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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 har