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Without further ado bachelors degree in the air force academy 1989 and masters in aeronautical science from the Aeronautical University directed by nasa and 200, a pilot and assumed command of the International Space station and spent over 200 days and the imax film a beautiful planet released in 2016 and also the author of the o view from above. And the publisher of universe today and the podcast and creator reporting on new discoveries and space exploration. Please join me in using your reaction function to welcome terry and fraser into your frazr living rooms. Can you hear me . Guest loud and clear. Good to see you again. I think before we get started with this weeks conversation, im just going to ask every question ive ever been curious about space life. Youve got some Cool Pictures to share if your experience on the spaceship. I will do a screen share. The book we are talking about tonight, and let me find the screen share. I think you will have to give me permission for that, but [inaudible] its on the way. There we go. The book i really want to write as something fun to read and i wanted to have a book thats something thats not technical and you dont have to be a space nerd to get into it. My goal was to say while. Thats the reaction i was looking for. Its not a memoir. Theres a million astronaut memoirs and its not one of those. Its something you can read by the pool for the beach. Fiftyone short essays. They are all short and you can read them in any order that you want. So, its designed to be a fun learn something. A lot of the chapters are things you would expect and a lot of them are things you might not have expected you that you see in other books. These are a few of the chapters that i wrote and of course every good book starts with the launch. I talk about a lot of different aspects first of all just getting into the suit and how complicated that is and the process of getting strapped into a Space Shuttle isnt exactly like getting in your car and putting on a sea seatbelt and tn the experience with all of the noise and the view is that i had and the sound of things happening and the experience of the launch. I had done a lot as a Fighter Pilot and test pilot i thought i knew what i was getting into but it was unlike anything that id ever done to say the least. So the launch chapter is pretty cool. Another part would be spacewalking. Again, getting in that suit. It takes hours to get into. If you change pressure to quickly in hollywood you just throw your suit on and go start fighting aliens but in real life it takes hours and its a long ordeal. But then what its really like to be outside, you are in this big suit and on the other side you have the a vast. The views i saw i felt like at times i was seeing creation, like humans are not supposed to see this, this is gods view, then i had to get back to work and plugin cables. So theres this extreme and then 1 seeing things you cant imagine. Theres a few chapters on spacewalking which is pretty fun. My computer just locked up. Can you guys hear me . I can hear you. Interesting. What we try and do this. There we go. So, another aspect was i got the chance to film a movie. I hadnt planned on it but all my life since i was a kid i had been seeing imax movies and i love them. Thats what motivated me to be an astronaut and when i found out i was going to get to film a beautiful planet, going all the way back to the 80s, she was an amazing mentor for me but now that i made a movie last year and hopefully moving into tv and film, she was my mentor and getting the film beautiful planet was amazing. I ended up taking a lot of pictures. Theres some poor guy in houston and it turns out i took more pictures than anybody. Are you able to share your screen again . Im sitting here staring at it on my own computer. Hopefully my laptop wont lock up again. Heres a picture of me taking the photos from a beautiful planet. It was the module that i installed on the spaceflight. You installed that, i didnt know that. I installed the last three modules. Its incredible. You cant even describe it. One of the parts is learning how to be a doctor, a crew medical officer. I am a Fighter Pilot but i was a crew medical officer so i got to spend a week at houston hospital helping people that got bit by their pit bull and had been in car accidents, Chemical Plant fires and all kinds of disasters. I was in the er learning how to deal with the Different Things and i loved it. Funny story i would always put on that white coat and put the stethoscope around my neck and engineers at houston, the volunteers to give blood or just be guinea pigs we could poke and prod because we needed to practice on people. I walk in and this guy was super nervous and he sees me with my stethoscope and says how long have you been a doctor and i say im not a doctor, im a Fighter Pilot. He turned as white as my coat. Anyway, the medical training, i really fell in love with that. Survival training is something you may not think of. I had to do it in the air force as a Fighter Pilot in case you get shot down or have to survive or have to go into a prisoner of war camp. I thought i was done with is that after going into the air force and then doing it with the french air force. Well, when i got to nasa i had to do it with the u. S. Navy as a part of my training and then with the russians because winter survival in russia and water survival in russia and then again in massiah twice and alaska for this kayaking trip, so i spent a lot of my time living in the woods and freezing and being hungry. Theres a chapter about all the different experiences there. Flying jets is probably something you expect. Its the most important training to do. You can practice the Technical Skills and how to install this piece of agreement and this experiment, but the thing like flying jets gives you more importantly than anything else is the ability to have your brain stay ahead of the jet and think five steps ahead and was going to happen in the future and if i go do this in this direction, whats over there. And you are doing all of that while you are on the line. You crash and die. You are not in a simulator you can hit the pause button and go get lunch. So its really good for your mental ability to stay ahead of whats happening. We call that Situational Awareness and also to stay calm under pressure because with all of the training almost all of it is in a simulator and one of the only world war things real world things we do. One of the things i never expected us to get to know the earth by color. I got to know the planet by colors and that was unexpected. Canada and russia are wide, the caribbean is a beautiful blue, turquoise, you can see the bahamas there. Central africa and the congo is dark. They are all pink, red, orange and have these bright colors. This is the Southern Lights you can see a satellite flying by right there. This is just an amazing alien thing, something ive never experienced before in the northern and Southern Lights. Ive only seen them from they are a site to behold but i cant imagine looking down on them. The problem being an astronaut is your bucket list gets too long. Its definitely on my bucket list. Talk about something unexpected, cutting samanthas hair. This is a threeperson job. They held the vacuum cleaner while i did the cutting. You will find that chapter pretty funny. Cutting her hair was something i never expected i would do but its important. Shes the most popular italian on the planet, and so i had to make sure i didnt screw that up. So thats just an example of some of the chapters, and i apologize for the computer glitch earlier. You were able to recover from that near disaster. All of your training kicked in in that very moment. So, ive read the book a couple of times at this point, and as a journalist, ive been reporting on this stuff for 20 years and there was a lot of stuff i didnt know. I think that one of the it has to be 10 true. This is at least 10 true. One of the conversations i love to have when i get the chance to talk with them is the experience of launching like the Space Shuttle. You showed us a picture of the Space Shuttle flying away. Can you put us in the seat with you and help us sort of understand what that whole thing feels like, guest was flying a Space Shuttle feels like . Host yes, suiting up and getting into feeling it. Guest like i said it takes hours. The cool thing when i launched on endeavor, we sat in the same chairs, same room, same oxygen tanks meal and bows did in apollo. The government doesnt want to pay money to update the furniture or anything. There was no one flying so they spend money on new furniture, ikea and got a new furniture. You go through that process. The launch itself is amazing but as a pilot, flying the shuttle is broken down into three things. There is the launch which normally the computer flies. We train it and you have to be very smooth. If you touch the stick just too much, those giant engines putting out millions of pounds of thrust will move quickly and waste a lot of energy and so if you are not super smooth, you waste so much energy and you cant make it to orbit or into the orbit you want to be in and end up in a lower orbit and end up having to abort and you can do your mission. So, flying on the launch have to be smooth. Once in orbit its completely counterintuitive because in an airplane if you want to go faster, you push the throttle and go faster and that catches up with who you are trying to shoot down. In a spaceship if you try to rendezvous with somebody you slow down which causes you to sink and speed up and thats how you catch up and then speed up causing you to climb and slow down and thats how you fly in space. Completely not intuitive. You make one input and then wait like a minute or two and see whats happening and then another input so its kind of like watching paint dry. Then when you come back to earth, i had the chance to fly in an atmosphere and its like an airplane except double wing so when you pull back because you want to climb, when you pull back on the first thing with a double airplane like a Space Shuttle or old ass 106, it will sink and when it sinks, the nose goes up and you get an attack and that causes it to climb. What you dont want to do is be aggressive like on the launch because when you are coming into land, if you go like im coming in too hard, the first thing that it will do is sink so you have to stay a couple steps ahead of it. Its not an airplane you want to fly on the weekend. And you are going downhill, 20degree dive which is like a divebomb approach and the f16. So it was normal to me like im on another divebomb approach. Its like a divebombing glider and you only get one shot. Pullup and touchdown and thats it. Theres no more shots after that. So, flying the shuttle was awesome. The new vehicles are great, but the pilots dont have anything to do. They are just passengers along for the ride. I was lucky and fortunate to get to fly the shuttle where you can actually fly the vehicle. Host and you flown a couple, the launch on the Space Shuttle and how are the two vehicles different and how does it feel . Guest the shuttle is like a big american muscle car. Its big, majestic, the same weight and thrust of flying a huge. The other is more like a ferrari sports car. Its designed to get up and get moving as fast as they could towards america. Its not designed to sit there and go slow. So that was different. It was small and kind of like being in the front seat of your minivan but a few other people in these big spacesuits. Its a little too small. Its a couple of inches above your head so you are lying down on the couch and they put you on a crane with some straps and dip you down into plaster and its like in germany they have these big festivals every august and september. They let the plaster harden and pull you out so you have your own custom fit spine because it hits the ground so hard its like driving through the neighborhood and just running into a telephone pole. Its pretty much a crash. They have soft landing rockets but i think, i suggested they rename them the crash landing rockets because when its hit its pretty hard, but it works. Its simple, it works. I had a couple bruises. I was fine. I crawled out of it. Its not a nice fancy air force landing on a runway. Its a crash landing on the ground, but it works so theres something to be said. Host once you make it to space weather on the Space Shuttle or International Space station, how different is trying to just get around and do things in space compared to what you are use t used to down on earth . Guest we have a saying everything is more difficult in space and that isnt always true. Everything else is harder. Its hard to move around. Like when you move you translate and rotate so its not as simple as just walking over to the door. You have to put yourself over there and not turn yourself around. I told some stories and then all of the stuff that youre trying to deal with is floating away so its kind of like policeman on a bike. So youve got your tools and pencil. Everything has to be in a pocket or velcro or it just floats away. Its a pretty steep learning curve and takes a few weeks before you get really good. Host and you talk about how stuff goes missing which is kind of amazing on a fairly small closed space stuff just floats away. Host guest theres a funny story on my first flight i had a maglite and i opened up and was working on something. My feet were sticking out and after a few minutes i got it fixed and pushed myself out and i was looking for the light. I was dizzy, my head hurt. I had to slowly look around. I couldnt find it anywhere and then about five minutes later my back was itching. I reach back and in between my shoulder blades there was this flashlight literally id put it down my shirt and it floated around to the back of my shirt and it was just hanging out back there. Give yourself a minute to look for something and then stop because you could go down a rabbit hole and waste your entire day looking for a pencil and then usually it shows up. Host you mentioned a card like a flash card you are seeing in your camera. I couldnt imagine some kind of 2001 just rotating perfectly and disappearing into a crack on the spaceship. Guest im impressed that you remember that. Early in the mission i took the most amazing pictures. I was so exciting and it was a little compact flash card that was perfectly rotating like this and it was like slow motion. No. There were these racks like refrigerators, equipment, storage or whatever. Just rack after rack, how the equipment is and theres like a little half inch gap. I waited because usually if something goes and it will bounce and come right back out, but it probably bounced and went sideways. Anyway. Host thats funny. How long did it take to get your space from when you arrive to when you are no longer are a menace to your fellow astronauts . Guest probably good after a couple of days, but you are not great for weeks and like i said theres a pretty steep learning curve. For me it was the flight day number three my headache went away and i felt pretty good. I wasnt as efficient at getting tools and not that fast. The first two weeks of the Space Shuttle mission i was still getting better. When i went back four or five years later it took like a month. It takes weeks. But then i was really good. I was a spaceman. I could move around and it was like second nature. It took less than two months, maybe a month or two weeks. Host you talk about how you say push off from the wall. You cant help but give yourself some kind of rotation in multiple axes but i can imagine after a certain time you are doing this sort of threedimensional planning like i want to be over there but i also want to twist at least twice and be able to end up upside down so you sort of form that into the maneuver. Guest there used to be a competition to push off from one end to another to see how you could go without bumping into the wall so its 20 or 30 feet. Probably 40 feet may b maybe 50. Its pretty long and then theres another 20 feet and you cant go from one end to the next. You have to have some type of curve. Getting through one module isnt hard. Getting to the end of the second one is almost impossible without bumping into something. But you have to learn to move with your hands and carry things with your feet. So you would push and then have to calculate how you would rotate stuff. I remember on the first flight i was on the pilots seat a lot commanding and endeavors and theres this old 1970s computers zero through nine and a through f. That was the keyboard we had like with apollo, i remembe remd noremember notto strapped incomi would stick my leg through the seatbelt so i had something to stabilize me so i wouldnt float away and i would just push the keyboard and my whole body would balance. Just sitting here typing right now, my keyboard is right there, you would go flying in the other direction. In the quarters where everybody had a laptop and thats how you could send email and communicate, you would have to strap yourself in to a handrail to hold yourself together. I had a bungee cord so i would go to my crew quarters and wrap the bungee around my waist so as i was typing my whole body would be kind of bobbing up and down against this little bungee cord. Host people always want to know how the food is. How is the food in space . Guest its basically military style. They come in those green bags. The nasa office here there is a food lab and they dehydrate so its like a hard, crunchy meat or vegetables or dessert or whatever. Used to get in the machine, push a button, it fills up with water, you spin it around and then ten minutes later it turns into chicken or asparagus or whatever it is you are eating so its not bad. Its a variety. Its all processed though. Its not fresh. One of the interesting things about food is American Food anyway doesnt have expiration dates. The russian food does. For some reason our food didnt have an expiration but the belief did, so there would be these containers of beef that had the year on it like 2011 was okay, 2012 was a really good year. Its like going through the wine cabinet to pick out the kind you wanted. I dont know if there was a good thing or bad thing. It was eat what you want, dont ask dont tell, eat. Host but there would be food left over from previous astronauts, right, so would you be like horse trading various treats from the nations were going through things people left behind . Guest i started this bag of uneaten food. There were certain things nobody liked. There was a handful of things that for some reason nobody liked. We had a million in tease and usually about once a month the russians would come down and read the bag. They loved it because it was Something Different from what they had. They would give us left over food and a lot of it was tin cans like tuna cans and they had a lot of fish and we had none. We had the bags from the grocery store, that was the only fish that we had so they had bread that lasted for months. A normal loaf last week so the russian bread was the only bread we had in space. They liked our stuff and we liked their stuff. It was good to have a variety. On my mission, nobody ever through food away. Whats amazing to me right now is the astronauts continuously are inhabiting the space station since its launch more than 20 years ago and now the next step of the united thes is looking at is going back to the moon and hopefully mars. We imagine the time where not only are there astronauts permanently living on the space station but on the moon. You can look at the moon and no there will be astronauts up there. Do you have any advice for the next generation of astronauts as they pushed further an push furr away from the earth . Guest thats a great question actually and that would be cool. Thats what we have been dreaming about and expecting to happen ever since they went to the moon. I think for astronauts that are going to be doing exploring, one piece of advice i would give is share that experience with people on earth because very few people will ever get to do that. I remember having dinner on the russian segment i tried to do as often as i could and there were six of us. Russians are great and they have windows everywhere. Look out the window. There is earth. I said theres six of us here. Theres over 6 billion people down there. We are literally one in a billion, so we are lucky. Very fortunate. Yes people worked hard but we are lucky and fortunate. To share the experience with everybody not just the youth, so thats my advice. Looking to send settlers to mars more and more people are imagining they are going to make this flight to others. I think people have these notions of what its like to go and live on another world when do you think humankind is ready . Guest we have been wondering whats over the horizon and exploring for thousands of years. Thats just what people do. There is going to be psychological aspects. There are some things. You have to have electric power and engines to get you there and back. But the emotional status is the hardest problem to get right. They say mars is going to be dangerous and this and that. Going to the south pole 100 years ago, talk about dangerous, that was dangerous flying across the ocean, that was dangerous. One of the things i look for when i look for applicants, we go through thousands of these applications for each class and what i did not want was thrill seekers. I dont want a guy with a death wish. I want him to get back. My favorite part of the speech was we are training them safely to earth. You need the emotional ability to get to mars and the guy that is going to survive is what you want. Host one of the things astronauts talk about is this idea of the overview affect, this experience of being out in space and seeing the planet and there being no borders beyond some of the borders that are there. Can you talk about sort of what that feeling is like . Guest i just did a short film in july called cosmic perspective and it talks about how its changed our perspective, apollo taking the picture of the earth and the space station photographers like me but also hubble looking out into the galaxy, visiting beliefs and so many people and robots out into space its changed how we look at ourselves and the universe. Some people get overwhelmed like we are meaningless and insignificant. I dont think that at all. When you are low earth orbit, its this giant magnetic you cant take your eyes off it its so beautiful. You cant describe it. I still cant. Until you see it with your own eyes, you dont have that emotional like the planets are over there and im here. There itheres something profout it. I didnt see ourselves as insignificant. I saw we have this planet. Then theres no plan b weve got to take care of plan a thats the perspective i came away with. It feels like if we could get people to have that experience, it would wipe away a lot of the problems we have here on earth to just see the planet as you say. Guest mike chromate, some and that they really well said we are all on Spaceship Earth and should act like we are crewmates and not just passengers and that is a great attitude to have. The Space Tourism industry will start launching people into these orbital flights i hope so too the next few years and so people will be able to. There will be thousands instead of maybe tens of hundreds. I think the more people that see the earth, the better we will be. Some people are beyond hope it doesnt matter you can put a certain World Leaders in space and they are not going to change that i think if you put enough people in space enough will change to be very positive. Host i would take one of those flights. Im not sure if i would want to spend more than a week in space. 220 days is a long time. As a nasa astronaut you get per dm and its taxfree. Ill havwill have to talk tos hatfield and see how it works for the canadians. Would get paid in Canadian Dollars but we get paid taxfree. And no place to spend it. Europeans get i think to in addition to that and russians i think you get three zeros in addition to that. We are definitely not complaining. I think weve reached the point we want to open up and get to questions. We have a few questions and we might have time for more so if you have a question feel free to ask. How long is the training and what is the most difficult part of the training . Its about a year or year and a half. Then you go to some other job. The reality is its a lifetime. You cant just sit around and wait you need to learn as much as you can about everything because when you are an astronaut you have to know everything so it is a lifetime of training. Wondering if you can see pollution from the iss. The name of the movie is a beautiful planet. You can see pollution very prominently in china. It was a brown smoggy place especially northeastern china between shanghai and beijing and korea the other environmental problem was deforestation. Its a big giant rain forest off the south coast of africa. The guys who did it got some money and then 50 or 60 years later the nation is just devoid of trees and you could see these big giant squares of light green and now its accelerated with the change so those are kind of heartbreaking to see but other than that most does look beautiful. One of the analogies i use if you were just zooming past the earth you might not even notice people, you could see airline trails and if you know you are looking at london or buenos aires or some city with big concrete patches but not really during the daylight. At nighttime its different because you can see the lights. What you are really seeing his wealth, not population. You can tell where you are by the color because Different Countries use mercury or different types of light so some are white and some are blue and some are yellow and orange so its cool to see the earth that night. Regarding muscle mass loss i heard rickman jen he lost about 8 muscle mass during the two week mission. Can you tell about any muscle loss that you experienced . I lost 0 . I was shocked and the doctors were shocked. My muscles were probably 90 . Your legs you lose the most because you are using them constantly just to walk around. My upper body probably got stronger because i was lifting weights its like going to a health club for six months. I came back in good shape between exercising on the workout machine, the treadmill and the bike i came back in good shape. Theres fluid redistribution and problems with eyesight as well. I cant remember what the other one is. That regime has with the International Space station has been teaching. Its how to overcome most of the downside of being in this gravity. It can deal with muscle loss and bone loss and a lot of these issues. Its the redistribution problems you just need gravity and we dont know what the longterm consequences of that are. Host guest the vast majority are fine. Some are in their 40s or 50s or 60s. Im lucky i dont need glasses but there was a handful of folks that had a kind of alarming. I spent time doing experiments but the reality is the problem that scares me a lot is radiation because that is something you cant do. Its energetic enough to mess with your dna and that is the problem for the deeper space exploration. How do you recognize the time to go to sleep and the difficulty do not feel a normal day like you do on earth how do you adjust to seeing many cycles . That is a great question. You set your self t yourself tor day. The japanese were the worst off because the europeans are fine, only one hour off. If you did local time it would be every 90 minutes the very first night, i do a walk around, all my medical tests and finally im back in crew quarters. I felt like i was a superhero. I did a lot of ultrasounds on my eyes and brain and heart. I did some medicine experiments for the pharmaceutical Drug Companies to look at salmonella and e. Coli and another for like osteoporosis and muscular dystrophy and pharmaceutical experiments. I think one of the coolest experiments is a particle detector on the outside. Basically its made of 90 of stufstuffthat we dont even knot is so we are trying to find that out. There were other experiments psychology experiments. I did this thing i would keep a journal. I was very honest with him. He was able to capture how they are doing psychologically which is important so i do a lot of experiments and a lot of them are focused on medicine. We have time for one more question. What is on an application to bring attention to it so you increase your chances of getting selected . You just hit the nail on the head. Folks who do serious mountain climbing and Fighter Pilot test pilot is probably by far the most important thing you could have on your resume. Nasa wants things that are operational so we dont want professors that were gone blackboards all day long. It isnt a thinking job, it is a doing job that is the most important thing but something that is a little bit different than the status quo because there is a sea of status quo operations these are things like material science, manufacturing, faithbased construction. Theres a lot of new technology being adapted to this space environment. I could imagine if you a few specialized in things like 3d printing material but as you say that would be the kind of things they would be specialized in and helping run a 3d printer. If thats your specialty, thats great. You will be doing different stuff every day so having a specialty is great. You succeed at what you are doing but even most importantly is the ability to be adaptable. You have to also unpack stuff and do interviews like this and so the skill is being operational and flexible. If you are an astronomer by day and you do this hightech mechanic work at night you can do two things at once if you are a test pilot during the day but know how to speak russian and youve done foreign exchanges before, it shows you can work with International Cruise which is important, obviously. So i think that if you are the Systems Engineer if you have the ultimate engineering resume that youve never done anything else. Thank you so much for joini joining. Telling us a bit more about earth an in the iss we appreciae it and stay safe here on the ground. Hopefully you come through the bookstore here one day. Until then, to all the viewers thank you for the questions and for tuning in. Thanks again, take care, everybody. We will see you at the next event. I layout these cases and the outcome of what we did and the reasons we did it to be corroborated and people can see the facts and go back and verify them. The reasons they should believe is all these independent books that have been done over three years, 15 or more looking at every last thing i did, every text and email and call, note, communication, all of which have concluded not only me but the entire team that there wasnt evidence based on the improper motive when you add on top of that the department of justice is assigned to take a look at the actions after the fact so you look at the investigations that have tried to stem these things weve done and looking at things we did. All these things, all these investigations. He cant make it through a press conference or town hall without Fact Checking at each event pointing out the numerous lies and things he says that are not true. This isnt a oneoff occurrence within the thousands. So when i look not only at me but others in the fbi that have been lumped into this crazy conspiracy its apparent to me that its being done specifically to undermine any sort of valid criticism or observations because hes scared of whats there and doesnt want the truth known. Anybody that dares speak the truth is immediately attacked because they dont want the truth out
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