Speaker 1: My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast
Speaker 1: is joy. I talked to interest in people about what
Speaker 1: brings them happiness. Make mass Amino has done something that
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to do, and he's beat the space.
Speaker 2: Here's Mike. Do you wear headphones when you're in space?
Speaker 3: You need to be able to communicate with the ground,
Speaker 3: with each other. So sometimes we would not big ones
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 2: No big head We had a little ones like earbuds.
Speaker 2: Ye're like, no, maybe now they do that.
Speaker 3: We have these old kind of like the thing you know,
Speaker 3: like Janet Jackson would wear and are singing, you know, Madonna,
Speaker 3: one thing like that.
Speaker 1: Like that, not the just I'm talking about the communication gear. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 2: Some of us.
Speaker 3: You know, you do whatever you want up there really
Speaker 3: as long as the camera's not on. But the cameras
Speaker 3: are so low I think the cameras, yeah, but you
Speaker 3: can you can turn off. But but the little here
Speaker 3: it's kind of like a little mic headset, so you
Speaker 3: can wear a headset or you're yeah, you have to
Speaker 3: have something now in your space suit when you're spacewalk
Speaker 3: and you wear a snoopy cap because it makes it
Speaker 3: look like Snoopy the dog. And then you have headphones
Speaker 3: on your you know, but they're not big like this, right,
Speaker 3: there's just little headphones and there microphones that got colmcap
Speaker 3: is well.
Speaker 1: And do you have to when you finished talking? Do
Speaker 1: you have to say beep when you're finished talking?
Speaker 3: No, that happens naturally. But I think they got rid
Speaker 3: of that thing. They got rid of the They got
Speaker 3: rid of the beep. Last time I was down there,
Speaker 3: they called it a quindar. They were a guy that
Speaker 3: can look up what the hell that means.
Speaker 1: I thought quindar was a medical name for a lady's
Speaker 1: personal equipment.
Speaker 3: It might be man, that's why they called it that.
Speaker 3: But a little beep that was called a just called
Speaker 3: a quindar. And how was there a couple of years ago.
Speaker 3: I'm like, what's going There's no beep and they know
Speaker 3: we don't. I think why they did that back in
Speaker 3: the day was it was like an actual city. When
Speaker 3: you'd cue the mic, it was a signal that was
Speaker 3: sent to kind of clear the line. It's like it
Speaker 3: was an antiquated thing. So they have just like a
Speaker 3: beep and we're like clear the lines. So now the
Speaker 3: message is coming. Nothing's coming in this direction.
Speaker 2: This is gone.
Speaker 1: You know, you're talking to a guy in space. If
Speaker 1: you don't get I agree with you, I agree with me.
Speaker 2: That all.
Speaker 1: Now listen, Mike, I'm talking to you. And right in
Speaker 1: front of me, right here is a book called Moonshaw right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it says it's written by you. Now I know
Speaker 1: you for a couple of years. You wrote a whole
Speaker 1: book go by yourself.
Speaker 2: Knowing you a long time. Actually, I mean it's show.
Speaker 2: It was an nine. Oh wow. It was my first
Speaker 2: late night appearance and it was an I. So it
Speaker 2: was fourth.
Speaker 3: That's fourth over fourteen years, ten years ago. So you
Speaker 3: were saying, did I write this by myself? Yeah, you
Speaker 3: know I wanted to, I thought because I had written
Speaker 3: another book. I had his co writer named Tanner Colby.
Speaker 3: He was great. He wrote a book with Trevanoah as well,
Speaker 3: and he wrote helped me with my first book. And
Speaker 3: so I was like, now I can branch out on
Speaker 3: my own. And my agent said, I don't think that's
Speaker 3: a good idea. I'm calling Tanner.
Speaker 2: So he got it.
Speaker 3: It was a little bit different than the way we
Speaker 3: worked together the first time. It was more me writing
Speaker 3: and than him kind of looking at the stories and
Speaker 3: telling me what he needed. And as before I told
Speaker 3: him stories and it was then he had someone transpose it,
Speaker 3: you know, and he would write it from that.
Speaker 2: So a little bit different. But no, I did have help.
Speaker 2: I think it's good to have help. Definitely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to be better with especially with someone
Speaker 3: who's talented as Tanner.
Speaker 2: And I love the guy. He's so much fun to
Speaker 2: work with, so all the resources in the co everything. Yeah,
Speaker 2: why not? All right?
Speaker 1: So I'm not an astronaut's guide to achieving the impulsible, right,
Speaker 1: all right? So here here's my question. Then, what did
Speaker 1: you learn when you were becoming an astronaut? First of all,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. I know this, but you're not a pilot.
Speaker 2: I'm a private pilot. You're a private right but you
Speaker 2: know you or I am, Yeah.
Speaker 3: But probably more accomplished than I am in there in
Speaker 3: the private pilot realm.
Speaker 1: I don't know by that. I haven't flow that. I'm
Speaker 1: like VFR single engine.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's what I did.
Speaker 3: You do that before you went a space raft. I
Speaker 3: did that before before it was an astronaut. I got
Speaker 3: my pilot's since once we became astronauts. We got to
Speaker 3: fly in T thirty eight's, so I have a thousand
Speaker 3: hours of co pilot in a T thirty eight high
Speaker 3: performance jet. So it's a mock airplane. It could go,
Speaker 3: but we would cruise, you know, about zero point nine
Speaker 3: to one mock, so five hundred miles an hour up
Speaker 3: high at forty one thousand feet.
Speaker 2: It could go high. Did you do the sine wave
Speaker 2: thing to do to witlessness?
Speaker 3: You could do that in that plane or any airplane
Speaker 3: as a matter of fact, my pend Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that would make your cough. You gotta be careful. But
Speaker 3: that airplane that we used to use was a KC
Speaker 3: one thirty five, and then they started using a d
Speaker 3: C eight. NASA did and then they turned it over
Speaker 3: to a contractor. There's a company that does that.
Speaker 2: It's a company in Vegas.
Speaker 3: Is on there, you know, I don't want to mispronounce
Speaker 3: there and they get it wrong, but there's a zero
Speaker 3: maybe zero G or something. They do this where people,
Speaker 3: paying customers can go and I think, you, yeah, you're
Speaker 3: just go on his airplane. And I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's different than what we did. The parabolos are probably similar.
Speaker 3: To what we did when we were training.
Speaker 2: Did you throw up before slaving? Did it?
Speaker 3: I did not, But I wanted to medicated. We would
Speaker 3: medicate for these things. Yeah, so this is so they
Speaker 3: would give us. An Essa gave me. He would give
Speaker 3: us this thing. It's called scope dex and what it
Speaker 3: was it was scopolamine, which is like an anti nausea drug, right,
Speaker 3: but that apparently makes you a little sleepy. So they
Speaker 3: didn't like that idea. So they would combine that with
Speaker 3: Texa dream or something like Yeah Dexi's midnight runners. So
Speaker 3: they would give that combined to us. So let's go
Speaker 3: A couple of years ago, I was doing a I
Speaker 3: was doing like a commercial video ad for Lego, and
Speaker 3: they wanted to build Legos and zero gravity. So they're
Speaker 3: find me if we're gonna go out, we're gonna do this.
Speaker 3: They couldn't get the airplane here in America, I don't know.
Speaker 3: We went out to France, to Bordeaux and flew with
Speaker 3: this with a French different it's more European very you're
Speaker 3: doing it. It was a little bit different, but it
Speaker 3: was it was so anyway. So I go to my
Speaker 3: now like I go to a doctor, here, you know
Speaker 3: in New York have like a family doctors. Yeah, doctor
Speaker 3: bask and I need some scolpe decks. She's like, what
Speaker 3: I need? Uh, the sculpt because what is that? I
Speaker 3: go it's She goes, that's not anything real. That's just
Speaker 3: something they gave you, guys.
Speaker 2: You can't get that. Yeah, it's like it was, I
Speaker 2: mean it was a real pill. What they did? I wondered.
Speaker 3: You know, you're right because they would give it to
Speaker 3: us in a little like a see through capsule, and
Speaker 3: you saw these two things floating around in it, so
Speaker 3: they kind of made their own concoction. She goes, I
Speaker 3: can't get I can't get that for you.
Speaker 1: So it was just like so it's basically a guy
Speaker 1: on the way the aircraft going angy one you want.
Speaker 2: But we had it in space. I flew it.
Speaker 3: I took it before I flew in space as well.
Speaker 3: So that was a really good anti nausea drug. But
Speaker 3: still I felt a.
Speaker 1: Little did you get up? You get up on the
Speaker 1: shuttles on a shuttle twice? That's so that's like a
Speaker 1: powerful takeoff, right.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of power. Shuttle is was huge
Speaker 3: can comparison to like the SpaceX vehicle were you're really
Speaker 3: just putting putting a few people in it. Shuttle can
Speaker 3: carry seven passengers and a lot of cargo like something
Speaker 3: like double space telescope and big pieces of the of
Speaker 3: the space station. So when you take when you take
Speaker 3: gs the G forces to go to orbit or similar,
Speaker 3: no matter what a space craft you're in, you get
Speaker 3: a max of three g's.
Speaker 2: That's for about two and a half minutes. That's it.
Speaker 3: So like in a in a in a high performance
Speaker 3: jet you can go much higher than it's only for
Speaker 3: a split second, right, because if you sustain a high
Speaker 3: G actually yeah, you can get to you right. So
Speaker 3: but with this you run your back. So the reason
Speaker 3: you could pass out in a high performance jet doing
Speaker 3: it like a six G turn is that the you're
Speaker 3: kind of sitting in a chair more or less right,
Speaker 3: and the lot the I can't believe it's going to
Speaker 3: say vector, we can you know, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, a small audience. So the vector So the vector,
Speaker 3: as you understand, of course, the gravity vector now is
Speaker 3: is going through your head, down through your vertical so
Speaker 3: it's vertical exactly. So that's sucks the blood out of
Speaker 3: your head. And you can pass out right in space.
Speaker 3: You're lying on your back for that reason, so that
Speaker 3: the gravity vector is going for your for your chest,
Speaker 3: so you feel it in your chest. I feel like
Speaker 3: there were three big dudes sitting on me, none in
Speaker 3: a good way, in a good way. So it remind
Speaker 3: me of my playground days as a child.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get to that because you and I
Speaker 1: are of a similar vintage.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think almost exactly. I'm sixty one, now, that's
Speaker 3: what I am sixteen?
Speaker 2: Right? What do you think about that? Is that?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: I gotta be honest.
Speaker 1: As long as I don't look in the mirror, I
Speaker 1: don't notice anything to me. As long as I don't
Speaker 1: look in the mirror, and I'm talking about looking in
Speaker 1: the mirror, particularly below the neck, I'm like, what the
Speaker 1: hell hell's happening because the gravity vector is pilling. I've
Speaker 1: got some of that super strong American gravity working on
Speaker 1: at least one of my testicles.
Speaker 2: Better not to look. You don't need to be looking
Speaker 2: at it. I was thinking about that.
Speaker 1: So if I ever get plastic surgery, I'm going to
Speaker 1: start with my balls.
Speaker 2: Really, what are you going to do? Well?
Speaker 1: I thought i'd get them plumped and you know, a
Speaker 1: lift because here's what I thought. I know that wheel,
Speaker 1: but here's what I thought, because look, it's your balls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if they if they screw it up, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna look at any worse. It can't look at it.
Speaker 1: That's a very sensitive area though. I'd leave those things alone,
Speaker 1: all right. I want to mess with that. Yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm not an expert in this area, but I leave
Speaker 3: it alone.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very important that you get massive people
Speaker 1: under your podcast ball to do that.
Speaker 2: No, I don't want to let him mess with that.
Speaker 2: I want to do that now, all right.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, but you know you can achieve the impossible,
Speaker 1: make your screwed them look good after the age of six.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. You and I are a similar vintage. Right,
Speaker 1: so when I'm when I'm a kid, I'm seven years old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're the same. Yeah, And I see I'm allowed
Speaker 1: because of the time difference. It's on in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night in British television, Scotch television. I see
Speaker 1: these guys land on the moon. Yeah, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I want to be an American. That's when I say
Speaker 1: that I'm.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm gonna be and you are in America.
Speaker 1: I have an America now, Yeah, And I was like,
Speaker 1: whatever these guys are doing, that's that's I'm into that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I never I never went to space.
Speaker 1: I never did it, but I thought, whatever these people
Speaker 1: are doing, I want to be part of that. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: I can guess. And that had a big effect on
Speaker 1: you when you were a kid too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely exactly what you said, Greig. I remember looking
Speaker 3: at that TV said a little bit earlier than you did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, time wise, Yeah, it was private thing for you,
Speaker 2: and it was like probably about it.
Speaker 3: I don't know, we you know, we could look this up,
Speaker 3: I guess. But it's around eight o'clock, nine o'clock when
Speaker 3: that first walk.
Speaker 2: And see, that's why I love America as well.
Speaker 1: It was like we got a live prime time right,
Speaker 1: we got to let the world adjust.
Speaker 2: That's what fun. Everybody else we need time.
Speaker 1: We want primetime TV audience for America say that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another reason, yeah, to come to America. But
Speaker 3: I remember saying that. I was like, I not only
Speaker 3: wanted to grow up to do that, I want to
Speaker 3: grow up to be those guys. I wanted to be
Speaker 3: like Neil Armstrong, right, I did. Yeah, I met him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he's awesome. He was.
Speaker 3: He was just great. So the first time I met him, Craig,
Speaker 3: do you have time for a story here?
Speaker 2: So I met him.
Speaker 3: It was my first week as an astronaut. Can you imagine.
Speaker 3: He was in town for his physical, his annual physical,
Speaker 3: and our training coordinator reached out to was, Hey, you
Speaker 3: want to come speak to these new astronauts. So he
Speaker 3: said sure. So he was. He was almost like painfully shy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he didn't even talk about the moon. He talked
Speaker 3: about flying the X fifteen and so on. And then
Speaker 3: we went to Q and A. We asked him about
Speaker 3: the moon landing. Of course my first question was about that.
Speaker 3: But I saw him the next day in the cafeteria
Speaker 3: and I go up through I hat to like say
Speaker 3: something to him. I didn't want to bother going up
Speaker 3: to him, so I introduced myself and I said, Neil,
Speaker 3: you know, I asked you something. How did you come
Speaker 3: up with that thing you said on the moon? You know,
Speaker 3: I think he said on one small set from man
Speaker 3: one shine leaf. I was like, did your wife tell
Speaker 3: you to say that? How did you come up with that.
Speaker 3: Did you hire a publicist? And he looks at me,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of awkwardly. He says, no, Mike, I
Speaker 3: didn't think about it until I landed on the moon.
Speaker 3: I'm like, really yeah, And I'm like, that's exactly what
Speaker 3: I said. Are you kidding me? And he says, Mike,
Speaker 3: if I didn't land on the moon, there'd be no
Speaker 3: reason to say anything.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: And then he got serious with me, Craig, and he said, look,
Speaker 3: you're new to this business, Mike, but you know this
Speaker 3: is a serious business, and bad things happen when you
Speaker 3: get distracted. Stick to your job, stick to business and
Speaker 3: worry about all that publicity stuff. After he's like you
Speaker 3: got it, I'm like, I got it. So years later, Craig,
Speaker 3: I got asked to send the first tweet from space.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, first week from space. Right, and we
Speaker 3: have our final press conference and I get asked, what
Speaker 3: have you thought about what you're going to tweet? And
Speaker 3: I'm like, I channeled the armstrong man. I can picture
Speaker 3: my imo. I feel like I had a crew cut
Speaker 3: like he did. Yeah, I just channeled him, and I said,
Speaker 3: I'm not thinking about that. We've got to get the
Speaker 3: space first. If we don't get the space, there's gonna
Speaker 3: be no reason to tweet anything. I'm not worrying about
Speaker 3: that at all. I wait till we got I'll worry
Speaker 3: about that when we get there. So we get to space.
Speaker 3: I open up the computer and I'm looking at that
Speaker 3: screen and I realized, Craig, that advice I got from
Speaker 3: our hero was the worst advice I ever got in
Speaker 3: my life. I couldn't think of a damn thing. And
Speaker 3: then I'm saying to myself, there's no way he thought
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 2: On the moon. Everyone was listening. Everyone, you're saying, you listening.
Speaker 2: Everyone around the world won here totally. Everyone knew where
Speaker 2: he was, who he was, and what he was going
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 3: Here I am float up. A few people knew who
Speaker 3: I was, but no one's really paying attention. You didn't
Speaker 3: know where I was. No one's listening, you know, space, Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I didn't know what. And I'm saying, no one's
Speaker 3: paying attention to me. And I can't think of a thing.
Speaker 3: He must have lied to me. You know what I
Speaker 3: wanted to tweet. I wanted to tweat curse you, Neil.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you didn't do that I didn't do that.
Speaker 3: I wrote what So what I did is I whatever
Speaker 3: came to mind I put it. Launch was awesome. I'm
Speaker 3: feeling great and enjoining the view. The adventure of a
Speaker 3: lifetime has begun. That was on a Monday. On Saturday.
Speaker 3: They made fun of me on Saturday Night Live on
Speaker 3: Weekend up Dates. Seth Myers is there. I didn't notice
Speaker 3: what was going on. I'm in space working and he goes, hey,
Speaker 3: we have the first tweet from space, and here it is.
Speaker 3: Launch was awesome. In forty years, we've gone from one
Speaker 3: giant leap from mankind to launch was awesome. And then
Speaker 3: he continues and he says, I assume if we if
Speaker 3: we ever find life in the universe, I assume this
Speaker 3: is how we'll be notified. And it shows my little
Speaker 3: Twitter thing that says, geez dudes, aliens, I don't.
Speaker 2: Notice is the way fair.
Speaker 3: The way I found fent out about this was my kids,
Speaker 3: who are like in middle school in high school. They
Speaker 3: are apparently very excited about this, and so they sent me.
Speaker 3: They sent me some email and like, Dad, they made
Speaker 3: fun of you on Saturday Night.
Speaker 2: Loud, which is kind of awesome, and you gave me a.
Speaker 3: Lot of credit and they're like all the kids at
Speaker 3: school loved it. Keep up the good work. I finally
Speaker 3: got somebody that.
Speaker 1: Got to your kids, so they weren't compressed that you
Speaker 1: were going to space.
Speaker 3: Did not, they didn't, but they were excited to get that.
Speaker 3: I got made fun of for the first tweek, but
Speaker 3: I got that advice from Neil Armstrong.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. I've met a few of the
Speaker 2: guys that have been on the moon, and a lot
Speaker 2: of them have you know, most of them have gone.
Speaker 2: I just lost a couple.
Speaker 3: Yea, well that didn't ken maddingly Yeah, who didn't walk
Speaker 3: on the moon but went to the moon twice and
Speaker 3: then it didn't land.
Speaker 2: And Frank Borman yeah, Paula wait just recently died too. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean buzz is still he's still around. He's still
Speaker 2: around and crazy aer than a bed bug. But you're
Speaker 2: going to see Charlie Duke later this week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you're in town, you may want to come
Speaker 3: by tomorrow whatever, but he's going to be having to
Speaker 3: see him.
Speaker 2: He's he was on a policy giving me Jim lovel Yes,
Speaker 2: he's still around. Yeah, an amazing character. Do you know what.
Speaker 2: I have a story about that.
Speaker 1: So I went to the Living Legends of Aviation dinner
Speaker 1: in California a few years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you ever been to that thing? No, I've
Speaker 2: never been. I've never been this. I mean it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Was there and Car there and Tom Cruise is there,
Speaker 1: and it's like all these like celebrity.
Speaker 2: Pilots are there, you know, and never Morton is there.
Speaker 1: It's crazy and it's all these like, you know guys
Speaker 1: that flew choppers are nam It's like, it's crazy. And
Speaker 1: the person that was being onner, Jim Lovel's being on
Speaker 1: her nice for you know, bringing the Paul thirteen around
Speaker 1: the moon and bringing it back. And Sally sellen Burger
Speaker 1: is getting is giving him the owner. So so Sully
Speaker 1: gets up and he says that he said, I never
Speaker 1: met uh, never met Jim before this evening, only just
Speaker 1: met him backstage. But he is the gentleman who told
Speaker 1: me everything you need to know about aviation.
Speaker 2: M H. I was like, and he's he said, and
Speaker 2: here's what it is.
Speaker 1: No matter how bad things are, no matter how close
Speaker 1: death may appear, you gotta sound cool on the radio.
Speaker 2: You think about it. We have a problem you know.
Speaker 2: I mean it's not.
Speaker 1: It's like you used to me have a problem and
Speaker 1: then selling burger is like this is a bunch of
Speaker 1: It's like, no, I'm going to be in the huts.
Speaker 1: Say again, going the huts And what did I mean
Speaker 1: that piece of flying? I'm amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think people think that that was something to do
Speaker 1: with like the plane can do that on his own
Speaker 1: or something. I mean what that man did without plane
Speaker 1: in the huts, and that's an easy piece of flying.
Speaker 1: The decisions he made unbelievable so quickly. Good training, good training.
Speaker 3: But the way he was able to make those that
Speaker 3: quickly because there wasn't much time. He lost both those
Speaker 3: engines and.
Speaker 1: It was like it was unprecedented, was like a huge
Speaker 1: flock of birds went through the engines.
Speaker 3: And he says he looked back at LaGuardia and all
Speaker 3: he saw between him and the field was humanity, people
Speaker 3: in the bronx, people living.
Speaker 2: And it's like, that's not going to want to miss it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean, if you if we had a
Speaker 3: couple of days to figure this out, maybe we'd come
Speaker 3: up with the right solution. Yeah, he had seconds, and
Speaker 3: he came up with it. That's really the thing that's
Speaker 3: amazing of how quickly.
Speaker 2: You did the right thing.
Speaker 1: Get I mean, if you're traveling at high speeds and
Speaker 1: you know what you were doing for a living back
Speaker 1: then you're traveling at high speeds all the time.
Speaker 2: I mean, how fast does that space station go? That's
Speaker 2: seventeen five hundred miles an hour. I mean that's crazy.
Speaker 2: I mean it doesn't look like he's doing that because you're.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no sense of it, right, No, there's no turbulence,
Speaker 3: there's no wind, there's nothing, and there's no your visual cues,
Speaker 3: like you know, as I timed it right as you
Speaker 3: were coming we hit Baja California, set the timer hit
Speaker 3: Miami eleven minutes later. So you know, that's pretty fast
Speaker 3: coast and the coast, but you have no sensation of it.
Speaker 3: You don't, you don't feel anything. And even coming back,
Speaker 3: so we were coming back from more a bit on the
Speaker 3: shuttle and you kind of got into this area in
Speaker 3: the atmosphere where it's like being in a cloud, like
Speaker 3: the partials are particles are excited, and it's just it
Speaker 3: was just gray outside, right, and it's like being in
Speaker 3: a cloud, no sensation of movement because there's no there's
Speaker 3: no turbulence. There's still no atmosphere out there, still too high,
Speaker 3: but you're still you're picking up the outer particles, but
Speaker 3: you don't have you don't feel anything. It's still smooth,
Speaker 3: no sensation of motion, nothing, nothing out the window. And
Speaker 3: I look at the velocity indicator was still going about
Speaker 3: twelve thousand miles an hour. Wow, but no sense of
Speaker 3: it other than what the Struman said.
Speaker 2: That's insane.
Speaker 1: And of course that they shuttle landed with like, there's
Speaker 1: no flaps on that thing, right.
Speaker 3: They had a body flap, they had they had controls,
Speaker 3: but there's no power.
Speaker 1: No power on it. That's the flying brick they used
Speaker 1: to call it. Correct, Yeah, yeah, yep. And it had
Speaker 1: really very low lifted drag ratio so it came in,
Speaker 1: had to come in really almost just like drop out
Speaker 1: of the sky like a brick.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's get let's get back to seven
Speaker 1: year old Mikey, little Mikey in the playground.
Speaker 2: He wants to be an astronaut. So how do you
Speaker 2: go from where'd you grow up again?
Speaker 3: Franklin Square, New York. So that's right just outside of
Speaker 3: Queens right by Belmont Racetrack, that area.
Speaker 2: It's the Paris of America. It's a great place to
Speaker 2: grow up. But yes, I didn't know it's the Paris
Speaker 2: of America. Yeah, America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yes, what I have to say.
Speaker 1: You know that when I first came to America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five, I'm thirteen years old.
Speaker 2: I go to a.
Speaker 1: Bowling alley with my cousins. We go to a bowling
Speaker 1: alley in smith tywn Long No, that's okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So I go to smith Then, Long Island.
Speaker 1: I'm thirteen years old, my god, and I'm from Scotland,
Speaker 1: right from Scotland, Smithtown, Long Island. Yeah, I'm in a
Speaker 1: bowling alley and someone says, do you want a root beer?
Speaker 1: And I went, I didn't even know. I fucking I
Speaker 1: thought it was like beer made out of potatoes or something,
Speaker 1: so it's possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So so you want a root beer?
Speaker 1: I went yeah, and someone gave me a an American
Speaker 1: sized beverage. So it's about the size of where I
Speaker 1: live in Scotland. It's a root beer over crushed ice
Speaker 1: and a bowling alley. Yeah, And every time I taste
Speaker 1: root beer. I still remember that. I taste the root
Speaker 1: beer and I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, God, damn, these people are fucking amazing. This is crazy.
Speaker 2: So first you see moving on the moon.
Speaker 3: You want to come to America, right, and you're and
Speaker 3: you get there and go to a bowling at.
Speaker 2: Bowling alley, root beer over crushed ice. That was right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was right. That's total vindication. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So how do you get from seven year old Mikey
Speaker 1: in Queens right to NASA sitting on the space shuttle
Speaker 1: like ten nine eight six five four three two one, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then boom or you don't even go to one
Speaker 1: do They's like ten.
Speaker 2: One and lift offft they lift off? They yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: lift off like the Saturn five stuff.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Ignition, yeah, engines, there would be.
Speaker 3: It would be ignition sequence start at six. It would
Speaker 3: be ten nine eight seven six, Ignition sequence start three
Speaker 3: two one and lift You know how I know that
Speaker 3: I did. I was a have a very exciting news
Speaker 3: This is old news, but I was the voice of
Speaker 3: missing mission control in the most recent Beavis and butt
Speaker 3: Head movie Beavis and butt had do the universe. Mike,
Speaker 3: judge me do that. So I got to so we
Speaker 3: got behead and space right when they went to space
Speaker 3: in the cartoon movie. I got to so but yeah,
Speaker 3: they still do it like that. Ten and the lift offs.
Speaker 3: That's what you say at zero, you say lift off?
Speaker 3: And so yeah, all right, so you seven. Let's get
Speaker 3: back to the place seven years old. Right, So little
Speaker 3: Mikey then, Mikey's smart? Is he smart?
Speaker 2: Kid? Is he? All right? Yes? He was smart?
Speaker 1: Is he?
Speaker 2: He was?
Speaker 3: He liked math. He I'm talking about. I like math
Speaker 3: when I was a little kid. Yeah, so that's gonna
Speaker 3: go to math. I was a good student. I wasn't
Speaker 3: a real genius or anything. But you worked hard. I
Speaker 3: worked my I met my my fourth grade teacher after
Speaker 3: I became an astronaut, all right, and I go back
Speaker 3: to my elementary gat. So missus oco and so she was,
Speaker 3: so she'll working. She was a very young teacher when
Speaker 3: she was my teacher in fourth grade. And she said, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, I told my kids, and I have two sons,
Speaker 3: and I told him I was going to have lunch
Speaker 3: with a former student who is now an astronaut. I go, oh, school,
Speaker 3: and I go what they say? He goes, well, he
Speaker 3: must have been smart, mom, And I go what you say.
Speaker 3: And she said, well, I said, well, I'm sure he
Speaker 3: was bright, but if he was really smart, I would
Speaker 3: have remembered, is what she said. And she goes, I
Speaker 3: went on to tell him that sometimes the smartest isn't
Speaker 3: the most important thing now, and it's how you work
Speaker 3: and work hard and.
Speaker 2: Absolutely do the right thing and so on.
Speaker 3: Right, so, absolutely the words of missus Oco, I was
Speaker 3: probably bright, but I wasn't the smartest kid in that class.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's like when people talk about when
Speaker 1: people go to Hollywood and they think that they're going
Speaker 1: to make it because it's super talented, and yeah, of
Speaker 1: course you're talented.
Speaker 2: Everybody he is talented here here is like talent.
Speaker 1: It's like the driver's license, you know, it's like everybody's
Speaker 1: fucking talented. Yeah, what have you got? Do you have
Speaker 1: a work ethic that people want to hang out with you?
Speaker 1: Are you're going to fucking be on time? You're going
Speaker 1: to be a douchebagh? Are you going to get the
Speaker 1: work done? Are you going to prepare so that nobody's
Speaker 1: waiting around for you to figure out out?
Speaker 2: Right? And it feels to me like maybe you have
Speaker 2: that ethic as well, right, it's a work.
Speaker 3: I agree, and the little bit I know like through
Speaker 3: you as as my friend and other people that are
Speaker 3: in the entertainment business. It's the same thing because there
Speaker 3: are so many great people that can do it. But
Speaker 3: all those things apply and people don't always realize that.
Speaker 3: But the entertainment business is relentlessly competitive. Man, You've got
Speaker 3: to want it so bad to do that, which is
Speaker 3: it shows you have to have that passion, which is
Speaker 3: what I had for the space Permo that I.
Speaker 2: Was going to say it's going to be.
Speaker 1: I think being an astronaut is probably pretty competitive as
Speaker 1: well as a little.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's thousands of people that want to do it,
Speaker 3: and you're gonna I got told I got rejected three times. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I got I kind of forgot about I thought it
Speaker 3: was impossible. I went and saw the right stuff. You
Speaker 3: must have seen that. That's my favorite movie.
Speaker 2: That's a great movie. That's out of my favorite bit.
Speaker 1: It is you damn right, you damn right.
Speaker 2: It is sounds dangerous, It is dangerous. Count me in.
Speaker 3: I quoted that movie the whole that was We quoted
Speaker 3: that movie on the on the launch pad.
Speaker 2: It was just the greatest movie.
Speaker 3: I love that movie and the book by Tom Wolf,
Speaker 3: and that rekindled my interest. And then I went to
Speaker 3: grad school trying to pursue the stream. I got rejected
Speaker 3: ice out right. Third time I got an interview and
Speaker 3: got rejected.
Speaker 1: So you you applied directly to NASA.
Speaker 3: Yes, everyone can. You can't as well. You're an American citizen,
Speaker 3: you can apply.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like I might have missed the boat
Speaker 2: a little bit. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Man, Well, now with all these you know the commercial opportunities,
Speaker 3: and you paid it, but maybe I don't know you
Speaker 3: maybe the price comes down or maybe, like I mean,
Speaker 3: you would you know, you're a celebrity and you have
Speaker 3: a great interest in flying you.
Speaker 2: Someone will take me up. Someone.
Speaker 1: I don't see why not you call someone at NASA.
Speaker 1: He's asked, I don't think NASA is the way to go.
Speaker 3: That's taxpayers money, billionaire. But then they got to you know, hey,
Speaker 3: why are you flying that guy? They won't fly me
Speaker 3: anymore neither. You got to have a mission. I guess
Speaker 3: up there, Ah, that are a.
Speaker 1: Very wealthy friend, Like, yeah, I don't have any wealthy friends.
Speaker 2: You're the righteous guy, I know. Yeah, you're right, you're
Speaker 2: out of look yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm just trying to all right, so you
Speaker 1: applied to NASA, right, So what did you study at school?
Speaker 2: Mathematics?
Speaker 3: I was an engineering student. I was an industrial engineer
Speaker 3: as an undergrad, and in grad school, mechanical engineering is
Speaker 3: what I studied.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So you're a mechanical engineer, yes, qualified mechanical engineer, and
Speaker 1: you eventually get accepted in the space program.
Speaker 2: Ye. So but you're not going to be flying the
Speaker 2: bird up there, so what are you going to be doing?
Speaker 3: So back then, in the Shuttle days, there was actually
Speaker 3: two categories of astronauts. One was the astronaut pilot, and
Speaker 3: those were the traditional military test pilots.
Speaker 1: That's the guys who say beep when they finished talking.
Speaker 1: That's right, guys, sounds dangerous. Those guys, the test pilots,
Speaker 1: All the test pilots, they would be competitive for the
Speaker 1: pilot job, and they were trained to fly the Shuttle,
Speaker 1: to do the landings, to work all the all the
Speaker 1: flying part of it. Because that was almost like a
Speaker 1: completely different training flow than what mission specialists went through,
Speaker 1: which is what I was so mission specialists was kind
Speaker 1: of like a grab bag. So all the civilians also
Speaker 1: some pilots too, who are military pilots, but we're not
Speaker 1: selected as pilots.
Speaker 3: They could be selected as mission mission specialists. We are
Speaker 3: the scientist engineers and we were trained to do spacewalks
Speaker 3: and robotics and work experiments and also work the systems
Speaker 3: on the Space Shuttle to help.
Speaker 1: So you have a work and knowledge of how to
Speaker 1: repair and maintain the Space Shuttle.
Speaker 2: Is that the idea?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well for us, it's like so it's like doing
Speaker 3: the repair of it came in if you have damage
Speaker 3: like in orbit and you need to go out and
Speaker 3: do a space walk to do that. But it's mainly
Speaker 3: just just working the systems. Work in communications, work in
Speaker 3: the cooling systems, working all the different things for rendezvous.
Speaker 3: It's not just a too. You have a pilot. They
Speaker 3: don't have a pilot and cold pilot. We had a
Speaker 3: commander and pilot don't wanted to go to col pilot.
Speaker 3: Apparently if you have a commander and you have a pilot,
Speaker 3: and then you had a bunch of missing specialists. So
Speaker 3: we would help with the rendezvous. We would work the
Speaker 3: Space Shuttle robot arm we would do the spacewalks, be
Speaker 3: primarily responsible for the experiments, but also know enough about
Speaker 3: the space I'll say that we could be helpful. We
Speaker 3: were also trained as flight engineer. So you have the
Speaker 3: two people up front were flying, and then a person
Speaker 3: in the middle, like and the old airplanes just have
Speaker 3: like yeah the game. So you had yeah, that person,
Speaker 3: you had another person next to them. You have two
Speaker 3: MISSUS specialists behind the pilots who had assist with helping
Speaker 3: with emergencies and reminding of you in the check.
Speaker 1: You go like checklists to go through, like at the
Speaker 1: start of a mission, like you do this one you do.
Speaker 1: Everyone talks to each other, do you check the checklist?
Speaker 3: All that stuff, especially in the Shuttle dates, it was
Speaker 3: all manually flown. Everything was done manually. And the pilot
Speaker 3: on my first light Dwane Carry Digger, this guy from
Speaker 3: Air Force, Digger Carry was an A ten pilot and
Speaker 3: then an F sixteen pilot, a military test but cool guy,
Speaker 3: really cool haircut. So Digger good friend of mine. I
Speaker 3: asked him a couple of years ago, how much of
Speaker 3: your training to fly in space did you not use
Speaker 3: in space as training as a pilot because they had
Speaker 3: to know every emergency they had The percent he did
Speaker 3: not use. He said, ninety nine point nine percent of
Speaker 3: the stuff that I used that I was trained for
Speaker 3: I never used in space because typically everything goes okay.
Speaker 2: Well I mean that, But that's learning the fly a plane,
Speaker 2: isn't it You learned.
Speaker 1: That's why it's so terrifying, because you learn all the
Speaker 1: scary stuff and you know, probably never use it. That's right,
Speaker 1: you know, but you better know it. You better know it.
Speaker 3: But now with the newer systems like the SpaceX Falcon
Speaker 3: for example, right, that is not the Dragon and Falcons launchy,
Speaker 3: but the Dragon spaceship that is so automated that it's
Speaker 3: it's a completely different situation. You don't have to know
Speaker 3: all these things like we did with it. It reduces
Speaker 3: the training flow down to hard time. With that, I'll
Speaker 3: tell you why. Because of redundancies.
Speaker 1: If everything is in automated, so an automated redundancy program
Speaker 1: kicks and if one system fails, and then if that
Speaker 1: system feels typically in aviation, it's like three redundancies. Right,
Speaker 1: But if they were running through the same program, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like that isn't three redundancies, that's one redundancy.
Speaker 3: Well, the pilot is still the is still the backup there,
Speaker 3: they still get trained to handle some things, right. But
Speaker 3: what we found like there were things like we would say, oh,
Speaker 3: astronauts need to and the new spaceship need to control
Speaker 3: these one hundred things, and and he would come back
Speaker 3: and he say, wow, for like, let's say ninety of
Speaker 3: these things, there's a greater chance of you killing yourself
Speaker 3: as opposed to the automation. Hand. Okay, we the automation,
Speaker 3: but there's always there's a few things that that people
Speaker 3: will always be able to do. I think as the
Speaker 3: as the backup to the backup to the backup.
Speaker 1: Has technology changed, like the AI changed the space program immensely,
Speaker 1: it has it?
Speaker 3: I think so, yes, it makes easier, it does, yeah,
Speaker 3: And I think it does make it safer because it's
Speaker 3: your The design of the spaceships are safer too. The
Speaker 3: Shuttle was a dangerous spaceship. The odds of total destruction
Speaker 3: and loss of crew were one out of seventy five.
Speaker 2: We saw that.
Speaker 3: We saw that twice, right, major accidents, and you would
Speaker 3: keep losing them if you kept flying them, eventually something
Speaker 3: else would happen.
Speaker 2: They were getting old.
Speaker 1: That's an unaccepted level that is not good.
Speaker 2: You know, no, that's not good, right.
Speaker 3: So, but the newest you think of it, the shuttle,
Speaker 3: it had its its thermal protection system was exposed, which
Speaker 3: is how we lost the second, the second Space Shuttle.
Speaker 3: Even your borch you had to come back to the
Speaker 3: launch site or you had to go across the ocean
Speaker 3: to make it to you needed a runway where and
Speaker 3: you couldn't separate from the stack until after until after
Speaker 3: a few minutes. You could not just get out of
Speaker 3: there when it was a problem. You couldn't abort from
Speaker 3: the stack got full. That's a flying bomb. It's a
Speaker 3: flying bombing. Only the only even the only abortion earraws
Speaker 3: we had was after the solid rocket boosters left, and
Speaker 3: that was two minutes in. There was no abort before then.
Speaker 3: You would, did you when you're going up? You sweat
Speaker 3: for the first couple of minutes, Yeah, the first couple
Speaker 3: of the It was more you know what it really was.
Speaker 3: It was scary looking at that spaceship man after me
Speaker 3: on my first one way to yeah, standing outside of it.
Speaker 3: You know, we arrived there was a night launched my
Speaker 3: first one, and we got out there in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night and you know it was dark, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, so scary and darker, and it's no one
Speaker 3: around the place is deserted because they put fuel in there,
Speaker 3: and because you have a bomb sitting there, you know,
Speaker 3: and they won't get out of there. There's only a
Speaker 3: few people and we get it's all lit up really
Speaker 3: brightly and all the support structures. It looks like a
Speaker 3: space ship. And it's this smoke coming off of it.
Speaker 3: It's just a water vapor. Yeah, and yeah, and you
Speaker 3: hear these really you hear that, and you hear like
Speaker 3: this groans. I think it's like the crygenic fuel going. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it looked like it looked like an angry beast, right,
Speaker 3: and it sounded angry. And looking up at that thing,
Speaker 3: and that night, and after all these years of you know,
Speaker 3: you were saying, since we were little kids dreaming of
Speaker 3: doing this, you know, it hit me maybe this wasn't
Speaker 3: such a good idea, right, Yeah. I had to get
Speaker 3: on once I Once I got on, I was okay.
Speaker 3: And that was once you get in there, it seems normal,
Speaker 3: really weird. It's like thinking about it is worse than
Speaker 3: doing it. But we were all well trained. We had
Speaker 3: stuff to think about and stuff to do, and we
Speaker 3: had emergency placards, and the emergency placards were like, right,
Speaker 3: once we took off, I realized I had no control
Speaker 3: over this thing.
Speaker 2: It's either going to be.
Speaker 3: A good day or a bad day, right, And I
Speaker 3: was looking at that placard which tells us what to
Speaker 3: you know, unstrapped, remove your calm, pull the green apple
Speaker 3: which is oxygen, all these things. I'm like, this is
Speaker 3: just something there to read while.
Speaker 2: We died, you know.
Speaker 3: And that was like my suggestion was like, why don't
Speaker 3: you get a couple of magazines or something up here,
Speaker 3: because this.
Speaker 2: Ain't going to help you.
Speaker 3: You know, this is not what I want to be
Speaker 3: looking at my last couple of seconds here.
Speaker 1: So you get There's one thing you talked to me about.
Speaker 1: You do the rendezvous in space, and it just occurd
Speaker 1: to me. If you're traveling the super high speed seventeen
Speaker 1: thousand miles an hour so fast, and you're connecting with
Speaker 1: another vessel that is traveling at that correct so if
Speaker 1: that goes wrong, that's a fucking mess.
Speaker 3: Right away, you're flying in formation at that speed. And
Speaker 3: it was a manually flown rendezvous with the show. So
Speaker 3: these pilots, man these pilots like the guys you were
Speaker 3: saying at that aviation event that you're at, these are
Speaker 3: the best pilots.
Speaker 2: In the world that are doing this stuff. I'm so crazy.
Speaker 2: But you're flying in formation at seventeen thou five miles
Speaker 2: an hour.
Speaker 1: So when you do it with another another space ship,
Speaker 1: our space ship comes up at that point, do you
Speaker 1: get a sense of perception about the speed or because
Speaker 1: they are traveling the same speed, they've.
Speaker 3: Traveled in the same so it's all relative and it's
Speaker 3: it's like kind of you know, you travel, if you've
Speaker 3: flown in formation with another airplorant, you're going quite fast
Speaker 3: relative to that other airplane. Your whole world's that other
Speaker 3: airplane doing that. And you might look at the air
Speaker 3: speed and scare yourself because you're flying, but it's kind
Speaker 3: of like that. You don't realize that you're going that
Speaker 3: that quickly.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. And you were up there for a long time, right,
Speaker 1: not by today's standards. It was twelve days and fourteen
Speaker 1: days my two missions. Right now, these guys are up
Speaker 1: in there six months. We had one dude, my friend
Speaker 1: Scott Kelly, was there for nearly a year. Frank Rubio
Speaker 1: just returned after a year. He got stuck there for
Speaker 1: a while. A year, Yeah, over a year in space. Like,
Speaker 1: first of all, what exercises you doing it?
Speaker 2: Keep it?
Speaker 3: So when we were there, we we you know, a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks is of that bunch of a big deta.
Speaker 3: You're not you're not going to atrophy laying around for
Speaker 3: It's kind of like you're in bedrestling in zero gravity.
Speaker 3: We were space walking, that's exercise. And we had like
Speaker 3: we'd like these sterr bands, try to keep some of
Speaker 3: your muscle and you know, the things you pull on,
Speaker 3: you know. And then and we had a bike to
Speaker 3: ride ergometer, a stationary kind of peloton type thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a NASA's own invention. Yeah, peloton would have
Speaker 3: been a step up. There's something like that now probably, Yeah,
Speaker 3: they probably have a Starbucks up there now. You can't
Speaker 3: get good coffee when I was an astronaut, though, you
Speaker 3: don't want to be dependent on.
Speaker 1: I also think being a little caffeinated in space and
Speaker 1: you really didn't get nothing to do, it's probably not
Speaker 1: a great.
Speaker 2: Let me as this. You're talking about doing space walks.
Speaker 1: You've done space walks, yes, So you go out this
Speaker 1: is a vehicle traveling at seventeen thousand miles A.
Speaker 2: No, yes, quite fast.
Speaker 1: So you're getting out of this vehicle, right, you are
Speaker 1: also traveling at seventeen an hour. Yes, no, but you're
Speaker 1: not experiencing any sense of motion because there's no friction.
Speaker 3: There's yeah, and there's no reference either. Looking at the planets,
Speaker 3: you're like, oh, that's but it's so far. It's you know,
Speaker 3: far away from you. So it's kind of when you're
Speaker 3: flying and you come up to a cloud, right, you know,
Speaker 3: you think you're going maybe you're going you know, and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden you come up to this cloud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gone. Yeah, that's like freeze.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're in if you got stuff going by
Speaker 3: in a cloud, WHOA, what's going on here? It's like,
Speaker 3: I'm going fast right when you're out in the open space,
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily still get it right, yeah, So that
Speaker 3: we don't have any turbulence or any of that. So
Speaker 3: there's no queue to let your brain know that you're
Speaker 3: going fast. So you're not except for the indication on
Speaker 3: that instrument.
Speaker 1: So what about the psychological lyumpire. I mean you were
Speaker 1: up there for a couple of weeks. That's even a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes. For me, it would be. There's questions
Speaker 1: you ask yourself, Man, you I mean you, you're like,
Speaker 1: who am I? Where am I? In the sense of things? Here,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you get to see the universe and like
Speaker 1: you get a sense of how small you are and
Speaker 1: the and how small our planet is the sense of things.
Speaker 1: Did it do a number on you or any of
Speaker 1: your buddies? Psychologically? The people do the Do they even
Speaker 1: debrief you with that stuff?
Speaker 2: We don't. It's not.
Speaker 3: You may talk amongst yourselves, but it's not. It's more
Speaker 3: something that's of interest to people outside of NASA.
Speaker 2: I think when they ask us about that, it's interesting.
Speaker 3: But I never felt small man, because you look this
Speaker 3: planet we have, it is beautiful.
Speaker 2: It is right compared to.
Speaker 1: The other planets frozen crap.
Speaker 3: I mean really, the worst place that you can imagine
Speaker 3: on our planet is a paradise on Mars man, compared to.
Speaker 2: You, right, although I've had this idea for Mars.
Speaker 1: See you think like I think, we go to Mars
Speaker 1: it's off a bunch of nukes, yeah, and create an atmosphere.
Speaker 2: What do you think did it work? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just thought it might be cool, but at.
Speaker 3: Least yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe put some like water in the bombs and then
Speaker 1: like that would get an atmosphere, you know, you know it's.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that would work or not, but
Speaker 3: it's it's it's that outside of the box thinking is
Speaker 3: what we need. Well, not necessarily, but that's that's very creative.
Speaker 3: Have you asked anyone beside me about this that you submitted?
Speaker 2: Maybe it is.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm asking you because you have a degree, I do,
Speaker 1: you went to college, You've written books, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you because I know we can side tracked
Speaker 1: with little Mike becoming an astronaut. So you get a
Speaker 1: book by the way, too, Well it's a book about
Speaker 1: her becoming a national But interestingly, because I talked to
Speaker 1: you when you come in, I saw you were wearing
Speaker 1: a suit. Now I'm like, there was a fancy suit,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, very fancy. Yes you look fancy. And
Speaker 1: you tell me you were speaking to a bunch of businessmen. Yes, motivation,
Speaker 1: you do a lot of that now.
Speaker 3: I do. Yeah, I do a few of those a month.
Speaker 3: I've got three this week, So it's a busy week
Speaker 3: for that.
Speaker 1: So and you talk to people about decision, make it
Speaker 1: under pressure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all kinds of things. Today, it was about leadership,
Speaker 3: like how we ok leadership promoting people.
Speaker 2: Were you in charge when you were in the Space Station.
Speaker 3: No, I was not the commander of the spaceship, but
Speaker 3: I wasn't for other projects that I worked on at NASA.
Speaker 3: For my space walks, I was the lead on my spacewalks.
Speaker 3: So the commander of the of the Space Shuttle was
Speaker 3: it was our commander who was a pilot. It was
Speaker 3: commander of the missions for the space station. Though it
Speaker 3: doesn't have to be a military test pilot who's in charge.
Speaker 3: But I never was at the space station, but we
Speaker 3: had other you know, like I was. I was the
Speaker 3: lead guy from my spacewalks and for other projects that
Speaker 3: I worked on. So I talked about some of the
Speaker 3: lessons that I learned there about leadership.
Speaker 2: Tell me about that. Then, what did you learn about leaders.
Speaker 3: So I learned this from Alan Bean, who was the
Speaker 3: fourth person to walk on them. I think I'm at
Speaker 3: them and you might he's an artist as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure amazing person. Yeah, So he drew.
Speaker 3: He painted these amazing landscapes of his experiences. And very
Speaker 3: nice man. He passed unfortunately a few years ago.
Speaker 2: I didn't mean him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he told me that the key to being
Speaker 3: a good leader was to find a way to care
Speaker 3: for and admire everyone on your team. So you have
Speaker 3: to figure out a way for every one of those
Speaker 3: everyone who you're who's looking up to you, that you're leading,
Speaker 3: figure out a way to care for and admire each
Speaker 3: one of them. And they have to know that you
Speaker 3: care about them. And if you find someone that you
Speaker 3: just don't like, right, don't think of it is that
Speaker 3: you don't like them. Think of it as if you
Speaker 3: don't know them well enough, and take the time to
Speaker 3: get to know them and get that good thought. I
Speaker 3: call it in the book I write about it is
Speaker 3: like your bank of good thoughts. Try to get a
Speaker 3: good thought about everybody. So when they do something that
Speaker 3: might aggravate you, or they do something wrong, go there
Speaker 3: first for that good thought before you address the problem.
Speaker 2: You live your life like that. I try.
Speaker 3: I try to do that, and I have a different
Speaker 3: approach in the car.
Speaker 1: That's a different approach in the car.
Speaker 2: The driver. Yeah, that's what I'm not going to scream
Speaker 2: at him or you know, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: But you never know who the driver is. You never
Speaker 2: know what it could be you next to me, you know,
Speaker 2: you know what I could be in it. I always I.
Speaker 1: Always try to think that maybe it's like a nurse
Speaker 1: or a doctor and he or she is like getting
Speaker 1: somewhere or just come from something really hard, or you know,
Speaker 1: like try and get it in perspective. Yes, I don't
Speaker 1: always manage that. I got to be honest, It depends.
Speaker 1: I drive around a lot here in New York. I
Speaker 1: don't really drive here, and I don't mind it.
Speaker 3: But you've got to have patients because people are working.
Speaker 3: People are either there driving people, places are unloading things.
Speaker 3: People are in there, living out there in the streets. Man, well,
Speaker 3: you don't want to hold them up. It's God understand.
Speaker 1: It's a funny thing about New York. I mean, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a friend of mine. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm moving back to New York because I'm
Speaker 1: in New York, like a really yeah. And a lot
Speaker 1: of the time I'm in New York and so up
Speaker 1: near you. Actually yeah, yeah, all right, so you.
Speaker 3: Probably don't want to give away your address in the
Speaker 3: general area.
Speaker 2: I'm on the Upper east Side right right.
Speaker 3: It's if I knew about the Upper east Side. I
Speaker 3: never wanted to go to space. Don't you love that greatest?
Speaker 3: It is like Disneyland greatest neighbor steroids for older people.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable. I love it. I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: You can get to a drug store, you can get
Speaker 1: a big old nice people. This Dorman everywhere, keeping an
Speaker 1: eye on Dorman are everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's awesome. You know what those dogs? You know what
Speaker 2: I discovered here?
Speaker 1: You you like to drive. So here's the thing I discovered.
Speaker 1: It's a parking ticket twice a week, sixty five bucks.
Speaker 2: That's it to park on the street. Yeah, but you
Speaker 2: only get a parking ticket twice a week. Yes, that's
Speaker 2: the cheapest fucking parking in New York. This is a
Speaker 2: true statement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you just illegally park pay your tickets.
Speaker 2: This is and you may not even get a ticket.
Speaker 2: You might not you might not even have to pay.
Speaker 2: You might not get it anyway. Look absolutely right. But
Speaker 2: I still I park on the street a lot. I
Speaker 2: have to.
Speaker 3: I have spots in the garage, but I also park
Speaker 3: on the street lot. To me, it's like a hobby.
Speaker 3: Where to park when you know I know that I
Speaker 3: have the streets memorized. Now you know where it is,
Speaker 3: where the hydrant is, where the driveways are, and you
Speaker 3: like something to do.
Speaker 1: Hobby, got to know. So I said to someone, I
Speaker 1: spent a lot more time in New York. Like, no,
Speaker 1: for tax reasons, I can't spend all my year.
Speaker 2: In New York, but I spent. Yeah, but I found
Speaker 2: out about that too, so I you know, I'm less
Speaker 2: than one hundred and eighty days a year in New
Speaker 2: York City. Genius.
Speaker 1: But I said to someone I'm going back to New York.
Speaker 1: And he said, you hate people. Why would you go
Speaker 1: to a place that's full of people.
Speaker 2: I said, it's New York.
Speaker 1: Everybody hates people in New York, where, amongst their own times.
Speaker 3: No one takes offense to that.
Speaker 2: Get out of the way.
Speaker 1: You get out of the way, Okay, okay, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's the way it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I was I was talking to Eleana Douglas today,
Speaker 1: you know, the actress, and Ileana Duncan's.
Speaker 2: A great actress and real New Yorker.
Speaker 1: And I said to her, I think what happens is
Speaker 1: if you are like if you come to New York
Speaker 1: because I lived in LA for twenty three years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she lived in LA for like fourteen years. But if
Speaker 1: you're a New Yorker, it doesn't matter what. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like the I R S like, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: where you go. It it doesn't matter where you go,
Speaker 1: They're going to come and get you.
Speaker 2: And yeah, oh god, yeah yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like I tried living in Scotland. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're an American syst.
Speaker 3: Yeah you're like, no, well that's very n I'm not
Speaker 3: a CPA or anything. But I am amazed that the
Speaker 3: creative ways that they'll get money from. My God, no
Speaker 3: one can afford to live here yet. How many people
Speaker 3: do we have? Ten million? Yeah here and.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, I don't know how it's done. Yeah, how
Speaker 2: we do it? You know, you just have to take
Speaker 2: turns living here.
Speaker 1: You just have to find out how much they're going
Speaker 1: to let you've been here, and it's like I take
Speaker 1: a little less, and then that's.
Speaker 2: What it is.
Speaker 1: So now then at this point in your life, you
Speaker 1: know the same age, and I kind of I'm not retired.
Speaker 1: I couldn't retire. I tried sort of retire. It drove me,
Speaker 1: It threw me crazy. I hated you know, I started
Speaker 1: doing like home improvement and all that.
Speaker 2: It's awful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's overrated, putting up shelves and stuff that. It's
Speaker 1: it's it with my wife. Well that's nice, it's great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but too much. I started ir Yeah, I've noticed that
Speaker 1: if I'm there too long, it's kind of like, don't
Speaker 1: you Yeah, Now.
Speaker 2: I didn't marry you for lunch, so what do you?
Speaker 2: What do you do? Like? You do the speaking engagements? Now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really like and that yeah, and and that
Speaker 3: stuff has been you know, we talked about leadership or teamwork,
Speaker 3: whatever we're going to talk about. And that's how the
Speaker 3: book came about, was through that stuff. In that speaking
Speaker 3: what resonated with you at the Autist should probably have
Speaker 3: a podcast every realized book.
Speaker 2: I tried it.
Speaker 3: I did it with a buddy of mine. It was
Speaker 3: called this Other Astronaut, Garrett Reasman. It was called two
Speaker 3: Funny Astronauts. Yeah, because the two of us. And it
Speaker 3: was all right, But that's that's to keep making them.
Speaker 3: You gotta keep making We did like twenty five of
Speaker 3: them like, ah that we're out of it. So we
Speaker 3: kind of like that. But but I do. I teach
Speaker 3: at Columbia. I'm on the faculty there.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty fancy joke. You wear a fancy suit
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, not really, though it's kind of it's a
Speaker 3: little more the fancy suits for more of the speaking engagements.
Speaker 2: But but I'm a professor there. Yep.
Speaker 1: That's so, are you, doctor, Mike? I am why I
Speaker 1: got my PhD. So that's very impressive. Maybe you should
Speaker 1: do advice on TV. No, I don't know. I uh
Speaker 1: don't to Mike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying make him do advice on your podcast.
Speaker 2: Get any advice here?
Speaker 1: All right, So here's here's the thing, dog to Mike. Right, So,
Speaker 1: sometimes I feel so insignificant and small, all in the
Speaker 1: vastness of the universe, right, and I worry about God
Speaker 1: and if he's there or she's there or you know,
Speaker 1: and I just I have a lot of existantial anks.
Speaker 1: Now you've been a space doctor, Mike, Yes, how should
Speaker 1: I cope with that?
Speaker 3: I would worry so much about that. I would try
Speaker 3: to enjoy the planet while you can't. Ah, right, And
Speaker 3: I don't think we're insignificant. I think that looking at
Speaker 3: our planet from space and then you know, you look out.
Speaker 3: We were talking about those other planets out there. I
Speaker 3: mean you look to the blackness in the other direction.
Speaker 3: You know, we've checked out the neighborhood. We've got nowhere
Speaker 3: to go. We've got to make this planet work. And
Speaker 3: it's fragile. You can see the thinness of the atmosphere,
Speaker 3: but it is an absolute paradise. And Jim Lovell, we
Speaker 3: mentioned him earlier, Yes, I was telling him about this.
Speaker 3: I go, you know, it's like looking into heaven. It's beautiful.
Speaker 3: You know, you look at our I can't imagine anything
Speaker 3: like it. Yeah, anywhere else, you know, I think there's
Speaker 3: life other places, but it's so beautiful. And he said,
Speaker 3: Jim level told me, goes, Mike, you know a lot
Speaker 3: of people hope that when they die they'll go to heaven.
Speaker 3: I'm convinced where we were all born there, and so
Speaker 3: I think we should. After that experience I had of
Speaker 3: looking in space and looking at the planet, we're really
Speaker 3: we really have it pretty good here. Even if you
Speaker 3: don't live on the uppers side, we have it. We
Speaker 3: should try to and that's what I would that would
Speaker 3: be my advice to try to be amazed by what
Speaker 3: we have right now around us. And there's a lot
Speaker 3: of crap going on. I'm sure you know there's a
Speaker 3: lot of bad things going on, but we are really
Speaker 3: given an opportunity here to live on in a beautiful paradise.
Speaker 2: Are you a religious man? I'm a spiritual person.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of a fallen Catholic at this point, but
Speaker 3: I believe I should believe there's a.
Speaker 2: That's but here's what I yeah, I got one for you.
Speaker 3: Are you Craig if I can ask, I know it's
Speaker 3: your a podcast.
Speaker 1: A religious person, I think religion is a human vanity, right, okay,
Speaker 1: but I think the idea of a divine nature of
Speaker 1: the universe totally.
Speaker 2: I'm with you.
Speaker 3: I think there's something going on, so at at least
Speaker 3: that's wearing interpret things. It allows me to interpret things.
Speaker 1: So I heard, I read this thing about the early
Speaker 1: Christian mystics, pre Roman Christian desert mothers and fathers, Saint
Speaker 1: Anthony Abbe Pima, origin of Alexandria, and the Vagaries of Pontus,
Speaker 1: a lot of different people.
Speaker 2: I think, fancy, Yes, you're Catholic, so maybe you should.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Well, they were pre Catholic, though they were pre Church Christians,
Speaker 1: pre Roman Church Christians. The Origin of Alexandria said God
Speaker 1: is in silence. Silence is God. And I was thinking
Speaker 1: about that, and I was watching a YouTube thing with.
Speaker 2: One of my boys when I was little, and it
Speaker 2: was one of those YouTube things.
Speaker 1: It was extrapolating from like a blade of grass all
Speaker 1: the way out to the size of the university.
Speaker 2: It was like animated and all that. One of these things.
Speaker 1: He ended up watching my ten year old kids, and
Speaker 1: it was talking about the black holes in the universe
Speaker 1: and the life of the universe, and that the universe really,
Speaker 1: you know, when it comes down to it, in the
Speaker 1: and it'll be about mostly black holes, mostly black holes
Speaker 1: which are completely silent and nothing happens there. An Origin
Speaker 1: of Alexandria two thousand years ago said God is silence
Speaker 1: and there's nothing happening.
Speaker 2: That's what it is.
Speaker 1: So I think the science and theology, which is not
Speaker 1: dogmatic but a genuine quest to try and explain your existence,
Speaker 1: I think they're both the same thing.
Speaker 3: I happen to agree with you. I think that there's
Speaker 3: no reason why they need to be in conflict. And
Speaker 3: I think the more we learn, the closer we get
Speaker 3: to the truth. And I think that's that's what we'll
Speaker 3: find out. I think that I think the truth is
Speaker 3: what we're seeking. And when we go to space actually
Speaker 3: when we're exploring, observing, trying to figure out what's going on,
Speaker 3: and I think it'll bring us back to that, bring
Speaker 3: up it is. And there's no reason why I can't
Speaker 3: coexist and agree. It doesn't have to. I think that's right.
Speaker 1: And I think the only reason that the only times
Speaker 1: that doesn't agree is when you get people that are
Speaker 1: not prepared to accept new information. Yes, so you go, well,
Speaker 1: well we have new information. I talked to it before
Speaker 1: one of my kids was born. I was talked about
Speaker 1: my first boy was born. I was talking to the
Speaker 1: obstetrician and I said to her, so, you know, she
Speaker 1: was explaining something.
Speaker 2: About the baby this and that thing, and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh God.
Speaker 1: And she said, I the thing that, and the heartbeat
Speaker 1: this and thating like that. And I said, how much
Speaker 1: of this stuff that you you know of the progress
Speaker 1: from you know, conception to birth, how much of it
Speaker 1: do we actually know about? She said, well, if you'd
Speaker 1: asked me that you know, fifteen years ago, i'd have
Speaker 1: said we know about fifty or sixty percent, Yeah, she said,
Speaker 1: But now we've learned so much more, I'd say we
Speaker 1: know about ten percent.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love it. Oh my god. That's a
Speaker 1: real scientific answer. Yes, the more you know, the less
Speaker 1: you find out what you don't know. Right, absolutely, so,
Speaker 1: if you walk away from the experience you have in
Speaker 1: your life, right, you've been in space, You've seen what
Speaker 1: very few human beings have been prevalent enough to see,
Speaker 1: and you've walked away with it, not only in type,
Speaker 1: but with with.
Speaker 2: Like, I feel like you're an optimistic person. I feel
Speaker 2: like a yeah, I would like to think that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when the time comes for Mike's corporal tabernacle, for
Speaker 1: the realm of which you physically possessed right now, what
Speaker 1: do you what do you think happens?
Speaker 2: What do you think happens when it's time to shuffle
Speaker 2: off this mortal when we die? Yeah? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's a great answer. I mean, I don't know, and
Speaker 3: I hope it's good, but I don't. I don't know,
Speaker 3: and we don't I don't you know, we have a
Speaker 3: belief maybe of what happens. People have certain beliefs. So
Speaker 3: that's why I think we got to make the most
Speaker 3: of this. We've got to think, you know, and I
Speaker 3: I do believe we're in a paradise. And and Dan Brown,
Speaker 3: the author so that you know, DaVinci Code Guy, was
Speaker 3: having a similar conversation with him, and he said, you know,
Speaker 3: like God has given us a paradise to live, and
Speaker 3: everyone wants to die and go to heaven.
Speaker 2: Like this place sucks. I want out. This is terrible.
Speaker 3: But if you look at it, gave us this beautiful
Speaker 3: if you believe in God and you and you think
Speaker 3: of the creation that we have, it is a beautiful
Speaker 3: place with opportunities to do good and to help people,
Speaker 3: and to to create laughter and intertain people like you do,
Speaker 3: and to to have a you know, to love people
Speaker 3: and be nice and enjoy well, it's a wonderful place.
Speaker 3: What what would be different about heaven than what we
Speaker 3: could have here if you look at it here.
Speaker 1: But what you'd have to do is everyone have to
Speaker 1: live in there everywhere.
Speaker 3: That's really you're getting us in trouble with you. We
Speaker 3: gotta we gotta restrict this podcast to a certain zip.
Speaker 3: I mean other people are gonna.
Speaker 2: Come for us. You know that's right.
Speaker 1: The West Village go, fuck you, well, fuck you West
Speaker 1: Upper west Side.
Speaker 2: All right, we gotta go, Mike. It was a pleasure,
Speaker 2: and I do want to plug your book one very much.
Speaker 1: Moonshot and NASA Astronauts Guide to Achieving the.
Speaker 2: Impossible, Craig is great scene. Let me see you make
Speaker 2: always a pleasure.