October 14, 1963. They were announcing us at a press conference. And a week before that, dick arranged a meeting with the head of Johnson Space center and all the directors and different people. So paul was going to be there. Paul was on the phone when he started this meaning, and so he didnt get there when they started it. When he finally got off the call he was telling me he went down there and he went in. He had just finished naming and giving a little brief background of all the people that were selected. The head of engineering i have a name problem, too anyhow, he was the guy who designed the spacecraft. He was the best technical guy we had their. As paul walked in, he raised his hand and said, hey, you cant do that. He says, why . He says, that is 13. Meaning they chose 13 astronauts . Yes. I couldnt believe that the technical guy was being superstitious about 13. And he says, well, whoever is number 13 i really want this guy. So if i have to take another one, then he laid my brochure down. Im the only one to this day who knows when he was selected. I was number 14. Had that not happen, the 13 who knows, right . Had that not happened, i would be here today. Now, lets go back to some serious the apollo 1 fire. Your memories of that. Where were you . That is like a challenger for us. Yes, the challenger is probably much more memorable for people here. The challenger and columbia, both of them terrible disasters. But back in that timeframe, that was in 1967 they had the fire, but in 1966 the beginning of 1966 we were assigned to the crew of what wouldve been apollo two. And we were living with the contractors. I spent 270 days out of the year out at roswell. And so we were living with the vehicles. There were so many things wrong that had to be fixed. Not to mention the operational challenges, trying to get changes in for operational uses that they didnt want to put in because of one thing. It was the cost. It was the schedule. You know, somebody had said believe me, 10 years you try to do something today in 10 years but to get there, they really wanted to keep moving along. So they started making all the improvements at one stage, and the colder the block two spacecraft. But they canceled the black one spacecraft. We begin the backup crew. So we were backup crew for about three months on apollo 1. That that number got changed. More fate. Yes, that is exactly right. We were getting ready for liftoff it was scheduled in february, i think, in 1967. We knew there were a lot of things wrong with the spacecraft. In those days, i could just tell you that our guys i guess you would call it an ego but we had all been Fighter Pilots for at least a dozen years. We all had great confidence in ourselves. And we knew a lot of things that were wrong, but we would find a way that we could handle that. We knew we had to work around it. So we knew that the spacecraft was not great, but were going to fight anyway. In the afternoon of the apollo 1 fire, we had done that same test the night before, but it was what we called plugs in. So the hatch was open. We waited all day, we were all going to fight back together to houston. Finally got late afternoon, like 5 30, and don and i said that, well, we were going to go home. So we left. They had been in the spacecraft all day long. The head of our flight ops walked out to be less, we knew something was wrong. The fire happened while we were in the air. So it was it was really a hell of a deal. Nothing they could do. The whole crew is that in about 19 seconds. I worked on the Fire Investigation for a little while. About three weeks later, at dick took as a side and said that we were going to be on the first group. But they renumbered it, and it ended up being apollo 7. You know, you guys are steely and never have emotions emotionally, how did it hits you . Did you kind of expect something crazy like that withoutquickly you are running the program . Well, we were shocked that it had happened, of course. Because it was the first time that any astronaut had been killed in a spacecraft. You see, what people dont realize is that what was going on back in, our group of 14 in about three years, i think we had lost four of them. Airplane accidents. And we lost roger. But five of that group ended up dying, one way or another. So we kind of understood that. And i dont recall anybody ever really being terribly discouraged by the fire. We really wanted to get the first flight. He was already looking for to leaving nasa eventually. He started eating a lot more serious on the job. I dont remember us ever really being frightened. I mean, you fly airplanes. Rightly or wrongly, you will usually find some reason to blame the pilot. Talk about here. How do you handle it . Or, do you have any . I think no, i have a little bit of fear from time to time. In those days, i was just too stupid. You know, there is an attitudinal thing. Im not a psychologist, i read a lot about that stuff. I think there is a difference in mentality in how people feel about these things. Recognizing it, being aware of it intellectually is an important step. I think a lot of people are afraid of things because they dont have the faintest idea of what is going to god. It is an unknown. Those that learn about things they may be afraid of it because of what they know. And then there is some kind of a middle turf, that many of my friends and people out here today are aware of it. And i know that he was aware of the things that could go wrong. And you have to have the kind of self confidence that enables you to handle that. Now, that self confidence comes from the way that you have lived. You have faced a lot of lesser things along the way, and you have been able to overcome them. Im afraid that we have a society that has been moving away from that. We dont even let our kids have chances, take risks, or anything like that. So, they are not going to be able to handle the kind of fears that are going on in life. I just feel very fortunate that i grew up where did. And i dont ever remember being afraid. Wow. The right stuff. This program is partially about putting the pace program into the context of the cold war. I dont know if you guys know that apollo 7 was the first manned flight of the apollo missions. They had sent some up unmanned, and theyve had worked perfectly. But it is a different deal when you have real guys up there. So your mission was really kind of pivotal in going to the moon, beating the russians, and all that. Put that into the context of the cold war. First of all, not all the unmanned launches were perfect. The press told us they were but, you see, we had good engineers. Astronauts category because we were sitting there. But believe me, what we had was 400,000 people that worked on that Program Government and civilian employees. Those people, they had the guts, too. The management people at the Johnson Space center and throughout nasa, i think i was just most familiar with it there at jsc management had the nerve to make decisions and go with the results of it. And today, it is all too frequently unless they can reduce those risks zero tthey dont want to make a decision. Many of them are much more emotional about the program than i think i was at the time. Part of it was the urgency, though, right . With the cold war, everybody believed we had to get to the moon first. Well, i dont know. But getting back to the question about the russians. You see, we started off the russians, from the very beginning it a sort of different now but from the beginning, the russians were very focused on the Public Relations aspect of it. They wanted to be the head when they could. For example, when we knew we were planning they knew we were planning on the second german flight and testing a little maneuvering devices, they did everything they could to get alexi to do it. And they did it with a spacecraft that wasnt built for it. I mean, that was really risky because they were really they knew when they were taking risks and they were willing to do that just to be out in front, if they cut. So alexi was going to be the first to walk in space. Yes, i was with him just a couple weeks ago. He is like the buzz aldrin of the russian program. Oh we got it. Okay. Anyhow, i think it was 12 minutes and the whole effort was aimed at how to get them back in because the little port that they had had theire, it was a terrible of there, it was a terrible event, but they beat us by a couple of months. On the upside, they have been very, very fortunate. They have had very few accidents. It is just i have been tremendously impressed by that. Back in those days, by the time we had the gemini spacecraft keep in mind, youre getting my personal opinion, that official statement on these things the germany program, that was a more capable spacecraft than i even see today in the russian launches that they have. They could do more, can maneuver more, and that was back 40 years ago. More than that, 50 years ago. In the meantime, the russians have converted more to what i consider more of an engineering aspect. Exploration in the future. And it is a lot cheaper for them over there. So we were engaged in a real fight, and it was like a fight to the finish to get there. And the first time we even met any of the russians it might have been after ed white and i cant remember his name right now after the mission. Over the years, they have become very, very good friends. We have organizations that we work together. And we get along very well. Theyre living together at the International Space station. As a matter of fact, they have outmaneuvered us administratively and cost wise. We are like beginners. After your flight, we said we are going to send these guys around the moon because we were worried the russians would do that before us . There was great concern about the russians beating us to the moon. We were not exposed to a lot of the military intelligence they might have had. Or government intelligence. With us it was kind of what we , knew and felt and heard. But there were people that knew what the russians were doing to push for it. Even in those days, they must have had some pictures. The russians were developing the m1 rocket. 10 Million Pounds of thrust. They were going to go to the moon. And they were doing everything they could to do that. What was the focus of the question . Apollo 8 was originally not going to the moon. And then we sent it up quick. And the russians were shooting to go around the moon. Not a landing. They do not have any landings set for it. But before apollo 7, probably a month or so before apollo 7 flew, they started talking, the not us, the Administration People at nasa, about apollo 8 going around the moon. That was a brandnew thing. We had five giant steps to go to the moon. You know, we were going to test the spacecraft in earth orbit. That was what we did. And we were going to test the lunar module. [phone rings] he didnt follow instructions, did he . [laughter] houston, we have a problem. And then, we test the lunar module in earth orbit. Then fly close to or around the moon. And then do the simulation and the landing. Well, administrators now the administrators did this. They said, we could take apollo 8, and instead of flying a high orbit, we could send it around the moon. They considered everything. It was based on the success of apollo 7. They decided if seven was successful, they would have eight go around the moon. Only later did i begin to realize that it turns out that apollo 7 is the longest, most ambitious, most successful engineering test flight of any new machine ever. And the reason it was so loaded at a planned 11day first mission, was because we had lost 21 months after the apollo 1 fire. A year and a half, maybe a little less. We would have had another flight in theirre to go to the moon. And we had to do it supposedly by the end of the decade. Youre trying to make up for all that. When we went up for an 11 day mission, none of us thought we were going to go 11 days. You could not do that on the first mission. So we were actually surprised and a little irritated towards the end. No film left, no nothing, and we still had to go two more days. I want a shower. Get me back. So that was critical. And because it was successful, apollo 8 went around the moon. And, of course, that is what everybody thinks of as the first of the Apollo Program these days. Well, we have to find out from you. All the astronauts talk about it. But tell us in your own words, when you first got that view from space. How did it hit you . What was it like . What was weightlessness like . Go back. Remember. I do not have a lot of useful things to say about that. Because you are an astronaut, and you are the right stuff, and you are tough. But go down to your inner it makes me think i was totally insensitive to those kinds of things. Because we knew that, by the after one orbit, and we had never been around the world before. Hell, i am the only guy i know that went around the world 163 times before i went to europe. [laughter] so when we were up there we knew , we were going to have to separate and come back and simulate a docking with the s4b stage. And so the last thing in the world we wanted to do was screw up on anything. We were around the world a couple of times. I just signed somebodys picture, here. On the second time around, we had separated. Wally was flying. And i was taking pictures on the from the right side. I was taking pictures of the s4b. I was just snapping these pictures. And, all the way across the southern part of the United States in this picture that i signed, is the 24b. Later, only later, did i realize it was taken over where we lifted off. It was taken over the space center down there. To this day, that is my favorite picture that i took in orbit. But at the time, i was not even looking at that. I was looking at what my job was, which was the s4b. Thats how we were focused on doing things in those days. First time i started getting a thrill after that, we separated and went into a different orbit so we could rendezvous and see how that would work out. Most of the time, people do not realize how difficult it is to see anything on the ground. Did i mention this . No, keep going. Because you look at the International Space station, digital film, fabulous pictures. Always oriented toward the ground. In those days, we drifted. And you drifted because you did not want to use your fuel and your thrusters. Because then you really would have come home early. So we were just drifting. When you think about it, youve got we had five windows. They covered about i think about 150 degrees. The five windows covered about 150 degrees. The biggest was in the hatch. It was a round window, 10 inches in diameter. Two panes. About i think it was 3 4 inch quartz, best glass you could get separated by a tiny gap. So if the window broke, you can still keep pressure in the spacecraft. Unless a window was pointing at the ground, and you are drifting, and you see a tiny little bit of angle you got out there. If it is pointing out the ground and you have a camera and are not involved in some other thing, you might be able to take a picture. If youre looking at the ground keep in mind first off that every 45 minutes youre going , into darkness. 45 minutes darkness. 45 minutes daylight. The camera people did not want you to take pictures within five minutes of sunrise or sunset because, in those days, we had kodachrome film. Do you remember kodachrome film . You could not just keep taking photos like you do today. You had to conserve your film. We had a very limited amount of film on board to save weight also. So it had to be pointed down. If you pointed down, 55 of the earths surface is covered by clouds all the time. The part that is in the clear, that is usually the desert. Saudi arabia. Never saw a cloud over saudi arabia. It is a wonderful thing to take a picture of. You can take a picture and never even see a city down there in the desert on that. There was a lot of things like this. You did not want to take it more than 30 degrees off the vertical because of the atmosphere up there. It was hard to get pictures. We are going to ask some questions of the iss astronauts. And, you know, one of your questions your questions is, do we think that we should have a Fighter Pilot training or some kind of Training Like that for todays astronauts . Back when you guys did it most , of you guys were Fighter Pilots, right . If you were not a Fighter Pilot, you did not apply. There was nothing there is a lot of changes that has gone on in the people in the space program. For today, you do not have to be a pilot. And one of the reasons you do not have to be a pilot is because, in the Space Shuttle, which is the greatest flying machine ever built and operated by man that may be a minority opinion, but i feel strongly about that you always had a couple of pilots. And they did a fantastic job in my opinion. But because of what went on 40 and 50 years ago, we were able to develop hardware and a program where you could carry passengers up. You did not have to be a pilot. And that is the way it is now. And now even with the new capsules they are coming up with, they are going to be able to take people that arent pilots. Back in the days when they did not know what it was going to take, nasa decided to get the people that have the best chance of succeeding. The russians had taken a different attitude. They their people in the spacecraft did virtually nothing. They were strapped in. They operated the spacecraft. It has always been operated remotely. Even today, it operates remotely. It is not a satisfying thing for an aviator. In those days, we did not do that. And so they made their best guess of what they thought was. Thought it was. And they took it from the pilot field, all military. In fact our group was the first , group where you do not have to have been a test pilot. Half of our group was test pilots anyway. You had to have Fighter Pilot experiences. I have always felt that the advantage that gave us, every one of those people, myself included, we had spent at least 10 or 12 years, sometimes more than that, flying fighter aircraft. In that you develop the kind of , selfconfidence it takes. You think you are the best whether you are the best or not. You have to have that kind of an attitude out there. Plus we have flown with these people in all kinds of things. I was back mine was at the end of the korean war. Anybody here remember korea . [laughter] anyway, what that does is give you the sense that you can depend on your life on the other guy in the other airplane. In the spacecraft, the same way. See we knew that we could bet , our life on our associates. And that worked out very well. Today, they are focused able lot a whole lot lot more on the right kind of diversity in who they select. I noticed they just selected after a couple years, they just selected another group of astronauts. And the headline in houston was they had selected eight new astronauts. The big headline was that half women, half men. I mean, that was an accomplishment for somebody, someplace, some particular drive. You know, i, frankly, would not care if they were all women if that was the best that we could get to do the job. But today, they are focusing on a different thing. It is the numbers of it. You have to have the right number of minorities caucasians, all that other stuff. I think it is nonsense, but i am but that is just me. And i am an old guy. But they do not have to have the kind of skills you guys have. There is a lot more automated stuff in the shuttle right . And in the space station. Everything in the world is going that way. It is automated. [laughter] i bet im the only guy in his this room that does not own a cell phone. [laughter] buzz aldrin has three or four of them. Buzz aldrin has three or four of them. He is always going one way or the other. But that is because i do not want to be trapped with that kind of stuff. But today, it drives all things. Some things it is improving. It drives a lot of techniques and different things. But frankly, i have been fortunate enough not 10 years ago, i got to fly an f16 and f18, but i had to tell the guy i was flying with i did not want that he could handle what went on with my display. I did not want to mess around with the computer screen to pick out what i was seeing. I still like the oldfashioned way of flying airplanes, unfortunately. This guy is oldschool. I like it. His cell phone is not going off. Because he does not have one. We now rely on russia to take us to the space station. What do you think about the decision to abandon the shuttle before we had a replacement . It is kind of interesting because my attitude, and my contemporaries our attitude about the Space Shuttle is probably different than even a lot of people i have talked to involved in the shuttle. Keep in mind it is a small group of the people in the shuttle that were in the shuttle, that were the pilots that flew it. They were maybe 25 or 30 of the people in the shuttle. I think they have 500 people now that have been in space or , Something Like that. You take all kinds of folks with you. But i always but i always bet on having these guys on that shuttle. That is my personal opinion. The Space Shuttle is the greatest flying machine ever built by man. I personally think the greatest mistake nasa made was canceling that Space Shuttle without something better. Not just something else, but something that was better. And look what we are doing now at nasa. We are going back to outside contractors to develop capsules. Some of them look just like the apollo command module. Just slightly bigger. Maybe 30 bigger or Something Like that. Doing the reentries. Our lfrd was 0. 3. I think the shuttle was about 0. 4 excuse me. 4. 0 or something before you put the gear down. It took good aviators. It took a great airplane. I think the missions were absolutely fabulous. They lost two shuttles along the way, and both of them were due to management decisions that were made. The crew at the time, their particular position on the columbia and the challenger before it went was, we probably ought to delay this. Ought to put this off. And management went ahead and made their decisions, and you saw what happened. Lost the crews. We all remember, probably, where we were when both of those disasters happened. I guess i am going to open it up to the audience. I know you have a particular you must have a view about mars. And what is the best way to go there . Do we go to the moon first . Do we fly directly like buzz wants . Do we go to the moon of mars like buzz wants . How do we get to mars . Well, i am not a technologist on it anymore. I read about these things avidly other peoples opinions. I form my own opinions about a lot of it. And it has evolved over mars. I was in a committee in 1971. We were still talking about Space Shuttle development and about mars. And at the time, we talked about ways to go to mars in 1984. In retrospect, i know that was kind of ridiculous. But that was the extreme. Another seven years after that like 1991, that would be more likely. And i doubt if there was a soul in the Astronaut Office that would not have bet we would have been to mars by 2000. So there was like 30 years of that. 30 years from now, will we be on mars . I have no idea. I have been in favor of going to mars not because i think we will find life there. I do not think so at all. But we might. So what . There are others who want to go back to the moon. And then there is a really ridiculous idea were going to to the moon and take pieces off. The japanese landed something on a meteorite two years ago and brought back a specimen from it. So we have to focus on mars. The reason why we have to focus on mars is because Society Moves ahead by pushing the next frontier. I mentioned it at m. I. T. A couple of days ago. When magellan set out to go around the world 500 years ago that was, what, 1519 or Something Like that. They were going to find the next frontier. And it was the rest of the world. They were sailing around the world for the first time. You have five ships, 270 crewmen. When they came back, one ship made it back. 17 of the 270 still alive. But they were willing to push the frontier. And look what has happened in the western world because they went out and did this. Same thing was happening back in the 1960s. Back in the 1960s, the next frontier was space. The moon was representative of finally getting away from the earths gravitational field. Escaping from it and getting to the moon. The frontier today is mars. Im back when we did it on apollo, people were willing to accept the risk. The chance of dangerous adventure. And people were aware of it. We did lose people in the Apollo Program to do it. And look what it is now. Because of pushing a frontier, which is not an economic return, to go out and explore, the economic return comes from all of the things you have to develop to make that possible. And we have been benefiting now you are all benefiting things that were spawned because Technology Got pushed then. And some of that was political. The cell phones they all have. That is all part of what you guys i was up at m. I. T. I happen to get back to this, because i want to tell about going to mars. They were pushing the reason i was out i never graduated from m. I. T. I studied there in 1964 and 1965 because they had a computer we used in the command module. And it was very important. And it was hardwired. The system they had at the time. But i want you to know this. We had 38 kilobytes of memory in that computer. Kilobytes. Does anybody remember a kilobyte . [laughter] ok 38,000 bites. And 34 were not addressable. We had 4 kilobytes to do it. That kind of development. You push the next frontier for different reasons. I do not believe you are going to make money going out and doing this. The people that are developing it they will be able to make , money because of it. The next frontier is mars. I used to think about, lets go to mars and land on it and return. We had the concepts and all that. The main thing we had to overcome was the radiation problem. And then i finally came around to agree with people that we had something to gain if we went back to the moon. And that is setting up a site where you learn how to actually live when there is no other way of surviving out there. It will take a lot of work. And now, like you mentioned, buzzs big push, and others too that we make a oneway trip to mars. The more i think about it, the more i think that makes a lot of sense. Here is why. The technology and the cost of developing a system you are going to take out there, fly land, pick up, launch again, and stay alive until you get to the next decent time to come back to the earth. And then you come back, terribly expensive. You hear these idiots talking about 5 billion to go to the moon and mars. Things like that. It is outlandish. It cost us 25 billion in the old days to do the whole Apollo Program. Today, if you inflate that, it would be like 125 billion. And believe me going to mars is , a lot tougher than going to the moon. So i think we need to be doing that. If we can go there and send a couple things up first that might help people survive, you go out and you land, they are probably going to die. I understand that. Big deal. [laughter] but what im getting at is, you send stuff out there, try to let them live. And then try to resupply. You do the things you can, but you have to be willing to push the boundaries. We no longer have that. We are riskaverse. Very well said. With that, i think i am going to open it up to the audience. Can someone tell me what time it is . 10 15. Ok. Let me end it. I want to add one thought to that before i do that. That is because, when we talk about apollo 11 today, the first thing you think of is one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind. A story i like to tell is that they left on the surface of the moon a microfilm message from the leaders of all the free nations of the world. Microfilm used to be small. That was how we had things. And i got a chance to look at those some weeks afterwards. And i carried with me in my pocket for at least 10 years, a message that the Prime Minister of australia left. I cannot remember his name now. Gordon. His wife is reminding him. Gordon. What was his name . Gordon. Prime minister gordon. Gordon. And he had a couple sentences of platitudes. Then he went on to say and this , is what i think is what we need to be focusing on today especially here at the Explorers Club. Absolutely. Says, may the high courage and technical genius which made this achievement possible be so useful in the future that mankind will live in a world in which peace, selfexpression and this is the one, and the chance of dangerous adventure are available to all. We need to get back to that kind of thing. Of thinking. I would not disagree. Anybody want to ask a question . This gentleman here. Youre going to have to talk into the mic. Thank you. Can you share who one of your personal explorer heroes is and why . My personal i grew up admiring, i always wanted to be a pilot. Occasionally, i would get to go to a movie on saturday. And that was the second world war. They always had some Fighter Pilot that was the hero. But my boyhood hero was charles lindbergh. And at a very early age, he was willing to do that. Stick his neck out. And he also he understood what i was just saying about Prime Minister gordons statement. I do not remember the exact quote right now, but he said if he could live 10 more years before dying, that he would rather do that than not fly. Ok. Yes. Les guffman . Well, i would like to hear more about apollo 7. I assume the 32 kilobytes of memory do not put you on cruise control. Yes . What did you have technical problems . Tell us about the challenges of the mission itself. I do not recall those. Certainly in 7, we had very few technical problems. I think i remember only the alarm going off only twice in 11 days. We could not believe it. We were prepared for anything that could go wrong. And also in those days, we did not all sleep at the same time. I remember wally and i were on the same sleeping pattern. Don was awake when we were asleep. One time, i remember i was on one of the couches. I remember waking up. I looked up. I heard an alarm go off. I looked up. Don was up there. But he was asleep. He was asleep too. It took about i bet it didnt take 10 seconds for us to reconfigure things. So it was all over. Believe me, that spacecraft, after apollo 1 being a disaster, apollo csm101, which is what we had that was an amazingly good spacecraft. I feel guilty, almost, thinking it was a test flight, when nothing really went wrong. Any other questions . Ok. Wait a minute. Who is this guy in the back . Mr. Cunningham, a pleasure to meet you. You know, pilots you were selected as a pilot because of your ability to handle stress. And i would assume most really good Fighter Pilots have a natural ability to handle stress. And that is why you elevated yourself up to an astronaut. Can you remark on any training protocols that nasa, whether they be psychological, medical or nutritional, that would enhance your ability to deal with stress under difficult conditions . That is another thing that is a big difference today. And it is because of the attitudes of the guys at that time. We did not allow nasa to really turn you into a specimen very often. I mean i still get my annual , physical at nasa every year. Because theyre keeping a history of people that have gone into space. And i like it because i get to go down and do my physical. But today, they astronauts are a whole lot more specimens in the scientific field. Than they used to be. And part of that is the reaction to what happened in those days with us ancient astronauts. I was not as obnoxious and outspoken as some of them could be. But i do know this. That after the Pilot Program was over, and probably during that, management began to try to find ways to reduce astronaut influence on these things. Back in those days, we could go to any of the meetings. And we were involved in all the reviews, those kinds of things. But a lot of it was the people in operations, Mission Control those folks. They started trying to push the leverage of astronauts down. Some places on it. Secondly, nasa is a government agency. And as it has grown older, it has become much, much more bureaucratic, very much like any government agency. You leave them alone enough, they get more money. They are up there. It is one of the reasons that socalled commercial space industry is able to do these things today. It is because nasa has become very expensive. For example, i was at spacex. Out there everything is in one , hangar. You see it built over here. It is tested over here in the corner etc. They do not have to worry about having nine centers open around the country so they can keep the congressmen putting the money out to do it. So it is a real change. That is it for now. I want to thank you guys. Lets have a hand for walt cunningham. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by National Captioning Institute which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] more now from the Explorers Club in new york city, with entrepreneur and physics professor gregory olsen. He paid 20 million to be the worst space tourist to travel to the International Space station in 2005. He talks about that experience. This is 30 minutes. [applause] thank you. Thank you. I realize i stand between you and lunch, so i am going to try to blow through the presentation, and then do any questions, and then we will get to eat. People ask me, where did i get the idea to go into space . I am not a professional astronaut. I am not even a military pilot. I am a scientist engineer, and i had a lot of training in that area. About 11 years ago, i was sitting in a starbucks in princeton, new jersey. I read this story about how the Russian Space agency would take private people into space. And it was just one of these wow moments. I think most everyone here has that same thing. You are not a big planner or thinker. You want to do something, you go and do it. So that is what got me to go into space. Now as you know, the original , idea of the shuttle was to take the average person up and let them experience space. But because of the accidents that was cut out. So the only way a private person like me could go up is via the Russian Space agency. Now even though i am not a trained astronaut, you cannot just hop on a rocket and go up. Theres a lot of training required. I spent six months in russia soi spent six months in russia outside of moscow, training for my mission. And here are some of the things. It was a fulltime deal. It was like being a College Student again. I was in star city, russia, the russian version of Johnson Space Center Training grounds. The hardest part for me by far was trying to learn russian. When you are 60 years old, trying to learn a foreign language, not easy. Lets see. Can we all right. Good. Ok. Some of the training, you do not have to be an olympic athlete, but you have to be in reasonable shape. You know this is me in the , middle of the astronauts. Bill mcarthur, who went up, and the russian commander, cosmonaut valery tokolev. We train a lot, got to know each other. We were talking about psychological stuff. We had to go out to jsc for a week and a half as part of our training. And the nasa folks gave us these rorschach tests. You know the sort of things , where you go in and say, how can i get out of here with a right answer . [laughter] russians did not do any of that. I do not think they paid any i did not think they paid any attention to the psychology. What i found out after my training is that, every week they would get together with instructors and psychological people and say, what about this guy olsen . How does he behave under stress . Is he angry . Does he get along with people . It may have been a better system, i do not know. But anyway, as you say, fair amount of physical training. What else do we have here . Testing my spacesuit. I do not know how nasa does it but in russia, what they do is they stick you in a bathtub and fill it up with foam. When that hardens, they pull you out with an overhead crane. That is the format for the spacesuit. So it is kind of a custom fit like a bride at a wedding. This is just to make sure it does not leak. World war i gas mask. Another russian thing. But it is very effective in case of fire or toxic leaks
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