We have in studio NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haig now back on Earth, touring the US to talk about life in space, and he's here with us in studio.
Welcome Colonel Haig.
Thank you, Amy, it's a pleasure to be here, and thank you for the warm welcome.
Oh well, we had a little welcome home party and we have some treats and all of that stuff.
And you know when did you get back. It was in March.
Yeah, so the end of March is when we landed. It's been about three months. Time flies a couple of those months, it flies because I'm just heads down, trying to rehabilitate and figure out how to live in gravity.
Again.
You spend a while floating around on orbit and you forget just how strong gravity is.
Well, we had talked one other time, and you were talking about how you go from completely not knowing which direction is up or down and weightlessness, and we talked about how you said you got the best sleep of your life in space.
Indeed, indeed, and now I have to suffer an earthing Earthlink's fate and sleep in.
A bed, and is it difficult?
It's different, you know, you wake up and maybe I have a little toss and turn a little bit, or my back doesn't feel quite right, or I'm on an arm and it just you know, kind of falls asleep and I'm like, dang, I wish I was back on orbit because that was the best sleep ever.
Okay, so up in orbit, you were up there for it? Was it one hundred and seventy days around there?
One hundred Yeah, a little over one hundred and seventy days? Okay?
What there has to be like one thing that you absolutely miss about it?
Yeah? Or is there just one? There isn't just one.
The obvious stuff is being able to float around and flip and just play in microgravity where everything floats, the or to float over to the window and then be able to see the Earth and the universe in front of you in a way that just you can't do on the ground. But you know, probably the other thing that you might not think about missing my crewmates, I spend six months with six other people inside this really confined space, and and and you get to know each
other so well. And then when we hit the ground, we kind of go all our separate ways. Uh, and and we're doing all these different things, and so you don't see them as much as you did while you were up there. Uh, and so you miss those friendships.
Yeah.
Do you still communicate with them a lot?
Yeah, as you know, as much as we can. And unfortunately most of it's on a on a phone because we're not in close proximity together. Uh necessarily, but yeah, you know, we'll run into each other and it's a it's a big hug, and and hey, how you been, how's the how's how's rehab going? Yeah, you know, we're all all suffering all the aches and pains and and and everything that comes with trying to figure out how to walk in gravity again.
And uh, and you know, we.
Finally get to the point where those aches become age appropriate and uh and you're back to normal.
And you said that you do get it back pretty quickly though, that when you come back to Earth, all of a sudden, you got all of this weight on you that you didn't have, and your muscles are all screwed up because they don't know how to work again.
But it snaps back, I think, is what you said.
It does.
The mind, there's a couple of different layers. The mind snaps back and starts to appreciate that you're in an environment where everything doesn't float, and it understands what's happening. Your balance comes back fairly quick within a couple of days. But the and you're strong because while you're on the space station two and a half hours a day every day, we're lifting weights and.
We're saw some videos if you work it out, and so you.
Come back strong, but you haven't had to balance and you know, stabilize your body, and so all the little muscles, all the joints take time to kind of reacclimate. And that's kind of the long pole.
So does it feel a little bit like you're drunk or something like you just can't lose your balance, So.
The wobbly goes away. It feels like you went and ran a marathon.
And it's the day after, and the joints ache, the muscles.
Ache, yellow legs a little bit.
You're a little slow trying to, you know, get up from sitting. Feels like you're twenty years older than you actually are.
But slowly the body.
Responds and after a while it's like somebody flipped a switch and hey, I'm back to normal.
And are you?
Are you back to one hundred percent, you think, yeah, for it'll fall over when you're walking anywhere.
I have fallen over recently. Now back to as normal as I can be. The kind of the thing that I'm still waiting is you do lose some bone mass while you're up there, some bone density, and so your body will slowly accumulate that, and that's about a day per day. So at about the six month point, I'll truly be back to about one hundred percent.
Okay, So you mentioned cell phones and how you guys text each other because you don't get to see each other as much. But we were just talking with the author of a book called unplugg who we were talking about how cell phones just rule your lives and is it possible just to turn it off and disconnect for a while.
You had to do that, you had no choice.
Yeah, no cell phone coverage. And on the space station, so.
Even with all those Starlink satellites.
Even with all the all the satellites, you know, we still have email. We still have the ability to make phone calls, which is crazy, talk to somebody on the phone. And that's actually one of the things that I enjoyed doing,
you know, representing the Space Wars. Being being a guardian in space, I would take the opportunity every every week steal some minutes at the end of a day and call down to one of the ops floors and surprise, one of the Space Wars guardians is sitting there doing the mission that's helping protect me and say, hey, you know, just it's Nick on orbit.
Just want to.
Say and see how things are going down there. And and so it's the power of talking with somebody and hearing their voice and and the emotion and the inflections and their voice. It's something that you really appreciate. But yeah, you're unplugged up there.
I love that. I love that.
Okay, we have one hundred other things to ask you, and I thought you were going to talk about talking to students and stem because I believe you did.
That while you were up there as well.
Absolutely, i'd love to ask you that when we come back. Plus, we want to find out more about life in space and then life back on Earth and what's next for Colonel Haig. So if you'll hang tight, absolutely all right, this is NASA Astronauts Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haig live with us in studio this morning.
Real quick.
We're going to get in your business with Bloomberg's Courtney Donaho. Good morning, Courtney. I know that we are abbreviated today, but we have just a couple of things to check in on, and one is how are the markets looking today.
Well, it's looking a little rough out there.
Good morning.
We just got a report on the health of the consumer. Retail sales felled by the most since the start of the year, since May, suggesting that the new tariffs are holding back consumers from spending. So this is continuing to weigh on stocks, which we're already under pressure from the conflict between Israel and Iran. Futures right now down one hundred and ninety five points. It was a different story yesterday because stocks saw solid gains on a report that
Aron wanted to restart talks over its nuclear program. That down rose three hundred and seventeen points to wrap up the session.
It's amazing how much what's going on in the world affects these markets like this, And then wanted to take a quick look at Red Lobster.
It's cooking up a comeback.
Yes, they're looking to attract a new generation of fans with some old favorites. The chain has brought back its fried hush puppies and the crispy crunchy popcorn shrimp that was always my favorite. But Red Lobster also has refreshed its menu with some new items to try to track people, including lobster paper, deli pasta, and bacon wrapped scalps bacon. All right, yeah, but there's also they fought for bankruptcy, you have to remember last year for a number of reasons,
including their unprofitable unlimited shrimp deals. So they're trying to do some things to try to correct all of that.
But delicious unlimited shrimp deal.
Yes, getting in your business with Bloomberg's Courtney Donna, who let's do it again tomorrow? Shall we definitely see you later? All right, thanks Courtney. We are talking to a true rocket man. It's NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick hagu fresh off a trip to the International Space Station.
And Colonel Haig, this was your second time up there. Oops, I got to turn your mica on.
There we go. Yeah, second time to the Space Station.
I first, My first time up there was for seven months in twenty nineteen.
Okay, and we got to go back just a little bit, because it was it was his second attempt when he got to the space station for the first time.
What happened for the first at You know, if at first you don't succeed, try again. In fall of twenty eighteen, I was launching to the space station for a six month mission with a lexe of Chennin on a soy Use rocket and we had a failure in the middle of the launch that caused us to a board to say eject and the capsule came back down. So what was supposed to be a six month mission was a twenty minute flight.
Wow, So you.
Launched, everything looked good and then how far in?
Yeah, did you know something was We were two minutes in.
Everything was going fine. The first stage was separating and there was a problem where it didn't separate cleanly and it impacted the rocket that was continuing to burn, and it rapidly disassembled.
And so I love how you guys did it rapidly disassembled. I think that when SpaceX did their what's the name of the big rocket starship? Yeah, the starship, they said it went for like thirty minutes and then it rapidly disassembled, Like.
Yeah, So it all happened so fast. We were thirty miles up, going four thousand miles an hour. In you know, the snap of a finger, the alarm goes off, the injection system fires some rockets and pulls us away, and in there's some side to side shaking, and then we're just kind of coasting. We were going so fast. We continued to coast uphill until we got right to the edge of space.
Wow.
Okay, So then when you eject, you don't eject like a fighter pilot ejectory, and you're still in the capsule.
So the rockets pulled the capsule away and then we landed in the capsule with parashues just like we normally would, actually really close to where we were going to land six months later, just a little bit earlier than we were expecting.
Okay.
And this time when you came back after your six months, you brought Sonny and Butch back with you. You had to make some changes, and if you've been listening to wake Up Call, we we got to talk about some of those changes as it progressed, where it went from a four person crew to a two person crew. That made you the commander of the crew nine mission and then you went up with two, you came back with four. Yeah, and I have to ask you when you came back.
It was the coolest thing that we saw. Because several people that I've talked to, and of course I was watching when you splash down back on Earth and all of a sudden, a pod of dolphins shows up in the water like twenty feet from the capsule. Did you guys get to see that?
Yeah?
Inside the capsule we couldn't see it. The windows at that point had been charred over from re entry. And then they pull us all the way to the boat and then take us out. And it wasn't until I got back to Houston and somebody showed me, you know, put a phone in front of me and said, did you see this video?
And I was like, dolphins.
It was the most amazing, surreal thing.
Lead it to nature.
It's amazing all the technological feats of sending people to space and then having them splash down, the challenges of integrating crew members that hadn't trained on a vehicle to be part of a crew and lands, you know, safely, and then nature steals the show.
Absolutely.
Okay, so you're back and right now we know that you're touring around and meeting with different groups and talking. And I know one of the things that you did while you're in space is you talk to STEM kids. Yes, And why is that so important for you and for Space Force and for NASA?
Well, you know, STEM is that found stem science technology education math or engineering math education is such a foundational necessity in our society. And and it really is the fuel behind the things that that NASA does or the things that the Space Force does. And and so it's important to reach out to students and let them understand the importance of their education and and just and just what the opportunities that that education is going to open
up for them. So every chance I get, you know, try to get out and uh and and you know, inspire the next generation. I look at the you know, I go to go to K twelve schools and and look at.
Them and I'm like, wanted to you do you want to be an astro Do you want to walk on Mars? Why not? Okay? And and try to inspire them a little bit.
I love that.
What what was your first like aha moment, Hey, I want to be an astronaut.
I can distinctly remember when I was in elementary school and there was an astronaut that visited our high school and we brought the entire school together. It's Kansas, so a small school system. We brought everybody together and you listen to them talk and you realize, you know, that's just a person. They came from somewhere. Yeah, you know, I come from somewhere. So why couldn't I do that? If that's something that interests.
Me, I love that.
So if you had the opportunity, or maybe you already know about it, would you go back up?
Absolutely? The spaceflight is this.
It on a personal level, a challenge, challenges everything you know about the Earth and yourself and the universe that we live in. And then just from being able to serve and do what we're doing for the country as well as for the world. You know, the space station. We're up there doing scientific research and we're learning about ourselves and the universe around us, and that knowledge is for the benefit of humanity, And so how could you not want to.
Be part of that?
Yeah, And you said, we're learning about ourselves, and I think that when we talked when you first got back, you were saying, you're kind of a science experiment for NASA.
Right now, you know, you raise your hand and you can be a guinea pig. And quite a few different experiments, and so there was about a dozen this last time around where I was the test subject and they were poking and prodding and then sometimes shocking, and yes, they were shocking. Yeah, we were doing some muscle stimulation, trying to see if that might be an effective way to avoid having to bring all of that heavy equipment that we have to use in order to do weight training.
As we go to the Moon and on to Mars, mass and volume become really precious, and so we're trying to figure out alternatives.
Oh that's so fun.
Okay, So in the short term, you've got something that I am so jealous of. An any Dodger fan, any baseball fan, has got to be so jealous of. Tell us what you're doing this evening?
Well, I get to go to the Dodgers.
Game tonight, Yes, and and get out on the mound and throw out a first pitch.
Can you believe that?
Are you excited?
Yeah?
I am excited.
Have you been practicing?
I've if you may have caught me throwing a ball with my son.
Your son is looking at you right now because he's here in studio with us.
Is he practiced enough?
No?
That was a resounding no.
Okay, so we'll be watching you.
And as I mentioned, you're you can channel your inner show, hey, because he pitched for the first time last all right, all right, Colonel Hag NASA Astronaut, Space Force Guardian.
It has been such a pleasure to have you.
I wish we had you all day because I have like pages and pages of things that I questions that I would love to ask you. But hopefully we'll get to talk again soon because I think that your journey is not over yet.
Thank you, Amy.
All right, Colonel Haig, thank you, thank you so much,