Afford Anything - Astronaut's Guide to Taking YOUR Moonshot, with Mike Massimino from NASA and Big Bang Theory

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

#476: Mike Massimino stared in disbelief at his TV. The date was July 16, 1969, and he marveled as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. At that moment, he knew he wanted to become an astronaut. He was six years old. But as Mike grew older, he developed more “realistic” dreams. After all, every kid wants to become an astronaut. The chances of making it are incredibly slim. He went to a local college, studied engineering, and took a job at IBM. But he couldn’t shake the tiny voice inside that said – “why not try?” So Mike upended his life. He enrolled in a Ph.D. program at MIT, and then proceeded to fail the qualification exam so badly that his professors gently suggested that perhaps a doctorate isn’t right for him. He battled to pass the exam on his second attempt, and went on to teach at Georgia Tech, from where he repeatedly submitted applications to NASA for their astronaut candidate program – which they called “as* can.” He was thrilled when he finally received his acceptance – until he learned that he needed 20/20 vision. At the time, NASA required astronauts to have naturally 20/20 eyesight, without surgery. So he sought out a doctor to help him re-train his eyesight. Then he learned that he’d need to pass a swim test. He was in his 30’s and had never swum. “Can’t I just take a math quiz?,” he joked. But he … didn’t let that sink him. (Pun intended). In today’s special episode, former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino explains how anyone – including you – can take your own moonshot. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode476 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you ask a little kid, what do you want to be when you grow up? They might say a NASA astronaut, a best-selling author, a TV star. Well, today's guest is all three. And we are going to learn from him how to take our own moonshot, how to do the thing that defies the odds. Welcome to the Afford Anything Podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your effort,

to any limited resource that you need to manage. That opens up two questions. First, what matters most? And second, how do you make daily decisions accordingly? Answering those two questions is the ethos of this show. It's why we exist. I am your host, Paula Pant, here to help facilitate that. Today, we are joined by former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino.

Thank you for joining us. Welcome. No, thanks for having. I really liked that opening. I got inspired just listening to it. That's pretty good. Thank you. Thank you.

And I forgot to mention you were the first rookie to spacewalk on the Hubble Space Telescope. I was. A rookie in that context, I'm assuming you were probably pretty qualified. Well, yeah, but actually it's kind of like, you know, I teach at Columbia. do you usually want to call students freshman any longer they're it's more first-year students I guess is oh really I call them freshman so it's like with rookies if you know that rookies sometimes if you don't like that you could just say first-time space flyers but I like I like rookie I like freshman I think it's you only you know get to do that once really on life so you should take advantage when you can

yeah exactly exactly oh and you were also the guy who brought Snoopy to space I did I brought But I brought my Snoopy. I used to play with them pretending I was Neil Armstrong and Snoopy was Buzz Aldrin. I had a costume that my mom converted an elephant costume. I was an elephant in the first grade play with all the other kids that didn't have much talent. This summer of 1969 that was converted to an astronaut costume that I wore. And my toy Snoopy, I used to have them everywhere with me when I was a little kid. And so, you know, backyard adventures in space with Snoopy as a kid.

I felt like when I was going to space for real, he had to come. with me. So Snoopy was with me in space and now he's at the Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. Wow. Wow. And you, we're shooting this the day before Thanksgiving. It's Thanksgiving Eve. And tomorrow you're going to be holding Snoopy in the New York City Thanksgiving Day parade. Yeah, that is the plan. I made a lot of friends in my life and a lot of different cool, interesting places. And Peanuts, the, you know, the brand, the Charles Schultz's Peanuts comic strip, of course is where Snoopy and right so the Peanuts people are very nice people and they're headquartered in new york i've gotten to meet charles schultz's family and they're wonderful people so

they invited my wife and i to be a part of the parade carrying snoopy in the parade who would have thunk it so i'm very excited about that as my wife would say it sounds good in concept because you have to be there like 5 a.m. to go through balloon carrying training so we'll see how that goes early on thanksgiving morning but yeah well you know i want to kick this off given that so many kids have this dream of being an astronaut one day. I imagine a lot of the people who are watching this, who are listening to this, are kids with this dream. And so, for the sake of all the kids out there

who are watching this, there are three questions that I want to ask that are just for the kids. Yes. All right, kids, tell your parents to cover their ears. These next three questions are for you. Question number one, how do you fart in space? I think the parents might want to listen to this too. because you more or less do most of your bodily functions the same way that you would do on earth,

like, you know, brush your teeth or, as you say, pass gas or go to the bathroom. All that stuff still works. It's just a little bit different. So, for example, if you've been in an airplane, look at a bag of potato chips. It expands in, it's a lower pressure when you go to altitude. It's approximately about 10,000 feet altitude when you're in the cabin altitude. in an airplane, and so the air expands. When you're at a lower pressure situation, just like that bag of potato chips, your stomach

also expands. All right, so what that means is you have more gas in your stomach, and so you are encouraged to let it go. The gas in your stomach is going to expand, you need to relieve it, or else that could cause you some unnecessary pain and discomfort. You don't want that. So it's important to do that, so you're actually more susceptible to it when you're at altitude to gas. And when you actually let go, it works just like it does here on Earth.

Oh, so does it stink up the spacesuit? Okay. So if you do it in your own space suit, you're going to smell it because you have your own. So what happens is there's no, one interesting thing I think about space is there's no natural convection or motion of air. So on our planet, because of gravity, hot air rises and then kind of comes down. We get this natural circulation of air. We don't get that in space. In space, it kind of hangs around. So what we do is we have artificial circulation, like an air conditioning system,

where the air goes into a vent, gets cleaned from carbon dioxide and other contaminants, and then gets returned through a vent, right? That's how it works. Okay, so in your own spacesuit, you're in your own little spaceship. So that air will be sucked in through vents in your arms, that you're wearing a fancy pair of long underwear. called the cooling ventilation garment. And you didn't think this is going to be a technical answer, did you?

You thought it was going to be just for the kids. Anyway, you have these vents that suck in that air, and then it returns right over your head. Oh, no. So if you pass gas, it'll come right. It'll be sucked in, right? That air will be sucked in because it's an artificial flow. You have a fan that's, and it'll be returned right to your face.

It comes right to your face. And it comes out because you usually want fresh air coming in that way. Yeah. So you breathe nice, fresh oxygen. Oh. And it also does a little bit of like a defog of your visor. Right. So that's where it comes right in.

And over your head, defogs a visor and you get to breathe it. So my friend Rick Linehan, though, came in from his spacewalk. He said, I thought I was going to die of methane poison. He farted and it came right in over his head. The other thing that is that when I talked about that circulation, if you wanted to play a trick on one of your friends, let's say, right? The way that that fan worked, it was in the space shuttle, the circulation fan, it was right underneath, right next to the pilot seat in the upper part of the

space shell on the flight deck. So we're down in the mid-deck. If someone wanted to play a trick with this odor, they could pass gas right by that fan, right? Because then that air would immediately be brought up to the flight deck. And while that poor pilot is sitting there, he might get a surprise. Not that I would ever do anything like that. But if one wanted to, you could. Current astronauts, take note. To the grownups who are watching this on YouTube or who are listening, who are wondering, hey, what does this have to do with me taking my moonshot?

What does this have to do with me getting where I want to go in life? Hold your horses. We're getting to that. We still got two more questions for the kids. Oh, goodness, all right. Two more for the kids. I'll try to make it shorter. Go ahead.

So the kids want to know. How do you pee in space? Yeah. Well, you pee the same way. From the science, our health part of it, you tend to get a little more dehydrated in space. Your gravity keeps us the way we normally are, right? So our bodily fluid is included in that. And in space, when zero gravity, your bodily fluid tends to go, is not being held down by gravity to all your lower extremities and keeps everything balanced the way it's supposed to.

It can kind of pool in your upper body. And your head gets a little full. You have like a bigger head, not because you're conceded that you're in space, but there's more fluid there. And it takes a couple days. The brain figures all this out and redistributes it the way it should be, but you have the tendency, the signal is sent to your brain. You have too much fluid, and so you need to avoid pee. So you've got to drink a lot. You always want to remain hydrated.

Very important on Earth, of course, but also in space, very important so you don't get an infection or you've got to keep yourself hydrated. So you tend to pee more in space, especially the first couple of days. on the space shuttle, which we don't fly the space shuttle anymore, but we would pee into a hose and that urine would get collected and then it would get dumped. The tank would fill up and then you would dump it out a port when no one was around outside the spaceship, or any no spacewalking going on.

And it was kind of cool because it was out, you're putting it out into a vacuum and it would kind of crystallize and disappear and the sun would shine through it to be like a rainbow. Wow. It was kind of cool. So you literally, you dump your pee in space. The pee's okay because the pee, The P goes out there and it kind of disintegrates.

The molecules kind of scatter, get excited, start to almost like they're boiling and poof, then they go in the vacuum. It's kind of cool. No pressure you're in a vacuum. It is pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool. On the space station, though, backing up a bit, on the shuttle, the power we had for the space shuttle was fuel cells.

And fuel cells were liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and they would combine in a chemical reaction to provide power to charge our batteries. The byproduct of that, liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, is liquid water, H2O. So we had plenty of drinking water on the space shuttle, so much so that we would have to dump some of the drinking water. We couldn't drink all of it.

That's how much we had, even though we were drinking all the time. Sounds a good way to go here because you can create water, but it's a consumable. You start using that stuff, and you can only be in space for about, 17 days and then you'll run out of power. So it's a limiting consumable that liquid hydrogen oxygen oxygen. On the space station, that wouldn't work, right? So what they do is they use the sun's power and they have solar arrays for power.

So they can't create water as easily. There are ways to do it, but you can't really recreate water like we did on the space shuttle. So what they do is they recycle the water. So you pee into a tank, you pee into a hose, and that urine gets collected, along with all of your sweat, condensate, all the moisture in the air, all that stuff gets collected, and then it gets cleaned and treated, and you drink it again. So you're drinking your pee and your armpit sweat? Yes, but it doesn't.

It doesn't, yes, exactly. But it tastes just like, I've had it. It's not bad. You don't know the difference. But it is kind of an interesting fact that you are drinking your own pee, but it's cleaned. It's not really pee. You're not drinking urine.

I guess technically, are you not, are you drinking only your own or are you drinking? Everybody's mixed together. Oh, that's yours. But it's treated and clean. And this is actually a pretty good spinoff for applications here around the planet because that all places. We're very lucky here in the U.S. that we be typically wherever we are have clean drinking water. In New York City, we have some of the best drinking water in the country. And other places around the world aren't that lucky to have clean water.

It's a big problem. Right. So ways to recycle the water or clean the water that is there is a good thing. And so that is something that was developed by NASA for space, but also can be used on the ground. All right. One more question. I want to talk about those long shot dreams, how you developed the confidence to do something that kind of seems like, I mean, everybody, every kid wants to be an astronaut. But, you know, who actually ever grows up to be an astronaut?

You. So I want to talk about that in just a moment. But first, first, we got that third question for the kids. Third and final question for the kids. The phrase to infinity and beyond. Yeah. What does that mean to you? Buzz Lightyear, right?

That's this thing from Tori Story Story. Great series of movies. To me, it's just, I guess, kind of a cool saying. I never really said it, you know? Maybe I should have used it more. But I guess to me it means, you know, you know, the sky's the limit. There really is no limit.

You can go anywhere you want, and that's where we're going to go and explore. I never used that phrase really in practice, but to me that's what it means, that we're going to go and explore, and there's no limit to what we can do. Well, that's actually a perfect segue then. Oh, cool. To hearing about, you know, I want to hear about your story, and sort of take us scene by scene. You were inspired, I think, as many people were, by watching the moon landing.

Yeah. Tell us about that day. Yeah, so we're going back to 1969. July 20th was the day that Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, the first person to do that. But the lead up to it, to me, was pretty exciting too. These are like the first memories I have of anything going on in the world. I was little, right? So I remember Apollo 8 in the Christmas time of 1968 going to the moon, orbiting the moon,

and coming back. And then Apollo 10, I remember, where they nearly landed. landed. They went down with the lunar module into orbit like they had planned and then they came back up to the command module. They did not land. And then that set them up for Apollo 11. And that buildup to Apollo 11 that summer was huge because we know this was coming. School wasn't in session, but I went to my elementary school every day for a summer program, like a summer recreation program we had at John Street School in Franklin Square, New York. And that was all to talk about what was happening. It was very exciting.

How old were you at this time? Six, almost seven. So I was six, almost seven. Yeah. But I remember very clearly the teachers talking about it and my parents talking about it. And this is how I was discovering what the world was about. But it meant a lot to everybody, but it meant something different to me. I really got into it as a little guy. And I remember very clearly thinking in the school auditorium when they wheeled in this, to watch the launch.

because the landing was at night, but the launch was a couple days earlier during the day, and I remember they wanted us to see it in this summer rec program. We took a timeout from playing checkers and knock hockey or softball, whatever we were doing that day, and we all were in the school auditorium in my elementary school watching it on these small TV sets. But I was one of the little guys,

so I got to be a front member looking up at this thing and thinking that this is the most important thing that's ever happened in the world for 500 years, and it's going to be the most important thing in the next 500 years. that people 500 years from now are going to remember this day. And it hit me like that. And those astronauts, Neil Armstrong, man, he was cool. He was the coolest guy.

And I got to know him a bit, and I wasn't disappointed meeting him. He was just a good guy and very much about the mission. But he was my hero. He was my idol. And I wanted to grow up to be him. So that's what affected me. And seeing him take those steps on the moon, I was like, that's what I want to do that someday.

That's what happened to me as a little kid. Wow. How is it, so, you know, as you grew up, did you hold on to that dream or did you ultimately let it go? Nah, so what happened is that by the time I was about eight years old, you know, you start growing up and I realized I was scared of a lot of things. Like I was not a thrill seeker. I still am not, believe it or not. There's something, I'll take a risk if I think something's worthwhile, like going to space to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. I'll do that. But just for the heck of it, I'm not like a thrill seeker. my wife had a significant birthday a couple years ago, and what she wanted to do was jump out of an airplane.

And I was like, okay, go ahead. And she said, well, wouldn't it be great if we did it together? I'm like, that would be so cool, but that is not happening. I will drive you to the airport. I will take pictures. I'll even help flying the plane, but I ain't jumping out of it unless it's on fire. So she did that one with a friend of hers. They did tandem jumps with instructors.

But I was, I don't, like, no, I'm not doing that. And I was afraid of heights as a little kid. I didn't go fast on my bicycle. I just was kind of like this cautious little guy, and I couldn't see very well. I bad eyesight at an early age, and was kind of skinny and didn't, you know, I just didn't see myself growing up to be this superhero like Neil Armstrong.

Plus, I mean, as you say, it's ridiculous. And I think as I got older, this is ridiculous. How many people grew up to be Neil Armstrong? Nobody. You know, there's a handful, and I don't see anyone walking around my neighborhood. So it just, it's something I just crossed off the list of possibilities. And it wasn't until I was a senior in college. I was studying engineering, but I'm not thinking at all about the space program.

Not even like working in the space program. I was like, it's just impossible. Real people don't do that. My senior year, I went to see the movie The Right Stuff, which is about the original seven astronauts and the test pilots that came before them. And it depicted, I read the book by Tom Wolfe. I saw that movie and went and got the book right away and read the book, cover to cover immediately.

To me, what struck me about being, those test pilots and the first group of astronauts was the camaraderie and the teamwork and doing something of purpose that was more than what you could do alone, being part of something that was bigger than you. There was things that I grew up with that didn't really seem like I was going to be an astronaut, but my parents, both of very smart people, good students in high school, never had a chance to go to college, but did things for the community and in service. to others or for the family. My father worked for a New York City Fire Department. He was a fire inspector.

My mom was a stay-at-home mom. And when I was in college, he started working at a senior center, you know, helping people in the community center there. And I don't know the sense of doing something to make the world a better place and service, but also especially I think with the fire department was doing something to help people. It was kind of like a good thing. You know, and around me were police officers and firemen in my neighborhood and the sense of community, I think that affected me that I wanted it to be a part of something like that. And so that's what I saw in that movie and what I saw in that book, the right stuff, being a part of something bigger than me, something that maybe won't make you a lot of money, but that doesn't matter. I know this is

what you, I know this is, this is about making money? No, it's not. No, it's not okay. Not at all. This is about living your best life. Right, okay, good, good. I hear you go, leaving your best life. Okay, so you need money to live, you know, but I've always felt like the true satisfaction and happiness comes from doing things for others. And I think it's interesting is that I notice a lot of wealthy people donate a lot of

their money. You know, they like doing good things. We need to do great things. A lot of generous people who are able to donate. We all should donate, right? And I think that you could also do that in your job or in your work. And I wanted to be a part of that sort of community. And I wanted to fly in space.

I thought that looked pretty cool too. So I started thinking about it and learned more about the space program. Now it's the mid-1980s when I got out of college. And I found out that it wasn't just military test pilots any longer. It was also engineers and scientists. And the first women were picked for the space shuttle program. The first people of color were picked for the space shuttle program. And I thought maybe this is something.

I could do. It's not just these military test pilots. There was just a little big part of it. But maybe I could at least throw my name in the ring. You mentioned confidence about trying to do things. I never, for one moment, I think, thought I would become an astronaut. I felt like that was still out of reach. Even today, whenever I see one of my mission patches, I always check that my name is really on it. It's bizarre. I still can't believe it happened. But what, what, what, what, what, I did decide I should do is try. Because you can control that. You can you can control your effort and I didn't I did not. I knew these people were really well qualified people and super superheroes to me when I was a little boy. To think I'd be one of them was kind of I thought

ridiculous but at least I could try to be a part of that team. Maybe I could help them go and maybe but I knew I wanted to try to be an astronaut. So I never said I'm going to be an astronaut. I don't think I've ever said that, ever. I said I'm going to try to be in it because I knew that is something that I could put my heart and soul into. And that's what I started to do. I worked for a couple of years after college and then went off to graduate school to pursue a career in a space program and maybe be lucky enough to become an astronaut or at least try to become an astronaut. So you set the goal of not I'm going to do this, but I'm going to try. But then on the road to trying, you know, you went to MIT to get your PhD.

and then you failed your PhD qualifying exam? I did. I think I set a record for failure. It really was terrible. That exam was a bit different. It was very comprehensive over different engineering disciplines. And there was a written element to it, but there was also an oral exam where you got up in front of a bunch of faculty members and he started asking you questions. And they're trying to test you.

I also always think that they're also trying to educate you, you know, felt what you don't know. maybe, you know, and I got toasted. And I just, you know, I got destroyed in the oral exam. And I remember when that happened, going to see my advisor, Tom Sheridan, who's still around. I just exchanged dealing with him. He's like 95 years old now. But he, a very good, very good advisor and a good person. He was like a father figure.

And I go in to see this guy, and I knew it was going to be bad news because I knew it was obvious. I didn't do well. And went into Sam and I said, Tom, I didn't pass. And he says, no, Mike, you didn't. And they go, what do we do now? He goes, well, you know, you typically offered a second chance, but we had a discussion the faculty did on the committee. And we're not really sure it's worth your while to try again because you did so poorly.

You know, you get another try in six months. But it wasn't like you were close. You know, there's a, I don't know if you have six months to, you know, get ready to change things. And you might want to think whether or not it's worth your while if you just, you know, take your master's degree and move on. And he goes, why don't you know, I go, what can I think about it? And he's like, sure, yeah, why don't you let me know when you're ready to whenever you decide. So I thought about it for a day or so.

And I went back to see him. And I said, you know, Tom, I'm going to give it another shot. What the heck? You know, I figured, what could I lose? If I fail again, I'm in the same position anyway. And it was another semester at MIT. And as torturous as that place was, and still is, it is a wonderful place to be educated. And another semester of taking classes and maybe.

doing some research and seeing if I could figure out how to pass this exam, seemed like a pretty good use of six months out of my life, as opposed to putting the tail between my legs and wondering what's next. So he kind of smiled at me, which was interesting. He said in like this sort of academic MIT words, he said, you know, Mike, if one can learn to live with indignities in life, one can go far. If one can learn to live with indignities, one can go far in life.

Something like that. like, that's pretty cool. It's kind of like if you can get your butt kicked and get knocked down and learn how to live with that and get back up again, you can go far in life. And what I discovered was, is that I had prepared the wrong way. I wasn't just going to repeat exactly what I had done the first time, or else I would have failed a second time. But I started reaching out to some of my friends who had passed the exam, and they told me how they got ready. How they got ready is they would help each other prepare for the oral exam in particular, because it's something we don't normally do.

And so I put together a bit of a community. I talk about that a little bit in the book, too. I learned that lesson. I think it's important throughout life is that it's nice to have a team, a mission control center, someone that can help you. And so I got a group of my friends together who had been successful in taking the exam. And on Fridays, I would supply like cookies and juice, and we would go to one of the conference rooms,

and they would sit around the conference table and play professor, and I would play victim at the front, and they would just grill me immerselessly. And it was a skill. It was an inquired skill to be able to think on your feet and answer questions. And it was pretty ugly at first, but it's better during practice than in the real day. And I got, I don't know if I got good at it, but I got good enough that when I took that exam again, I passed. So that was something I learned that, you know, when you're trying to do something,

when you're trying to make your moonshot, right, when you're trying to do something that's out of the ordinary. And that doesn't have to be passing your qualifier at MIT or flying to space. It could just be anything. It could be learning how to drive a car. I also failed my driver's test the first time. I failed my private pilot's test the first time I took that. It just seems like anything you're trying to do that's new. If you're trying to learn something,

if you're trying to do something with your family, if you're trying to accomplish something as a parent or something at work, if it's something that's challenging, don't expect it to be easy. There's a reason why things are hard. Not everybody does them, and not everybody can do everything. And people that do, it's not like they're super talented, but they just stick to it. And they try to forge on when they get hit with difficulties.

Successful people and not those that don't fail. They are those that don't let failure stop them. And I think I learned that in school at an early age because school is never easy for me. I tell my students that. The hardest thing I've ever done in life is learn stuff in school. It's not easy to go to school and learn stuff and take tests and everything.

It's hard. So those are lessons that I learned on my way to becoming an astronaut, but it was also critical to keep up that attitude, I think, once you get the opportunity, get the degree or whatever it is you're looking for, I think it's important to have that same attitude moving forward. As soon as you lose that attitude, you know, you think, oh, I've made it now. It's time to relax. You're done. Cash it in right there because as soon as you lose that, it's not going to go well. You need to keep that same persistence throughout life, I think, in order to be successful once you get the opportunity you want.

I'm hearing the theme of fail and try again. And I'm hearing the theme of take the long shot chance. Yeah. And, you know, we're talking about getting a Ph.D. from MIT. It makes you sound very smart. But your fourth grade teacher would beg to different. Yeah. Yes.

Mrs. Oco, you've done your research. I have. You talk to Mrs. Oco? Oh, I should get a cameo from her. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, Mrs. Oco, my fourth grade teacher, was a very young teacher when I had her back in the fourth grade. She was like, I think it was her first job, but I didn't know that until later, because I was reunited with her when I visited my elementary school. Soon after I was selected, about a year and a half after I was picked by NASA, they were having a career day at the elementary school, and they asked me to come back.

I mean, I was like, sure, it was great. They had decorated the school with all astronauts stuff. And I was like, I think it was like 34, 35 years old. So Mrs. Occo was still teaching. You know, she was still there. And I was able to have lunch with her. And she said, you. to me that she was having breakfast with her kids. She had two boys, I think they're like 10 and 12 or something like that. You know, she said, I'm going to have lunch with one of my students that I had back, you know, years ago. And he's an astronaut now. What do you think of that?

And one of her boys said, wow, mom, he must have been really smart, right? And she said, I'm sure he was bright, but if he was really smart, I would have remembered. Like, she remembered all the smart kids in the class, and I wasn't one of them. I was just one of those guys, you know, one of those young kids in the, you know. looking around or whatever. And she didn't remember me in that way. But then she said, but I went on to tell him that being the smartest isn't always the most important thing. And it's having other things.

It's being able to work as a team. It's sticking to it. It's not giving up. And I had those things. And I think that makes up for a lot. And I was never the smartest kid anywhere in any class I ever took. That's probably a good place to be, you know, because you can learn from others. You want to be challenged.

But I had these other things that. that this realization that the thing I wanted to do in life was to be not just flying space, but to be an astronaut, like in the lineage of my heroes like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn and those guys and Sally Ride and the ones that came later as well. And to do that wasn't going to be easy.

And so these are things that I kind of discovered along the way that helped me get there. And not just get the job, But that's kind of the beginning. One in a million is not zero is the first chapter that the odds are against you, do it anyway. One of a million is a non-zero outcome. As soon as you give up, that becomes zero, right?

That one disappears and you know you won't be successful. But as long as you're trying is a chance. But most of the rest of the book are things that I learned as an astronaut to help me achieve that moonshot, but can be applied to anything. To personal relationships, to deal with your family. Parenting, I hope. I try to use some of these principles.

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That means every dollar goes twice as far to help build a future where no one's seeking help is left behind. Donate today at camh.ca.ca. I want to get to some of the lessons that you learned as an astronaut. I want to get to that in a moment. But first, on the theme of what Mrs. Occo said, you know, it's not smarts that matter. It's other things such as working together as a team, sticking to it, not giving up. Yeah. There were two things that nearly knocked you out of the running when you became an astronaut candidate.

One was your eyesight. The other was swimming. Yeah. Tell us about how you worked through both of those. because they play to that theme of teamwork, sticking to it, not giving up, of everything Mrs. Oco said. So the eyesight issue was during selection. The first two times, NASA selects astronauts every couple of years. So the first astronaut class that I applied to was the astronaut class in 1990.

I applied, waited to hear back. I got a letter saying, no good. I was there, all, I'm going to try again. A couple years ago by, the astronaut class said, in 1992. I apply to that. And that's the reason of my application. I hear nothing in for about nine months and then I get a letter, no thank you. A couple years ago by astronaut class of 1995 now at this point. I apply to that one. I get an interview. I get a phone call, not a letter and they want them to come in for an interview. It's a whole week of stuff including an eye exam.

And I met a lot of medical tests and I failed the eye exam. I couldn't see well enough. And back then they didn't, I don't know if LASIC existed, but they didn't accept any medical procedure. You were done. And once you're disqualified, they won't even read your application again. That to me was kind of like horrifying. For me, it was like, if they were told me, now we're going with these other people we like better or whatever, that's fine. I can, I'll try again, but I couldn't even try again. It was saying that's it. And the first time I was rejected, I was like, I need more education. The second time is, oh, I need more experience. And the third time when I got disqualified, I was like, I'm physically unfit. What am I going to do? I'm medically unqualified. And

I just figured it's got to be some way to get back in this game here. And I learned about vision training. There's a book. It was called Seeing Without Glasses that I found them somewhere and ordered it. I don't even know if we had Amazon back then, but I ordered it somewhere and got this book and read it and found an optometrist that worked with these methods of trying to improve your vision. And when I went to see her, I'm sitting in the exam chair, and she comes in. like, you're here for vision training? I'm like, yes, right? Dr. Hopping, her name was Desiree

Hopping out of Houston, and she says, well, I don't know if it's going to work. How could you tell? I just got here. And she said, well, I only work with kids. I've never done it with an adult. You know, kids, her eyes are still forming a brain, whatever is going on there. And I don't think it'll work on an adult. And I said to her, well, I can be so immature, Dr. Hopping. You won't, you know, you won't, you know what I tell the difference between me and a 10-year-old. And I begged her. It was the only choice I had, and she helped me. And I was able to pick up a couple lines on the eye chart with these techniques and exercises and things to do. So I was able to at least requalify. And that allowed me to submit my application again and then was given another chance.

I got another interview for the next selection for the class of 96 and went into that, got through the eye exam. That wasn't an easy, but I got through it and I got through all the rest of it. And the interview went well and they picked me. So once I get picked, that second thing you mentioned came into play because you get a phone call from Dave Leitzma, the head of flight corporations, calls me up and they were calling everybody that day, good or bad. And he said, Mike, how are you doing today? He said, this is Dave Leitzma from the Johnson Space Center. I knew what he was calling about. And he said, how are you doing today? He's like, Dave, I really don't know yet. You're going to have to tell me. And he said, well, I hope you're doing well because

we want you to be an astronaut. We hope you're still interested. I'm like, yeah, that's absolutely Yes. There's no other word that's coming out of my mouth other than yes. And then I got a packet of info in the mail, which I was very excited to open. And the first paragraph was like, congratulations, welcome or something like that. And the second one was, please practice your swimming skills. And I gave us a whole list of stuff we were going to have to do. And I think it was probably fairly reasonable for someone who was a strong swimmer. But the reason they warned us is because in the past they had people show up.

It's a naval course. It's a water survival course with the Navy. And you have to be able to swim. You can't drown during this. Because it teaches how to get into the water and parachuting into the water and how to do stuff with the parachutes over your head. How do you get into a raft? How do you survive?

How do you signal? Everything's in the water. You're surviving in the water. It's not easy. So the idea is that we're going to be flying in an injection seat aircraft. And if you jump, if you pull the rip cord on that and, you know, the handle on that and you eject out of the airplane, you're going to come down in a parachute,

and it could be in the water, right? So you've got to be able to know how to enter the water and do what you need to do so you don't drown before they can come get you. And the shuttle also had a bailout scenario. If you got stuck, if you weren't going to get it to space because you had an emergency, something happened, malfunctioned or lost an engine or whatever,

you would try to turn back to the U.S. and land somewhere there. You needed a runway for the shuttle or try to make it over the ocean to the other side of the other side, of the ocean in southern Europe and northern Africa. We had some sites there you could land. But if you couldn't do that, you were going into water, right? So you had to bail out, and you might end up in the water,

so you had to survive in the water until somebody found you. So water survival is really important. We couldn't do any of our training until we started that. And you couldn't do the training, the water survival training, until you passed a swim test. So they had people, they would send them to Pensacola, and the Navy was afraid they were going to drown and sent them back. They're to teach these people to swim.

That's not our job. And so NASA warned us about this. So I practiced as hard as I could, but I avoided the water my whole life really and never really learned to swim very well. And I grew up in New York, we had bridges and tunnels and stuff. There's no reason to swim for it. You know, we got here to Brooklyn over a bridge,

you know, we didn't have to jump in now and get over there, no, you know, so. But now I needed to learn and I did my best, but I was afraid about being embarrassed in front of my new classmates and all these high-performing people and military test pilots, and here's this, you know, this egghead jumping in the water not knowing what he's doing. That was going to be me.

But the Friday of our first week, after it was many of the administrative stuff, and that Friday, before we went home for the weekend, Jeff Ashby, who was an astronaut in the class before us, and was a great leader, and was given the assignment of being responsible for all of us to help us with our training. he came in to address the class at the end of our first week, and he said, okay, first week's done, we're done. But before you go home, I want to remind everyone that we're going to start our training in earnest next week, and Monday we're going to start with the swim test. That's the first. It's like, can't we have a math quiz?

Can we do something else? Why does it have to be that stupid math, this stupid swim test? So anyway, so he goes on to say, who are the strong swimmers in this group? And there was 44 of us from eight different countries there. And a couple people raised their hand that they were strong swimmers. And then he goes, all right, who are the weak swimmers in this group? And don't lie to me. So I raised my hand.

And he said, okay, everyone else can go home. But the strong swimmers and the weak swimmers are going to stay after class, and they're going to arrange the time to meet at a pool over the weekend. And the strong swimmers are going to help the weak swimmers with their swimming. Because when we go to the pool on Monday, no one leaves the pool until everyone passes the test. and that was my indoctrination to this world I was now in and I thought about that I've thought about that not just then but since

and during while I was at NASA what that really meant what that meant was is that it's a team gamer in here and you could be Michael Phelps and go in the water and set a world record in the pool but if you didn't help your crew if one of your crewmates failed you also failed that you can't do this alone and in spaceflight that is heightened

because you're depending on each other to keep each other alive in case something goes wrong and to be successful in your missions. It's too complex. But it's not just spaceflight. Its life is like that. Whether you're raising children or you're working whatever job it is or you're trying to achieve your moonshot or dream or whatever it is, you really can't do this alone. And it's heightened in the space program because bad things can really happen to you.

Right. But it's the same principle if you want to be successful, I think, in anything. The other thing that I thought was interesting about that. Paula was that when you he made us raise our hand that we were not strong swimmers right and I kind of did that sort of shyly you know that yeah I'm one of the weak guys here right but that's the right thing to do if because if I didn't raise my hand and faked it and then went in there and totally bombed the test it would not have been good for our group right and so you have to raise your hand when you're having trouble when you make a mistake when you fail

the thing that would get you in trouble was if you didn't admit that. And so that was the other part of it. And sometimes it's easy to think, oh, I'm going to help someone. You know, we got to make us feel good. We're helping somebody. But what happens when you're when you need help? You need to speak up and help will be there for you. And that actually leads perfectly to some of the lessons that you learned,

including speaking up. Yes. So tell us about Jim Kelly. Yeah, Vegas. Yeah, who went by the nickname Vegas. Tell us about the time that you didn't speak up. So this is where I was a new person. I think for new people a lot of times when you knew at something

especially when you work with someone who's very experienced, we tend to not say anything. It's okay if you're doing that to learn, but it's important for you to say things when you're the new person. We were always encouraged to speak up because you're not kind of sucked into the usual way of doing things and your intent might be up a little bit more. And that goes for a new idea, something that might be a problem, identifying it with a different perspective.

And a lot of the ideas are the things you speak up about may not make any sense and might not be good, but every once in a while you'll come up with something that might be important, and you should make sure that you vocalize everything, and leadership should be there to listen and encourage it and not squash someone speaking up. So that was our culture. And one of the ways I learned this in a practical way, was flying with Vegas, my buddy Jim Kelly, and it was one of my first flights. I probably had two hours, maybe two flights in the airplane, the T-38.

Vegas had thousands of hours. He was a military pilot flew combat in the Air Force, flew F-16s. He said 3,800 hours. 3,800 hours, yeah. He was an F-15 pilot, flew the Eagle, I remember saying. And, yeah, 30, okay, that number is correct. Then 3,800 hours in high-performance jets as a combat. pilot and as a test pilot.

He was one of the best pilots. He was a young guy too. I think my age or maybe younger. We were kind of on the young side. So he had accumulated all this in a fairly short amount of time. And great guy, you know, wonderful personality, good friend still is. And we get in the airplane and we were going flying together. It was going to be an out and back.

We were going to go to San Antonio, hang out for a little bit, and then come back at night because he needed to get nighttime. That's part of the deal. needed to get a night flight in. So he went there toward it at the end of our day. You know, it was a great flight out there. We were talking and he was teaching me stuff and it was great. And then it becomes nighttime. And at nighttime, I think, just in general, it just gets your, you guess it's not scary, but you just don't see what's going on as well as you did in the daytime. You got to be more vigilant at things, you know, just in general, walking around town,

driving a car, whatever you're doing. Nighttime, I think, is you need a heightened awareness because you don't see as well and you're kind of tired and, you know, you know, It's the end of the day or whatever. So we're ready to come back and we get a clearance. And my job was to kind of write stuff down and put it in the flight computer. And the tower gave us a heading out of El Paso. They got your initial heading. Say it was like maybe 1-80 was going to be our initial heading.

So I write that down and put it in the flight computer. And we taxi to the runway now. So there's a few minutes between being at the base ops going through the taxiways, it's through his field and getting out to the runway. By the time we got to the runway and we got our true. final clearance from this guy. So I cleared for takeoff, turn 1-360, a different heading than what we had than the initial, you know,

climb to 10,000 cleared for take-off. So I changed the heading. And as we're rolling down the runway, he lights the afterburner and get off the ground and he raises the gear. We're going really fast. And he starts turning toward the old heading of 1-80. And I see him doing this.

And I know that the guy just said 360, and I put that in the computer. And I'm like, what the hell do I know? I don't want to say. I mean, this guy is like one of the greatest pilots in our country. I don't even know how to get inside of the airplane without help. I guess he knows what he's doing. I'm just going to shut up.

Well, a few seconds after that, the tower comes over the com, over the radio and says, you know, NASA 911, turn right now, hard right now. So Vegas takes the airport. and zips it to, makes it hard right bank. And he's like, what the hell was that? What it happened was, is that another aircraft that showed up in the time that we took to get to the runway. And we were headed toward that aircraft with that initial heading.

We almost had a midair with another airplane. A midair collision? Yeah. Because we were headed. He was coming in and we were headed right toward him with that old heading. That's why they changed the heading. And that's why this controller, the tower guy came on, right, you know, immediate. And it's rare that they'll scare you.

like that, but it's time to go. So he made this quick turn and we avoided the other aircraft, but he was like, holy cow, he goes, what was that all about? Because did he change our heading? You know, and I go, yeah, it's right there in the flight computer. He goes, he's like, you heard him change it. You saw me go in the wrong direction and you didn't say anything. Now, I can't see him. I can only see the back of his head because the aircraft was a front and back. So you have the pilot and command that's in front. I'm behind him. I can see the back of his head. I can't see his face, but I can hear him. And he's like, you knew that, and you saw me do that. You didn't say anything. And I was like, no, I thought you knew what you were doing. That's what I said to this guy. That was it.

It was no more conversation. There was no, no chit-chat, no what's going on with the football game this weekend, nothing. We came back and we just communicated to complete the mission, complete that flight. And when we landed, we get out of the jet, I get down the ladder. And I was like, okay, maybe we won't be talking about this, hopefully. I get out of the ladder. And now I, I he's right in my face. Not in a mean way at all. You know, it's still my buddy. He's still my colleague.

And he just says, Mass, one thing you need, before we got out of the air, you know, right next to the airplane, this could not wait until after we took a pee. It was going to be like right now. It's like, mass, number one thing you have to learn from tonight

is that when you see something, you need to speak up. We almost got killed tonight because I went in the wrong direction and that's on me. And he said, that's my bad. But you didn't speak up. and that almost got us killed as well.

You almost got us killed for not speaking up, and you can't ever do that again. Speak up. Even if you're wrong, I will tell you you're wrong, but I will always thank you for speaking up. You have to speak up. And he was being really serious about this because we got away with one.

And maybe next time I'd be with someone else, and we wouldn't. And I got that message loud and clear. And then that, I think, is a good lesson for everyone to hear. You may not be life-threatening, but it's important to speak up. It could be something that deals with the product that you're making or the company you're working for or whatever you're trying to accomplish and you're a new person coming in there and you're seeing something that doesn't seem quite right. And everyone else has already assimilated this into, you know, that this is going to be normal.

I don't know. Maybe one out of a thousand times the guy changes your heading on the runway. You know, it's really rare that that happens as I turned out. The guy, you know, they're not making his stuff up. There's a reason why you're going in that direction and it's rare that they'll change it at the last second. And maybe me as a new guy, I'm actually paying attention the whole time. And Vegas is like, I'd heard 1-80, 10 minutes ago. It hasn't changed.

So you don't know why. And you need to speak up when those things happen. And that was a lesson I learned and put into practice from then on. I got away with it the first time. And I was never going to let that happen again. Wow. So a couple of lessons. One is that lesson of take the long shot try.

Yeah. One is the lesson of teamwork. Nobody leaves the swimming. pool until we all pass. Yep. And then another is that lesson of speak up, otherwise you might have a mid-air collision. Yeah, yeah. We know you love the thought of a vacation to Europe, but this time, why not look a little further?

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Trusting yourself, trusting your training, trusting your team, trusting your gear. To kind of talk about this, tell us about February 1st, 2003. Yeah, so that was when we lost the space shuttle

Columbia Space Shuttle and crew and that was a bad that was a bad day it's worst day of my life pretty much we where were you when you got the oh I was uh so that morning that Saturday I was with my my son Daniel's how old is he he was seven years old so we were at the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby race that morning we were heading into the into the school for that race into his elementary school. And one of the parents saw me, he says, have you heard anything? I'm like, heard anything about what?

And he said, he goes, Dan, why don't you go inside your dad will meet you? And so what happened? He goes, they lost the shuttle, they think. It lost communication. So I immediately called my friend Steve Smith and on the phone. I think it was the only number I knew by heart.

Because back then, I don't know what kind of cell phones we had, but I called Steve up and I was like, he's like, what's going on, Mike? I go, turn your TV on a CNN or something like that, and tell me what you're looking at. And he's looking and he's like, and he started, you know, like saying things I can't really say on your air. Like, you know, like, holy cow, right? And I go, he goes, he goes, it doesn't look good here. I go, what do we do?

He goes, he goes, go to work. We all got to go into it. We got to go to the office. And so that's what we did. We all congregated there. And what had happened is that we lost the shuttle. They had taken damage on Ascent when they launched. We didn't know.

No one knew that. I mean, they knew they got hit by a people. of debris but it put a hole in a wing and that we weren't aware of and and the crew wasn't aware of. There's no way to inspect the vehicle and they couldn't repair it even if there was and it's like one of these things you do it a thousand times and it's okay and then a thousand and one it's not and the external tank of the shuttle debris had been flying off of it and hitting the space shuttle it's a big the big tank where the fuel was for the for the main engines and it never caused a problem before so like ah it's probably okay but it wasn't this time this was

the one time when it wasn't. And so when they tried to reenter, they had a hole in a spaceship that they didn't know about. When you come in and slow down in the friction in the atmosphere, it builds up a lot of heat, like 5,000 degrees worth of heat. And that entered the wing and took it off and we lost the shuttle and the crew. So that's what ended up we found in the investigation. Did you leave your son at the Cub Scout thing? Yeah, I did. I got one on the parents to watch them. And I said, Dan, I got to go. And then you drove straight to work. And figured out what was going on, went into work, found out what was happening, and it was really chaotic. But the first thing that we needed to do was take care of the families, because they were coming back from the Cape, and I knew them

really well. So I went to meet them and see what I could do to help with them. And people did different things, whatever they, whatever, everyone had assignment to do that day and moving forward. And then we had to figure out how we were going to fly the spaceship again was the other thing, and how we were going to build up that trust. Because when you do things, when you mention trust, When you do something that's kind of scary, the only way I found I could do that was to trust different things, trust the gear that I was going to work with, the space shuttle is going to work, trust my training. A lot of times we think that we're not ready for something, but you're not.

You're not set up for failure when you're given an assignment. You have to trust whatever got you there. Your name wasn't picked out of a hat. That was a tough one for me to learn that, no, I am ready to fly in space. You also, they wouldn't let me. They're not doing this because I won a contest. I'm the person that's supposed to do this. Willie Wonka.

Yeah, right, exactly. My name wasn't picked out of a hat here, you know. But that's something I think we need to remember, no matter what it is when we're scared about stuff or nervous about things, and entrust your team. And trust yourself as well. Your team is with you and trust yourself to execute the plan. And so it was a lot of trust.

And all of a sudden like, well, how do we trust anything anymore because this thing's gone? And the way we rebuilt that trust was by doing a thorough investigation where nothing was covered up, everything was honestly exposed, we all felt like complete idiots because there were things that we had thought were safe that weren't

and not even what happened with that debris, but even the way we approached entry of how the importance of, we thought entry was easy. We were worried about on Ascent, that's where you lost people, that's where things blow up with the engine running. Coming back from a space mission on the shuttle, there's no

fuel left, you're just gliding back, I mean, you first have to use your engines to maneuver, but after that it's a glider coming home and there's no fire there, you know, there's no active fuel there. What could happen? And that's what happened. And it made us all feel like idiots. There was plenty of blame to go around. But what got restored the trust was how everyone reacted to it. No one was trying to cover it up. No one was saying it's that person's fault, not mine. Everyone was fully engaged with trying to find out what had happened

and making sure it wasn't going to go again. And so the next flight, we were, the first flight up there, we were pretty sure that was going to work well. And that we were going to be able to fly out the program safely, and we did. So we had to rebuild that trust. So trust allows you to do things. Sometimes things don't go well, but it's no time to point fingers

and throw people under the bus. And I'm really proud the way that we reacted to it. We came together as a team. You find out what your team is like when you experience disappointment, tragedy, bad times. When things are going well, you high five, everything's great. But what happens when things don't go well? Do you retreat?

Do you give up? Do you say it's your fault, not much? or do you come together to fix the problem? And that's what we did. And I'm really proud. I would never want to go through that accident again, but I'm really proud of the way we reacted to it to get flying again. What advice would you have for anyone who's listening to this, who's having a hard time trusting, either trusting their team or trusting themselves? Yeah. I think you have to, for me, what it was is have to believe that if you can't trust yourself, that's not good. So look at your trust in other areas like I would trust for the space shuttle I was nervous at first

you know going on the space shuttle the thing that gave me the courage to to do that it's kind of scary looking up at the spaceship when the time when the day comes arrives like ooh this looks kind of scary maybe this wasn't such a good idea but I just thought that this this spaceship's ready to go a lot of people have checked that I'm going to trust that machine I'm going to trust my space suit when I'm spacewalking I'm going to trust my tools my tether and I'm going to trust my training. You know, for me, I felt the reason I was kind of worried going into my first flight was I felt I wasn't, how do I know if I'm ready? I'm never flown in space before. But I was pulled aside. I think people could suspect that and I think it's pretty common. But I was pulled aside to be

told that, you know, we have full confidence in you. You've shown that you're fully capable and you're not really a rookie, is what I was told. You're ready to go just like any of the veterans. And I knew I needed to accept that. You have to accept that because you have to. to do your job and you have to have the trust that you are ready to go or else it could affect your performance and can mess up the whole thing. So you want to have trust that you're trained well and you're trained and ready to execute the plan. How do you square that though with those moments that I think all of us inevitably face when we disappoint ourselves? You know, you're like, I want to trust myself, but I once completely got tangled up in my tether. That's absolutely.

Yep. Right. Yeah. At the, where were you? The International Space Station and you like, We were practicing there. That was a practice run with the tether snow. It never happened in orbit, luckily. But yeah, for things like that, when you mess things up, I think that you're going to make mistakes. And no one wants to make mistakes. So the issue, I think, is learning how to deal with those mistakes. So when you do make a mistake, it's okay to be disappointed in yourself, but you have to cap it.

Give yourself 30 seconds of regret, beat yourself up internally. Man, it was a dumbest mistake I've ever made. I can't believe I'm the stupidest astronaut ever, whatever it might be. And after 30 seconds, let it go and move on. And don't repeat that mistake. Try not to repeat it, but leave it in the past and move forward. Don't dwell on it because if you dwell on your mistakes, you're just, you're living in misery. And you're not going to be a functioning person.

At least that's the way I was. Before I learned how to deal with my mistakes, I would ruminate over them. sometimes for days. I can't believe I did that. When I fell my qualifying exam, it was like a week of misery. You know, what was me? That's not helpful.

That week goes by, you don't get those days back in life. They're gone. So you need to figure out a way to leave it in the past, but I do think it's okay to be mad at yourself and to be regretful and remorseful

and call yourself an idiot. But keep it to 30 seconds and just get rid of it and then let's move on and move forward. And then the other thing, when you make a mistake, what I learned with that tether snarl because I got myself tangled in my tether and at first it wasn't so bad. So the tether's there to keep you so you don't float off into the sun and become a satellite.

Something happens. Very important. Really important piece of equipment, but it's also a hazard because it's this wire that's always with you. And so you can get wrapped around your legs, which is what happened to me. And that's fairly common, especially when you're learning. But I didn't want anyone to notice. So I'm like, okay, let me try to fix this on my own and maybe no one will ever notice. or my training this was.

The next thing you know, it's like going around my back, down my backpack around my head. And there's no way I'm getting this thing out. And I had created a really bad problem. And so that's where I learned this, what we call Hoot's Law. Hout Gibson came up with this. Hout was a former chief of the astronaut office

and a very talented pilot. And his motto, Hoot's Law, was, you could always make it worse. No matter how bad you've messed up, you need to remember, you can make it worse. and oftentimes we make a mistake and we're like, oh, man, I'm going to make up for it. No one will notice.

I'm going to rush now. No, no, no, no. Just take a beat here and don't make it worse. And you can actually think about how it can make this worse. Like in the tether situation, okay, I've got to snarl around my leg. If I move too quickly and I don't get help and I make it worse, then the snarl is going to be around my head. Or I'm going to somehow damage my tether or my spacesuit or I'm going to lose something or I'm going to lose. You know, let's not let any of that happen.

Let's just deal with this problem. Let's recruit help. Let's get a second set of eyes on it. Let's slow down and take it easy for a minute here before we make things worse. And those are my two reactions. Whenever I made mistakes, it was, all right, I'm going to give myself, it's okay to be upset with myself, but I'm going to cap it at 30 seconds and then work toward the solution, not wallowing the misery. And I'm not going to make this worse.

I'm not going to create a problem B for us to fix before we can get back to problem A, because problem A is bad enough. Right. So in order to take that beat, you've got a saying it's go slow like Jolo Piccolo. So Jola Piccolo is a family friend who could fix anything because he went slow. He took his time and could fix anything. And he was famous for this. He would take a long time, but he wouldn't break anything.

If he did break something, he would slow down even more. When I got to NASA, I would hear this as well as go slow, slow down. slow down especially when you make a mistake you go slow to speed up you know the idea was don't rush don't do something you're going to regret take your time get a second set of eyes you know especially when something goes wrong you know just and so he kept saying go slow and i blurt it out one time in our training and after we were getting debriefed i mean go slow like jolla piccolo i couldn't help myself any longer and they go what and they explained the story it became like a theme they goes exactly right and Jola Piccolo became somewhat of a celebrity in our training team.

But yes, go slow. Think of Jola Piccolo when something goes wrong. And how do you square that? You know, with something like spacewalking, the goal, as I understand it, is to shave minutes off of the spacewalk. Right. So how do you square, hey, here's this thing that we want that we're doing, where we want to shave minutes off of the length of time that we're doing it.

How do you square that with going slow? I know if it's the story of the hair and the tortoise, you know, the slow and steady wins the race. but what we found remarkably enough was that if you try to speed up by moving more quickly, I mean sometimes you have to make haste

if you're being chased now if you're being chased by something or whatever, you know, you got to run you got to go, right? But you can't really think about it. I don't know if that even makes sense if you're being you know, if a wild dog is after you you might want to not do, I'm going to go slow here.

I mean, that's that. There are maybe times we need to go quickly But what we found in what was what I was taught in this world that I entered at NASA, and what I discovered on my own is that what we really mean is move with purpose, think before you act. One bad mistake can cost you 10 times the amount of time of what you do by going slow. And when we were, especially for things that had a high consequence or that you could make an error, particularly maybe when you're fatigued toward the end of the day or when it's high pressure or whatever it might be that's going on, that's the time to take a beat and go slowly.

Because if you rush to do something, you might do something incorrectly, make a mistake, break something that's going to set you back a lot more than just a couple seconds. And so it was just as you're saying, my first reaction was, ah, that's nonsense, you've got to move quickly. You don't save time by trying to go fast. You save time actually by trying to go slow and deliberate and executing at the right pace. Because once you start rushing, that's when you start missing things.

And in the work we were doing, you couldn't afford to miss things or miss a step because you're going to pay for that later. So as counterintuitive as that might be, slow and steady does win the race. And I think that that's the way it is with most things. once we start rushing, especially if we're driving in a car and we're trying to rush, that doesn't work.

That's when you start making wrong turns. God forbid you're getting an accident. But now a sudden you're in the wrong street and like, oh, man, I was rushing to get there. And now I don't know where I am. And now you just lost 10 minutes because you're in a hurry. And now you don't want to do anything that might slow you down even longer by doing something with the car or God forbid getting in an accident or whatever it might be.

That's the time to slow down. And we tend to feel rushed at things. But we've got to be really careful of taking it too fast because that's where you could start making mistakes that you'll regret. I think that goes to decision-making and sending out that email that you might regret sending out. Don't be quick to the draw here. You know, let's take a beat when something goes wrong or when we're not feeling good about

stuff. Just give it a moment. Recruit some help. Slow down. It'll save you time in the end. So we've talked about the importance of teamwork. We've talked about taking the... the long shot, the moon shot tribe.

We've talked about the importance of speaking up, about the importance of trusting your team and yourself, the importance of going slow. The last lesson of the many that you outline, the last lesson that I want to cover is the importance of staying amazed. Yeah. Why?

Why? Sometimes you can get bogged down in the details of your life. And even as an astronaut, as exciting as that sounds, it was a job. It really was. It was a lot of hard training and working hard and things that were sometimes scary and dangerous and time away from home and missed holidays. We're coming up on Thanksgiving. I missed more than one Thanksgiving with my family because I was doing something at work that I needed to do, working in a control center, working shifts for flights that were up. it's not always a bowl of cherries.

And I think that that's the way it is for most of us. Even, you know, we think that sometimes there are glamorous jobs out there. A job is a job. And I think there's always those good elements and there's always those tough parts to it too. And I think we need to take time out to remember how amazing it is that we're here in the first place. And it hit me on my very first spaceflight, on my second spacewalk, looking at our planet and realizing how beautiful it is from that perspective. perspective. And it's still beautiful down here on Earth. In fact, it's more beautiful engaging it on Earth, but you don't see it in its full glory unless you're in space, I think. I think it was meant to be seen from space. And you see this beautiful place that I thought looked like heaven to me. I can't imagine any place being more beautiful than our planet. But you can't go to space all the time to see it. I can't, but I can engage it here on Earth. I can see the beauty of if you're out in a remote area, of the or the ocean or the clouds above you or the stars at night, but even in the city, just the

buildings around us, the faces of people in the subway if we're riding around New York City, there's a certain tempo to it, there's a beauty to it. It's amazing that we're all here. It's a very fragile place we have, our planet. Our atmosphere is very thin. You see that in space. If you look at a picture, it's just a thin blue line above the planet. If you think of the earth as an onion, the top thin layer of the onion is the size relationship between the atmosphere and the rest of our planet. And we've checked out the neighborhood. We've got nowhere else to go. We have to make this planet work. We have to take care of it. And it's amazing that we're here. It's been here for a long time. Going through a sunrise in space, you go from darkness into

sunlight. And if you look out, it was on one of my spacewalks, looking down at the planet, you see the line that separates night and day. On the left, it's dark. On the right, side, it's light. And there's a very distinct line that we call it the Terminator that separates that. And that line is moving across our planet. It's moving across our planet right now. But we don't think of it that way because we see the sun rising in the morning or going down at night if we're lucky to catch that. That's not what's really happening. It's our planet is rotating toward the sun and away from it depending on where you are. And so we see that line moving and I could see the rotation of our planet and it's a very steady motion. And I got the

sense of permanence was the word that came to my mind because it's been going on for billions of years and it's going to go on for much longer. Billions of years after each one of us who are alive today are gone. Our time is now to be a part of this. And I think we need to do our best to try to enjoy it as much as we can. Hand the baton on to our children so that they can continue to make this place. make this planet a better place, but we should try to appreciate it as much as we can. So just the fact that we are here, the miracle that we are here, I think is enough to be amazing.

Look out the window once in a while. If you can, get outside, look around. Even if it's raining, we don't get rain in space. That's a miracle, too, I think. We don't have breezes or temperature changes, but not the cool breeze or the warm sun that you feel when you're out there in a park. You don't, you feel it, but you feel it in a different way through your spaceship. So you don't get the, there's wondrous things that we have down here on the planet. And I think we need to be amazed every day and try to take that time out to realize how lucky we are to be here in the first place.

That view of the Earth from space, did it ever get old? No. It's different every time. You see things that are just extraordinary. The clouds, the storms, the thunderstorms at night, the stars in the sky that you see. It's the best planetarium I've ever been in because you're above the atmosphere. And all the stars are perfect points of light. Seeing the sun and a black sky, it doesn't get old.

But it does end. You only get to do that for a certain number of days. Even if you're my colleague Peggy Whitson, who has 675 days in space. That's a long time. But that's kind of small compared to how many days she's been alive, right? She's about my age. She's been spent most of her time on the planet. I think what it truly does is allow you to engage the planet in a different

way and with a different perspective and appreciation for what we have. And it also is a planet that we all share. My concept of home has changed. When I think of home, I used to think of my town of Franklin Square or New York or the United States as I got older and I'll always be from those places. But I think of myself now as a citizen of Earth. That's where we're all from. It's a place we all share.

And I think, especially when we run into tough days, we should try to remember that, just how lucky we are just to be here. Two last questions. I realize the next one that I'm about to ask could be a very long answer. I'll try to keep it short then. That's on me. Do you think we'll ever be multi-planetary

and do you think that's a good idea? Like we'll live somewhere else? Yeah. Like Mars. I think Mars is a place for exploration. I think we can learn a lot about our solar system and about our planet going to Mars.

It's not a trip to the Caribbean though. This is not like, oh, this is a nicer place to go. going to Disney World here. It's going to be really interesting, but it's going, it's very in us inhospitable there. We can't. Do you see us terraforming it? Like Elon's plan to bring a million people there and terraforming? I don't know about a million. I think we'll start off with a couple at first, but I think eventually, I think the reason to go there is to study and to, uh, to do things that will help our planet here. I don't think we're ever going to be leaving Earth. I think we have to, I think our exploration is really about preserving the Earth. If we can find energy sources,

other places, if we can understand how to better take care of our planet, if we can do some of the polluting somewhere else and keep Earth as pristine as possible, the most unhospitable environment on planet Earth would be a paradise on Mars. It's not an easy place to live. This is why we haven't been there yet with people. We haven't been back to the moon in 50 years. It's not so easy to live there either, but at least you're closer to home. If you have trouble, you can get back, and your communication is only about a second and a half. you can get help from the control center. But Mars is really far away.

So I don't think it's going to be that easy. I do think we'll be there. But I don't think we're ever going to give up this place. I mean, this place is a paradise. And I think we need to take better care of it. And I think going to Mars will allow us to do that. And exploring space will allow us to do that. But we're going to have to figure out a way to live there.

It's going to be pretty challenging. And speaking of visiting, that leads perfectly to my next question, which is, you know, Blue Origin, you know, all the SpaceX now that we've got these private companies that may be going into space tourism. Do you see that as, is that the next frontier? Is that the future? And is that something that appeals to you? Like for me to go as a tourist?

No, or for humans generally, for our society generally. No, I think it's perfectly fine. I don't think it's the whole part of the future. I think it's, you know, people want to go to space to experience it. and look out the window and look at the planet and float around a little bit. I think that that's great as a tourist location, sure. So I think people can still learn and experience it that way. I think that that's great.

But I also think that it's getting more people to space also leads to more research opportunities to learn about our planet. My students at Columbia have flown two experiments in space, and that's a result of the privatization. It opens up more opportunities. One of their experiments flew on a blue origin vehicle a couple of years ago, and more recently, they flew an experiment up on a spacecraft to the space station. It was on the experiment was on the space station for a couple of months, and then returned back to Earth for analysis.

So it was a biomedical experiment. So our students, researchers, entrepreneurs have more access to space. And I think what's great about the commercialization of it, that it's, it's not just NASA going anymore. It's private citizens or companies or people with good ideas now can access space and use microgravity or whatever else, mining an asteroid or some process they want to try out on Mars

or that's further down the road or the moon maybe. That's all open now. And we couldn't do that before. It was just NASA going for reasons that a government would go for exploration and hopefully turning it over to private enterprise. And that's what we're seeing now. that a lot of space operations are being turned over to these commercial companies.

So I think the tourism thing's kind of cool. You're going to experience it, bring that story home, tell people about it, share your pictures. It's going to allow more people to go with a real purpose, too. And I think tourism is a, you know, to experience that, I think, is a real purpose. But I think also in the areas of research or doing work, to go the route I took was not easy, right? It's not going to get any easier. It's still years of trying to get to. in and then you get there and it's going to be years of training before you get to go.

A lot of people don't have that much time, right? They're involved whatever they're doing on the planet here and maybe they want to try out a new manufacturing process or maybe they want to try out some sort of new technology that can only be made in space or whatever it is that they want to do. They now have the opportunities to do those things without having to spend 20 years to get there. They can hopefully get a chance to go with relatively little. training because these spaceships are highly automated to get there, do their stuff, and then come back

and not have it as a career. I wanted to be part of that team. And that's what I share in the book is the lessons I learned that that helped me achieve my moonshot. But a lot of people, if they want to go to space and don't want to be a NASA astronaut, they can do that, or if they want to try out their technology, there's different ways to do that now that were not available just a few years ago. So I think that it's, all of that is part of the future and the commercialization of it, whether it's tourism or manufacturing or whatever, making movies, who knows what people are going to be doing, I think that's where the future is. The first movie shot in space. The first movie shot of space. And you were, we never even talked about you. You're a TV star too.

Not about a star, but you were on the Big Bang theory. I was on the Big Bang theory, though, yeah. When NASA called you about it, they said, have you heard of the Big Bang theory? Yeah. And at first I thought they were talking about the theory. itself, you know, and like, no, the TV show, go, yeah, of course I've heard of it. Oh, yeah, what about it? But, yeah, I didn't, I wasn't, I wasn't very, I was familiar with the show, but, but I became more familiar with it and a really great group of people. So, yeah.

Nice. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. You bet. Thanks, Paula. Are there any final lessons that you want to impart to everyone listening about how they can take their moonshot? For me, becoming an astronaut seemed like an unreachable goal. And I don't know what the stereotypical astronaut is,

but it's not what people think, I think, in any regard of, we have this idea of what, you know, a successful actress or actor or entrepreneur or astronaut might be, and they're just regular people who don't give up and don't let failure stop them and have a passion for something and work hard at it and surround themselves with a good team and our good teammates. These are qualities, I think, that are important for success for anyone.

And there was nothing special about me. I learned these things. Some of them were, I was driven, I think, by my passion to want to be a part of the space program. And that was important to get me to that opportunity. And then these things I learned in teamwork and leadership and perseverance and dealing with mistakes. and speaking up this guidebook that I've accumulated over those years, I hope can be helpful to people. Because if I can do it, so can you.

That's what I want people to remember. There's nothing special about me or anyone else who's successful. There are things that we've learned along the way that helped, and hopefully now these things are, at least from what I've learned, are available to you to help whatever that moonshot is or developing that moonshot, I hope they keep that in mind that they can do it as well. Thank you so much for spending time with us. Where can people find your book if they want to read it?

It's available just about any place. Whenever you buy your book, the neighborhood bookstores are always good places to go to. Let's start there if you can. But order on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or whatever book seller you use, it's everywhere. You can also go to my website, MacMasamino.com. If you want to get a hold of me, there's a way to do that. There's also a way to order the book there as well. That'll send you to different booksellers if you want to, if you want to go that route. And I also am active on social media, the first guy to tweet from space.

You were the first guy to tweet from space? It was the first guy to tweet from space. Take that in your alarm strong. Wow. So there you go. I got that going for me. So you can follow me on social media as well. But the book is available everywhere. So if you think it might be helpful, and I hope it will be helpful to you. We'll pick up a copy. What was the first tweet from space? Yeah, I was given advice by Neil Armstrong

not to think about it, because I asked him how he came up, what he said on the moon, and, you know, one small step for mankind, one small step for man, one giant leaf for mankind, and so when I first met him, I asked him how he came up with that. You know, did his wife tell him to say that, or whatever? And he said, he told me he didn't think about it until after he landed on the moon. And I was like, really? And I was a brand new action. I met him my first week at

NASA, and he said, Mike, if I didn't land on the moon, there'd be no reason to say anything. I was worried about landing on the moon. I wasn't worried about what I was going to say. And then he said, you know, Mike, you got to, you can't, there's a lot of distractions in this world you've entered with this astronaut business. And you're new to this, but you've got to stick to your job

first. Don't worry about that other stuff. Do your job and worry about that other stuff later. And I was like, okay. And so I was asked by the press on our last press conference what I was going to tweet and I channeled the alarm strong and said, I'm not worried about that. We've got to get the space first. I'll worry about that after we get there.

So we get to space and I open up the computer, I'm ready to send this tweet. I hadn't thought about it. And I couldn't think of a thing. And I started thinking, he must have lied to me. There's no way this dude stepped on the moon and came up with that. I'm just floating around a couple hundred miles above the planet, and I can't think of anything. When I wanted to write, Paula, it was curse you, Neil Armstrong. It's like, this guy lied to me.

He set me up here. And so I just wrote, launch was awesome. The Adventure of a Lifetime Has Begone or something like that. So I sent that out on Monday. On Saturday I get made fun of on Saturday night live. Seth Myers is doing weekend update. And I didn't know this. I found out about this later, because I'm busy in space, right?

But he says, we have the first tweet from space. Mike Massimino, here it is. Launch was awesome. In 40 years, we've gone from one giant leap for mankind to launch was awesome. So he let that one sit for a moment. Like, you're laughing here and what the audience was doing. Then he continues and says, I assume if we're ever to discover life in the universe, this is how it'll be notified.

And it shows my little Twitter thing, and he says, it says, geez, dudes, aliens. So that was that. And I didn't know this was going on. But my kids were 13 and 15 at the time. And so that was on Saturday. On Sunday, they go to school, of course, you know, and I get email from them after school. And I sent me an email. And this was that, the spacewalks were over. I go over to see what they had to tell me. And this is how I found out about this Saturday Night Live. Then he said, Dad, they made fun of you on Saturday Night Live. All the kids at school loved it.

Keep up the good work. You know, and I was like, okay, great. Finally, I was getting a little street cred here. Not for anything I did in space, but for the getting made fun of it on Saturday Night Live. There you go. So you can find me on Twitter, X, Instagram, Facebook as well. But the book's available anywhere. Oh, well, thank you.

Well, the book was awesome. And this interview was awesome. Thanks, Paula. What three key takeaways did we get from this conversation? Number one, there are many misconceptions about what it takes for somebody to succeed. Often, we believe that what it takes for someone to succeed is some type of innate characteristic or ability. We think that people are naturally gifted, naturally talented, born brilliant. born brilliant. In reality, Mike shares with us that what it takes to succeed is persistence,

grit, doggedness, tenacity. It requires not giving up. But you don't necessarily have to be the smartest kid in class. In fact, your fourth grade teacher might have thought you were kind of average. Anything you're trying to do that's new. If you're trying to do, that's new. If you're trying to to learn something, if you try to do something with your family, if you're trying to accomplish something as a parent or something at work, if it's something that's challenging, don't expect it to be easy. There's a reason why things are hard. Not everybody does them, and not everybody can do everything. And people that do, it's not like they're super talented, but they just stick to it. And they try to forge on when they get hit with difficulties. Successful people and not those that don't fail.

They are those that don't let failure stop them. If you never try, your chances are zero. If you try, your chances are greater than zero. They may not be great, but they are at least better than zero. One-have-a-millions-n-zero outcome. As soon as you give up, that becomes zero. Key takeaway number two. Mike shares the story of how not speaking up, even though he was the rookie,

Not speaking up nearly cost him his life. Now, most of us are not going to face consequences that dire when we fail to speak up, but it doesn't change the fact that failing to speak up, failing to advocate for yourself or for an idea, for something that you believe is in the best interest of your team, your organization, your mission, failing to speak up has consequences and everyone, even rookies, should pipe up when they see something or when they sense that something is wrong. A lot of times when you're new at something and you're, especially when you're working with someone who's very experienced, we tend to not say anything.

It's okay if you're doing that to learn, but it's important for you to say things when you're the new person. And we were always encouraged to speak up because you're not kind of sucked in. to the usual way of doing things and your intent your intent might be up a little bit more and that goes for a new idea something that might be a problem identifying it with a different perspective that is the second key takeaway finally key takeaway number three there are times when we are tempted to let our failures or setbacks derail us mike walks us through how to deal with a disappointment without letting it derail us.

When you do make a mistake, it's okay to be disappointed in yourself, but you have to cap it. Give yourself 30 seconds of regret, beat yourself up internally. Man, I was a dumbest mistake I've ever made. I can't believe I'm the stupidest astronaut ever, whatever it might be. And after 30 seconds, let it go and move on and don't repeat that mistake. Try not to repeat it, but leave it in the past. and move forward. Don't dwell on it because if you dwell on your mistakes, you're just, you're

living in misery and you're not going to be a functioning person, at least that's the way I was. Before I learned how to deal with my mistakes, I would ruminate over them, sometimes for days. I can't believe I did that. When I fell my qualifying exam, it was like a week of misery, you know, what was me? That's not helpful. That week goes by, you don't get those days back in life. They're gone. So you need to figure out a way to leave it in the past, but I do think it's okay to be mad at yourself. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, who was also on the Big Bank Theory. Thank you so much for tuning in.

This has been one of the most special episodes that we have created ever. Those of you who are listening to this through audio, please go to our YouTube channel. and watch this one. It is absolutely incredible to watch. Mike is so wonderful, so absolutely wonderful. So YouTube.com slash Afford Anything. And for those of you who are on YouTube right now, hello, hi, please drop a comment below.

Let us know what you thought. I'll be reading every single one of these. Thank you so much for being part of the Afford Anything community. Make sure that you are subscribed to this podcast on YouTube. Make sure that you are subscribed to the show, which you can get for free by going to afford anything.com slash show notes. And most importantly, share this with a friend, share it with a neighbor, a colleague, a family member with someone you love, someone you kind of like, someone you sort of tolerate,

someone you dislike, share it with everybody because that is how we spread these positive, uplifting messages of how you can take your moonshot. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is the Afford Anything podcast. My name is Paula Pan, and I will catch you in the next episode.