lot of them are gone now, too. But that's what I wanted to do as a little kid. And it really made an impression on me. And I knew it was important, but like a lot of kids want to grow up to be astronauts, as you said. But but it really stayed with me. I thought it was impossible. But by the time I was eight years old, it was never going to happen. I found out I was afraid of heights about that age. And I still don't like heights. And I just hate them and I try to avoid them whenever I can. I never thought it could happen. I my eyesight went bad when I was when I was young. I mean, you know, couldn't see very well. Needed glasses at an early age and thought I could never grow up to be Neil Armstrong, which is which was true. But the astronaut program changed when I was a when I was a senior in college. So I kind of forgot about it until I was a senior in college. And I went to the movies. And so the right stuff based on the movie, right? So based on the book by Tom Wolf of the same name. That got me thinking again about the space program. And I decided at some point after seeing that movie and watching the reruns of it on my VCR back then, I realized that either I could just be interested in reading articles about the space program or I could try to be a part of it. Went to grad school with the with the idea of of at least trying to become part of the space program. I never thought the astronaut thing would really work out. I know you guys can see these like my patches behind the wall. Yeah, like every time I see one of my flight patches, I make sure my name is still on it. But somebody is like, I guess this has ever happened, but that's what happened. So it happened as a little kid and then as an as an adult being a senior in college that I got reignited in that passion. And I think it really though is what happened to me as a little boy that was always there in my heart and soul of my mind that I wanted to be a part of the space program. Yeah, that opens up the book talking about the eyesight issue. And I remember when I was a young man and I had some thoughts about wanting to be a fighter pilot. And then I was told, well, you have bad eyes, so you can't do that. So I so I changed my major into being a rock and roller and was that. But you didn't take hearing that very well. And that opens the book about obstacles and getting over them. Could you tell our audience a little bit about that? But wait, is rock and roll things a pretty good thing, too? Do you think you would have? I mean, if your eyes were better, you'd be you'd be a fighter pilot, what do you think or what do you what have you changed over to rock and roll? Or eventually, I bet you would have. Well, my dad was a rock and roller and they rehearsed downstairs. So there you go. Eventually, it would have been a rock and roll turn anyway. So there you go. All right. So well, with me, I didn't, you know, I wasn't talented enough to be a rock and roller, John. So and I, you know, the other being a professional athlete, that wasn't in the cards as far as the sports that I had tried. So maybe there was some hidden talent I had in something else. But I know for for what for me, as you're saying to my eyesight. So what happened was as I applied and was rejected the first time I applied, I just got a letter the second time I was in grad school at this point. Second time I was almost done with grad school and they would announce it again. So every few years, NASA is looking for astronauts still. That's the way they do it now. So the next time it came up, I applied again and I got another rejection letter a few months later. And then the third time, though, by this point, I'd gotten my PhD and I was down at the Johnson Space Center working and they called me in for an interview. So when you're a finalist then and your odds are getting better at that point. You know, it's about 120 people they interview over the court in groups of 20 over six weeks. So anyway, I went in there with with with high hopes, but then I failed the eye exam. I couldn't see well enough. And you mentioned the thing about the fighter pilot stuff. That's all. So if any kids are listening in or don't worry about it, they throw all that stuff out. That's antiquated stuff left over from a long time ago, like World War Two, when you needed to see the other guy when you were flying and whoever saw the other guy first won the fight in an airplane, right, in a dog fight. Now they have all kinds of electronic stuff that NASA doesn't even really have a vision standard any longer, as long as you're correctable with 2020. LASIK has accepted as long as it's stable. It's a different world. But back then, this is the mid-1980s, you just needed to see well. And when I was told that I was disqualified, what they told me was is that that's it. You're disqualified and we will not even read your application in the future. So that was pretty disappointing. And so it was anything I can do because I had heard that sometimes people have something that they're concerned about and they're able to get an operation or get it checked out or provide more data and get it overturned. And they're like, no, because your eyes are what they are. We don't accept it. I don't even know if LASIK existed and like you're done. And I thought about it. It has to be a way around it because they didn't want any medical procedure, any surgical thing done or anything. So I found out about something called vision training, which was done with kids, right? It was like a kid thing when their eyes are still developing. If they have bad eyesight, there's things that doctors can. So it was as doctors, like a pediatric optometrist in the in the neighborhood, more or less, I did this. So I made an appointment to see it. I said, please, I can be really immature. You won't know the difference. Please help me. She didn't think it was going to work, but it, you know, it did. I was able to pick up a couple of lines. It's like training your eyes and your brain to see better. I just needed to feel like at least I could try. I think the way I looked, what I was looking at it is that as long as I was trying, I was OK to give up. You know, the first chapter, as you said, the book starts, the first the first chapters, one in a million is not zero. And I came up with that when I was in grad school after I got my second rejection was that, hey, this is impossible. And I said, no, it's not really impossible. It's like one out of a million. One out of a million is a non zero outcome. By definition, I was up at MIT. There's a lot of math going on up there, right? So I even verified this with the math people and they said, yes, it's a non zero outcome. But as soon as you give up, guys, right, that one at the end of those zeroes turns into a zero and you know the outcome with certainty, you will not be successful. And so that's that to keep you know, maybe there's a chance. But also, I think looking back on it, it was just to be able to try. I think a success not giving up is being successful. Once you give up, that's when you're defeated. And I didn't want that to happen. So I was going to do everything I could to figure out a way to try to remain in the game. So beyond the eyesight. Next challenge is swimming, which I don't think a lot of people would assume astronauts have to deal with in terms of testing to become one. Yeah. How did swimming come up? And why was that a challenge for you? Yeah, AJ, just you said that you wouldn't think that you'd need to swim to be an astronaut. Yeah. That's what I thought. Well, luckily they did it. It wasn't part of selection. I'm glad there was no, you know, all right, everybody jump in the pool during selection was after I was selected. And I think they didn't they didn't bring it up maybe because they figured they could train us to do that if we couldn't swim. But or they just figured most people can swim. You know, like it's kind of like they say in the book, like making a grilled cheese sandwich. There are some life skills that most people should, you know, probably have by the time they're 30 years old or whatever. So yeah, I got my packet of information after I was called on the phone that I was going to be an astronaut. And the greeting letter was congratulations. And in paragraph two was please practice your swim skills. So I guess they did have trouble with this in the past. And they kind of explained that that sometimes people come unprepared for the swim test and you need to be able to pass a pretty rigorous swim test in order to go through water survival training with the Navy in Pensacola. And I guess what happened is they were sending candidates down there because your hired as an astronaut candidate is the astronaut candidate program or as they call this affectionately ask cans. So I was an ask can at this point, you know, so they're reserving right to fire you within two years for, if you know, whatever reason. The swim test was going to was going to allow us to enter this course with the Navy so we could learn how to survive in the water, get out of an airplane over water with an ejection seat. Aircraft, we were going to be flying as a high performance jet with T-38. Also, we were on the shuttle. There was a bailout scenario for an abort. Wouldn't it be pleasant? But if you had to get out of the spaceship, you would bail out of it over the ocean. So you needed to be able to survive in the water until they would come get you and a helicopter or whatever is coming to get you. So that was a course that was required before you could go through the pilot training, the T-38 training and the shuttle training. So it was kind of like the first thing we were going to do. And they gave us the requirements. And for me, it was pretty serious. I mean, for most people who can swim, it's probably not that big of a deal, but it was a series of laps, a couple of hundred yards with you. You had to wear your boots and your flight suit and a helmet, because that's what you would be wearing when you ejected out of the airplane, for example. And you had to demonstrate these survival swims. And then you had to do like a rescue and pull one of your classmates for 50 yards or something so you could keep them alive. You had to drown proof, which is like the dead man's float on your back. And then you had to tread water for a long periods of time, including at the end, you had to like have your hands out of the water. So I was like, oh, man, so it mainly was the swimming strokes and all this we had to do that I practiced. And I was feeling OK about it, but I was afraid I was going to embarrass myself. But that the first week of work was mainly administrative stuff. And then on Friday of that week before we went home, you know, this is the first time our class is all together. Jeff Ashby, a Navy pilot who was our sponsor, he was from a previous astronaut class and he was helping us with our training. He says, OK, I want to remind everyone Monday, you know, we're going to start your training in earnest and we're going to begin with the swim test. And so I was like, oh, that's great. You know, could it be a math quiz? Can we have something else other than the swim test? But it's the swim test. And then he goes on to ask, who are the strong swimmers in this group? And there was 35 of us just getting to know each other, 35 Americans and nine international astronauts. So we had 44 of us. And we had a couple of Navy qualified divers who raised their hand. Dan Burbank was a Coast Guard guy who was a good swimmer. He raised his hand. So a few people raised their hand and they said, more important, who are the weak swimmers in this class? And so I raised my hand and so did a couple of my classmates. And they said, OK, everyone else can go home. But the strong swimmers and the weak swimmers stay after class. Arrange a time to meet over the weekend because the strong swimmers are going to help the weak swimmers with their swimming. And when we go to the pool on Monday, no one leaves the pool until everyone passes the test. And so that was kind of like my introduction to what things were, is that it was going to be very much team oriented. If you were strong at something, your job was to help someone who maybe might be struggling with something. And if you were having a hard time with something, whatever that might be, you needed to admit that you needed help. And I think that was more of the message in some ways that you need to speak up when you need help because what matters is that the team is successful. We all met over the weekend and they they helped, you know, the strong helped the week. And I was one of the week and we got to the pool on Monday and all of us passed the test together. So that was my first lesson in what what the attitude, the teamwork attitude was going to be at NASA. And, you know, that's something that I think applies to, you know, still to my everyday life. I think of that when you're working in a group, you know, hey, you're having trouble, you speak up, how can I help you? What matters is that the team is successful. Well, what we're seeing is the data shows that we now feel more isolated than ever due to our working from home and everything else that that comes with that and all the technology that that we have that we engage with. It puts us in isolation. And in the book, when you were going over this part, when you recognized that it was that you guys were going to be there with the better swimmers and no one was getting out until everyone passed. In the book, you mentioned about a sense of comfort there, knowing I got this, these people have my back and we're going to be able to do this together. We have to be able to to remember that when we are feeling isolated because of we don't allow ourselves to. It's easy to to spiral thinking that we're completely alone. Yeah, I agree with you, John. I think a lot of people feel that way. During the pandemic, that was something I spoke a lot to audiences about about feeling isolated. That was similar to the feelings you might have in space as well, that you're out there, especially on a spacewalk, it's you and one of the person and your all of your support is down on the planet. And I made I made mistakes when during my spacewalk. One was really bad. I stripped the screw during a repair of the of the Hubble and there was no backup plan for this because it was such a simple task. Even I couldn't mess it up, but I messed it up. And I remember looking down at the planet before I fessed up to the ground, I kind of leaned out of the telescope. I was in a foot restraint so I could lean back and take a look at Earth. And we were over the Pacific Ocean and I'm in space and I couldn't even imagine a hardware store I could go to to get help. And it's like, who's going to help me now? But I reached out to the Mission Control Center and for an hour, between an hour and hour and a half, we tried all kinds of things and then they came up with a solution to fix it, which I never thought we were going to be able to fix it, but they came up with something. And then I learned later about what was going on. I couldn't see them, right? And but it was a guy in a in a back room and Houston had had an idea. He called up to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and they did a little test in a clean room. And this is on a Sunday. They're all doing this and he came back with the results and they just talked about. So it was like the whole team sprang into action to help me. I couldn't see any of this. And I try to recommend to people to reach out to their Mission Control Center whenever you need help. People are still there. They're there waiting to help you, just like you should be there waiting not waiting, but being available to help them be Mission Control for others so that when one of your teammates needs something, you're there for them. And people should know they can reach out to you and it's not going to be a bother in the same in the other direction. Reach out to your control center when you need them, don't hesitate. And that I think was a lesson I learned as an astronaut that applies to Earth, but even more so in these times where we don't see each other, but the teams are still in place. We just don't, we're not in the same room, just like the three of us are in different parts of the world right now, apparently, and we're still able to communicate. Well, mistakes definitely happen and you have a story in the book where someone who you look up to makes a mistake in front of you and you're new on the job and now you are hearing the mistake, but going along with that person's mistake instead of speaking up. And how important it is to find your voice in those moments, even if the other person who's leading the charge has more experience, more knowledge and shouldn't be making that mistake. Yeah, that was another thing, AJ, that I thought was important about our culture that I learned early on. And people can tell you these things, right? Oh, you should do this and you should speak up and all that. But the book is a series, there's a bunch of stories to try to help people picture what was happening and how important some of these rules or guidelines are. So we were encouraged to speak up and for me what happened was, as you mentioned, was one of my early training flights in the T-38 and I was flying with a very experienced pilot and as we were taking off, our heading was changed by the tower and it was at night, things happen at night is usually an indication of it just, you know, lose awareness at night. It's always things are more likely to go wrong, I think when it's nighttime for whatever reason, can't see as well and lose some of that awareness. Anyway, so I put the correct heading in the flight computer and we rolled down the runway and my buddy starts turning in the wrong direction. Now I had about three hours in the airplane at this point. I had like this was probably my fourth time inside. I wasn't even sure how to strap in and get the oxygen mask on, you know, and everything. So this guy had about 8,000 hours or whatever, thousands of hours of experience. He was a test pilot with the Air Force, Jim Kelly Vegas was his name and he was a combat veteran. So this guy knows what he's doing. What the hell do I know? And so as he's going in the wrong direction, I don't say anything. And then I was like, I must be wrong. And then the tower comes over the communication loop and go over the headset and it was like, you know, NASA 922 turn right now, sharp turn right now and he immediately whips the airplane around. It's a very maneuverable airplane. So we're able to get out of the way. What it was is that unbeknownst to us, another airplane had showed up in the time that we got our initial clearance and the time we reached the runway and we almost had a midair with a guy coming in the land. And, you know, my buddy said, what the heck was that? Did he change our heading? I go, yeah, I put it right in the flight computer. And he goes, you saw me go the wrong direction. You didn't say anything. They said, I thought you knew what you were doing. You know, there you go. And that was the end of that. Until we landed about an hour later and we came down the ladders of the cockpits. And, you know, he said, look, I made a wrong turn and that almost got us killed. But you didn't speak up and that almost got us killed as well. You got to learn to speak up. So that I think is really important and what he said he would have done and what I found in further times was that when you're wrong, it's okay to be wrong. It's better to speak up and be wronged than to stay silent and be correct. And then something bad happens. And I never did that again. And I was like, you know, hey, especially when you have a close call like that, you learn your lesson. But hopefully it doesn't take that for people to understand that it's important to speak up. I think it's more important for the leadership to encourage that. You know, there was, you know, and thank you was always a good thing to say in the cockpit is what we would say. So if I would have told Vegas, hey, you're supposed to be going to, you know, heading 250 and be like, no, no, no, they change. He would explain it to me, but, you know, thanks for speaking up is thank you was always a good thing to say in the cockpit because sometimes especially new people are gonna say things that really aren't correct, right? They may have an idea that's not gonna work or we've already tried that, but you don't yell at them. That's not the way it was at NASA. You know, you always try to encourage them. It's just, oh, you know, this we can't do that for this, this and this reason, but thank you for bringing that up because the next time they might have the good reason. And if you react badly to the bad idea, then you're not gonna hear about the good idea. People are gonna shut up. I think it was always important, especially for leadership to encourage that. And that was our culture because we had to be that way or else bad things can happen like you hit another airplane. But I also think it's a good thing to do in business and in life on earth is speak up when you have a concern and whoever is that you're talking to should appreciate that you took the time to speak up and thank you even if you're wrong. Mike, during that story, I couldn't help but thinking about all the times that I have been in that position where I should have spoken up. And usually for myself, what happens in that moment is the other person, they make their move and then I start second guessing myself like, oh, well. They've done this before, so maybe I'm wrong and how could I be wrong and going back and making sure that I have everything together. And it comes up in the book in the chapter about trust where trust begins with trusting the people who trained you so that you understand and know these things. So then you can now trust yourself to begin to speak up. Yeah, well said, John. Thank you for reading the book. That's pretty good synopsis of that whole thing. I don't think I could do it better. Thank you. Yeah, that's what you have to remember in having confidence. It's hard for me, it was like, am I ready? I don't know if I'm ready to go to space. My first flight of special is like, I don't know what I'm doing. I've never been in space before. And I felt like flying in space was, for me, it was like playing in the Super Bowl or the World Series or whatever event you can think of as a big deal. You know, a rock star playing in Madison Square Garden or something like that. But I'd never even been on the field before or on a stay. I had to go out there and perform right away. I never been to space. So I trained for hours in the water tank. And, you know, I didn't know how I was doing. I was doing OK in the training, but how am I going to be in space? And I was told, hey, you're doing fine. We have full confidence is what I think the leadership and some of the people around me were kind of detecting because some of the astronauts, I think I felt the same way. It's kind of a nominal feel that on your first time in space. And you're given a lot of responsibility. You don't want to mess it up. But the truth of it is you wouldn't be allowed to, I wouldn't, they wouldn't let me go if I wasn't ready. They're not going to roll the dice with the Hubble Space Telescope. They were going to, they had confidence in me. I just need to have confidence in myself. So sometimes it might be hard to have that confidence in yourself. You have to realize, hey, I'm being trained by people who know what they're doing. And that training could be lots of different things. It could be a formal training or it could just be your life experiences or whatever it is that got you to that moment. That allows you, you've earned the right to be there. So trust that training, trust the tools, the equipment that you're going to be using that you understand how it's going to help you, whatever that means. And then whatever the equipment might be. In our case, it was like parachutes and spaceships and so on. And then the other one is trust your team. We rarely go into things alone and related to what we had said before. Space flight was an open book test. My friend, Steve Smith told me that right before my flight, remember, if you need help, you ask for it. And that's the way it is a lot of times on earth. And like we were saying earlier, it's important to know they'll be there for you. And then those things allowed me to trust myself because everyone's like, what do I know? Well, as you said, John, the experts are saying I'm okay and they're not setting me up for failure. And I think that that was certainly the case with Hubble Space Telescope. They were not going to take risks with that important world asset. Remember me just not to hurt my feelings. But I think that's the way it is even in little things that we might think aren't as big deals on earth. But they could be big deals for us, right? Or cause it may not be the Hubble Space Telescope but it might be a pitch you're gonna give for as an entrepreneur or a big meeting or a proposal, whatever it might be. And you're like, well, what's going on here? Am I really, am I gonna, am I okay to do this? Just remember those trusts. So trust your gear, trust your training, trust your team and that leads you for the big one, which is trust yourself. Well, that brings up a very big point which is it takes a lot to build trust. And when trust is there, you are capable of wonderful amazing things such as going into space and coming back in one piece. However, as powerful as trust can be when it has been built, it's also delicate and can easily fall apart. And then the story about Columbia took years for everyone on that team to gain the trust back due to that accident. So with that, do you have any pointers of what to look out for so that the trust that you worked so hard to build is not subverted or undermined? I think the trust is there. In our case with the, you mentioned the space shuttle accident, as I said, trust your equipment. So I remember walking onto space shuttle Columbia thinking, oh, okay, I know all the workers are really diligent and I know they worked really hard and this is gonna be okay. Well, on the next flight at Columbia didn't work out that well. They took some debris on the way up from the external tank foam that came off and it put a hole in the wing that no one knew about and we ended up losing the crew on the vehicle. That was a bad day. And that happened. It was a horrible worst day of my life. I think that things are gonna happen. I don't know if I fully appreciated it at the time when it first happened, but I started to learn of how much people were affected by that who were not astronauts, people who were not in the line of duty, I think took the accident as bad or possibly even worse. They really felt responsible for what happened compared to the way the astronauts might have felt about them and we lost our friends and this was not a good, it could have been any of us but the impression I got from the folks who were in the control center and in the space shuttle program, they felt directly responsible and they felt horrible about it. So they knew that things had to change and when that happens, it could have affected our trust in them with the team and the system but there was no sugarcoating anything and a full investigation was done and everyone admitted, hey, a lot of things were wrong, when you have a major disaster like that, it's never one thing, it's a series of things, both technical and non-technical and there's gonna be plenty of blame to go around and everyone has to be open to hearing what happened. Everyone bore some responsibility on this and we are gonna stick together as a team to get through this and fly again safely and finish out the things we wanted to do with the space shuttle program and the way we reacted, it's not that you can't, you can't prevent accidents but even with your best efforts, bad stuff is gonna happen. You don't, no one wanted a shuttle accident to happen but stuff happens, right? I mean, you never know, it could be a pandemic hits and what are you gonna do about that? Or whatever else happens, things can happen but it's how you react to it and so I think the way we reacted to it with diligence to make sure that we understood what happened, put things in place to make sure it never happened again and everyone came together without pointing fingers, throwing people under the bus and I think that's the way the team should react when it hits adversity. You know, it's easy to be a good team member when everyone's winning and high-fiving and oh, this is great. What happens when you have a bad issue? Something happens with the product you're trying to sell or the sales pitch doesn't go well or a pandemic hits or something happens that there's nothing you can control about it and it just happens. What do you do then? Do you start pointing fingers and calling people names or do you come together and I'm really proud of the way the team came together and so it tested I think the trust we talked about but the way we dealt with that problem I think built that the team in such a way to make it even stronger, built up the team to make it even stronger than it was before. I think the powerful takeaway in that is understanding that finger pointing is not only building distrust but it doesn't serve the greater mission. You know, everyone involved in that mission was looking for success, was working hard for success. No one went in purposely making any mistake whether it was technical or human error was involved and so often finger pointing might absolve us from the blame and the guilt but it certainly doesn't foster a great team environment. Yeah, I agree. I am amazed sometimes that sports teams where something happens at the last minute and they blame the person who made the mistake but if the game is that close at the end, if the event is that close at the end there were a bunch of other things that happened well before that that put that, you know and I've seen sports teams stick together and not blame the kicker for missing a field goal and I've seen other stuff where they just say it was this guy's fault and blah blah blah and the guy who's saying that is the guy that two minutes earlier did something really bad that caused that set his buddy up that where that mistake wouldn't have mattered if this guy was doing his job earlier. So yeah, I'm amazed but I don't think that's a good way for, that's not a good way for a team to behave. You can't do that, you have to stick together not only in the good times but more importantly in the bad times. I think that's the mark of it. You find out who you are in the bad times not in the good times. I think that brings a good segue into another part of the book where it's titled, Well, Things Can Get Worse and you talk about Hoot's Law and could you tell our audience a little bit about Hoot's Law please. As a rookie space walker, I was training in the pool one day and I wanted to show everybody how great I was. You know, I'm the greatest space walker and I was the first rookie to get a chance to be a space walker on Hubble. There were three previous Hubble missions and he always had an experienced astronaut who had flown in space before. At first it was you had to have space walk experience and then he loosened it up a little bit at least you had to have been a space before. So I was the first pure rookie that was gonna get a chance to space walk on Hubble. So I'm trying to alleviate everyone's concerns and show how good I am and moving really quickly in the water and we're practicing like we would in space you know in big giant pool and we have a tether that we that always is attached to us. It's a safety tether. In case we come off of structure you start floating around. This thing is like officially it's got attention on it's a big reel that's on your side. It's gonna pull you in back to safety but you don't wanna rely on that you know as you're flipping around then this thing is going in like you're a fish. So you don't, it's not, but it's there as a last resort kind of thing. Anyway, so it also is an obstacle you know if you don't keep track of it and I got this thing between my legs somehow and I'm like, ah crap because it's why now I'm floating around in the water and I'm like this is like really a silly bad mistake. Let me try to fix it. So I try like kicking it and going on my side to get it out from between my legs and it ended up going like around my helmet like down my back around my helmet and then I see it in front of me somehow and it's going around and like moving and you know I was like the tangled in this web and I still didn't really say anything until someone, one of the instructors who's watching this because there's cameras everywhere. I was like, hey, I'm asked to need some help. I was like, yeah, I guess I do. And then my buddy Jim Newman came over and was really impressed with what I was saying. If I was trying to do it I couldn't have entangled myself with it. So he kind of moved me around like a giant balloon in the water and got me untangled and then afterwards he says, how the heck did this happen? I go, well, you know, I had one snarl and then I made it a lot worse because I was trying to hide it. And he said, you got to remember who it's law. I go, what's that? And he said, no matter how bad things are you can make it worse. You know, you don't want to make a bad situation worse. He also said, who Gibson also said nothing is often a good thing to do and always a good thing to say. Anything of that one. That's so anyway, but who Gibson was a very wise person and chief of the astronaut office for a while and beloved by everyone. That was a pretty good thing to remember when you make a mistake, it can get worse no matter how bad it is, you know? And you think, and that happens and usually strike one could be really bad but it's not strike three yet. But if you have, when you make a mistake I mentioned like when I stripped a screw on the telescope I actually like thought of Hoot's law like, okay, this is really bad but if I start losing tools if I puncture my space suit, if I break something else there's no chance anyway with the mistake I made but it can, oh, even though you think it's really bad it can get worse, it can always get worse. And usually that first thing that happens it's time to slow down and recruit help and not make it worse. And I think that was something dealing, mistakes are gonna be made all the time in space I made them all the time on earth I make them even more often because they have more free time to make mistakes I think but I make more mistakes. But we had to learn to deal with them in space. On earth you think you might, but you have to learn to deal with them on earth too that's the point, right? Is that we're gonna mess up and make mistakes here on earth the consequences of another mistake might not be life-threatening like they could be in space but still it's, it could be threatening through your business or your work or your family situation too, you know we're having conflict in our families even so yeah, not Hoot's law, no matter how bad it is it could always, you can make it worse it could always get worse. Well and reading that chapter the thing that came to my mind was how we chase perfection and we also have this idea of memetic desire where we're trying to recreate these pictures that are in our minds and for our clients they have a lot of very high expectations it's whether inner expectations that they have for themselves or the expectations from other people that they put on themselves and when it comes to Hoot's law if things aren't perfect they get frazzled and then when they get frazzled they start to beat themselves up and then they get frustrated and that begins a spiral that can put them into a bit of a depression over the progress that they had made and I think it's very important to understand that a lot of these picture perfect ideas in our mind are their fiction, they're made up and to not hold ourselves to these ideas and when I was reading the chapter it stuck at least it came to me that your ego had gotten the way of I don't want the other members to see that I got this tangled which then puts you in a rush which made the situation worse and all because there was something there that you were trying to protect either the picture perfect for your teammates. Right and the result was not good is slow down not to make, don't make it worse but also when you're going back to when you need help you need to speak up mistakes are going to be made some are small, some little things you forgot to do are messed up, the tether snarl, space shuttle accident, some are huge but so some are big, some are small but they're going to happen and you have to be able to deal with them and so it wasn't that you're trying we were never I don't think ever John I don't think we're ever trying to reach perfection I think what we were trying to realize is being able to handle mistakes well and because you're going to make them and so nothing I write about is a 30 second rule you're going to make a mistake give yourself 30 seconds of regret beat yourself up and then move on you know it's okay to be really pissed off at yourself for making a mistake but take 30 seconds and that's all the time you're going to give yourself to be miserable because you don't have hours or days to be miserable because that takes you out of the game and we couldn't do that in space and I would say the same thing on earth in your business you can't you don't have time with your family or your business to take a couple of days off to be miserable but I used to do stuff like that I would be so pissed off in myself when something bad would happen that I would be on my mind and it would kind of check out that's not a good way to operate so I think what we learned and still in the astronaut office the same thing it was Woody Holberg is a friend of mine who has selected 21 years after me he became an astronaut in 2017 and he was just in town we had a downlink with him with my students when he was in space and he came back to Columbia and we did an event together and the students asked him what was the most important lesson you learned as an astronaut and I just let him answer and he said I learned how to deal with my mistakes you don't have to learn how to make mistakes because we all can do that on our own but how to deal with them and part of it is fessing up I made a dumb move but I need help here or else it's going to affect the mission you cannot keep it to yourself you have to fess up so fess up don't make it worse 30 seconds of regret and let's try to become part of the solution well yeah I'd like to dive into the protocol that you have there for the 30 second rule because accidents happen, mistakes are made things don't go as planned you have high expectations that you fall short of and I have seen people ruminate on these for days to weeks sometimes months or years and in the book I was so happy to see it's like hey we got 30 seconds of regret and we're moving forward now for a lot of people they're like well 30 seconds that would be great if I can get through that but what does it entail to move through that 30 seconds so could you go through that for our audience please it's okay to be disappointed with your mess up the thing you mess, you're going to mess things up and it's okay to be mad at yourself but you, to wallow in that misery it's not going to be helpful and we did not have even a minute we did not have seconds to spare a minute to spare but I would argue it's not just in space it's on the ground too I mean life is too precious for you to be going through it miserable because of a mistake you made but I would hear you know leave mistakes in the past let it go, flush it, all these things but how do you do that you know and the way that I was able to be able to do that to move on was this 30 second role I learned from my crewmate Megan McArthur told me about it that she learned it from CJ Sturkow who was a marine pilot in our office he called it 30 seconds of remorse where you beat the crap out of it you made a mistake, it's really embarrassing so you take it and you just really let yourself have it I'm the worst astronaut ever now I'm gonna be known for setting back astronomy for years the textbooks will say we would know the age of the universe except Mike broke the Hubble Space Telescope why didn't I think of a different way to do this task why was I cavalier about the way I did it they should have never assigned me to do this I should have just done simple things they should have never selected me I'm gonna go whatever don't vocalize any of this folks just keep it to yourself because you'll scare people it's an internal rant and it's set a timer for 30 seconds and then when you get down to like four seconds left just say I'm never letting that happen again it's in the past and we're gonna leave it in the past and we're gonna move on and that's what I did when I stripped that screw I used that on the Hubble and I was like if I ever get a chance to do this to continue with the spacewalk somehow if we get around this problem because I still had a lot of work ahead of me I had 111 little small screws those are the ones we were worried about and we had backups for those backup procedures for those these were big screws that I'd messed up with so I was like all right the hard part is still to come so if I can get by this I am not gonna be cavalier I'm gonna make sure I'm seated with the right tool I'm gonna take my time and all I just need redemption I need a chance and it didn't make it worse got over it and became an active participant in the solution and it worked we were able to get around it and be successful that day I'm really curious to hear with all this training from a young boy having that vision of being an astronaut to then in college did that night before your first launch the first mission what's going through your head and then also what is that moment like when you actually achieve this goal that you had set out and pass through failures, rejections you worked on your eyesight became a swimmer everything that you put yourself through to that moment to be up there in space and how did it line up with what you thought it would with the movies and what we see in media and what you imagined it to be the being accepted into NASA getting a chance getting that opportunity and that's chapter one right and I think and that's in my and then the rest of it is what I learned at NASA so it was great to get the phone call to be accepted and then we showed up there and I remember Bob Cabana was the chief of the astronaut office the marine colonel flown shuttle commander and he was our boss and he welcomed us and he said something like we're very happy to have you here you know we were all dressed up you know our first day of work we wore coat and tie everyone's dressed up we were happy to have all of you here we're thrilled that you're all here but I want each of you to remember this is our first day of work from the boss I want each of you to remember that for every one of you there are thousands of people who would exchange places with you this morning in a heartbeat and the only difference between you and them is that you are more fortunate than they are and that you owe it to them and to everyone else around the country or the world to do the best you can with this opportunity and so that was it it was like really great to become an astronaut but we really we hadn't done anything yet and we had to put all these principles to work and these things I learned to get that that flight opportunity like you're describing so it was kind of like just heads down at that point trying to get there and the night before I was you know very very excited about the whole thing and looking forward to it got a little worried on the launch pad when I actually saw the shuttle was ready to go it was kind of frightening it was a night launch and it was the place is deserted because there's fuel in the tank and usually it's a lot of bustling activity but it's deserted and the space shuttle is brightly lit up with all the support structure it looks like a real no kidding it's going somewhere it's going to space smoke is coming off of it just water vapors making these hideous noises like screeches I think it was the cold fuel going through the pumps and I looked up and I thought after all these years of dreaming maybe this wasn't such a good idea looking at that but that's where the trust came into no you got to go inside of this thing and once I'm thinking about stuff it's thinking about stuff is always worse than doing it right that's the other thing you can really psych yourself out so build up the trust remind yourself get in there and then everything was fine but it really hit me I think A.J. it was on my second spacewalk where I had a chance to I think kind of soak in a moment and it was a kind of a lull in the activity that was going on and I was able to look off to the side and just look at the planet and it was so magnificent the thought that went through my mind is this is a view from heaven what a view this is and then I thought no no it's more beautiful than that this is what heaven must look like and I felt that like I was looking it's absolute paradise I cannot believe I don't have to any place could be more beautiful than our planet and we get to be here every day what a great place but just admiring the beauty of the planet you know zipping around our earth at 17,500 miles an hour in my NASA space suit with the American flag on my arm and it was like holy crap how did this happen I think that was my moment that you started I realized that well I'm really glad I didn't give up that I think was the moment where it all kind of came together and I was so grateful that it all happened because you get accepted you once you get in you still haven't flown yet and you've got to get on a mission hopefully and get something to do that you think is important and it never really lets up but that was where it kind of hit home that alright this is pretty cool it was worth it Mike is there anything you want to tell the Flat Earth Society yeah I was trying something else to be worried about I mean I got a feeling there's not many in your viewers are there that are Flat Earthers I don't think so but I've seen them argue online of like I can't believe this and there's so many I mean there's a million things to worry about I mean really why are we worrying about that you know no it's the place is round it's very easy yeah our home is we have a living around home not flat you're gonna fall off the edge I was not even getting into it yeah nah now was there anything that surprised you about that experience of being up in the shuttle and on the mission I think one reason one thing was I felt I was surprised at how well prepared I was I don't know if that happens to people too you know we think something's gonna be really oh am I ready for this and then you know the work went you know kind of went it felt now even making the mistakes I mean because we had worked with the control center and even though we didn't have that problem before because no one thought it could I that I could do that to strip that screw for example and other things that happened we had worked through so many other problems in practice that we just were able to engage it it's like you know going down to take an exam and in college or high school something like oh this I didn't know this is gonna be on a test but hopefully you're prepared doing other problems and you can kind of apply that same technique so that's what we did so I was amazed at you know how comfortable I felt and just how beautiful it was up there and even though I've been prepared for that there's nothing I can really prepare for the beauty of the earth they can prepare us to do our work and that's what I try to you know there's a chapter in a book about being amazed of how beautiful our planet is from up there but we can engage it on the ground too you know wherever we are you know you're out there in a beautiful place in California Johns and in a beautiful place down in South America now but yeah but you know we're in these and I'm in New York City and there's a beauty to all of it and sometimes it's natural beauty sometimes it's the buildings around us or the people or whatever it might be and I think that it's important to take that little time out and so I was surprised by the beauty of the planet that I saw but it stayed with me and we all live in a paradise I didn't know I would react that way but that's where I felt that we are so lucky to be here and you're now member of a very unique club extraordinary club of astronauts tell us a little bit about the camaraderie after the missions are over and now at this stage of your career it sounds like you're interacting with young astronauts and there's training so what is life after being in space like it's actually pretty good I enjoy what I'm doing now I like telling the story of space and NASA I gave me opportunities I think a lot of my fellow astronauts weren't that inclined to talk to people about what was going on I mean it was part of our job but I really liked it I thought it was a very important job part of it and I like interacting with people and now I had something that they were interested in finding out about I mean you guys are having me on your podcast for heaven's sakes right because I got to do this cool space stuff right so it's given me the excuse to be able to to do things like this to share these things that's why I wanted to write the book because I'd learned so much in leadership and perseverance and teamwork and I was kind of shocked after I left NASA of how much of those rules that we had these rules of engagement more or less the way we operated and the way we took care of each other how much of it applies to everyday life and especially to business and I do a lot of relatively a lot of keynote speaking to various businesses and they're having concerns about mergers and teamwork and people working together and perseverance and dealing with bad news and change and AI and all these things which we had a certain way of engaging the world when problems occurred and when new things came up and programs changed and bad news happened and whatever those rules that we had that worked for us in space because we had to be safe and successful also applied to business so now I enjoy doing that the book is part of that of course and getting a chance to talk to you guys I really appreciate it and I really like doing that and I teach at Columbia so it's been fun in that regard I do some TV here and I got so NASA like gave me some opportunities of being like the big bang theory TV show yeah I got to be on that a few times which was cool and it just to me it was another way of being involved with the space program and you mentioned like the getting to know the guys who had left what was I didn't there was a lot I met Neil Armstrong and got to know him when I was an astronaut and Alan Bean and John Young some of those old timers but I've gotten to meet a lot more since I since I left I think what it is is now being like outside you're kind of jealous of the people that are still doing it so it's like it was like a different club you know it's like ah those guys what did they know you know they're spoiled now they don't have to fly a space shot all the they can go to sleep during the launch there's not nothing guys all of them that's not true but you know I think a lot of it is that I still like to hear from them like I mentioned Woody and some of the other folks out of steel that I've gotten to know that are friends of mine I'm thrilled for them so it's kind of fun to be cheering them on it really is and be happy for what they're doing and also kind of being this this kind of like a kind of an offshoot of the because a lot of us are doing stuff like this you know a lot of us are writing books and and a lot of us are teaching classes we share from don't tell my students but we you know we share information on classes on it we teach around the country we all try to help each other it's it's the reason it's a great club is because there's really nothing we want to do for each other and that goes even for some of the new folks who I don't know if they're coming to New York and I get a chance to meet them you know they're my brother or sister it doesn't it is no questions asked and that is that is what makes it nice and I think again that doesn't those are things that don't have to be unique to being an astronaut it can be that for any for any organization that you have you have this bond between each other and a respect for each other and a love for each other really that you know I'm going to this person is you know is one of my people I'm going to try to help them and so it was there I used to get advice on how to fly the airplane or the spaceship or do a space walk when I was at NASA now that stuff doesn't really I'm kind of curious what a way to do it now but now we have different conversations about maybe how to teach or you know different about whatever might be story of speaking or whatever so right it's a different it's a whole different thing but it's it's still pretty cool it's just different I wouldn't say it's better or worse it's not as cool that was never going to happen again I don't really know you can get anything cooler than being an astronaut but but it's not it's not bad being a former astronaut so thank you again for stopping by we love the book and our last question for each and every one of our guests is what is your X factor what do you think makes you unique and extraordinary Mike? Well it made me successful I think really look at the core values I would say I have a pretty good work ethic and I learned that most likely from my my parents who worked really hard my my dad worked from New York City Fire Department my mom was a stay-at-home mom but very smart and was all doing something all the time and and how important it was to do work in service of others my mom and when once we were grown she ended up working in a in a senior center helping out there it was always doing something that's in service of others and that work ethic of doing something that's bigger than you whatever that working for an organization working with other people to do something together like for example in the fire department or in the astronaut program or in the companies I speak to it's the same thing where it's a pharmaceutical company or a startup or whatever there's that camaraderie that teamwork so I think that work ethic was important I think the perseverance of not giving up always trying that that no matter what I would keep I would keep applying until this day because my definition of success is not necessarily meeting the goal but at least continuing to try because that's all that you can control and I think the other thing is being a team player is really important so I'm giving you those three I don't I think that that combination is kind of what we look for in astronauts and I think that's what also makes people successful in other things and that the not giving up is really important success I've never met a successful person who's never failed the successful people that don't let failure stop them right and there's examples of that even those with early success or have some early luck in order to continue that everything needs to be built organically and a lot of time you see those people really deal with reality in a harsh way because they didn't have to beat those challenges in order to reach that that place it was they had a they were lucky enough to have the lightning strike and then what came after that was is some real floundering and it's it and it can take a toll on somebody as well yeah you've got you can't be brittle and I see that a lot with my students as well they because a lot of you know students get to they've been very successful in high school and in some you hit you hit walls I hit walls when I was in when I was a little eighth grade was a huge wall earth science I got a deep in there in earth science Mrs. Cazak well made it it's a marking period that way and I made it to space you know so I don't Mrs. Cazak wasn't thinking this kid's going to grow up to be an astronaut I was like this find something else maybe work in the deli or something that's a good job too but you know find something else me kid and but I you know that was my first lesson in needing to change the way I could do things so I was lucky that I had a lot of failures at an early age you know I felt a lot just nothing ever worked the first time for me and that was a blessing looking back on it absolutely because you are definitely going to hit that wall if you're not it's because you're not challenging yourself probably or who knows maybe just really super lucky well that's certainly one of the most valuable lessons from Moonshot and we encourage all of our listeners to read the book where can they find out more about you you're speaking in the book my website is Mike Massimino dot com you can reach out to me there the book is available just about everywhere that you might want to buy a book also you can follow me on social me as the first got a tweet from space so you can find me on Twitter or whatever they call it now the thing that used to be Twitter Instagram Facebook LinkedIn all that stuff you can find me there too thank you Mike right on thank you thanks guys