Green Light with Chris Long - Leland Melvin! NASA Astronaut on Time in the Space Station, NFL Career & Fighting in Space.

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

(2:15) - Leland Melvin on the Impact of the Moon Landing on his Youth, His Football Career and Becoming an Astronaut.  (11:00) - Privatization of Space Travel and Life on the International Space Station. (30:15) - Space and Faith, and Confidence in Space Movies. (42:15) - Going #2 in Space. (54:30) - Potential Life in Space. Green Light Spotify Music: https://open.spotify.com/user/951jyryv2nu6l4iqz9p81him9?si=17c560d10ff04a9b Spotify Layup Line: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1olmCMKGMEyWwOKaT1Aah3?si=675d445ddb824c42 Green Light Tube YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/GreenLightTube1 Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. https://www.greenlightpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Download the app, bet big, win bigger. And I got to tell you, I really like the sound of that. And with win bet, it's just that easy. Win bet has what you need to win. So if you're from Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, or right here in Virginia, sign up today to receive this special offer. New users can take advantage of win bets, bet $50 to win $200. Just bet $50 and win $200 in free bets.

download the win bet app now or visit w-n-n-n-n-b-t-com. Download the app, bet big, and win bigger. Let's get after it. Terms and conditions apply. It must be 21 or older and present in a state where win-bet is available. Gambling problem in Arizona, call 1-800 next step. In Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, and Virginia call 1-800-Gambler. And in Michigan, 1-800-2-7-1-17-8-9.

Tennessee, y'all, 2. 1-800-9-9-7-89. Welcome to the Green Light podcast. Today we have a real-life NASA astronaut in Studio J. That's right. Leland Melvin stops by. He's going to talk to Chris about traveling to space. His NASA career, how he started off playing football and transition to an astronaut, how space exploration will impact our future, the privatization of space travel, and the important questions like, how do you take a number two in space? How do you eat in space?

can you fight in space? So lock in your helmets, enjoy the show, and please have a great day. So one of the first things we ever did in this studio was we did a Halloween pot and I was an astronaut, Cowboy Reed. Do you remember that a couple years ago? That's right. We had two astronaut uniforms for you

and the best was you pulled your visor up and you were just breathing into the mic. Yes, I was breathing into the microphone. Was it an orange pumpkin? suit or white the white suit i had the white one and i had the orange one the orange one um what do they call that the rise on the pants was too high so i couldn't get the pants on which is a problem because it's all one suit issues yeah dude okay so i got a real astronaut in here today for the first time i was joking with leeland melvin uh who joins us in studio which is awesome um good to be here man yeah man it's good

it's good to have you it's been four years in the making i know right since our on stage panel at University of Virginia. Can I tell you something, man, I feel out class a lot in my life, but when I showed up and they were like, hey, you're going to talk with a few people today about, I don't even remember what we were talking about, honestly, but I was just so shell-shocked by the resumes of the people on the stage, including yourself who- Everyone has on red underwear, man. It doesn't matter, you know. The first is actually mine's yellow. Mine's yellow. Oh, really? Yeah. Thanks for sharing that, yeah. For a problem. I appreciate it. I'm breaking the ice. But this is the first astronaut, needless to say we've had in Studio J, as we call it.

And we were talking offline. Is there one personality trait or one skill set? You know, because we were talking about kids in school, you know, that dictates whether or not you can become an astronaut. Yeah. I think the main personality trait is the same personality trait to be a ballplayer. It's that you put the work in and you do it. I mean, it's that mindset that I'm capable of doing anything, right?

Right. And we had a guy, John Harrington, the first Native American astronaut who was in college. He was flunking out. He had like a D-minus average. And he just wanted to hike and go up on mountains. And he was with his surveyor. And his surveyor said, dude, you're a smart guy. What are you doing up here? And just need that one guy to reset him. He graduated from college, went to the military and flew in space two times. So someone with a D-minus average becoming an astronaut. You don't see that. You don't see that. you don't hear that, right? Yeah. And it's possible if you get someone that says that you have access, opportunity, and belief in yourself. Yeah. That's the same thing with all. As it with anything, right?

Yeah. You got at some point believe that you were capable of doing that. What were the barriers to you believe and you could do it when you were a kid? I think we talked about this. I mean, I heard you talk about the speech you heard one small step, one giant step, that whole speech that we all know, even if we're not astronauts. Right.

You're hearing that speech as a kid. Did you feel like it was possible for you? Well, I was a kid when Neil and Buzz walked on the moon. You weren't, how were you when, 1969? I was a twinkle. It was a twinkle. And your mom did. It's like, hey, there he is.

Nine-year-old, how he longs-on. Yeah, I'm 1985. 85, okay. So I'm five years old. Yeah. And I'm the kid holding the rabbit ears on the Sylvania Black and White television set. Yeah. So I actually never saw the actual transmission.

Right. But, you know, I knew that there were these two white dudes with crew cuts to a military. And, you know, my dad was in the military. So it wasn't a military thing. It was just like, I didn't see someone look like me. And that next day we went to play astronaut outside. And they said, well, what do you want to be? He don't be Neil or Buzz.

I'm like, I'm going to be Arthur Ash. Right. It's Arthur Ash trained five blocks down the street where I grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia, on Pierce Street. Yeah. And so, you know, my dad talks about his intelligence. his athleticism. He was winning all these tournaments and stuff.

And I'm like, I want to be like him. So I had this role model that I was going to try to emulate. I started playing tennis. And so I never imagined an astronaut or working at NASA as something that was, for whatever reason, you know, maybe it was just that one moment that said, you can't do that. And fast forward, I'm working at NASA after, you know, Stents and NFL and whatever for a minute. This guy says, hey, you'd be a great astronaut. He has me an application.

And I look at it. don't fill it out in that same year that I didn't fill the application out, one of my boys, he got in. And I said to myself, if that knucklehead could get in, you know, you see that competition thing, like your boys, and like, wait a minute, he did how many pull-ups? And so I applied the next selection and I got in because I saw someone who was a knucklehead. And if he can do it, I can do it. Well, it's that competitive spirit. And you're a ball player. Yeah. That's what people don't know. Give people your football background a little bit. Yeah, so out of University of Richmond,

so starting in high school, though, I'm going to take you this story. Senior year, I was on a running team, why I received on a running team, running down the sideline to catch the touchdown pass in the end zone, three minutes left, and I dropped the pass in the end zone. Go to the sideline, coach Jimmy Green

grabs my face mask, I'm ready to be bench. He looks at me and I said, look, get back out and then catch the ball this time, run the same play. Yeah. time there's a scout from Richmond who's walking out of the stadium, hers the crowd screaming the second time and sees him in the end zone doing a little dance. He's on his way out. Yeah, he's

leaving. Morgan Howe was the receiver coach. Yeah. And he said if this guy can recover for some such horrific failure, his friends are there, his boys are there, his parents are there. Let me give him scholarship. 186,000 scholarship to University of Richmond because I didn't give up. And that set a tone in my head that if you keep trying, we get these opportunities. And so went to Richmond, O and 10 freshman year, 3 and 8, 8 and 5 playoffs in the senior year. The Lions came down. Denver came and the Cowboys came, did some scouting stuff. Got drafted to the Lions in 11th round, 86 college draft, pulled a hammie in training camp, play some preseason games, and started the UVA in material science. And then they videotaped the courses and mail them to

Dallas. I got picked up by Dallas for free agency. And so I was doing material science at night and you know, Tom Landry and Danny White. Danny White's before your time too. Yeah, Danny White's before my time. Yeah. So Danny and I were going out to throw and catch a little bit and I was, I was stretching from my hammy, you know, just trying to get loose. And we're about to do a 10-yard half-speed out. Tom Landry walks on the field. Danny sees Tom. I see Tom. I see Tom. I know what's about to happen. It does an audible to take it to the bar. So he's like, look this. I'm going to show Tom. I've got it. We got to run the nine route. Yeah. We're doing the nine route from a half speed out. And, you know, I see him. I'm like, oh,

I better, you know, I can't just go half speed. And I take off and pull the hammy the second time. That's the end of my career. So I thank Danny White for helping me get to space. Or Tom Landry. Or Tom Landry. With the peer pressure. Right, right, right. Tom deserves an assist, dude. John Stockton this situation, dude. What was Tom Landry like? Ghosting the machine. Yeah. The rookies, he really wouldn't talk to.

He'd see us and, you know, maybe wave or something, but he only talked to Herschel. Herschel was there. Mike Chirard, Danny, Steve Pallure, I think he was there, quarterback. Dorset was there, too. Yeah, Dorset. Before he got traded to Denver. Yeah, yeah. So he was there for a minute.

And he, I'll never forget, we were lifting. and Tony was like, hey rookie, get out of my way. Yeah, that feels good though to get bossed around by Tony. Tony Dorset. I'll take that. I've made it. If Tony Dorset needs this bench press machine. More than I do.

Yeah, we're good. I was going to say like you have a little piece of equipment in Hall of Fame. Yeah, so that's kind of funny. Yeah. My dad, you? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think mine is displayed as prominently as yours.

I wonder if there's anybody between here and Lynchburg that's got something in the Hall of Fame. That's interesting. I think it's you and Howie Long. That's funny. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah, when I went to space, my first mission, they called me up and they said, we want to, you know, I want to send your jerseys up to the space station.

Right. And they sent me a football in both of my jersey. So I took pictures in space with my jerseys on. And, you know, it's kind of cool. And then they... It's hard to get the jersey on at sea level. But it's easy in space. It's easy to get your jersey on in space.

You just go, you just float into it. That's so damn cool. That's why you got to go to space, man. I would love to go to space. When do you want to go? Well, so this is the question. I got a friend who went to space. Yeah, I got a patch now.

You got your honorary astronaut patch, man. I have an honorary astronaut patch. I think, like, if you try to get on the space shuttle, you just show them this? Take that to Elon Musk. Oh, take it to Elon Musk. While you're doing Twitter. How do you feel about this? How do you feel about like the privatization of space track?

It's fantastic because the more people that get the opportunity to see the planet from that vantage point, it changes the way you see humanity. Like my little pea-sized brain, when I look out the window, the space shuttle, we're going around the planet every 90 minutes. We see all of civilization. Everyone who's down there working and living, we see, you know, you fly over Manhattan, you fly over Virginia. We come over Virginia, and I'm looking down, and my parents are probably having a meal. Five minutes later, we're flying over Paris. I went there with a French astronaut, Leo Ihearts. He said, yeah, my parents are probably having wine and cheese, Leland.

And then Yuri, the Russian astronaut on the board, he's looking over to Moscow. He says, my parents are probably having borsh, you know. Potatoes and borsh. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, in that one little swath of time, we saw three hometowns. of three different people, and it connects you in a way that nothing else can. It changes the way you see yourself with the planet and humanity. You think if everybody went up to space, we'd be a lot better off. Like, we'd be able to solve a lot more of our problems at home.

I think people would see that if we don't work together in space, like if I flip the wrong switch, if Yuri flips the wrong switch, if Hans flips the wrong switch, we're all dead. And so you see the the gravity of playing ball. Someone's pulling to do a block. You know, you get paralyzed because the person didn't do his assignment. I mean, it's, you know, highly functioning teams doing highly critical things. People get it, right? We get it.

You know, we get it in space. But I think back here on the planet, you don't see the time constant of something happening like to the planet, you know, environmentally. You know, that's going to happen 50 years from now, 100 years from now. So I don't have to worry about it, but it's, you know, it's exacerbated now. Also makes you feel small? It makes you feel big. Or big?

When you look back from space. Yeah. You feel this, you see this, this beautiful planet. Think about it. It's a huge planet, but we get around the entire planet in 90 minutes. So I see the whole planet in 90 minutes. Good Lord. Right?

You see a thunderstorm the next time. Yeah. Or it's getting dark and you see these lights coming on. it's the footprint of humanity. Wherever you see a light, you may see a fire in Africa in the middle of Africa somewhere and people are living and working and making love,

whatever they're doing, they're living. And I see them every 90, you know, 90 minutes. What about geological features? Like what's the most mind-blowing thing that you're having? You see Nepal and like the Himalayas or you see the Caribbean or, you know like what blows your mind from up there i'm sure it all does but in the u.s it was crater lake you see this lake that's the deepest lake in our country right and it's at these

levels of blue um because it's so deep it's like really really deep dark blue yeah and then you're flying over places like the caribbean and you know i i know maybe five definitions of the color blue like you know navy blue yeah bluebird blue you know light with turquoise whatever but you need like 30 more definitions of blue to describe the colors that you're actually seeing because they're so different and vibrant man it's just it blows you away and all these people at the i ss are obviously from different countries and that sort of thing yeah yeah is it is it a fun time up there is it just like when you're not hitting the switch that could decide whether all you go pirouetting down into the atmosphere like into a black hole like is it fun in between those heavier moments we do stupid

astronaut tricks yeah that's what i was going to say so let's say you're up there franks and shit huh franks and shit you get pranked in space so you'll ball up into a ball yeah someone will bowl you down into the astronaut pins you know like bowling you know bowling you know bowling astronauts who's the ball first You know, you draw straws. You draw straws, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Where the little guy is easier to get in the ball.

You just push them down. That's so cool. What's the ISS look like? What kind of rooms are in there? Like, what is there to do there? Yeah, there's a size of a football field. Yeah. So you look at the solar panels and then you have these basically soda can looking things connected

with radiators. And so you have these sleep stations. It's kind of padded inside. You've got a laptop that you can talk to your family on Get to snacks and things in there. Talk to your family. Yeah. Like Zoom basically? You can basically a Zoom call. It's like a FaceTime. Yeah, yeah. And you uh, so when I was up there This is crazy. I had my birthday in space. Oh really? February 15th And I was over working in the Russian segment and my commander comes up and says, hey, Leland, you got to get your butt back to the flight deck. There's something over there you forgot to do. Mm-hmm. And so I'm floating, I'm like, you know, swimming through the space station. I get up to the flight deck.

And all of my family and friends are at NASA Langley Research Center in a conference room with a big happy birthday sign up. And my mom and dad, man, I mean, they're gone now, but they were there and just, you know how your dad is so proud. If I see his son, how you see your sons and you're proud. to see that pride of my father from space was just it was like life-changing and they said okay we're eating your cake but uh do some of that stupid astronaut stuff you know so i'm like doing a flip and my butt hits the hits the screen and the camera is like going all over you know hell yeah you're still still a big kid up there you got to be man the longest you've been in space is how long So two missions, 565 hours.

565. So it's about two weeks, two and a half weeks or so. Is that daunting for you? I mean, like, you could have all these skills, I imagine, as an astronaut. I mean, I know that there's not one particular skill, as we discuss, but you could be type A, you could be resilient, you could be highly intelligent, but if you're not good at sitting still, I know it's not all sitting still up there, but just being stuck somewhere.

Is that a barrier to? to entry, the claustrophobia, the... Now, that's a barrier. Yeah. Because to see if you have that right stuff, they put you in this thing called a personal rescue sphere. When you go down to interview who comes an astronaut, it's this ball that's about this big,

and you're curl up in it, they have a heart rate monitor on you, they have a beanie cap from the Apollo era, and you're supposed to stay in there until you freak. Now, I just went to sleep. You know, I was like, okay, I'm just going to... Hopped in Ambien. Yeah, yeah.

I don't help an ambient, but... And I'm ready. But if you freak, you know, you're not getting in. So how long impress NASA? How long do you stay in there? If you want to impress NASA. They watch your heart rate and they just, they just sit there and see if you're going to. It's really more less the length of time than you start your heart rate going up and you're

starting to freak out. Because they can. They're watching. They're monitoring them. You can't bullshit now. Yeah. You can try. But you can't, you can't bullshit NASA.

So what's harder? training like a training camp at Richmond, circa 1980, whatever it was, in the heat down there, or a Dallas training camp or training to become an astronaut. Yeah, that's a good question. They're different. I mean, the heat you have when you go do survival training. Yeah. And then you also bond with your team. We went on these hikes in Utah, like 10 days in Utah with backpacks. and you got to cook, find water, do all of that. So it's more, you know, Knowles. Yeah, Noles, yeah.

We did two Noles trips as a crew, as a team, to see what's going to stress you out. And like one of my, the pilot on my mission, my first mission, whenever he didn't get enough water, he was starting to get snappy. And so in space, you know, so he demonstrated that in Utah,

in space, if he started getting a little snappy, dude, you need some water, drink this water. So you get to know what are the trigger points for your, your boys and your girls so that that doesn't happen in space or if it happens you can mitigate it you know are there disagreements in space oh yeah I think about it ugly you can't fight in space you can I mean you can you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't I'm sure it's something psychological and here I am

some of you motherfuckers listen to this or all you know dream analysts or something or psychiatrist but is it like that it's if you were to try to grab somebody in space like so if you're against the wall and I'm pushing off from this other wall yeah I can I can land it and knock you out right because because you're not going anywhere and that the force of my fist is going into your body but if I were to be anchored on something and you're floating and I hit you you're just going to react and float off of that. So I'm not going to be able to land it as hard and knock you out as though, you know, if you were pinned or something. But it is managing stress up there. I mean, it's a ridiculous hypothetical for me. Like imagine people fight in space. But you just said it.

Like people, you're still human beings. You're not robots. So stress is a part of going up in space. Like, yeah. Yeah. And these are variables that triggers. What triggers you? You know, and if you know yourself, you know what's going to trigger you. So you, you say, hey, I'm about to get triggered. Let me fix because up there, it's, if something happens up there, it can be game over for the whole space station. I mean, for the whole space program. That, yeah. Let's say we lost a space station. They're not building another space station because all these components come from all over the world.

The Russian segment, the European segment, you know, the American segment, they're all pieces, parts that will never be built again, you know, and a timely manager put the space station back up there. until Tesla builds it or something. There's a company Axiom space right now building a space station. They're going to have parts that attach to our current space station. And then once they deorbitate the ISS, they're going to then undock their pieces and have their own space station. So you go up there and, you know, have another honeymoon or something. That'd be kind of dope. I mean, getting up there seems like the issue.

No, why? I mean, how claustrophobic is it to get up? there. Michael Strayhan. One of my buddies just went up on the... Is he claustrophobic? Probably not. Presuming he's not. And I don't think I am. I think I'm claustrophobic if it's for nothing. Like if I'm not going anywhere, I don't want to sit in this fucking suitcase. So if you're in an elevator.

If I'm more on the moon, I might be able to stick it out. Yeah, but think about it. You're in that seat. You're pulling three Gs, you know, going through your chest, right? Yeah. It's a dynamic, kinetic experience. You're shaking. You're moving. So you don't have time to think about a small space. You're just trying to.

And you're going to be in mission mode. You're going to be in, we've got to get the wind mode. We've got to get the space safely. So the things that you have to do through training, you know, that will help the crew, the team get the space safely. You're going to be doing that. Is that the most dangerous part of being an astronaut to take off? No. It's the whole thing.

The whole thing. Because when we lost Space Shuttle Columbia, they were coming home. Right. And we had had a piece of foam come off the tank, hit the wing, a hole about that big in the wing. And then when they reentered into the atmosphere, it's like 3,000-degree plasma that came into the wing and melted it. So you can have problems coming home just like you can. Even with no fuel, you can still have the environment take you out. I mean, it's probably one of the most danger.

Where would you? I think race car. Well, we had 135 spatial emissions and two catastrophic failures. So one in 70. I think race car is probably worse than that. No, no, race car is better than that.

Is it? Yeah. I mean, it's a dangerous job. So, you know, when you'd go up to space, I mean,

is it unhealthy to grapple with that possibility that you're not coming back? Or do you just lay it out there for people you love and, you know, make that extra phone call? Right.

Is it counter to the mission to even consider that? But it depends on what the mission is. Yeah. If you're going to do some flips and stupid astronaut tricks and bolding astronauts, That's one thing.

But if you're going up there to help, you know, advance civilization, that's a whole other. You're potentially given your life to help your grandchildren's, grandchildren's grandchildren have a better way of life. Yeah. And so in that mission, I think people are like, you know, laser being focused on, let's get this job done for our kids, you know. So what's an example of one of those missions where it's of the utmost importance?

Yeah. So building this outpost so that people can live. there. You know, we just sent up some tourists with a buddy of my, Mike Lopez Aligrea, and took them up. They did some experiments on water and different things. But I think, you know, we think about all the technologically advances and these space stations and stuff, I think the biggest thing is having people that used to fight against each other live and work together and get along for six months or for a year off the planet. And if those people can come back from their respective spaces and say, look, we lived and

worked together. We used to fight against each other. Let's get our stuff together, you know, here on the planet. And I think the human part of existing is exacerbated when you go into a dangerous environment, but you figure out how to do it. Because people are stressed out. And if you're stressed out, you may resort back to, hey, I used to try to kill Americans because I'm Russian and we used to fight against the Cold War and all of this, well, that's gone. And now you're trying to, you know, befriend these people and live with these people

from a long duration standpoint. I guess so interesting because we see it all the time in disasters. You know, we're such a divided world. People come together under disaster. And when you're faced with an existential crisis as a group of people, I mean a small group of people, everyone helps one another, for the most part.

Right. I'm sure there are some bad actors. Always. We choose number one, but it's the same thing, I suppose, in space. Yeah, yeah. Because the consequences are so dire if you don't work together. Yeah. What is going to space and seeing what you've seen, you know, the earth, at the scale you see it?

Mm-hmm. What does going up to space do for your faith, if you have faith? Yeah, that's a good question. I think, you know, for me, looking at the planet and just thinking of all those billions of people, down there working and living. And I'm blessed to have this moment to look back and see that, but also to turn around and look at the deep in darkness of space, you know, and what's out there, what's up there, what happened after the big bang, you know,

who's turning all of this, you know, it amplified my faith. Right. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, my parents were always very, you know, religious, spiritual, whatever, whatever you want to call it. And I was always in church. but for me to So I got to tell you this quick story

So you know I lost my hearing in my left ear I have no hearing The training thing? The training accident But before that accident happened My parents were having their 35th wedding anniversary In Lynchburg I was there with my cousin and her best friend

Her best friend's name was Jeanette Jeanette said Leland Something's going to happen to you No one's going to know why it happened You will be healed of this You will fly in space And this will be your testimony that you share with the world.

That was on a Saturday, Sunday was the service. Monday, I flew back to Houston. Tuesday, I'm in this EVA suit, five million gallon pool, down 20 feet down, telling the test director to turn the volume up in the headset. When I got out of the pool, they popped my helmet off,

and there was blood coming out of my right ear. I was completely deaf. And my hearing, and this year came back. I medically disqualified to fly in space. The doctor said, you will never fly in space. because you only have one ear. And you only have one ear in the speaking frequencies only,

not even high frequencies. So if syrians and things go off, I might not be able to hear it. Right. But that was her testimony to me. She was prophetic and all of that. And the day that this doctor said, I believe in you,

sign me a waiver to fly in space. And so I called Jeanette. Her name was Jeanette. I said, Jeanette, your prophecy was spot on. So that was like, you know we affirming of you know the power of of this ability to to transform and to have this faith that you can do things when you're building a dream team great scouts can help you find the future MVP's first to hire great

talent faster you need indeed indeed is the hiring platform where you can attract interview and hire all in one place find great talent faster through time saving tools like indeed instant match assessments and virtual interviews with Instant match, over 80% of employers get quality candidates whose resume on Indeed matches their job description, the moment they sponsor a job. One of the things I love about Indeed is that it makes hiring all in one place so easy because with virtual interviews, Indeed saves you time. You can message, schedule, and interview top talent seamlessly all in one place. Even better, Indeed's the only job site where you pay for applications that meet your must have requirements. Indeed is the unbelievably powerful hiring partner delivering four times more hires than all.

all other job sites combined, according to Talent Nest 2019. Sign up for Indeed now and get $75 credit towards your first sponsored job. Plus, earn up to $500 extra in sponsored job credits with Indeed's virtual interviews. Visit Indeed.com slash Bluewire to learn more. Claim your credits at indeed.com slash blue wire.

Indeed.com slash Bluewire. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire, you need Indeed. Do you think it's possible that science, I mean, obviously, it's almost a rhetorical question, seen as what you've done with your life, but science can meet faith somewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have it.

Yeah. We don't have the full answer on either end of the. But we have people that are saying either, you know, it's either this or it's either that. Yeah. And it's both. Somebody made this. Right. Right.

What the first thing was, was it the Big Bang or the mystery of it. I mean, like, everybody at this point has, like, you know, heard the, hey, there's so many solar systems or so many galaxies, this is how small you are. This new black hole in our solar system, right? I just heard the black hole in our solar system. just heard the black hole. That's what it sounds like. Dude.

Just, that's what the fuck it sounded like. To me, it sounded like something that was eating planets and shit like that. Oh, it is.

I know. Think about, I mean, think about the power and energy of a black hole capable of sucking in every, sucking in light.

Light doesn't have enough velocity to not be sucked in to the black hole. And that's how we know where the black holes are because it's the absence of light, right? Yeah. But back to what you were saying about how do we know faith in God and all this stuff.

Think about the James Webb Space Telescope that just got commissioned in space. Hubble Telescope could see 400 million years back in time. The James Webb will see 100, no, 100 billion, no million years. Another zero somewhere. Yeah, another zero back. Just another zero, dude. Just another. When you all run out of zero

It's like But you'll be able to see more granularity What happened after the Big Bang No way Yeah And so the more The more you see The closer you are

Maybe we can make some inferences On what happened How it happened So when is this new telescope dropping Oh it's here It's up there now It's up there They just commissioned

They had to do All these series of tests and things To make sure The optics were lined up So when do we get our information I think so Really That's going to be huge.

Will you go down to NASA with me to... Hell yeah, dude. Hell yeah. You kidding me? Check it out. Yeah. So what's the next piece of information that you're, like, waiting with bated breath on? Like, what's the thing you want to know?

I know everything. Do I want to know? Yeah, like, we're on the cusp of figuring something out in space. What is that thing that you're like, this is what I'm wondering about? And there's a distinct possibility that I have the answer in my lifetime. when the Lions will win a Super Bowl. I got bad news for you. Even the astronauts can't figure that one out.

Even the new telescope can't figure that one out. What's up with that, man? Can we get a telescope to look backwards and see why they couldn't win with Barry Sanders in the 90s? I know. I know. You were a fan. Why do you think? Why do you think? They didn't have any help around him.

Now, I was just talking to Brad Holmes about this, the GM for the Lions. And I asked him a tough question. I said, because you remember Barry wanted to be traded at the end, for good reason. Right. And then Calvin, something about those lions. But I asked him if he would trade Barry Sanders, you know, because that would be the more progressive thing to do nowadays. A player wants out.

I'm going to hold him hostage. And Brad said, I would never trade away a good football player. Obviously, he was skirting the question. Even if he wants to go. Right. And the funniest part about this is he just traded Matt Stafford. So he's not doing what he says. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So the lions, I can't figure him out. But I'm excited about Dan Campbell. We should get Dan Campbell up to space. Okay. That might break the curse. You know Josh, who was an aerospace engineer from Tennessee. Josh Dobbs, quarterback.

Josh Dobbs, he may be the next NFL player astronaut. You think? He did an internship at NASA in offseason, and he's got the right stuff, man. No way. I bet he is the next NFL or astronaut. Because you. Yeah, well, because you're going to go before him. I'm like, I'm like a friend of an astronaut kind of thing.

You get me in. I got you the pass right there. What about the movies, man? What, because I was going to ask you, like, when you watch these space movies, I have a few favorites, but are there some that, you know, like when I watch football movies, I'm watching it differently than. Right, right. Do any of them come close to actually? Okay. So the movie that rocked my world.

I love contact Matthew McConaughey and is that one of your favorites? No, but I'm going to get something about that. No, I'm just, I'm an interstellar guy. So interstellar, interstellar, blew my freaking mind. Not in a good way. Oh, fuck. But I mean, I didn't, I wasn't getting the books in the looking back. I mean, the whole time, the other dimensions of time, I'm not a, you know, astrophysicist's person.

Right. mechanical guy who does, you know, hands, you know. I just, he blew my mind, man. Why did that blow your mind? Well, I thought it was good. But again, like, I'm not an astronaut. So I don't know if any of this stuff's true. Like, he gets off on that planet.

He gets off and everybody else in the spaceship is, they were like, where the fuck have you been? Right, right. Which planet is it that we were, we were just talking about the planet, the Cowboy, Venus, that the clouds. Yeah, well, but which one is it? Oh, you mean, if you get off on that planet,

the red spot. well that's there's one red spot well here I am telling you because I've got on Wikipedia that red spot is this is a storm cell yeah yeah yeah it's enormous huge but what's the planet where their days are really long or whatever it is that would have some are there any planets that would have somewhat of an effect that Matthew McConaughey is there anywhere in space that you could go so Neptune and Pluto I mean Pluto is no longer a planet because it got demoted that's fucked up we can get to that's a little bad right but it's because it's so far from the sun that it's orbit around

the sun so we are 365 days right 248 years for a day yep wow but a human being would die of old age before they turn two right so like there yeah the the listen if you're counted in years if you're living your life in years versus days yeah then i guess you would you would die before you yeah yeah you know forget the the the mcana hay you know mind bending kind of like pseudoscience you I did like it, though. I did like it. I'm trying to understand why. Why I liked it was, it was a deep movie.

It was a deep movie. You know, I don't need it to be. Right, right, right, right. You know, it's like you watching, I don't know, well, you played football. It's like them watching some football movie. You know, here, you're critical of football movies and space movies. That's got to be a hell of a burden. It's like 33% of all movies.

That's true. Is there one that you actually blew your mind in a positive way? Because they were relatively on top of it. It was, um, George. George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Gravity. In gravity. Oh, shit.

So the gravity was shot on a green screen. The whole movie was shot in green screen. And there was only one part of the movie that I'm like, who was the consultant? Who was the astronaut consultant on this? Because, you know, when we go, we launch from Florida, we launch, this is a planet, right? Right. I'm pulling on my fist. Fist is the planet.

And we launch from west to east. So we launched this way. We're going around orbiting the planet from west to east. Right. When the space shuttle was coming up in gravity, it was going in the wrong direction. No shit. And I'm like, what's it? Who?

Yeah, that's the most basic. You know? And I said, they need to get fired. Hoover did that. But that was the only thing because everything else was, it looked realistic to me. And, you know, you had all of these, I guess it was a Chinese satellite. getting they were exploding and all this debris was coming and wiping out everything and they had to figure out how to get over to the space station and the shenzu and but just how you overcame all of

these obstacles to survive and then when she came down you saw gravity right yeah when she came down remember she was in the ocean and she had on this parachute and she was trying to get out of a suit and she almost drowned it's not even like yeah in all the other movies you hit the the water and you're safe. Everybody's just celebrating. Like there's a whole another set of, like when they hit the water, that's a motherfucker too.

That never goes perfectly, I would imagine. Yes. But she had to swim and crawl and grunt and scratch to just live, man. Yeah. And that was powerful to me.

That was pretty deep. And then everything looked like it looked when I was up there. So she was floating through the space station. I'm like, hey, that's where I left that box. You know.

Who was in the box? Well, so, you know. Yeah. Well, it's the wrong Brad Pitt movie. The Ad Astra is the one I'm thinking. Ad Astra. That's, that was deep, too. Really?

I really liked that movie. I didn't like, I thought Brad did a great job, and I loved the pacing of the movie and the way the moon scene was crazy. Oh, with the rovers and. Yeah. Holy shit, dude. But, but, you know, I'm just watching it as a fan. We were talking about gravity. You said, contact.

Yeah, like being out there, like, outside the space. Space Station, like, I remember some of those, like, kind of really riveting scenes. What's that? Is it just dead silent? Like, what space sound like? If you were to listen to space outside of your suit, like in, I guess, what is it, a third of a second, you're dead, you know, because you're, you're, all the oxygen that's in your body is getting sucked out into the vacuum of space.

So you're, like, imploding inside. Yeah, so you're not hearing, I mean, you might hear, you know, something like that real quick. And then you're gone. Yeah. But there's no sound in space. Not a bad way to go. Is that a bad way to go? Can you make that sound?

No. Yeah, that's me exiting my own body. So that's not a bad, it's not the worst way to go. But would you want to go like that? No, I mean, but compared to some other like mundane bullshit. Like, yeah. Like half a second. Tripping on a curb and hitting your head and.

Yeah, like give me the, you know, the half second of, oh shit. And I died in space. But it wouldn't even be enough time to. really realize that you're about to die. You know, you're just... That's the blissful part of it. I guess so. You're just permanently like, damn, I'm floating outside the ISS. Yeah. Fixing a fucking oil pan.

Right. Or I get an oil tank here, dude. The hydrogen tank. Hydrogen tank, of course. I get my vernacular down. I'm here for you, man. But what does it sound like if you weren't, if you had a recorder out there, like, you know, like spaces, we heard a black hole. Is it like the quietest? You know, they get the quietest room in the world in Minneapolis.

Have you heard about this place? No. No. Yeah, it's the quietest place on earth. People can't hang out there more than five minutes who lose their mind. Why? Because they're hearing their mind. You're in your head. So do you have any like, I have tenets, you know, my ears are always ringing.

And in that room, I probably be like, it's amplified. Amplified. Hearing my head speaking to me. So when you're in the suit, you're just hearing your breathing and you're hearing. You're breathing and then they're talking to you at the same time. That's so crazy. Trying to tell you what to do and come in. Here's one.

How do you take a dump in? space very carefully because everything floats right dude okay so you want to hear the story yes okay it's the r-rated pod dude so i get to space my first mission i'm the i'm the chief medical officer in space yeah i'm not a doctor on a ground i just play one in space right i got the training and so i had to give out you know the drugs and whatever to people that got sick or and to check on people if they were peeing and pooping, you know, quickly. Because if you don't pee in time, your bladder fills up. You don't even feel it filling up because when you pee on Earth, gravity pulls it down.

There's a little sensor at the bottom that says, I'm full. Gotta go, you know, take a leak. But up there, the urine is floating in your bladder. So you never get the sensation that you have to pee. Until it's just too full. Until it burst. You don't even, you may not even get the urine coming down to that sensor. that tells you you're full.

So if you, if you haven't peed within like two or three days, you gotta get catheter. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it just drains all out. You just got to keep track of that. So I'm the one keeping track of that for all my,

my colleagues. I'm like, hey, have you peed? Have you peed? Have you poop? No one is checking on me. You're like a parent. Peat and poop,

peeing poop, peat and so I'm there eating everything. I'm hungry. I'm just throwing down eating. And I haven't pooped in like two days. And so I'm like, oh my God, I got to go. So you go in, you get to take all your clothes off and use the bathroom because if something floats, you don't want to get it on your shirt and have to throw your shirt away. Yeah, everything's white.

Right. As I see in the movies, all the spacesuits are white, all the fucking. We have like, LLBin, you know, polo shirts on. You got a thermal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you get leisure wear up there. Leisure, right. Comfy wear.

Yeah, good. Coffeyware, yeah. So I'm in the bathroom trying to get this in all. rolled space poop off and bro it was like just kept coming and the in the depth of the toilets like this yeah and my intestine is like you know this yeah and it just i mean so i had to rise up off the toilet and i looked back and it was like a snake like do do do like a snake charm it was you know it was just like this and i had to get a glove and like break it in half and push it down in there and it was it was about to be bad oh yeah so is the smell more more it's intense

it's more intense because it's just like yeah it's like people in the russian wing of the i ss are like what the fuck is the space shuttle oh oh yeah yeah i mean our commander you got to go outside dude yeah like without a suit on if you're bringing that kind of funk in here you need to go outside having those suit dude and not come back yeah oh my god it was bad man but so the essentials then you got a poop you got to pee right you have to drink water lots of water right and is that you can because when you come back you're um so when your your your heart gets smaller in space you're not having to pump as much blood oh right because gravity is not pulling the blood down to you got exercise right you had exercise yeah yeah yeah and your face kind of puffs up a little bit because

there's more fluid coming up from the bottom. But when you get back, if you don't fluid load, you pass out because your orthostatic pressure is very low. And you can't keep the blood up in your head. Right. So a lot of people that get hot and don't fluid load coming home, they start walking and they go, boom. I was going to ask, like, when you come home, you were up there, you said, you know, like a couple weeks, which is a long-ass time. I was reading about this woman who's been there the longest. Sunny Williams, one of my classmates. She was there for like 200 days, but the guy, Mark Vandahyde, just came back,

355 days in space. So this, I feel like you've got to have a certain gene or personality. Myset, man. But you have the doctors, the shrinks, you've got your family you can talk to every day on a Zoom call. So you're connected to your people is just, you're away from them. It's like you're in training camp for eight weeks. weeks or six weeks or something or you know on the road or yeah but i can get i can't go to the the dining

hall or to the hotel room or run around on the football field no we got a treadmill okay we got a resistive exercise device that you're doing bench squat um deadlifts curls overhead press which of course looks much different in space it's just rubber bands that you're pushing against and then you have a a bike called a cycle or gometer. Yeah. And then a treadmill. Sonny Williams ran the Boston Marathon in space. She had her number and everything.

No way. She did her 26. What, three? Two. 26.2. I like to do point three. I did too. Yeah. It didn't mean you, man.

26. Yeah. In space, while Karen Nyberg, there was another astronaut, ran it on the ground. And they were comparing their numbers while they were running. That was so cool. So cool. She thrived, sounds like.

She's a Navy helicopter pilot marathoner, and she was a triathlete. Rare human being. When she lands, it's 230-something days or your friend's 300-something days. Like, how long does it take to feel normal again? Yeah, for them, it's if you work out two hours a day, you know, it used to be you lose bone density. So your bones would, because you're not loading your bones. about it. If you're on Earth, gravity tells you that you're loading yourself, you're getting forces. But up there, if you don't do resistive exercise, your bone morphology changes to where

you're like osteoporetic. Right. And then you come home and get stress fractures. So we had to have the resistive, the treadmill running because you're pounding, but a bungee is holding you down to the treadmill. Or you step in, pshuom. That's crazy. The shum is floating off from the treadmill. for our listeners out there. Yeah, it's just one. You did it with the hands and everything. So I forgot to ask you about this movie, First Man. Did you see that movie at all with Ryan Gosling?

No. So it's about the guys that went to the moon the first time. Did you like it? I loved it. So you probably won't. Because this was the first movie that I realized. And I don't know what you think about this from an astronaut branding standpoint. We grew up and these astronauts are like, in my mind,

my little astronaut figures and all that stuff. Incredibly bright people. Incredibly type A. Amazing human beings. But I never thought of them as badass. Right. I think astronauts have like a branding issue where they should be thought of

is like these absolute alphas that are like capable of pushing through anything that are total like just like they're almost zealous. Superhero invincible type. Yeah. And their commitment. to what they're doing. Like, it's insane.

And First Man was the first movie that portrayed that portrayed that. I think properly for me because he was going in the spinning thing. He was going in the pools like you were talking about. Like, it was intense. And, you know, he had lost a child and that sort of thing. He had, uh, I did see that with a lot of tragedy. I fell asleep and had to push through it. And I see for him, it's nothing like the real thing.

But I love the movie First Man. And, you know, like it made me think about the moon and all that stuff. I almost wore my t-shirt today. We landed on the moon. It was the second t-shirt from the top. It's a shame. I should have grabbed it. I forgot who I had in.

But you know, there's a lot of people that still don't think we landed on the moon. Oh, my God. I did a, I did a series on the truth behind the moon landing. Talk to me. You know, there was one conspiracy theory that when they got out of the vehicle, how could there be so much light, coming up on them. You know,

it was like, they were very reflective. Even though, you know, the regolith, the moon dust, if we did an experiment where we took something like moon dust

and we shined the light on it, and it came up and illuminated the astronauts. And so we did a series of little tests to show that, you know, some people said the radiation would kill,

going through this path to the moon, the three days to the moon, the radiation would kill you. We did a little test where this is the amount of radiation you would feel. Right. wasn't enough to take you out in, you know, that six-day period or four-day period.

But, I mean, the people that have these conspiracy theories about not us going out to the moon, it makes me so mad because the people that he did go to the moon that I know, like John Young, he is like a living legend. He's one of the most honest people I know. I mean, he wouldn't lie about anything. Right. And so that there was this huge conspiracy that John Young was lying, you know, Farm boy flew every airplane known to humankind, Mercury Gemini, Apollo program, walked on the moon.

And I lived around the corner from him. I would walk my dogs by his house. Hey, he knows some pretty dogs, man. Yeah. He's in gardening, you know, just, you know, guys that are just salt to the earth. Yeah, you take, it's almost personal. Yeah. Because you're like, bro, I know these people.

So for some chucklehead to tell me that my guy here didn't go to the moon, it's like offensive to me. And then people that lost their lives. trying to do this like Apollo 1, you know? So you're kind of slandering the people that gave their life to make our civilization better. Right. Is what they're doing in my mind. There's a guy in the moon that left a picture. One of the astronauts, Charles Duke.

Uh-huh, Charlie Duke. Had left a picture on the moon and they say that's going to last thousands of years just sitting there. Is that true? Because of the way it would or would not. There's no wind. Yeah. there's no atmosphere. Right.

So there's nothing to make it tarnish or turn. I mean, the sun could make it fade, but it's not going to dissolve it. Right. Yeah. That's crazy. Without an atmosphere, nothing will, you know, rot or go away. That speaks to the stillness up there. You got to go, man.

You want to get still? I want to get real still, dude. And go to that room. Where's it, Ohio? I'm going to go to Minneapolis first. And if I pass that test, I'll go to the moon. You don't have the right stuff to go to the moon. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

What's the coolest thing you've heard about the moon that people might not know from, you know, the movies or light reading from people that have been there? Yeah. But I think the coolest thing is that when the earth collided with this asteroid, I guess, which all of that stuff accreted and came together. And then the moon was a byproduct of, of that collision, our days, our rotation used to be like,

something was only like two hours. Yeah, our day was two hours. It was only two hours. And then it became 24 hours when the moon started moving further apart. So it guides our seasons, our tides. And it controls the frequency in which the earth is turning. every 24 hours. If you control the ocean, like, you're spectacularly important and powerful.

Like, if you can move the ocean. Yeah, the ocean. I mean, think about three quarters of our planet is water. Yeah. And the oceans. Yeah. And you got control over that. Yeah.

Those tides. If you're here in Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, or right here in Virginia, and you haven't tried the Winbet app yet. I have great news for you. Winbet is now offering $200 in free bets for new users. That's right, $200, $200 big ones on a $50 bet. Win bet is basically giving you free money.

Don't turn that down. Don't pass that up. Download the Winbet app today. Terms and conditions apply must be 21 or older and present in a state where win bet is available. Gambling problem in Arizona, call 1,800 Next Step. In Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, and Virginia call 1-800 gambler. and in Michigan, 1,800-2707-1-17. Tennessee, y'all two, 1-8009-9-9-7-89.

Do you think that in the next 10 years there's going to be some private expeditions to the moon for private citizens, or are we going to colonize the moon? Is that something that, like, people still talk about and, like, realistically in NASA circles? So there's an Artemis program right now. Artemis is going to send, and people back to the moon to live.

And I know that SpaceX is building the lander. So anything that SpaceX is building for NASA, they could eventually build it for private citizens to go and take a lunar ride also. Would you go to the moon? Yeah. But not to live. Not until I have to. I think we're going to have to at some point.

Why? Because of us decimating our own planet? idiots. Is it inevitable that we have to push off here? I don't think so. Okay. I mean, 2050 is when we say if we don't turn it around, we're going to have this environmental catastrophe. Yeah, cataclysmic kind of thing. I'm just hoping people will, you know, get hip to it and figure it out that we need to take care of. I mean, a lot of people are doing it now, you know. And I think we're talking about, you know, I've got, I've got a diesel tractor. and a diesel truck and a diesel sprinter.

You know, we talked about these vehicles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're comparing sprinters. Yeah, but I just got a Tesla. Yeah. Because I think the more of the driving I do with that, the better the hopefully environment will be. And we've got to do something, though, man. I would rather stay here than have to go somewhere else.

Oh, dude, people were talking about going to Mars. Can I just say this? I'm not really into Mars, dude. Why not? Looks too hot, looks too red. Would rather not be there. You know what I mean? I think it'd be hard to adjust to living on Mars. Do you, are you as into Mars as other people are into Mars?

Like, why are we so particularly interested in Mars? Why do we choose Mars? Yeah, it's the, it's the, besides the moon, it's the closest planet, right? And there's signs that there was, you know, life there before and water, lots of water. Right. So is there water in these huge canyons? I mean, they're underground caves that are, you know, huge deep caves. maybe there's water down there.

I know that Nat Geo did a show called Mars and the people lived underground so they wouldn't have to worry about the dust storms. So we could have cities underground that we'd come up for, you know, getting back home and back. But it's a possibility. You said life, I mean, when they say life on Mars,

I mean like microorganisms. A little red man. Yeah. Not little red man. But do we know? We haven't talked about aliens yet. What do you think? so when i got to space my second mission i like to say when i got to space you have to say that

you have to start saying that that's almost worth like going through the the whole ryan gosling thing with the fucking thing and come on just to say what i went to space but um we were looking we opened the payload bay doors of the space shuttle right that's one thing you have to do and we were looking in the palo bay and there was this thing floating out of the palo bay and it had curvature. It was translucent. And I was like, what is that? And I called Houston.

I said, Houston, you don't want to say Houston, we see an alien, because they get freaked. We don't want to say we have a problem. Yeah. We don't say Houston, we have a problem either. You just say, Houston, we see something. It's translucent. It has curvature. It's slowly turning out of the payload bay going up, you know, from the shuttle.

and we're trying to identify what it is. And they come back, does the curvature look like hoses? I was like, yeah. You know how like in alien, when the alien creature had all those kind of curve, organic-looking things? It kind of looked like that a little bit.

And they said, well, that's just the ice that's formed on the frion lines that are rejecting the heat from the shuttle to the doors, the panels. And it just broke off in one big piece. And then when it broke off, it probably just started, had a little rotation to it and just kept turning. Because the turning made it look like it was moving out by itself.

Right. But it was just ice. It's easy to, your confirmation bias to take over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And be like, that's a living thing. Yeah. I'm looking for it. You're looking for it anyway.

So you guys talk about it. You guys and gals talk about life up there. You guys like when you're shooting the shit, you're like people trading stories about maybe some speculative. Exoplanets. Yeah. We have planets out there. We can't get to because we can't get there in a person's lifetime.

So it's got water. We've seen water. We've seen temperature around the same as our planet. So with water and temperature, there's life usually. Yeah. So maybe there's some type of life there that we haven't seen. it's there maybe evolving out of the ocean and maybe turning into something else

and I don't know what is multiverse mean multiple universes so like I hear that a lot parallel parallel parallel universes yeah like basically there's so many I don't know if this is I'm butchering this thing but I hear people talk about you know the possibility in me I'm gullible I'll go with it but like there are so many variations of where we live right now, an infinite, you know.

And space is expanding. Space is expanding. Right. So our new, a new universe is being grown out of this. Maybe that's what the multiverse is. As we grow space, we're getting these other,

you know, versus. Well, I mean, I'm like, who's to say there's not another planet just like this? Well,

I mean, we've identified, there are planets that are, the Goldilocks zone, right? Just right, right? Just right for life. We have those planets.

out there. We just can't get to them. And that's in our purview. Yeah, yeah. Like, there are, there's a ton we don't know. Like, maybe like, uh, 10 light years away. There's a Goldilocks planet they're sitting out there. How long with that take to get there for a human being? That's an exoplan. So one year, 10 light years, it's the speed of, it takes you the speed of light, which is three times 10 to the eight meters per second square out and how many miles, but. Hold on. Let me do this calculation. Yeah, do it. But, you know, the speed it takes, the distance it takes light to travel in one year.

Right. Right. So. Which to me seems very fast. It's a crazy. It's not attainable for human. The light year is approximately 6 trillion miles. So I guess 60 trillion if you're talking about 10?

60 trillion miles. 60 trillion miles means the same to me as 10 light years. Bro. No idea. So think about this. We are, there's people think we are in space. and we're so far away. The space station is the distance from Washington, D.C. to New York, about 240 miles.

Right. Which is nothing. No. The moon is 240,000 miles. Right. And the sun is 93 million miles away. Yeah. And this is 60 trillion.

One light, I mean, how are we getting there? We're not. Right. Unless we get warps beat. Star Trek, baby. Star Trek. How do we do that? I didn't watch Star Trek.

So what is your... You didn't watch Star Trek? No, dude. What's wrong with you, man? I'm 37. I know, I understand. I'm not enough light years old to watch Star Trek. But remember, well, if you saw Star Trek, they have this thing called the tricoder and they just

open it up and it makes this noise. And it's like a little cell phone. Yeah. We have that now on the iPhone. Yeah. You know, so we have things that have come from. space technology from the 60s. Now, you know, science fiction

became science fact. Right. We never went off the planet before. Now we're flying to... We have two voyage... We have two satellites called Voyager 1 and 2. They were launched in 1977. They are at a place right now outside of our solar system.

It's called the Heliopause. It's where our sun has no influence on them. Like we have a solar wind that pushes it's out of the range of our own sun. And it's like they're past, but they've been flying since 1977. Nuclear power.

Unbelievable. And they're still sending data back to us. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's eerie, but cool, right? It is cool. Yeah, well, you know, or now you got me.

Now you got me. Interstellar eerie is what it is. Talking into the Zoom, yelling at Murph. And that was your favorite? Space movie? Well, I'm a big Matthew McConaughey fan. So for me, I get swept up in the, like, I'm not as into like, hey, is this realistic? It's Right. But contact then. Let's go back to contact then. Yeah. He was Matthew McCona. He was in that movie. Yeah. No, I haven't seen contact. Yeah. And that whole movie was about faith. Yeah. And because he was a man of faith that was trying to advise the president. Jody Foster was an atheist. Yeah.

Who was going on this space mission. And when she, do you want to tell you or not? tell me you can spoil it so when she went on this mission she was gone for like you know hours and hours and hours it was she was like teleported to this other alien place but when you when you looked at someone filming it she dropped through this thing like in one minute and it was the mission was over in one minute but she experienced it much longer than that like matthew mccanahe's friends right right so everyone said they faked it it was a lie right but then she and her deliberations in the court, they were like, but you gotta have faith.

Even though she was an atheist, she got to have faith. Yeah, yeah. And he backed her. It was, dude, check it out. That's why I asked you about that. And I'd never seen contact because I just feel like... Because you're 37. 137.

But also, like, if there, you know, if something's in the Bible, right. You know, the Bible talks about things like, there's nothing else but this. Right. And so, like, I know it must be, for some, a little bit of, there's some cognitive dissonance there.

Like when you, if you're very faithful and you go up in space and you're like, well, if they had this whole thing figured out, we are such a small piece of this puzzle, you know. But the firmament, but that's past space, though, isn't it? I don't know. I'm a the theologist. Are you not? No, not yet. Not yet.

I'm going to do that after I go on the moon. Well, that's after the multiverse. Yeah, that's after the multiverse. You know, like I hit you with the multiverse. earth. But you talk about aliens and all this, this, you know, life and space. Like, I feel like if somebody's coming down here and we spot a UFO, which by the way, do you think all the UFOs are anomalies, like when they're like, oh, it's flying object, can they all be explained? Like, you know how they go to, it's a balloon or it's. Yeah. Area 51. But these pilots are all like coming out and,

I don't know about droves. Some say they've seen them. Some say they haven't. I mean, it's a mix, right? the people that have seen them, to your point, when you talk about your friend who you lived near in Houston, talking about walking on the moon, you've got some of these folks that have flown dangerous missions all over the world. They've done remarkable things. And they're saying, I've seen, I saw something that's not fucking, right. It's not an airplane. It's hard to, it's hard. Of course, you can't accept it until you make contact with that aircraft and like confirm it. Right. But, It's hard to ignore it. No, I hear you.

I mean, again, like the moon, right? Yeah. It's the argument both ways. Just because someone is honorable, did they not go up and do it because we were having this big ruse on trying to get money to do it, you know? To say we went to the moon. We're going to keep going to the moon so we need more money. But then they really hadn't been to the moon, but they're saying they went to the moon to get the money from the government to go to the moon. Exactly.

I mean, like, and if I'm pessimistic, depending on. which way I look at it, I could write it all off. But I also think that some people think of aliens came down here. They just immediately land and do all this shit. If they came this far, they don't need us. They don't need this. If they came this far, maybe they need us as fuel or food.

Maybe, but they would have already eaten us, wouldn't they? I don't know. It's, it's, maybe so. That's a little trippy. Or maybe they bid into me and they said, I know, we don't want this. That's pretty good. That guy has stuff floating,

floating out and sweet. The former football player. If you could go anywhere and see anything in our solar system and you had the ability not to travel 10,

you know, trillion miles or whatever it is, and it was just like, hey, you had that Star Trek shit. Right. Which planet would it be? Which moon would it be?

Is there something that you're like, that sounds so... Yeah, no, it's a good question. I think I would want to be on the space station, looking back at our planet with a zoom lens, seeing people getting the hell along, seeing kids from every zip code getting access, opportunity, and belief in

themselves to rise. Because, you know, we only have one planet that we can live on right now. and for me to to to make sure that we're taking care before we go somewhere else is most critical for your kids for your grandkids one day from my my nieces i mean i don't have for my dogs yeah you know because we're looking dogs by the way oh thank you brother i appreciate that the roadies yeah yeah yeah yeah but uh you know we got to take our home base man if you're not if you're not if you're if you're if your guys aren't blocking for you yeah What's the use of we've been having a team? Yeah. So home team, home planet. Look back here.

Now, the second thing, if I were to go somewhere else, I would probably want to go to Mars. Big Mars guy. I believe we should go to the moon first and figure it out and then go to Mars. But, I mean, when you explore, it's not the destination. It's the journey. Yeah. And it's the journey with who you go with.

Yeah. You know, so if you're with your boys and you're going on a journey, you know, you're in the car, you're cruising, you got your stuff, you're having a good time. It doesn't matter where you go. Yeah. Because you're doing it together and you're finding out what life is all about and finding about who needs water before they get pissed off. And, you know, you're finding all these things. That's a really good scouting report that you guys did doing those little hole hikes, man. Critical, critical.

So it doesn't happen in space. And know yourself. And know yourself. The other thing, yeah, the other thing was, I learned from that was self-care before group care. If you're out helping everyone else, getting their pack ready and everything and you don't have your stuff together and it's nine o'clock time to go and you're not ready, you've just slowed everyone down.

Well, I think that's the same in like life, like family, friendship, business. But we don't do it, though. You got to. We don't do it. Because a lot of people who are fairly driven are thinking of other people all the time. You know, and you're not securing your life vest or whatever it is. Yeah. You know.

Put your oxygen mask on first. Put your oxygen mask on first. I think it's one of the best like life pieces of advice, you know, you could get is like, you got to take care of number one. It's not inherently selfish to make sure you're solid before you run out and start saving the world. But your bear cubs, you see your bear cubs, right? Yeah. And you want to say, oh.

You want to help. Yeah. Guys, you got it. Yeah. No question. How hard was it? We talked a little bit offline about this. you talked about like helping each other.

And that's a nice kind of, you know, message for people. How hard was it to be around all these really brilliant people but encounter ignorance? You know, when you first got to NASA. I mean, you told me some anecdotes. How can such smart people be so ignorant? And how many black astronauts were there before you? Yeah, they were probably eight, eight or nine. Short left.

You know, I think, I mean, you can be as smart as a whip, but still have your isms, you know, just because there's, I mean, back in, when I was working at NASA in Hampton, it's electrical engineer, this guy came up, we were looking at, I was looking at buying his house, he was looking at the electrical panel, we pulled the, the cover off, and it was just crazy wiring, right? And the guy says, man, that looks like it was en rigged. it was a nigger rigged I was like what did you say I said that looks like it said the same thing and I wanted to see if you do it three times

he said yeah it looks like it was niggerigged I'm like do you know you're talking to what do you mean oh oh my god I didn't I didn't I didn't that's what I was saying

but in where he was from in Tennessee that was the word they used for shoddy shoddy you know work and he didn't have any black friends. And so that was what was used. Yeah. So that's all he knew for shoddy work was nigger rigged. And, you know, I said, dude, if you've been someone else, he would have been on

the ground with two less teeth if you had said that to the wrong person. But he was a good guy, you know, he was a good guy. And I just knew he had not been exposed to a lot of people of color. But I wasn't going to hit him anything. But I just said, that was a learning moment for him, preservation of life for him. Yeah. To not use that term anymore, you know, around people that would jack him. I mean. But it's exposure's experience.

It's, you know. But that's a very patient mindset. It had to be. Because, but to say it three times and not, not have the, the wherewithal to know who he was talking to. Now, if I'd been like a pipe fit, remember that Ving Rames in, uh, Pope Fiction? That was before your time, too. No, we were just talking about Pulp Fiction the other day.

I'm going to get me a pipe fed and you're going to get medieval on your. Yeah, that would be an ugly ass. That would be ugly, ugly, yeah. Yeah, if you went Bing Rames on him. Or just me being rings him. Yeah. But I mean, there's still probably not enough representation. No, it's, uh, they're talking about sending the first woman in person of color to the moon in the Artemis program.

Yeah. And I think there are people that are like, well, why? are you sending them while you're sending the best people well there were 18th after the Martian you see the Martian yeah Matt Damon yeah

after the Martian he was way too fucking happy to be up there on Mars in my opinion did you like it you would have been that happy you would be like I'm here on Mars I got a garden and everything I didn't love the Martian

because of the poop and the potatoes no I just thought it was too light. I feel like it's got to be harder to be on Mars. I feel like... No, dude, come on. It's got to be heavier. He got left for dead at the beginning of the movie.

He's mad, David. He had a puncture in him. You know, he was sewing his body up, you know? Yeah. You're right. I mean, it's hard. It didn't start out good. It was a Disney movie. It was too many one-liners. There was too many, like, the whole theater's laughing. I'm like... So, you wanted to be more like First Man?

First Man. I love First Man. I can't wait for you to watch first man and absolutely burn it to the ground. I did see it actually I saw it and and disappointed you can have call me later and I yeah that movie sucks too the spinny thing they don't even do that yeah we do still do that okay you do centrifuge yeah we did I did that we all do that did you puke no is anybody puke while they're in there and they can't get them off and it's just puke everywhere there's puke in the zero G airplane yeah you know you're doing a parabola you get Like I was a roller coaster. Yeah.

25 seconds of waitlessness and then. Yeah. And then it's like just floated. Now, I puked in space. Same thing with the poop. It was different. So, you know, I had the horrible poop situation thing going on. And then when we got to space, I ate a ham sandwich.

It was like underneath my seat and I ate this ham sandwich. I was starving. And so I'm like, what's this? What? I didn't feel sick, but I knew I had to throw up. And we have these bags that are preloaded in our shirt. And so we pulled it out, but I missed. Oh, no.

And I had a Richmond Spider's hat on, you know, University of Richmond Spider's hat. So the vomit went out of my mouth, hit the brim of the hat. So I'm like looking up from the middeck up to the commander and the pilot, because other guys were down. Yeah. They weren't feeling it. Yeah. Look at the, look at them. And they're like, oh, my.

God, Lido's down too. And I'm like, Coach, I'm okay. Put me back in. With a vomit veil right in front of my face. It's like just,

yeah, it's like floating? It's floating. Because the brim of the hat pushed it back down to like right in front of my face. So I wiped all, I've got it all up.

And then I'm looking back, put me in, Coach, I'm ready, man. I've got vomiting my eyebrows. I'm like, oh my God. What's he exfoliating with?

Yeah, Right, right. It's crazy. But cleaned up and got back in the game. Well, when I puke in space, I'm going to handle it. I'm going to make sure turn my hat backwards. Turn your hat and hit the bag. You don't have to turn the hat back and just hit the bag, you know?

I've got to ask this question. Has anybody ever had sex in space? That's a very good question. Well, let me preface it with I did not. I know. You would have a great poker phase. Very good question. But it is possible.

It is possible. If you had to guess, do you think anybody's gotten busy in space in the history of man? Of humankind, right? Of human kind. There's been a lot of spaceships up there now. So if I had to say that someone had or had not? Yeah, two single people on the ISS. Or are not single, I mean, you know.

Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, there's zip code rules that I've heard people refer to. I mean, there's definitely when you're... What happens on ship, stays on a ship. Yeah, what happens outside the Earth's atmosphere. And you can't be on one of those private, you know, fucking Amazon space shuttles. They don't apply there.

Right. You gotta really be in NASA. So you're saying, have there been NASA or other astronauts? I just feel like somebody had to try it. It's possible. I'm setting the odds. You're a gambler? I'm not a gambler.

What are we setting the odds at, Matt? plus 500 probably plus 500 plus 350 which means five to one chance it hasn't happened but if you take the if you take the money if you take the dog you might you might it might pay well so I'll do a little researching you back to you thank you how's that you the same thing on first man okay okay sweet awesome um how about this book before we let you go what talks to me about the book I just got my present yeah I got my patch I got a book yeah I'm hype it's uh chasing space It's living your life with grit, grace, and second chances. Yeah.

And I've always had second chances, like getting a chance to fly when they told me I'd never fly. You know, when I was a kid, you know, some stuff that happened to me as a kid that didn't tell my dad because I knew my dad would probably kill the guys that did what they did. But just this journey of, you know, trying to do the things, extraordinary things from a simple, from a simple beginning. and journey and all the people along the way that have helped that if I didn't have this person in my life that this thing wouldn't have happened. So it's a, it's just a journey man of trying to live the best life and rise, you know. That's so cool, dude. And you've got a TED talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was that like? You got a book and TED talk. Yeah, it was pretty cool. I mean, you know, to be able to, to be able to say what you want to say to help inspire and motivate other

people and the whole thing about the TED talk it was just about um how we can't overcome obstacles i mean you work with a lot of people to help them get through tough times and things and get guys to the top of a mountain man that's that's that's powerful and uh how we can all help people rise and and make the world a better place maybe maybe you're maybe i am okay hey if an astronaut says he's he's going to be somewhere i feel like he's going to be somewhere so lila Melvin. Thank you for the time, man. This has been awesome. You got to come back more. We can probably do 10 hours of this, but I know we have... So you watch contact. Yeah. I'll watch first man. First man without falling asleep. And then we'll have a little discussion. That's good, man.

All right. That sounds good, bro. Appreciate you, man. I appreciate you. Like I appreciate it. It's been been a good time. Very fun. Good to have a friend in studio. There we go.