Space Junk, Space Walks, Space Rescues + Helmet Drowning

and millions of pieces of pace drunk up there. And what we're not talking like the Chinese balloon that came by golf ball size, big pieces, larger pieces, right, stuff that's been look at Tesla is up there. So we've been cocking up. We did the oceans, we do everything. We have to ship our stuff to China, everything, and they said no moss, not not not language. Um. But then I realized with all of the stuff that's going up there, my take, yeah, is we're gonna be landlocked.

There's so much stuff up there. And there's something called I think it is the Kessler effect. Is that very I think that's what it is. Where on the ground. Yeah, if junk is just junk, okay, in space, junk hits other junk, creating more junk, so it keeps exponentially that you were going to do the coln routine for a minute, where here it's junk up there it's stuff. It is stuff. But when space junk hits other space drunk, it breaks apart and becomes more space and more space drunk, and

I forget. It's a problem that compounds, is what you're saying. Yeah, and it's going seventeen thousand miles an hour. Well that's that's a nice rate. So my take is we're gonna be landlocked. Your take on space drunk, we'll fix it everything. There's no problem we can't fix. Really, yeah, no, really really, So who do you get to talk about space drunk?

I'm always suspect because when I see spacewalks, Yeah, if there's that much space junk, are they either shooting it from an angle where they're hiding it or shouldn't deny doing a spacewalk, be diving and chucking to the side and doing all maneuvers to get out of the way. Right and by the way, the spacewalks we're busy. If you could spit speed it up a little bit. I'm going for the wrench. I'm bending down a lot of time.

It takes a lot of time speed up. Who wouldn't know we are about do we naturally slow down and out of space? Because let me tell you, if I'm on a spacewalk, gonna go very fast. We'll be in and out and back in fast. You can say, jimminy cricket. Guess who we got. I'm really excited about this. We got somebody who can't talk about space junk and who's been up there and done I think he did two spacewalks.

His name is Garrett Reisman. He's a mechanical engineer and a former NASA astronaut who's been up on the space station. I think a couple of times and did my right, Garrett, we're gonna start with junk, but you've been up there three times. But I read that you did two spacewalks. And the two spacewalks the thing that got me it said over the course of fourteen hours. That's how long they take. Well, first of all, thank you very much

for having me on. It's great to see. Yeah, so um, I did actually three spacewalks, you know, not that I'm counting up. Thank you in the research. Thank you beautiful, nice job, and they didn't make a big deal. So big three three space walks fourteen hours. You want to change your assessment of how long were the three space walk fourteen hours each? Each one was about seven and a half a little bit over seven and a half hour, really yeah, and so yeah, so in total over twenty

two hours. So let me it's so space drunk space? Are you worried you're going out there? Man? You're tethered. You're tethered and they got all the things to hold onto. Yea, what do I say, Reisman? You know? Is it Reeseman? I wasn't gonna say anything. You know, you say potato, I say potato, You say cardiovascular disease. Space want Giggenheim. Make sure that Peter did the name wrong. Peter, Peter got the number of spacewalks wrong. Just start a list.

Peter said stuff is moving at seventeen thousand miles an hour. I don't think that's true. I think everybody calls me Reisman, actually, because I think now you're gonna my Peter got partial credit on the name. Were you were up there? One hundred and seven day, one hundred seven days, one hundred seven days, three hours and fifteen minutes. That could be right, I don't know. I days three hours, it's right. I mean, no,

you're geting. But like these crazy nerds that like hang out with these like stop watches and time it to the second. But one hundred and seven days, one business, one piece. Never correct me, Laurie, I will say his name wrong. No one will. No, no, don't ever correct me. How dare you Reeseman Reisman? Who cares? He's a he's an astronaut. I got that right, Yeah, I was going with it whatever. See what you learn on the space

station in close quarters is just go with it. You don't stress out over sure, right it is Garrett, right, that's okay. Yeah, although when something goes wrong, you go, where's Reeseman? And there's an Yeah right, he's just floating around over there. I come back, So it's actually gay. But I wasn't gonna say anything. So this is as fascinating as all this is, and I don't want to cut it short. Oh my god, space drunk. Why aren't we seeing you dive? And how what's the risk when

you go out there? You know it's out there and it's flying. Yeah, so no, it is a huge risk. It's a big, big And how fast is it going? Here? About seventeen thousand, five hundred thousand, that's different, not seventeen thousand and seventeen your orbit. It could be going faster if it's coming from Look, you could have just said seventeen. You didn't have to add, you could have gotten his name rights. So okay, let's get serious space. So you're

about to go out. It's really dangerous. Yeah it is. Yeah, it going out and doing the spacewalk is just as dangerous statistically as launching or entering. And we've lost people, you know, Challenger launching, Columbia entrink. Fortunately I got I need some wood to knock on here, but m Fortunately we haven't had any problem in space walking. But but statistically it's just as much risk. So what're about the space?

So this episode is about how much space drunk is up there and how much it is predicted that will be up there in this world. Let's take it with you man, what is the boy Scout logo? It's a takeaway a picture leave only foot prints. Isn't that where you're supposed to do? Yeah, but we've been cluttering up,

we've been messing that up for a while. We've been leaving all kinds of junk up there and in certain orbits, especially low orbits where the space station is, where the Space Shuttle used to fly and where we send a dragon spacecraft. That's where that's where most of our junk is because that's where we've spent most of our time. There's also a bunch of junk up at the geostationary love which is much higher, filling that too. That's and is that where the space station orbits or is the station?

Space station is lower? It's lower and lower. Yeah, space it's between sort of the two most dangerous zones. Is that what you're saying? It's actually right in the middle of one of the most dangerous cells. Yeah, but it's about two hundred and twenty seven also up, is it? Yeah? Yeah,

that's right. That's all very good, Peter, between two hundred and eighty and four hundred and I heard I've read that the space stations had to do maneuvers because, yes, because of Russian junk and other junk clouds that have gone by, So why not the space walk back to space walk? Are you looking for that stuff? Or it's the thing is like you guys saw the movie Gravity, I was gonna reference and because if I had seen it, let me tell you the us end off my spacewalk.

You know, we got like a recruiting took a dip after that movie come out. In that movie, they can like see it coming like, oh look therery here it comes. Yeah, And that's ridiculous, That's that's bullshit, because the thing seventeen thousand and five family, sugar, Oh no longer in space. You're on ground. You're yeah, it's you can say it,

we'll bleep. And I'm just saying, just saying, don't freaking curse, okay, just because you're in space three times no, so you cannot see it coming when you're the particles are that small. So seventeen thousand, five hundred that's our orbital velocity. That is about ten times faster than a rifle bullet. And you can't see a rifle bullet coming at you, right, it's invisible. So it's gonna be the same way with the space. But wait, wait, what are there pieces of

things up there? Like I'm I was not kidding. I mean, you know, Musk did put a tesla up. There are there pieces that are that big or or similar, and you would see that, wouldn't you. You could potentially, but even that's but so you won't necessarily see it with your naked eye, but we can see it using sensors.

So we have a lot of the Department of Defense looks up there for everything, and they could track anything down to like a couple of centimeters, so anything that's bigger than like a golf ball, they could track that, and they and that's what we move the space station periodically to get out of the way. Smaller stuff, though, is what you really worry about because that's hard to see, and for that we just rely on shielding. So the

space station is covered with shields. They're called whipple shields because they're kind of like sandwiches. They got like a standoff piece of metal and then a shield lower down. And the stuff is coming so fast that you're not going to stop it with with a thin piece of metal, but you'll break it up into lots of little tiny pieces and then it kind of hits like rain on the hull if you if you put if you do that, So that's what we use on the space station, but

you can't like put that on your space suit. So when you go there and doing the spacewalk, you're just playing the odds basically, So what's the plan. Let's stay in space junk for a little bit, then we can do your experience on the space station as an astronaut. What is a plan? Since we know what's incrementally increasing?

And I was right with space dunk creates or the space junk, because as you said, if you get an impact and it breaks it and the shield breaks it into more pieces, that's just more junk, right, Yes, it doesn't stop the speed of that. That just bounces off and keeps going exactly, It keeps moving. And so the worst generators of this junk are when things either explode, so we have pressurized like old upper stages of rockets and things that get hot and then they burst apart

and create lots of little pieces. What's even worse than that is when two satellites hit each other. And that's happened. It's rare, it's a big sky, but sometimes they actually can hit each other and if they collide then boom. That's even worse. And then the worst still, the very worst producer of this junk our anti satellite weapon tests. So We've done it a long time ago. The Russians have done it recently, the Chinese have done it fairly recently.

So when they do that and they shoot a missle it when these satellites, then it creates thousands of pieces and depending on the orbit it could be it could really persistent stay up there. The higher it is, the longer it's going to last because there's nothing. You know, what goes up comes down if there's air, but if it's an orbit, it will stay there for a long time before. So you've said we've done it, China's done

at Russia has done it. Is there any sort of standing or prevailing treaty that says, let's not do that for our mutual interest anymore? Or is that still it's kind of doing it. It's every time somebody does it, there's a lot of finger wagon. There's no treaty that says like you've violated a law or a resolution or something. But there were there should be. There were international laws that said you're supposed to within five years clean it up.

And I don't think anybody's racing to do that. And I'm envisioning with the technology we have, making like a gigantic blue hinged receptacle and a green one in the block. You shoot them up, you open the hinge, and then every Tuesday you have somebody come up and pick them up. The hard part is, you know, sorting it. So you gotta figure out is this compost or is this? You know? Is there? You gotta look at the number one, so do they have it? Have you heard of you you

were NASA, you would know is there a plan? The best thing we could do is not make any more of this stuff. So what we do now that's different is we used to have these upper stages that would deliver say a capsule or a satellite up to up to orbit and and then we would just leave it up there and it would be an orbit itself until

it eventually it might break apart. So what we do now is we keep a little tiny bit of gas in the tank and we burn the engine one more time so it comes down in one big piece, so we don't make any more junk. So that's one thing we could do to not make it worse. So you you, you, you you fire that engine to make it come down. Why wouldn't you fire the engine to send it out? Well, you know that takes a lot more gas, so it would it would you only have you use up almost

all your gas. You keep a little bit of extra just in case, but when you get up to orbit, you have just a little bit left and not enough to leave Earth. At that point you'd have to have a lot more to like go to the Moon or to Mars or whatever. So you only have a little bit left, but it's enough to slow you down, so that Earth pulls you back and you'd burn up in

the atmosphere. It sounds like how my mother used to keep gas in their car fast enough I can't get where I'm going, but she's got just enough to make it up the driveway. So before we leave space Junk, I've made an observation and maybe you can help me with this. Yeah, the space to Earth economy is huge in space to Earth, meaning you guys do testing all the time to benefit us you're on Earth. All of a sudden, the paradigm has shifted to space to space economy,

where they're spending more and more. There's privatization, there's SpaceX, there's Amazon thing. It's putting a lot more in space. Is it because he's wealthy? Guys? Know they ain't gonna be getting it will get out in a while. So we're racing to get that Moon colony and to get the Mars because they know something we don't know that we're gonna be landlocked now. So I used to work for Elon Musk, right, and I can tell you that's never been a topic of conversations. I've got to hurry

up before. Like if you remember Wally when like it's so literally they could barely get it doesn't really work that way. Um, you can avoid this stuff, and if you're just passing through the odds of hitting something are very very small in ten years, even even even if it gets worse if you're just passing through. The danger is when you hang out up there. So right now, it's a big concern for the space station, which is

there all the time. And so the biggest risk over like any six month period that you're gonna send a crew up there, is getting hit by one of these things. It's actually the most the biggest thing we worry about, right Wow, But if you're just passing through on your way to the Moon, you're kind of okay. Yeah, So let's switch to the space station because knowing you were

coming in and blew me away. I thought about it because I hear about it, and you guys wave and you sing songs, and the pizzas delivered and all that stuff. But I didn't realize they didn't share with you, these astronauts these days that, by the way, dominoes in thirty minutes or it's free. You know, honestly, I made a whole bunch of calls. Yeah, because you have a phone up there. Oh and I call it seriously, did that? I called a couple of places a guarantee thirty minutes

or less. Oh fantastic. Technically, at let's addressed that interesting thing about the space station. You can make calls to your family. It clears a bellance and emails, right, no problem because you're right near the satellites. What I didn't realize, though, is that the thing is as long as a football field. They say it's the size of a six bedroom house. But when you think about that, verybody listening because there's no volume, you can't use the ceiling is the floor

of the floor, the ceiling. It's like twenty times the size of a six bedroom, right, because in my house with the ten foot cathedral ceilings, but I can't do anything on any ceiling. It's wasted space. Look at all the space in this room right wasting right now. So when you're up there, Okay. The bigger issue for me that was really fascinating is the weight listing. I read a lot about astronauts describing it, and one astronaut said, it's almost like you're just a conscience flow because you

don't feel anything. You don't feel your clothing, you don't feel the blanket at night. So it really kind of messages your head up a little bit as far as realigning where your body is at any given time. Yeah, you know, but if you go too fast and you knock your head into the hatch, it still hurts. I'm

not sure about that. But before we leave the space chalk, there's one more thing I wanted to tell you, which is on my very first spacewalk, I went out there with this guy, ricklan Ahan, and we had this We out there for seven and a half hours. We did all of our work and we come back inside and one of the things we had to do is we had to bring inside this handle. We called it a

d handle. It's just a big hunk of metal like a steering wheel that you could take off and put on, and so if you're gonna move something, you could put it on there. Now you have a handle to grab this thing by, right, And we needed it for a subsequent spacewalk for like a couple days later, so we had to bring it inside so that the next crew could go use it. So we carried the thing inside. It's made out of like half inch thick solid aluminum.

He's looking at it in his hands and he sees that there's a hole shot straight through all the way through that aluminum. It's about like a millimeter. It looks like somebody took a cocktail straw and just like Superman and just like punched it through the aluminum and made a clear hole straight through. And he looked down at that, and he looked back up into me and he said,

you know, man, if that hit one of us. And he didn't have to complete that sentence, right, because it's not that you worry about like losing pressure in your suit. If you get hit by one of those things and the air leaking out, you're in one hundred percent oxygen. So the moment something with that kind of energy punctures your suit. You flame up immediately, and it's flame up, flame up, as the phrase, it's not a good day. It's not like in a Fantastic four kind of way,

but in a sort of painful flame. Okay. I also heard that if your suit rips, if your suit rips, which happened in the test, all right, that it's your lungs collapse. You don't explode, But also that the moisture in your tongue, your eyes, you're it starts to boil off. Is that correct? Yeah, it's called So what happens is if you're exposed a hard vacuum unless your Princess Leia

and then apparently you can get away with it. But if you're not, then um, then what happens is all the liquids in your in your tissues begin to change phase. It's like they're boiling. It goes from liquid to gas. And it's kind of like Schwarzenegger on Total Recall with like their favorite their bulging eyes and all that. That's kind of what would happen. You would have this grotesque

bulging and um edema and all the swelling. Anyway, that's that's me after Thanksgiving meals and by the way, I should mention because we talked about this before you went on the bonus of going up to the space station is all the all the food in your body goes up, correct? Yeah? Um, you also can't go to the bathroom become constipated. But you're two inches taller, yes, so, which which is the whole reason I signed up for this job. By the way, I'm not I'm not signing up there because, as you

guys have probably noticed, I'm a little vertically challenged. And when when Rick was looking at that hole and said, oh, if this hit one of us, I pointed out that statistically it was much more likely to hit him, sure, because he's six foot four. Yes, right, And besides, I was like behind you most of the way, so I think I was pretty safe out there. You That's why that's why I've teamed up with Peter in case, in case we ever got retrimission for people to listening and

not watchings on YouTube. Guards or about four four foot five Come on, okay, you're tall, you're mighty. I'm fine personal. Yeah, we're about to say ye five four, but wait, I want to go back to the spacewalk. So seven hours this is the first place my mind went, a I know where you're going. What happens if you need to go and be It's not like you can pop down an energy bar. You know, do you get hungry? I guess, I guess on the go sure diaper, you just go. Yeah,

there you go, you just go. Yeah. I went like four times before they even opened a hatchet. Oh yeah, let me carol, and twice doing this whatever I went, I was gonna say, I went myself. That's how you look. And then you just kind of your carve up before. Yeah, your carve up before you go. And we used to have like a little kind of like a fruit roll up in the helmet that you can nibble on, but that got messy and it just it wasn't didn't really help very much. So we got rid of that water water.

You have a you have a little you have a little camel pack kind of like a bite valve. Yeah, and so you bite on that you can suck the water and drink. And the water's coming from in the space, in the spaces coming from the air. You're sucking water out of the area. Oh there's that. There's that whole thing. But let me get to that, but in the suit, it's just in a bag like just like there's like a camel back backpatch, so it's like it's up by your chest and there's a straw and you bite on

the valve. So I'm out there in the middle of my very first spacewalk and everything's going fine. But then they see this blue thing floating inside my helmet, like coming like across my helmet like this, and I realized, oh, that's that's the bite valvet felt off the straw. You know, I'm like, crap, I'm gonna be the first person to drown in space. Oh no, it's real. Yeah, yeah. I got really worried about this, so I put my mouth like I'm a strung I'm sorry to drink like as

fast as I can. But then I soon realized that there's enough surface tension like kepler action in the straw that it wasn't coming out. I was fine, Does your mother just call you every day and go enough for what are you trying to prove? Enough? Stop it? Yeah? Yeah, so yeah, no, my mom my mom lives down in Boca s not in Del Boca Vista, but nearby. Yeah, and she's and she walks around hanging head her head and shame that her son did become a doctor or

a lawyer. So she's like, got a doctorate, don't you have a doctor? Yeah, but I'm not the kind of doctor that could help you. I just she doesn't go around like Jason's mother did in all of Florida and go ask him out. So what is your just baits everybody, So what does your son do? Just so she can say, no, my son's time. It was even better than that. She she had a pin with my face as George, like a little like an election pin on her bag, and people would go, why do you have that pin? Why

do I have that pin? I'll tell you why, And so she was off to the race. Yeah, your mother didn't sit at the pool or satellite pool eight and shade everybody, you know where my son is right now? Look up? There was Yeah, there were a few moments like that, not even mentioned it. But so I'm gonna go to to a thing because this is my area.

This is where I get fascinated UFOs anything. Do you ever see a thing that you go not that you go, oh that's an alien ship, but do you see anything and go I don't know what that is, and that could make me think, yeah, you know, I was looking, but I didn't see anything. Nothing. No, no, no, not really. There are the guy's a thought that maybe something but and and and look, I believe and I'm looking now as some of the stuff that's coming out r and

there are things that we don't understand. And now now we're starting to think, oh, maybe that's you know, some China sending balloons or stuff. So I do think that there's things that we can't explain, but I don't jump to the conclusion that that means they're alien visitors out there. I do think that there. I do think that there's almost definitely life somewhere else in this universe, right. I think we'll find it in our lifetimes on Mars, which

would be incredible because we keep getting tenalizingly close. We keep finding out that there's liquid water and they're building blocks of life, and we keep getting more circumstantial evidence. And I think some day before too long, we'll find that little Martian microbe or something, and then we're two for two if we find that. And then, and with the billions of other galaxies out there, the fact that there could only be these two that would be incredible.

We're making them hard for the Aliens because if we can't get out for the junk, they can't get in. Yeah, but you know what, it's not advanced that they're they're looking down. Why do we want to go there? It's like a bad vacation destination. You don't. Let's not go to Club Medical. I didn't like that there. So my fascination and we'll get to their interpersonal stuff because you're in a tight space, living in a bizarre really bizarre where you're ruckrowing yourself in a bag at night to sleep.

But my fascination is with the Russia, the Russian partnership. Two reasons. Number one, the astronaut who is up there and I think he's now the guy responsible for NASSA and Russian communication was a guy who was up there when the Soviet Union fell, and he had to stay up there like an extra hundred and something days because there was such chaos on the ground with Russia. Yeah, knocking the Soviet Union anymore, he's going, wait what happened

down on the ground. So he went up as a Soviet citizen, Sokay Crico, and he came home without a valid passport, which is stunning. Okay, but how do you guys do know Russian? Do you have to know some Russian before? So you have to What does that mean? It means yes? But is the food yes? Where you eat still in the Russian side of it? Do you still sit and have all the meals with the bay My kids love it when I scream at them in Russian because Russians a great language for being here. Let's

hear it. Let's hear it the strugg and Prussian and that means I love you. It's a rough language. It's at us. So what is the relationship? Like, I know that the Soyers thing is leaking. Their side was leaking and they refused to have elon Musk's space like come up and pick them up. Where does that stand? Well? So, yeah, so that might be this. That's probably the space junk

again rearing its ugly head. So they did. The weird thing though, is that we've had two nearly identical Russian spacecraft leak out all of their get get punctured and leak out all of their cooling system kind of in the same spot, kind of the same way, and also in a direction that is less likely. So it does. Since you know, the first one, we were like, oh yeah, that it got hit by some of the space junk

is natural. There's little pieces like little tiny meteors that come from comments and stuff that that we didn't put up there, And some of that stuff is moving really really fast and can hit you from behind. Right, you get rear ended by this stuff, right, but the but most of the stuff that we put up there is going to hit you from the front or maybe from the sides. We don't sneak up. We don't know. Our junk is slow, slow, So I never use that phrase before.

So it's kind of a believable explanation. But then the second one happens, right, and now we're scratching our head a little bit, like, really did did they hit the same way the same direction, within a month of each other. It just seems kind of improbable. It could be the other thing, Garret. That was fascinating to me because it's so far up. I didn't realize if there's a rocket ready to go, like to bring people down, it's a

four it's a four hour ride. It's like taking the four row five in LA that's going not that far but a four hour ride gets them, gets them up to the stay station space station and doc you can't if the place it is in the orbit, or you can control the orbit, you can actually get up there that quickly. Yeah you could. It took us about two days in the Shuttle to get there, but we did it slowly on purpose for other reasons. The t So let me just tell you, depending on what you're you

make it time far. I always help us. Depending on the emergence, I get it, of course. You know. I once had a splinter. I waited for somebody for three minutes. It was agonizing. I just you know, I was kidney stone. If I'm passing a kidney stone, I gotta wait four hours. That's the other thing. By the way, you we're docing count there's a good chance you're gonna get a kidney stone up there too, right, because you're you're losing counts. It's all the great stuff. But the training. I read

that mark because I'm claustrophobic. Mark Kelly said he got into a fetal position into a rubber ball with a heavy zipper. Yeah, they zip you in, put you in a closet, and you don't know when or if they're coming back to test you, I would the zip up. I'm not even in, I'm not getting in. Did you have to do that? Yeah? So for market at Mark is also about our height, so it was actually cant for us. It wasn't that bad for the tall guys.

That's that's a it's the same size ball. So that's what they do for screening when you're applying to become an astronaut before you get selected, just to make sure you're not claustrophobic. And they put me in there and they zip me up. It was like the most relaxed part of the whole. Oh my god, I fell asleep in there and they kept waking me up. I'm hyperventilating. Now, hy I could do that? I couldn't. I don't know if. I really don't know if I could do the let's

see how many g's you can withstand machine? That seems they actually don't. They actually don't do that to check you out. Um. We actually ended up doing that centrifuge thing in Russia as part of my Russian training because there they'll haze you the death over there. But uh, and I'm gonna say it's always the Russian guy running that machine at the amusement park. Right, you'll go again, You'll go again, you know, you know what, you know,

it's so, this is true. I'm sitting in that centrifuge over there, and it's this huge Russian It's in a giant building and I'm spinning around. The gs are picking up, and then then you know, all this is happening, and I'm thinking, I'm thinking about that scene in Moonraker with the with the evil Nemesis is like is cranking the dial into the room and I'm sitting They're like, oh my god, what if my evil nemesis is going to do that to me? I'm strapped in. Here's nothing I

could do. Then I remember I don't have an evil nemesis, you thought. I fascinating where you have to go through to get up there. Yeah, and then for me, the interpersonal relationship part of it, Yeah, it's tough up there. You're floating around, you're zipped and everything's unnatural. That's got to chip away at who you are. And then you're in close quarters with what four or five other people? Yes, when I was up there, we only had a crew of three. But how is that if you're people flip out,

people have behavioral problems. Stuff happens. How do you talk through that? Or there shrinks on the line all day long? Do you go to that angry? Is that allowed? How do you deal with the interpersonal stuff, because that's got to be to put the seat down. Yeah, that happens. So we do do a lot of preparation, and we do have a psychologist to help us with that, and we do study what we call expeditionary behavior to prepare for long duration missions, where we study things like teamwork

and self care and self management. And we do some of that with the National Outdoor Leadership School. So we go out into the wilderness and we go for like a week or two with just the stuff you have in your back, and you have to work together as a team, and we practice these and we have debriefs about these kind of interpersonal issues. We studied the Arctic explorers like Shackleton and Cook, and we looked at what they did right and what they did wrong. People eat

other people too, you know what that happened? Yeah, which you know up there, I understand that food's not very good up there's nothing right, it's not if you know, they can't set all freeze dried, and yeah, you don't go for the food, well nothing, nothing for I didn't realize you can't have bread. You can. Everything that makes crumbs becomes a thing. Yeah, it doesn't fall down out to your napkin. It goes all over. So it's peanut butter.

It's yeah, it's like oatmeal for breakfast. It's like an oatmeal. Oh, it's already mixed. Well, it's it's dried up. It's contained, and then you squirt hot water into it and then you shake it up and then you like, then it's all sticky. Wow. I would go, I'm out with a suction toilet, and I how do you go in space? It's a suction toilet. You're you're you're kind of a chance yourself, so there's no air and then you do

it right. Yeah, so yeah, in lieu of gravity, use a little bit of air suction to make things go in the correct direction that you want it to go and be contained. It doesn't always work. Gravity is better. Let me just put it that way. You know, I have that. That's the mumper sticker around my car. You know that I'm out just with that. I'm just with that because I'm so sure. Here's what honestly, the things that I don't think. I don't think I could do it.

I don't think I could go into space. I don't think I have the kind of guts and fortitude. But there are little things that that freaked me out, like if I'm witless. I've looked, you know, I've been to the Smithsonia. I've looked at the inside of the capsules and things like that. And I go a lot of buttons, a lot of levers. I'm always going to be afraid. Am I floating into a lever? And it's like, oh no,

not the red button? You know, well, you elect the news ship when the one I worked on at SpaceX, it's just a touch screen. We got rid of a lot of those button Oh my god. And now these ships are much more automated, so you don't have that much manual contro role. So you go into the cockpit

the shuttle. Yeah, there are thousands of things, and there's some that are very bad if you accidentally yea, in the Dragon, there's only a couple of those things, and they're actually covered with a guard, like a cover to open that first sure, you'll probably be Okay, my luck. The cover that get left up is not the toilet, that's the covers. You can't leave the toilet cover up the things they're floating with the shoot up, shooting up

in G Force. We just had William Shan And I said to Bill, so, did they give you any kind of contingency plan if they shoot you off and not you, Bill, but somebody has a heart attack? Benson? He said, well, they tell me it is. The force going up would invigorate me, and the G Force coming down would invigorate me, so it wouldn't be a problem. I said, did you believe that's absolutely not? Is that? Is that? Is that a truth? Did they give you contingency? You're you're about

three two one blast off? I think I'm having a heart attack? What happens? Wow? Well, so we do prepare for all kinds of medical emergencies, so if you have um so, first of all, for for Shatner, his whole thing was like fifteen minutes long. So if he's having going get the cardiac arrest, they'll put the paddles on him in fifteen minutes when he's back on the ground. Oh sure, that's really really sloating and every's looking at Bill Hardest stopped. There's only fifteen What are you seeing now?

I'm seeing the overview effect that shatters dead and floating in the caraft Is that good for space section? Is that a real live to see? This is why he's an astronaut. The nonchalance is is this hard stoppedeen minutes He'll be back put his person, Bill's body out of the problem. He's starting to go, you're blocking my view of here. I'm gonna have the overview effect. Oh my god, just do this a little bit. My whole trip. I got to compress Bill Shatton and hell with him him

on the way. Would you have said to Bill, Bill, you're ninety two, I would I wouldn't do this. Would you have advantse him against? It's okay because that that particular space flight, for all that vehicle is completely automated. So the good thing is it's gonna do. It's nobody inside as now I love you, Now, I love you an uber. Okay, So it's going. So you're in a blue Yeah, you're in the back seven uber and it's going, and you're gonna come back down and they have doctors

waiting right there. So if it's they'll take care of you pretty quickly. But if you're going up to the space station, as you pointed out, it could be about twenty four hours before you come home if you have an emergency. So if you have like appendicitis and you need to get to a hospital, you're you're looking at about a day too is done. So we had to prepare for like anything that could happen and so, and you don't always have sometimes there are some astronauts that

are physicians. And my first fight, the closest thing we had was he had that guy Rick I talked about it. He was a veterinarian, so he actually gave us a valuable so he could number one, clear your throat to stop you from barking or peeing. By the way, if I need to be new during he so do me a favor. If I gave you a toy, a puppet or point to my body, which areas are you capable of working on as far as surgery, Like what can you do? Well? I did practice. So if you don't

have a doctor, then he's coming in. Yeah, yeah, right, It's just it might be your mother got the doctor after all, Hey mom, look up good news but I get a surgery. Yeah, wow, you were prepared to do so, you really were prepared to do surgery. Not surgery is really hard in zero G because the fluids were all going to come out. Oh my god. Right, so so you got to be ridden. It's gonna be really tricky. So but we could do things like I was trained

to put in a chest tube, tracheotomy. Uh, this kind of the thing that scared me the most actually was the dental Like just sticking somebody with the needle for Novakin was was what creeped me out more than anything, I think. But they burn wound care and basic intubation. We were trained to do that. Jesus. Oh, I know is we talked to competitive leaders. There's a Heimlich guy standing by always they're going up into space. They got nobody shouldn't they always should one or the four? You

should be like a surgeon. Maybe wouldn't that be an idea? Possibly? Yeah? You know, I think we're ready. You know, there's nothing. Yeah, this is the guy who puts on a suit and walks out with there's things that could kill him at any second. At seventeen thousand miles an hour, you think he's going to get nervous about it happened back to me, I'm I'm curious. I'm curious at the end of the year when you're looking at your bills and stuff and

it's time to re up your insurance. Yeah, when they ask are you doing anything a lot of the ordinary or like you write a motorcycle, do you bunch you jump? You go? No, I'm shot in the rocket in your space. And I'm what do they charge you? What do they charge you for insurance? The insurance doesn't cover it. So and that's that's it. So, first of all, everything risk I've ever done in my life, I've justified by saying, at least I've never ridden a motorcycle that's like a

space shuttle, flying airplanes, all these things I do. But that's my one kind of you not a crazy person. I'm not crazy. The other thing is, I remember you try not to get your hopes up. But when you're going through the interview process, at the end stages, the FBI comes and knocks on your neighbor's door and does a background check on you. And that's the one time you want the FBI knocking on your neighbor's door because it means that you're you have a bout of fifty

fifty shot of making it at that point. So that's that's good news. So and remember once you get there, it's hard not to get your hopes up. What are they asking your neighbor? You know, does he like have a drug problem? Does your neighbor? My neighbor doesn't know what I'm doing. The neighbor goes, they don't know what I'm doing. Do you tell the neighbor that does come. I was living in Manhattan Beach and you know, those houses are very clear clear, so they can hear if

you're doing drug. I think you're snorting something last night. I think I had analogy. Gee, oh my god. All right, so you hope the neighbor. So I'm getting my hopes up. And one of the things they told us and the briefing was that actually your insurance won't cover you if you have a mishap in space and so your life insurance won't come. So I'm sitting there at home and

you get jumping. Whenever the phone. This is back in the day we actually like home phones, and whenever my phone would ring, I get jumping because it could be NASA calling to tell me yea or an A. And so the phone I pick it up and it's a solicitor, right trying to sell me insurance. So he starts going through his pitch and I stopped and say, excuse me, I just have a question, Um, does your policy does

it cover flying in space? They guys like huh and said, you know, like like on the Space Shuttle, and I hear click. I got him to hang up by me. There you go, everybody, this is a public service. We found that we found. You know what I do. I do something similar. I always say I can't talk now. I'm burying my father in the yard and I'm eating aluminum and used that line for years. They hang up and they take you off to aluminum and I'm burning

my father. You know, I'm busy right now. But how about you give me your number that now we're doing I want to get back to because we started with space junk and I no time is short. So in your opinion, is this what we've heard is and you've sort of said no, I don't think so. Is that the problem could compound to the point. We read one report where it was speculated we wouldn't be able to push something through the junk zone come ten years, twenty years,

twenty five years. But do you do you believe that? And whether or not you do, is there any kind of solution? Have you heard of anything being talked about to literally get some of that stuff out of there? People have tried things like shooting lasers at it to lays off and vaporize a piece. So to your knowledge,

people are working on it or there isn't. There have been some experiments done where we could see, like, hey, maybe we could shoot it and it could be propulsive if you if you vaporize a section of it, it can actually push it and then push it in a direction it would slow it down and cause it to come back to earth. So but that's hard. It's really hard to do that, and it takes a lot of energy. There are other people who look actually sending up collectors

to actually mechanically get this stuff all right. For some of the bigger pieces, that might work, but it's a very it's really a difficult problem to clean it up. I really do think that the best thing we could possibly do is just not making any worse. So you

wouldn't advocate. And this is something I've actually asked, And I know it's probably cost per hivotim, but I'm trying to think you would not be an advocate of sending earth junk up into space because I always say, what, you know, radioactive waste, why don't we just shoot it into the cosmos? Why don't we get our why don't we get our the the most corrosive elements of our earth garbage out of here? That way, not a fan

of that. I do think that it's something to consider for a radioactive waste that you really don't want hanging around down here. The problem is you've got to be really, really confident it's gonna work. Yeah, and you know, I'm confident enough that I'm only get on one of these rockets, but not live under it. But you know, in the

radioactive waste that on there. I do think that if we get to the point where access to space maybe through maybe not through liquid propulsion, maybe through there's this new thing that they're trying with, basically a giant catapult that slings around at incredibly high rpm and then shoot something releasing old school. I love it. Yeah, if you could be assured that when you let it go, it's going, and you could use, or even a railgun or something

like that. This isn't going to work for humans because the g's are way too high. But but for something like that, if it was proven to be ridiculously reliable, then I think you could consider that. I think they should work on robots for spacewalks first part. But and tell us be totally honest with us here if this makes you uncomfortable at all. Podcasts are great. It's a nice little life, little business here using your name. However, to start a business where we clean up space junk,

we could raise a tongation a ton of money. Put his name first. Yeah, yeah, what do you think? Are you good with that? We could talk, We could talk. Look, yeah, the podcasting thing is maybe a little a little better. So it's a little better. Really, I go to parties and here's what I get. So, what are you and Jason doing? Podcast? And you know what the answer is, my grandson does a podcast. I'm thinking we we didn't

even have to change the initials for the show. And be real, hold on, hold, realize, I just realized something. Richman Reisman does a podcast. You do a podcast? I do, of course. Gods, you know, nine out a ton adults. Gods, we got in at the right time. What about living Los Angeles? Sure they came and knocked at my door instead of head. All right, go ahead, what's yours podcast?

All of this stuff which we just are you on the iHeart app, the Apple Apple wherever they get their podcast because we are person an astronaut, we're an Apple Google. We're also on YouTube. Yeah, we're on YouTube. We're on you because not for me, but the guy I do with is is good looking. So yeah, what's your who? You're a guy can pull off the shaved heads thing. I'm a long dart. If I shaved my head, it's the tragedy. You're a handsome man, don't. Don't don't whether

you're in gravity or not. But so, what's your podcast about? Thank you very h It's called Two Funny Astronauts, So it's it's myself and a comedy. The man's doing comedy. Can't even leave art. Yeah, we're not treading on yours. Why are you treading on army? But he HiT's the thing. I'll go in your rocket and take a dump too. Yeah. Funny yeah, yeah, And here's the thing we're not saying that,

we're like like you guys, we're not saying we're funny people. Sure, okay, are you in that hilarious account We are you the two Hilarious Accountants network? Is that where you are? Those guys kissed me on? So you talk about space. We talk about space. We tell stories funny things that happened to us in space as myself and Mike Massamino is my co host. You might know him from the Big

Bang Theory. Had a recurring role on that for a while. Sure, and so the two of us did this podcast where we where we tell ye, so we don't you know we're saying we're funny. For how many astronauts have you met? I've met about six? Okay, Buzz Alder and I should stand behind at the deli every week. And he was angry, always angry. He was he trying to send back soup. He was an angry And I have a fan. He doesn't know you, but I have a fan. Can you

see that three reference? I'm slipping him in there stuff. I'm guessing you're gonna be before he leaves your podcast. Just make sure you're promoting our podcast. Let me ask a question. You and Mike you split at fifty fifty because that doesn't seem right. One of you has a higher profile than the other, doesn't it. Yeah, and wait we should we should probably negotiate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah doing you and I we will talk to the two

new the two Funny Lawyers show. You got a good trademark attorney, you could you could drop it before you are you? Before you go? You're gonna go up in another mission? Would you ever go up? And can you go? You know so, because I'm hoping you go now that yoh man? So you never say never because now there's these commercial opportunities out there. But I'm also okay if I never go. Because I did spacewalks, I did robotics, I was a flood engineer in this shuttle, was a

long duration astronaut. I'm kind of I'm kind of good. Yeah, I'm happy with me. Are you rocking? You know? Elon? So can you call Elon and saying anything you high? How you doing? I could call? No, I'm not asking you, but you're that that close you have that kind of relationship. Um. I could send him an email, I said. I actually send him an email, him a tweet, I know anybody.

I sent him an email about a month before he bought Twitter, and I said, don't do it well and you're man, Yeah, he said, uh, he said, I don't. I don't want to do it. They're making me. So you're like the signfild opposite episode, but you different advice and he does the opposite. That's right, it's perfect. Well, te email him that you were on this show. Okay,

thank you very much. Your podcast is called Two Funny Astronauts, Two Funny Astronauts a good Garrett Reeseman Reisman, and I love that he does space space discovery endeavor in Atlantis. The school of Engineering you consult You also were on Battlestar Galactica and Ron Moore, the show runner, Yes, kind of created a show with you, right, and that you were consulting on it. Right, I'm still working on it. It's it's on Apple TV just four ninety nine per month. Um,

you're a consulting on very cool, very cool Garrett. Thank you very much for your time and thanks for ving to have fun. It was. It was a great a lot of fun for me. So I think you're a good dude, and thanks for long and prosper Yeah. And I have a trigger finger and I can still do it all right, So a Garrett that was amazing, right, pretty fascinating. You know what I like the most about them? Pretty good looking guy as me as somebody height, good

looking guy. Yeah, got the guy on TV and then in the in the CSI wanted the CSI show, what's his name? With Mersa Haggardy that's who he reminds me, a good looking guy. You can't get her name right either, right, getting his name right? Now? You can't get that name right. You're good with names. I would just want to mention what's my name? But last week when we were taping, Jason called me, where did you call me? You didn't call me? Tolden what did you say? Four times? You

got my name wrong? Four times? Have the guts to look at me and say that's right. I have the guts, I have the guts, I'm the right stuff. Let's go to let's go to Googleheim. Googleheim. Anything in this episode that he correct thing or that that you need to look up to clarify, Well, yeah, the it's Christopher Maloney by the way, thank you, Christopher Murder. You get that he gets out alive by yeah, yeah, thank you. There's a bevy of things that at all. I'll give you

an option, give us part of the bevy. Jason referred to the Carlin route teen. I don't know if people know who George Carlin is, so I could you know? We can get it. That's true George Colin Fronty commed in, but he's been dead a long time. How sad is that that people may not know? Ya? Wow? Del Bocca Vista, of course, is the fictional home of Jerry Steinfeld's parents, and then at some point George's parents as well, for a short period of time. The Internet is all over.

As far as Garrett's height, some places it says he's five to seven, some say he's six twin. I don't think anyone's buying that. That's Garrett constantly trying to invade him sights. Yea claustrophobia that is actually caused by a traumatic event experience during early childhood. So you might want to share you know something. I don't know what that is, but it's true. If I ever have to go in one of the machines today, I don't think I honestly

don't think I have not. That's not one of my problems. They'd have to give me iowa any problems, but you could go in there, and I've done it many times. I have no problem in small places, close place. When Garrett was talking about going into that balling sept up started, I start, yeah, I can't breathe. It's unbelievable. That's terrible. A lot of people have that. Well, that's why I don't go in balls that are driving, you know, driving my cars. I don't let your cars kind of like that.

Every time you get out. It's like giving birth. It feels like or the downstairs bathroom and my head down stays. Bathroom in your house is smaller than tight, smaller than an airplane bath by way, what's with airplane bathroom? They can't give you another couple inches if you're six too, Sorry, Garrett, I'm six two. It's the I'm always holding on with my head. My head is what they're called. Chat get the bathroom. And by the way, you know who has

an airplane bathroom in his hallway of his house? I understood Billy Crystal doesn't really have an airplane bathroom installed. An accurate bathroom installed. And when you close the door, suppose it makes the sounds. Isn't it great? A Google hoime anything else. The last one is my favorite. The Kobayashivaru is a fictional training exercise in the Star Trek franchise designed to test characters in Starfleet Academy with a no win scenario and as Captain. As Captain Kirk says,

I don't believe in a no win scenario exactly. I felt like I was with the only man to beat he actually he cheated and he cheated. He cheated. He beat the Kobe Ashimura, the only man to do it. I'd love that you, Kirk. There you go. Take by the way, take is takeaway from this? Yeah? Is Guart's great, He's knowledgeable. I think we're screwed. I think that they're racing the go out of eight. They don't want us to know because Guart's in on it. He knows Elon Musk.

They're all going to get in rockets and take off when it's all cluttered, and we're gonna be Bibo gates by Elon must. I mean, they're all going, they're all racing to get out of here. Let me explain something to you. Oh you mister science, let me help you, Yes, sir mister, and I what if you have a hundred billion dollars. And now you're in space. What good is it to you? What are you buying? What are you

gonna have that the guy next to you doesn't have. Okay, a life gates down here, Elon Musk, you know, Jeff beys Us, their life is here. That they will they'll invest in these things to make money, but they're staying here. This is where they want to be, This is where the quality of their life is extraordinary. On Mars, they're just another schmow on Marshy. And I am not pessimistic. You're pessimistic. You you actually smell something. If these guys

are shut up. Now, you're gonna good night. Everybody drives safely. No, you're I know that you think that what we heard is that you know that there's going to be so much junk up there. We're not gonna be you can't get through it. I say to you, first of all, Saturn, I love that you Saturn. All that all that ring, the Ring of Saturn is all junk. It's all junk, It's all space debris. So you're saying make it, it'll all compress. I think the thing will have around the Earth.

They'll be a ring like Garrett, can they make it all neat? Could you just go up there and tidy up? Say yes or no, I don't need to put on the headphones on the whole thing. Yes or no, it'll take a long time. We got time. We got the time. We don't have to. You know. The second thing I'm gonna say to you is, despite pessimist one and pessimist too, whenever mankind is faced with an existential problem, we kind of man our way out. Do we figure it out?

Where's the force fields? We're gonna have force fields. That means we're gonna put force fields around our stuff, around our ships. We're gonna have a force field electro magnetic field, and we're gonna push through the junk to junk will repel away. We're gonna figure out how to do that right after we figure out where my jet packet exactly. You know what's amazing what you're better on Space Talk. You should be partnering with Garrett than on your show.

I'm more out of show, and I'm going over to a two funny astronauts. It's gonna be two funny astronauts and a former sign from coach store to parsippany. That's right, good night, everybodyday everybody, depending on where you are in the world, because this is global signing off for an astronaut. Two guys. Now, well, we want to thank Garrett Reesman,

our test subject this week. An amazing guy. Not only is your former NASA astronaut who's flown on the Space Show of Discovery and Endeavor and Atlantis, but he also is consulted on a TV show for all mankind. You can follow Garrett's podcast two Funny Astronauts anywhere you get your podcasts. He's on Instagram or you can check out his website at Garrettreeseman dot com. As far as really No Really, you can find us at really No Really dot com or on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok at Really

No Really podcast. For questions and suggestions, you can message us on Instagram also, and most of all, they do and thank you for listening, subscribing, and sharing the show. We release new episodes every Tuesday, so make sure to follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Really No Really is a production of iHeartRadio and Blaise Entertainment. Four