Transcript for Mike Massimino Interview on the Beyond Speaking Podcast

Mike: If you had a list of 50 things that we were like, well, this is what astronauts need to control. And you know, the folks at SpaceX, for example, would come back and say, “Well, out of these 50 things, 40 of them here, there's a greater chance of you killing yourselves as opposed to letting the AI handle it.” And we're like, “Well, we think that AI sounds like a good thing. Let's rely on that.” 

 

Intro: Welcome to the Beyond Speaking podcast from Premier Speakers Bureau, featuring in-depth conversations with the world's most in-demand keynote speaker.

 

Brian: Hi I’m Brian Lord, your host of the Beyond Speaking podcast and president here at Premiere Speakers. Our guest today is Mike Massimino. He's a former NASA astronaut, a New York Times best-selling author of two different books, a Columbia University professor, and, rumor has it, he has a PhD from MIT, somebody that is great at overcoming rejection to hit success, which I'm sure he'll talk about. And he's been on four spacewalks. Has done amazing things for NASA and beyond. So, Mike, thank you so much for coming on and being part of the Beyond Speaking Podcast. 

 

Mike: My pleasure, Brian. 

 

Brian: So I am curious to know. So your nickname is Mass. Your name's Massimino, but also because you're a pretty big guy. Are you the tallest, biggest astronaut ever? 

 

Mike: No. No. Well no, I am not the world's largest astronaut. What we call the WLA. That was a different guy. My crewmate, Scott Altman, is a little just a skinch little taller than I am and a little bit bigger than I am. So I'm not the biggest guy. The height limit we had during the shuttle program was six foot four inches. I'm about six three and a half. There weren't many taller than me. There were some a little bit bulkier, but yeah, I'm pretty at I'm pretty much at the top end of height for astronauts.

 

Brian: Now, was there ever time where you thought you couldn't go because of that and they changed things? It was kind of famously that they had a really narrow window of what they could have an astronaut be. And then you kind of you're kind of in the newer breed of astronauts. 

 

Mike: Yeah, no, the height restrictions they have, the reason they have height restrictions are the size of the spacecraft, or in the case of the space shuttle, the size of the seat. This is like in high performance aircraft as well, in order for you to be protected for an ejection or a hard landing your sitting height was usually key to those things. So that's where height would sometimes knock people out. The spaceships were smaller back, you know, in the 1960s, with the Mercury Gemini and Apollo programs. I know for Apollo, for example, their height limit was five foot eleven. But when the space shuttle came into existence, it allowed people as short as four foot eleven and as tall as six foot four inches to be astronauts. 

 

Brian: Mm-hmm. Great. Well, hopefully they'll keep pressing the boundaries there and get some of those and former NBA players to become astronauts at some point. 

 

Mike: I guess so. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's a lot of other things to worry about if you want to be a competitive candidate to be an astronaut other than the height. Your height is one thing, but you know, it is a lot of other things they consider as well.

 

Brian: So now for you, I'd love to hear your journey, 'cause you’re obviously a very smart guy. PhD from MIT, you've accomplished a lot of different things, but you weren't like smooth sailing, like, hey, first time applicant, just hop in this hop in the shuttle right now. What was your journey? Like what was your motivation in your journey to become an astronaut? 

 

Mike: Well I was interested when I was a little kid. Can I show photos here? 

 

Brian: If nothing else, you can always send them to us. Eric, our producer, is great, but you can show them.

 

Mike: I got like you know I got this man on the moon here that inspired me when I was a little kid. This is me as a little kid dressed up like an astronaut. So that's what I wanted to do. That's a great astronaut costume, it's a converted elephant costume from the first grade play. But that's me about two days after the moon landing. And I wanted to grow up to be like Neil Armstrong. You see, I have my astronaut Snoopy with me. We're having those backyard events. Snoopy's still with after, can you see him down at the bottom of the photo down my screen there? So, I also took him to space with me as well. So right now he's here with me in New York. But it's what I wanted to do when I was a little boy. But yes, as I got older, by the time I was eight years old, I realized I was afraid of heights. And I was like, there's no way, you know, how can you become an astronaut when you're afraid of heights? And then I also like, how'd he grow up to be like Neil Armstrong, who was a superhero. And you know, I was like, forget this. So it wasn't until later in life when I was a senior in college, I went to see a movie called The Right Stuff. And it's about the original seven astronauts and the test pilots that came before them. It's based on a book by Tom Wolfe. And I saw that movie and I read the book. And I was graduating college with an engineering degree. And I was like, Well, you know, becoming an astronaut is still what I would love to do more than anything. I think I came to that realization at that point, had to be honest with myself, and I realized it's probably impossible. But at least I can maybe, as an engineer, be a part of the program. So, you know, and not being an astronaut and helping other people go to space. And so I worked for a couple of years after college and then went to grad school at MIT and submitted an application when I was eligible. I was still in grad school, but I met the minimum qualifications about nine months after submitting that application. NASA announced it to make an announcement they're looking for people. So at that you know, that time, this was now, you know, the late nineteen eighties. I sent in my first application and I got a letter back from NASA. It was a letter that said no, it was a rejection letter.

 

And then a couple years later, I was almost done with my graduate school program and NASA's looking for astronauts. So I sent another application in. I got another letter back from them. This one was different. Brian, they changed the date at the top. Other than that, that was really the only change. I got rejected again. And then I graduated, took a job at the Johnson Space Center, which was a great job. Again, NASA's looking for astronauts. I sent in my third application. This time I didn't get a letter. I got a phone call. They wanted me to come in for an interview. And the interview was a whole week of activities. There's medical exams, there's a selection board interview where they talk to you for about an hour and a half. But there's also social events where you get to meet lots of people. They really wanted to get to know you well. They got to know me very well as a result of all this. And with that information, they rejected me. So I was 0-3. I wasn't just rejected, I was medically disqualified. I failed the eye exam. This is different now. They don't have the same eye standards now. It's much easier. I think you just need to be corrected to twenty-twenty. you don't necessarily have to be able to read an eye chart really well without glasses or contacts. I don't even know LASIK or any of that stuff wasn't accepted back then. Now it is. So the rules have changed. If anyone listening is interested, look up this the latest on the rules. But it's much different than it was back then. Back then you had to be able to see pretty well without glasses or contacts. I couldn't do it.

 

So they disqualified me. And once you're disqualified, they told me they wouldn't even read my application again. And that was kind of disappointing because I think my definition of success now has become not giving up and just trying. Because you don't always get the outcome that you want, but at least you can control the effort. But in this case, I couldn't even try again, is what they were telling me. So I looked into what might be possible and talked to a lot of people and there wasn't much, but there was something called vision training, which NASA didn't have a problem with because they didn't think it was going to work and it didn't structurally affect your eyes like an operation would. So it was like a series of exercises that you could do to help improve your ability to read an eye chart. And so I did that and worked with an optometrist who helped me with that. And then I was able to requalify. It didn't give me any guarantees, but allowed me to at least apply again the next time. And then I did that and got an interview and passed the eye exam and then was selected to be in the astronaut class in nineteen ninety six. Here's my astronaut class. Again, I don't know if this works with what you're doing here. 

 

Brian: Well, yeah, no, it looks great. 

 

Mike: I'm the second row from the top, the third guy from the left. Okay. That's me back in 1996. So okay. Yeah, it took a while, but you know, you know the way I look at it is I as long as you try and you're successful and you never know. The only way you know what the outcome is going to be for things is if you give up. Once you give up, you know what the outcome's gonna be. You won't be successful. So as long as there's that chance. You know, I have the title of my second book, the first chapter is entitled One Out of a Million Is Not Zero. And that's what it is. Even if the odds are against you, yeah, just try anyway. Give it your best shot. And even if you don't get to that goal, but pursuing that goal, I think other opportunities are put in front of you that could be pretty good outcomes as well. 

 

And that's where I was. When I was selected as an astronaut, I had a job. I was working at Georgia Tech as a professor there. And you know, I'd started my family and things are going pretty well. And I think a lot of that motivation that I had to pursue a PhD and stick to it was to try to become an astronaut. But luckily it worked out too. Not only did I get those other things, but the astronaut job worked out for me. 

 

Brian: Yeah, that's amazing. So when you actually went in for your you've had the two rejections, then you go in for the in-person week launch. Were a whole lot of other candidates there too? 

 

Mike: Yeah, you're in there. They do it, they do it this way. It was with groups of twenty. So there were 19 other people. You know, we had military test pilots and high performing people with different military jobs. A lot of civilians, I was a civilian, so a lot of people had done really well in their civilian life, both in academics and in also working for the government too. We had people who were scientists or engineers or all kinds of occupations. So yeah, it was pretty cool, you know. My my first time I didn't get picked, two of the other guys out of the 20 got picked. And then my second time around a bunch of us got picked from my second group to be in the same astronaut class. So yeah, you just gotta you just gotta keep trying. You know, you never know how things are gonna work out. And I actually think that that is probably the most important quality an astronaut can have is to persist and not give up. Because once you get the job, you know, it's not an easy job. It's not very glamorous. That, you know, people might think it's kind of a fun, glamorous show. It's kind of fun. You get to do a lot of cool stuff, but it really is a job where you need to be able to solve problems and deal with failure and things not going well and disappointments. And you have to stick to it. And I really think that that quality is very important for people to be successful in anything they do.

 

But even once you reach that goal, you know, your goal, your reward for reaching your goal is more work. You know we got there, but we hadn't done anything. You had all the folks in my astronaut class. There was plenty of work ahead of us. And I think the quality of persistence and not giving up was something that came up again and again, both before I was an astronaut and with my time there at NASA. 

 

Brian: Now, I'm sure it's a combination, but is that more ingrained by the people that they hire or do they have a special training on how to bounce back from failures or difficulties or problem solve? What are some of those things that they actually train you?

 

Mike: I don't think you need I didn't ever need any training to fail at stuff. I was pretty good at that. I think one of the things I had to learn, I've spoken to some of my colleagues about this. You just talked about what the job was like, yeah, you had to learn how to be able to to fail without like you know, not destroying the whole thing. In other words, meaning that I was always okay. I always made mistakes, but I wasn't good at dealing with them. Let me show you a photo here. There's another one. I made a terrible mistake on a space walk, and this is me as a very sad astronaut here. So I had stripped a screw on the Hubble Space Telescope and we didn't have a backup for that. It was a very easy task and it was the most complicated spacewalk ever, but this was the one that we ever attempted. Over a hundred new tools were invented for this task I was doing. And it was my final spacewalk and that I'd done out of the four that I have done. And the easiest thing I was going to do was remove a handrail and I stripped the screw on the handrail so it wasn't coming off. And I realized that the handrail's not coming off and we're not going to be able to bring the instrument back to life and we'll never know if there's life in the universe and everyone will blame me. And I wasn't too far from the situation, but I felt terrible about it. 

 

Before my time at NASA I would make a mistake or fail. So I failed a lot of stuff. I failed my qualifying exam in grad school. First time I took it to get my PhD and had to retake it. And I was having trouble back with eighth grade earth science. I think it was the first time I ran into a wall and was having trouble where I had to, you know, figure out a different way to study or take it more serious or get help really is what I did back in those days whenever I ran into trouble. But I would meet disappointments and failures and sometimes be really bummed, you know, and beat myself up for maybe a week at a time. And you don't have that much time when you're operationally doing stuff in space and working on things. so the training that I got, because I made mistakes during my training, I learned how to deal with those mistakes. 

 

And there were two things that were really helpful in dealing with mistakes. One was the 30 second rule, which I learned from one of my crewmates. The 30 second rule is give yourself 30 seconds of remorse or regret. And take a timeout. It's okay to be mad that you've made a mistake, but you're gonna cap your remorse at 30 seconds. So you make a mistake. You know, in my case with stripping that screw on the Hubble Space Telescope, I took that 30 second time out and said, Mike, you know, this is this is this is the worst mistake any astronaut has ever made. Why were you even on this mission? They should have had someone else do this. Neil Armstrong will never talk to you again. You know, just beat yourself up. Keep it, keep it to yourself or else you'll scare people. You know, just do it internally. Don't vocalize anything.

 

But just beat yourself up for 30 seconds. And then after that 30 seconds, you know, you have that mental timer and say, okay, that's it. It's now in the past. I'm gonna move on, I'm gonna learn from that. That's not happening again. And I'm gonna become an active crew member. But that's the way I was able to get around. So I would hear people say, let it go, move on, you know, have a short memory, blah, blah, blah. But I never could do that until I learned the thirty second rule. So thirty seconds of regret, beat yourself up and then move on. And it's in the past. 

 

The second thing that helped me, that I learned in my training, Brian, is that, you know, no matter how bad a situation is, no matter how hopeless it appears, no matter how bad you've messed up, you have to remember you can make it worse. You know, you think things are gonna get bad. This idea, you know, the sun's gonna come out tomorrow. No, don't be fooled by any of that mumbo jumbo. No, do not make it worse, you know, because the tendency that I had again before this.

 

The training that I went through is that I'd break something or I'd mess something up. Now I'm gonna make up for it. You say I'm gonna go a little faster, I'm gonna make up for lost time, I'm gonna try something different. And next thing you know, you've broken something else, and now we have problem B to fix before we can get back to problem A. And problem A is tough enough. So 30 seconds of regret and don't make it worse. And give the team a chance to recover, you know, reach out and get that help you need. And then we did that, and it all worked out, and I was a happy astronaut. You're right, that's me as a happy astronaut at the end of the spacewalk. Very happy because it all worked out and the instrument is still working. 

 

Brian: So that's awesome. That's awesome. That's very cool. Well, I know some of the things you have to do through yours. I know you said you were in some of the most challenging missions. I mean, obviously you have made that mistake there. What are some of the challenges that you faced while you were up there? 

 

Mike: There's always a challenge. Every date is going to be something different. Yeah. The most difficult one was the one I described there, because it was a mistake that I made. So it's like the challenge you have, the I think the biggest challenge for the flight that we had was this the spacewalk I had described or mentioned. They really didn't describe it, but what we were doing was something completely different where we were taking an instrument about the size of a refrigerator. We were gonna take that apart and replace its power supply, which might seem simple, but it had never been done before because the way we had done our space or our spacewalks on Hubble, there were five missions to service a telescope. And on the first up to the first through the first four of those missions, I was on the final two of those. But the way we had always done things was you take the instrument out or the solar rays or the gyroscopes or the batteries or whatever it is that you're messing with, you don't try to repair it. You take it out. If it's broken. Or if it's going to be upgraded, the whole thing comes out. 

 

So Hubble was designed to be serviced by astronauts working in space suits and using certain tools. And now you can't really do any fine work or take things apart like you would in a laboratory or in a clean room with good lighting and you know lots of time and so on. So it was just connectors and and and bolts that you would drive and connectors you would undo and you'd remove the instrument very carefully, put the new thing in, tighten it up, and you know, away you go.

 

But with this one, this was a space telescope imaging spectrograph. We didn't have a replacement for it. So when we wanted it, we could do things like analyze the atmospheres of far-off planets, and we wanted to bring it back to life. We didn't have a replacement, so we started thinking about what we can do to take this thing apart. And so these engineers and technicians that put it together did a really good job of making sure no one would ever take it apart again. Now they had the it looked like the power supply looked like a computer board. It was held in place with launch lock bolts. It was covered by an access panel. The access panel had a hundred and eleven small screws in it, each of which had a washer and then glue on the threads to make sure that these screws would never come out. And it was other barriers and things that had to be done. So it was something we didn't think we could do. But the way we handled innovation, let me show you another photo here.

 

You know, a topic I often talk about is innovation and problem solving. And this is us working in the pool. Us me on the left and my buddy Mike Good Bueno is on the robot arm there. And if we could even save one minute of spacewalking time during one of those training runs in the pool, that was significant. And when we were problem solving or trying to come up with ideas, we would typically do those as a team. And you'd get a you know, a diverse group of thinkers together and you start throwing out ideas and something that you think is impossible. Because at first we thought it would be impossible to take an instrument in part. Because these things were put together very solidly and in perfect conditions. And here we're going to take it apart in space and we can't lose anything at all. And how can we do this? But you get a pretty diverse group of thinkers and some new people too. Sometimes it's the new people that have the great idea. I mean we were used to doing things a certain way, but we have some new people on our crew and on our team and they sometimes have the best ideas. A lot of times the new person's ideas aren't good because they don't know, but you never crush an idea. 

 

So our general rule when we were trying to innovate and problem solve and come up with a better way to do things is that every idea is welcome. Everyone has a voice, no matter what their experience level is, and no ideas get crushed. So if an idea comes up and it's not a very good one, you need to explain to the new person, well, we can't do that because of this, this, and this, but keep the ideas coming. Because if you crush an idea, you'll never get the good idea. You’d hurt feelings or you'd say, it's really stupid or whatever. You know, you're not going to hear from that person again. Or you're not going to hear from them for a while. So you never wanted to do that. So always encourage new ideas and then see what we can do. And you start realizing that, well, it's not impossible to do this. It's just really, really hard. And we were able to meet all those challenges. And then I gave us a bigger one in space where I stripped that screw and we had to kind of go off script to figure out a way to fix that problem.

 

You know, innovate, get a good plan together, and then be prepared to pivot because something's gonna be, you know, something's gonna be unexpected, either the situ especially in space, you know, you you you can't really practice and then and then do the and then do the spacewalk. You could practice on the ground, but not on the field. So I felt like I was going to play in a World Series or a Super Bowl or World Cup or pick your sport, but I couldn't practice on the field ahead of time. We had to do it all through simulation. Because when you show up at the field, you got to be ready to execute the plan. And then there's going to be things there in that field that are a little bit different, you know, that, we didn't expect that to be over here. Or I didn't expect that to happen. Or boy, I didn't think I could make that mistake. And so you've got to execute the plan, but be ready to pivot. 

 

Brian: Yeah. And that's one of the things I like too. I know you mentioned diversity of thought is one of the things in addition to problem solving. And I like too the ideas that you talk about, you know, a lot of times right now, companies are always changing. And how and you did that with NASA too. Like what advice do you have for someone on how to adapt to organizational change? 

 

Mike: Yeah. So we had a few things happen while I was there. I showed you my astronaut class. That group of folks there, we represent not just the United States of America, but there are eight different countries represented in that astronaut class. And the reason for that, this was 1996. We have been going from pretty much a US only program that you know that we went to the moon, you know, the Apollo program back in the 60s and early 70s. And the space shuttle was pretty much paid for by the US taxpayer. There were other countries that contributed. Canada, for example, contributed robotic systems and other countries helped. But it was primarily a US spacecraft. You know, it had the American flag on it, it was a US spacecraft. But when we were looking at the International Space Station, at first, Space Station Freedom, which was the space station being designed and planned in the 1980s started hitting some big cost overruns and they weren't really making progress. And their leadership in our country was getting a little skeptical. 

 

And so that program was canceled and replaced with the International Space program. So it was the international nature of the alliances and the agreements we had between the countries of Europe and Japan, Canada, and also Russia. Because now you're going into the early 1990s when the International Space Station came around. Then you know there was no more Soviet Union and we were now trying to work friendly with the Russians. And this was a little bit different and in some ways difficult for some of the old timers especially. You know, we were new guys, we didn't care. We were happy to be there. But some of, you know, some of the other guys like, you know, why are we doing this? You know, working with these other countries, particularly you know the Russians, which was kind of a new concept because you know we had the cold just coming out of the Cold War.

 

But it was made very clear to us. I think when you go through those organizational changes, that's where leadership can really help. It was made clear to us from our leadership that not not, you know, you have to do this, but why it was important that hey, you know what, if you really want a space station, the only way you're gonna get one is if it's international. And not only that, but pulling the Russian experience, the Russians had their space program was all about space stations. And they're also going to be able to get the best and brightest from Japan and from Canada and from the different countries of Europe and other countries as well that participated. 

 

So it was pulling resources, both financial and brain power and experiences, and also building those alliances to help with international cooperation. So we started seeing, you know, we our leadership explained to us and we started seeing it as we started getting into the workings of it, of the benefits of having this international program, because it was it was the only way we were going to get a space station, but it was going to be a really good space station. It was going to give opportunities not just for our country, but for other countries and the benefit to our country and to the whole world in international cooperation was going to be huge. And we see that now we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of having an international space station that is occupied by more than one country. You always have an American and a Russian on board and most of the time there's other countries represented up there as well. So now we look back and we can see those advantages. 

 

Some of the other things that happened, especially with new technology and so on, happened later. I'm switching to another photo here. Yeah. This is the way we did it back in the day. On the left, you know, the space shuttle, and on the right is a SpaceX vehicle going up. There was another big organizational change that happened toward the end of my time at NASA, where we were retiring the space shuttle and moving on to the next thing. And the next thing we thought was just going to be another spaceship that, you know, we would design maybe with some help from other countries. But all of a sudden, a whole new partner came in, which was the commercial space program of these other companies like SpaceX and Boeing. And we were going to be relying on them to build a vehicle and to operate it and to launch us. And we were like, wait a minute, not so fast. But we started realizing that there were going to be some advantages there, particularly in the technology development area where private companies, you know, the private enterprise are pretty slick at doing things quickly and efficiently compared to the government. You know, we have taxpayers dollars, we've got to be cautious with that. It doesn't always work out the way we would like to, that's the speed of it. But private enterprise doesn't have all those restrictions. So that was a really good partnership. 

 

And now we can see the advantages of it. They're being able to develop things like the return of the launch vehicles so that you could use them over and over again, which has really brought down the cost. also the AI, the technology that is used. So with the space shuttle, I'll just show you again on the left. That is, it was flown by people. Manually. So every landing, all the abort scenarios, just about everything that you were going to do, whether it was something that was planned or unplanned, responding to an emergency, required astronauts to do stuff. So it was a lot of training. You know, we got this big giant manual when we showed up on our first training day. Here, read this, you know. And it was just really intensive training to fly that spaceship because you had to know everything that was going to happen, but you also had to handle every emergency. And well, this means that and that means this, you know, it's just a lot of intensive human interaction with the spaceship. But these other things, I'll show you again, it's like the one on the right. That's like an amusement park ride. I mean you get inside of that thing and you know, you kinda even like one of the emergencies, you know, the AI and the technology is making these decisions. 

 

And at first, again, we were worried about this. You know, astronauts need to fly their spaceship, Brian. We're not gonna let someone we're not getting in a, you know, a driverless car, we're gonna drive that thing ourselves. We don't trust this technology. That was kind of the initial way we were looking at it. But we started seeing the advantages. If you had like, say, a list of 50 things that we're like, well, this is what astronauts need to control. And you know, the folks at SpaceX, for example, would come back and say, Well, out of these 50 things, like 40 of them here, there's a greater chance of you killing yourselves as opposed to letting the AI handle it. And we're like, Well, we think that AI sounds like a good thing. Let's rely on that. So that was pretty cool. 

 

Brian: What was that transition like? I mean, yeah, I know you mentioned that a little bit like yeah. Was NASA for AI?

 

Mike: No, it was absolutely, I mean, it was we started once we started seeing the benefits of it, like this is this is pretty good because there's plenty for people to do. And we could concentrate more on the spacewalks and the robotics tasks and the experiments, and you don't have to worry about just the vehicle, just getting to space was the issue with the space shuttle. Now with this, it was so at first we were skeptical because you want to be in control of things.

 

But once we started seeing again, it was one of these things where, you know, management or leadership kind of told us what was happening here to how it's going to make us safer. It's going to open up opportunities. I mean, my students at Columbia have flown a couple of experiments in space in the last couple of years. And that would have been unheard of like 10 years ago. You couldn't do that sort of stuff. You know, but now there's lots of opportunities, not just for people, but for experiments and the launches we're getting now, satellite launches, you know. Over a hundred last year, for just communications alone. So for the science payloads, where you don't have, you know, payloads going to study our planet or other planets or other places in the solar system. We're able to get those up a lot more efficiently. We can get more people up more efficiently, and you're not controlling a spaceship as much. So your training flow is really shrunk and you can concentrate on those other things. 

 

So there was some skepticism at first. But once we started seeing the advanced technology and the opportunities it was going to provide, not just for our program, but for the commercial space program, which is something that NASA had wanted to encourage for many years with the space shuttle. They had initially thought it was going to be like a commercial vehicle. They were making plans to convert it so that you know Delta Airlines could fly space shuttles as well. And then they had the first accident way back when, you know, in 1986 that first accident had not put an end to that. So they took the opportunity to try to encourage commercial enterprise with a commercial space program when the shuttle retired. 

 

So, you know, it wasn't necessarily something we were excited about. A lot of us wanted to keep flying the space shuttle, but once we started seeing the benefits of using that new technology and working with these commercial programs, these commercial companies, you know, we all became believers. 

 

Now I wish they had it, progress comes too late, Brian. I wish we had this thing when I cause it was so much, you know, I was not a pilot. I mean, I'm a private pilot, but I wasn't a professional pilot. And I had to be trained to be like a flight engineer to understand this stuff. And it, you know, it wasn't my strong suit. I enjoyed it, but I would rather concentrate on the spacewalks and some of these other things. And so you know, I look back at it and say, I wish we had that spaceship when I was flying. But yeah, the space shuttle is pretty cool. I'd say the space shuttle was the coolest. (Let's just show you a picture here.) It still is the coolest spaceship we've ever had, I think, and probably the coolest one we may ever have. I mean, it was able to launch like a rocket and kept us alive for about two weeks at a time doing our work. He'd bring a lot of payload up, a lot back home, and land on a runway. So it was a really cool spaceship. I shouldn't say I was, you know, disappointed in it would be cool to have a sp a space shuttle maybe a little more automated. That would have been all right to cut down some of the workload. But it was really cool.

 

Brian: I'm curious, when you go up there, are you like where do you bunk? Do you sleep when you're taking your breaks and stuff? Are you on the shuttle? Are you in the space station or or what are you doing when you're up there? 

 

Mike: Well, if it depended on the mission. For the space shuttle, on our missions, we were going to the Hubble, so we didn't dock with the Hubble. But even if you went to the space station, typically the shuttle crew would sleep on the shuttle. Occasionally you might get you know, a night just for fun over on the space station, sleeping in a hallway more or less or something.

 

But yeah the way it was on the shuttle, it was like a slumber party. So you would set up, cause you had the mid deck and a flight. You had two, two, two rooms basically. Yeah, and not too large, but not too small. You can float around them. So you would set up your sleeping bag and attach it to different spots on the spaceship. For a couple of nights I slept on the ceiling because I'm like, how often can you do that? You're just floating around. So I slept on a ceiling a couple of nights just for the heck of it.

 

But you could, you would just set up your sleeping bag every night and then you'd roll it up in the morning and you know, brush your teeth and get ready for your day. On the space station, it's a bit different. They have crew quarters, which are like it's like a closet that you get to sleep in. But it gives you your own room and your space, your sleeping bag and all your stuff's in there. So it's a little more private. And you're there for a long period of time. Typically those missions are about six months or so. 

 

Brian: So yeah, yeah. Very interesting. So one last question to wind things up here. I'm curious to know what you are most excited about. Is it in the future for space in general? Is it going to Mars? Is it space station things? Is it space tourism? What are you most excited about from your standpoint, from your background?

 

Mike: I'm most excited about us going back to the moon and setting up a place to live there. You know, that's what inspired me as a little kid. Going to the moon where they were collecting rocks and they came back and there were six landings. There were more than that. There were other orbital missions. We had Apollo thirteen that didn't quite make it, but only twelve people have walked on the moon. And that happened a long time ago. Right. The youngest guy to walk on the moon is Charlie Duke. And he's almost 90 years old now. Right. So a lot of those guys are gone. Neil Armstrong died about 10 years ago. You know, we've lost a lot of these people that were involved.

 

And I think that that's okay that it's been a long time because when when they went back in this it was a different objective when they did it back in the late sixties and early seventies, it was to get to the moon, land, do some amazing work, which is what they did and bring back a lot of rock samples. It was incredible what they did. I think it's the greatest achievement ever that the whole world, not just you know, the US was there mainly with our tax dollars, but we were attracting help from all over the planet. It was just amazing the way it brought together the best minds available to do this program. And I think that going to that as another planetary surface and learning how, like I said earlier, we've been flying people on a space station now. Continuously, we've had people up there changing out the crews every so often for 25 years nearly. but that's you know, that's floating around and that's near Earth orbit. You know, when you get out to the moon, you're a lot further away, you can't easily come back, you're gonna be there for a while. How do you deal with rocks and dust and a huge amount of radiation? How do you find water? How do you live there? I think that's truly living off the planet on another planetary surface. And I think that that's a great stepping stone to then go to other places like Mars. 

 

But I think Mars is, you know, I think that's a little bit further, maybe a lot further in the future. But I think we can actually speed that process up by going to the moon and settling there. So I think that's gonna be really cool going to another planetary surface which in I think would start most likely is gonna be the moon and we have plans to do that. So I'm probably most excited about that. I'm excited about a lot of other stuff too, but what I'm most excited about is getting people back on the moon but this time to stay. You know, that's one one of my earliest memories as a little kid were those missions where they were first going to the moon. I think at this point in my life I'd like to be able to witness us getting back there again after all these years. 

 

Brian: That's great. Well, Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to be on here and talking about so many great things with adapting to change and AI and all you know, those amazing stories that you have there, for sharing those and for being a guest here on the Beyond Speaking podcast. 

 

Mike: Thanks, Brian. It's one of my favorite topics, all these things we've talked about. So it's my pleasure and I enjoy working with you and your team. You guys are top shelf people. So I've enjoyed our relationship and I appreciate the time now to be on your podcast. I'm very honored to be one of the speakers on this podcast. Thank you. Yes, yes. 

 

Brian: Well, that's you know, first I you know, I forgot to mention you're the first astronaut to tweet from space. Here we go. And the only way you can pop that there it is. A very historic photograph. Take that, Neil Armstrong. 

 

Mike: Yep. He never did that. He never did. Not only that, it gave me some street credit. We were up visiting some of our kids this past weekend up in Boston and they're in college and one of their one of their one of their roommates said, you know when you've made it they were talking about someone else who's made fun of on Saturday Night Live and wasn't happy with it. And there's, you know, you've made it when you're made fun of on Saturday Night Live. Well that's what the first tweet from Space did for me. I got made fun of on Saturday Night Live for my tweet. Because I didn't really spend much time thinking about it, I got some advice from Neil Armstrong that, you know, when I asked him what he thought about what he said on the moon and he said he didn't think about it until after he landed on the moon. Don't worry about that stuff. So that ended up being some pretty bad advice. Cause when I got to send the first tweet, I didn't know what to say. And I just said the launch was awesome and the adventure of a lifetime has begun or something like that. And then I got made fun of on Saturday Night Live. During the weekend update, Seth Meyer said, We have the first tweet from space, and here it is. I was still in space when this was happening. I didn't know this was going on. But he said, so he says, you know, because I sent the first tweet on Monday and on Saturday this happened. He says, We have the first tweet from space, and here it is. Launch was awesome. And we're going to say, you know, in 25 years, we've gone from, I'm sorry, in 40, it was 40 years. Wait a minute. It was 40 years. So he said, in 40 years, we've gone from one giant leap for mankind, which is what Neil Armstrong said. We've gone from “one giant leap for mankind” to “launch was awesome.” And then he let that settle. And then he goes, I assume if we ever find life in the universe, this is how we'll be notified. And it shows my little Twitter thing. And it says, “geez, dudes, aliens.” You know, like that's how we would report. But I didn't know this was going on. 

 

And the last spacewalk we had on that mission was a Monday. And I got an email from my kids who were at that time, they were like the two older ones that were thirteen, thirteen and fifty they were thirteen and fifteen. And so they sent me some email. That's how I find out about this. And like, “dad, you'll never you'll never guess. They made fun of you on Saturday night live. All the kids at school loved it. Keep up the great work.” You know, that kind of finally got a little street care street crit out of it. So, you know, I don't think the tweet was really that great, but you know, getting made fun of and my kids finally, finally give me a little credit for being an astronaut. That was pretty good. 

 

Brian: Yeah, it's good. That you finally made it. That's awesome. That's what matters to kids. They don't forget about the astronaut thing. no, yeah, that's right. They're like, you know, yeah. 

 

Mike: Yeah. They're happy about that SNL thing.

 

Brian: Great. Well, Mike, thanks again so much for being here and we appreciate you taking the time. Thank you.

 

Mike: Yeah, this is what our pumpkin suits look like here. We call them because they're orange. The reason they were orange is that we had a bailout scenario where you might end up in the ocean. And so this makes you a little bit easier to find out in the Atlantic at night, apparently. But one of my crewmates, I won't tell you who, we took our official crew photo in those in those flight suits, right? And one of the guys, one of the guys said, my butt looks kind of big because it was kind of puffy. You know, these suits are kind of puffy, and when you kind of sideways, you know, it you know, but it's like it's a space suit. So he's like, I don't like it. So he actually asked the photo guy, because he's like, I don't know, because we had it, we all had to agree on the photo. It's like I don't like my butt looks like What are you worried about? You're in a space suit, and it you know, and he says, never mind, you know. Some Hollywood star that is maybe more concerned about appearances. What are you worrying about? They photoshopped his butt. So they ended up changing a little. They shaved a little bit off of there so he didn't he wasn't as conscious of it, I guess. Yeah. But those suits were not very flattering. But they were kind of cool. 

 

Brian: You know yeah. I mean again it's you're an astronaut. Yeah it almost doesn't really matter what you look like. 

 

Mike: You didn't care. No, no, we would get a short haircut before the launch. So you wouldn't have to, you know, not but not so you'd look good, just so you don't have to deal with your hair. Other than that, you know, other than that, that was about it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, very cool. 

 

Brian: Well, well, I appreciate that. And yeah, by the way, one of the cool things is, I do have some emails with Neil Armstrong from back in the day. So I booked him, but I had to miss it because our daughter was born. So I've like, that's a legitimate reason to whatever. August, September of 2005. I missed it, but that's cool. 

 

Mike: So no, he's my hero and I got to know him a little bit and was not disappointed. You know, sometimes you meet someone you admire, you're like, ooh, I wish I didn't meet that person. I'd rather you know, it's not always sometimes it's disappointing, but not with him. he wa he's it really the more I learned about him, the more I admired him. And he was really, I think, a true American hero. 

 

Brian: Do you have any good lessons or things you learned from him?

 

Mike: Well, the thing that I kind of glossed over when I first met him, I asked him what you know, how did he come up with the thing he said on the moon? You know, one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. And he was actually on a food line getting a sandwich. And he was visiting, he was getting his annual physical, and it was the first week I was an astronaut and I had never met him before and I had just become an astronaut. So I had it, you know, I felt like I was bad bothering about you know, I had to say something to him. And he looked, he kind of puts down his tray and he looks at me and he says, “Mike, I didn't think about what I was gonna say on the moon.” Because how’d you come up with that? Would your wife tell you to say that? Did you hire a publicist? Because I was a six-year-old listening to it's like wow, it was amazing. It was in all the newspapers everywhere, you know, one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. It's like, that's unbelievable. So I, you know, I asked him and he puts his tray down. He looks at me, he goes, “Mike, I didn't think about what I was gonna say on the moon until after I landed on the moon.”

 

I was like, really? And he said, Mike, if I didn't land on the moon, there'd be no reason to say anything. I was like, I guess you're right. And then and then he's like, you know, Mike, you're new at this, but you gotta understand this is a dangerous business and you can't be messing around. You've gotta, you know, you've gotta take your job serious and not worry about the media and all the public relations. That's gravy, but that can distract you and bad things can happen. This is a dangerous business. Stick to your job. And I'm like, okay, I got it. You know, I got it. Right. And so they asked me and I remember the last press conference, they asked me, the press does before we go flight. He knew I was going to send his first tweet from space. It's a very historic thing. So they said, Have you thought about what you're going to tweet? And I just channeled Neil Armstrong. So I'm not worrying about what I'm going to do. You know, we've got to get to space first. If we don't get to orbit, there's no reason to tweet anything. Right. I'm not going to worry about that. I'll worry about that when we get there. 

 

So I get there, you know, we set up the computer like I showed you here. I’ll show you the photo again here. This is very historic, of course. So here I am. Attending the first tweet from space, very, very historic. And I'm looking at that computer, Brian, I realized that the advice I got from Neil Armstrong was the worst advice I got in my life. I couldn't think of a thing. You know, and then truthfully, I started to doubt him. Because I was like, there's no way, you know, because I'm just floating around there, you know, and now a few people are paying attention, but not the whole world. This guy, you know, I mean, everyone was listening. One of the things that they discovered was that. It wasn't seen as a they couldn't they didn't know this had it. There was a lot of controversy. Is it worth the money, going to the moon, blah, blah, blah. But once they did it, the whole world kind of unified. And the whole world saw it as a human achievement. It wasn't like the Americans did it. It was like we did it. And I don't think we ever had anything like that before. And I don't know if we'll ever get there again. It was just something that those guys were amazed. The astronauts, when they went around there to different places around the world about how amazed everyone was about this, that it was really a great human accomplishment. 

 

So the whole world's listening to what he's gonna say and he comes up with that. I mean, everywhere the Russians were listening and China, everybody is you know, a whole world, everyone's listening to what he's gonna say. And he comes up with that, right? So I'm saying to myself, he lied to me. I'm thinking as I'm looking at that computer, there's no way he came up with that on the moon. You know what I wanted to tweet, tweet, Brian? I wanted to tweet, curse you, Neil Armstrong. I would get chewed out. So I couldn't do that. So I just wrote what I told you. And then I got made fun of on Saturday Night Live. And you know, that's that's that story. But after Neil passed, I think it was in 2012 or so when he passed away. And 2019, when it was the 50th anniversary of Apollo, there were a lot of shows about, you know, the 50th anniversary of the landing and interviewing his family. So his brother gets on there, right?

 

So his brother's on one of these, you know, specials on one of the TV shows or whatever. And one of these documentaries, and he says, I was playing Monopoly with Neil before he went to the moon. And he passes me a little note and I opened it up and it said, One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. And he says What you think of that? And I said, I think that's pretty good, Neil. And I'm like, Good jeez, I knew it. So I become friends with Rick and Mark, his two, his two sons.

 

And I was at an event maybe like a week after seeing this thing. They were here in New York City and we were at this event together. I was like, let me ask you guys something. You know, I saw your uncle say, you know, your father I told him the story, your father told me this, and then your uncle says that and they go, Uncle Bill, whatever his name was, they go, don't pay attention, Uncle Bill said. He was always making stuff up, trying to act like, you know, because no, don't pay attention to that. And then one of the boys, I can't remember which one it was, turns to me and he says, Mike, if that's what dad told you, that was the truth.

 

And I believe that to be the absolute truth. I think he did have a poet in him. I think he gave me some great advice about sticking to your job. I think that's what he was all about. He wasn't about trying to get the glory. He was actually embarrassed, I think, in some ways, that he was the first guy. He was honored to do it, but he was all about the mission. And so I think it was a great lesson that he passed on to me. And I did think it was a hundred percent true that he thought about that on the moon in my book. I think what he told me was the truth. And I think he was worried about the mission and he was inspired to write something, to say something profound like he did once he got there in the moment. 

 

So yeah, I think he was an amazing hero. He could have capitalized and benefited and profited from what he did. And instead he became a math professor at the University of Cincinnati and did things to try to inspire more people and and never never never never took advantage, I guess, in that way, like I think most of us would. Right, if we had that opportunity. So he was just I think a true American hero in every sense of the word. 

 

Brian: Yeah. And that's what I mean, that's what I just from my small sample size of working with him, like one of the reasons why he took the event that I booked him for is because he was a surprise guest. Because he and I read somewhere that he didn't want schools named after him. He didn't want all that stuff. And yeah, and so he was a surprise one. So he said yes. So it was kind of an amazing thing. 

 

Mike: In fact, it's funny you mention that, Brian. This is good, because it's connecting another story with him. When he came to speak to our astronaut class that first week that we met him, he also spoke to our whole class. The exchange I had with him was like the next day. But he insisted that it was only the new astronauts. He didn't want any announcement. He didn't even want other astronauts there. He's like only the new astronauts. I don't want any announcement. I don't want any flyers, no fanfare. I'm just wanting to speak to those new people.

 

And that was it. He didn't want any; he was, you know, the patch, the Apollo 11 patch. There are no names. This is my space patch back here, right? Those are my missions. And you bet my name is on those patches, right? with all my other there there's only two missions that didn't have the names on the patch. One was Apollo 13, Jim Lovell and that crew, and Apollo 11 did not have their names on it. Apollo 11 did not put their name, it's only the Eagle landing. It says Apollo 11, it's an Eagle landing on the moon with an olive branch. And they did that because they didn't see it as an individual accomplishment by the astronauts. They saw it as a huge team effort and they only played a small role in it. That's the way they saw that. 

 

So all of his friends, the other thing that was interesting, all of his friends like Lovell and John Young and Alan Bean and all those guys that would come and speak to us, when they spoke about Neil, they all said he was the right guy to be the first guy on the moon. They would have loved to have had that opportunity, but if they had to pick somebody, that was the right guy. You know, both from the technical flying skills he had, but also the personality had to to handle that fame that was gonna come along with it. So yeah, you know, they don't make him like that anymore, right? I don't know if they ever made him another one like him. He's really a unique person. 

 

Brian: That's great. Well, thanks for that story. That's awesome. Thank you.

 

Mike: You bet, Brian. My pleasure. 

 

Brian: All right, cool. Well, I will let you get back to doing whatever you're doing. Thanks so much for doing this. We'll release it probably within the next couple of weeks or so. 

 

Mike: And share with me and send me whatever you want to tag me or whatever. 

 

Brian: Yeah, we'll definitely share it. We l and we'd love for you to share it too. Maybe tweeting that "Brian's show was awesome." No, I'm kidding. 

 

Mike: "The show was awesome." Yeah. That's awesome. That's great. All right, Brian. Thanks again. 

 

Outro: Thank you for joining us for the Beyond Speaking podcast. To learn more about today's guests, visit premierespeakers.com. Make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen.