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