Shawn Ryan Show - #185 Scott "Kidd" Poteet - SpaceX Polaris Dawn Astronaut on Spacewalk, Moon Landing and Mars

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Scott “Kidd” Poteet is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and highly experienced pilot who served more than two decades in the military. Over the course of his Air Force career, he flew F-16s in multiple combat deployments and held roles in leadership and training, earning a reputation for his strong work ethic and focus on mission excellence. Poteet’s dedication to both teamwork and mentorship helped guide the next generation of pilots, showcasing his commitment to service and the advancement of aerospace. Since retiring from active duty, Poteet has remained deeply involved in pioneering space initiatives and operational leadership. He served as the Mission Director for Inspiration4—SpaceX’s first all-civilian orbital mission—and continues his journey into human spaceflight as a pilot for the Polaris Dawn mission, part of the groundbreaking Polaris Program. Through these endeavors, he exemplifies a passion for pushing the boundaries of exploration and technology, reflecting both his military heritage and forward-thinking vision for space travel. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD https://patriotmobile.com/srs | 972-PATRIOT https://cozyearth.com/srs https://ziprecruiter.com/srs https://roka.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://tryarmra.com/srs https://identityguard.com/srs https://boncharge.com/srs This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. Scott "Kidd" Poteet Links: Website - https://www.kiddpoteet.com X - https://x.com/KiddPoteet IG - https://www.instagram.com/kiddpoteet Polaris Program - https://polarisprogram.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Donate today at unitedwaygt.org. Scott Poteet, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. This is quite an experience, so thank you. Yeah, you know, we've been looking forward to this. We met at Inauguration and had a quick, I don't know, maybe 15-minute conversation there. I've always wanted to have an astronaut on the show, so yeah, thank you for coming. Absolutely. There's only like six or seven, or 650 astronauts have gone into space. So

blessed to have that opportunity and just excited to talk about it. Yeah, me too. Me too. But so I want to do a life story on you and talk about your time in the Air Force, your childhood, get into space, and then who knows what kind of rabbit holes will go down here, but yeah, like I said, thank you for coming and I'm looking forward to this. So everybody starts off with an introduction here. So, Scott Kidd Poteet, born in Chattanooga, Tennessee,

you grew up in New Hampshire, earning a bachelor's in outdoor education from the University of New Hampshire before diving headfirst into the Air Force. You're a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with over 20 years of service where you logged more than 3,200 flight hours in aircraft like F-16s, A-4s, and T-38s. Over 400 of those hours were in combat supporting operations like Northern Watch, Southern Watch, Joint Guardian, Freedoms Sentinel, and Resolute Support. You commanded the 64th Aggressor Squadron, graduated from the elite USAF weapons school, basically the Air Force's version of Top Gun, and even flew as the number four demonstration pilot with the Thunderbirds.

You then went into the private sector serving as Director of Business Development at Draken International and later as Vice President of Strategic at Shift 4 Payments. You were the Mission Director for Inspiration 4, the world's first all-civilian spaceflight in 2021. You also suited up as the mission pilot for Polaris Dawn in 2024, a SpaceX mission that took you nearly 900 miles above Earth, the farthest humans have traveled since Apollo and included the first ever commercial spacewalk. You're a triathlete who has completed who has competed in 15 Ironman races including four

world championships and Kona. Now you live in New Hampshire with your wife Kristen and your three children and most importantly out of everything we mentioned you're a Christian. I mean so welcome to the show once again If you watch you know everybody gets a gift Use these on your next iron man. I Will I appreciate that you'll insulate gummy bears give you a couple more of those to take home Yeah, it was hard to come by and they're made in the USA And illegal at all 50. They're still legal. We haven't made any changes yet, but I Don't think we're going to

but then So I have one more thing before we really get we get going here So I have a patreon account patreon is it's it's a subscription online community. They have been with us here since the beginning when I was doing this in my attic when we couldn't get any advertisers any way to make money. And they were the ones that like, they're the ones that supported us that that that got us everything from the cameras to the employees to moving into this to everything. And so one of the things I do in that community is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. And they had some good questions. Oh, it's the most nerve-racking question, I'm sure.

So this one's from me. Oh, no's the most nerve-racking question I'm sure. So this one's from me. Oh no! Is that legal? I'm part of the community too and so this one's from me. Is that because no one asked a question? Oh no, no. The original question I'll ask you too. Okay. But I'm gonna ask mine first because I've been dying to talk to an astronaut about this. Cause we do dive into some conspiracy theories, you know. Did we go to the moon or what? I've been wanting to talk to an astronaut about this for a while.

There it is. We have not been back to the moon since 1969. What, why haven't we gone back? Why? Oh man. I think we just shifted our focus as a country. NASA had different priorities once we went to the moon, which I do believe we have.

You do think we did? I do, I do. I don't know. I do. I do. I don't know. I mean, I would imagine there would have been a lot more leaks out there. Yeah, I'm with you. I think about that. It's really hard to keep that big of a secret. Yeah.

But why haven't we gone back? I mean, we don't just go anywhere and then like, oh, fuck it. There's nothing here. I don't think we need to come back to the boom. We walked on it for five minutes and we're out. There's nothing to see here. Like, really? Give me a break. It's not easy.

There's a sequence of miracles that happen. I mean, think about the computer power of what they had back in the Apollo program. We have more in our iPhones these days. So it wasn't an easy task. And then once it was accomplished, you know, in my opinion, I, you know, the, the, the focused shift to low earth orbit, you know, building a station, accomplish the science and research that has been the focus for the last few

decades, amazing things have come out of that. You can do a lot more at zero gravity and with the science and research. And we experienced that on our mission with our 40 experiments that we had lined up. And that's just, you know, let's build up the station. Let's explore low earth orbit. And now that we've kind of made this new shift with opening up a new chapter in commercial

space exploration, allowing these companies and organizations to kind of go off on these new tangents and explore, we're not only gonna address low Earth orbit over the next coming years, it's all about, okay, let's go back to the moon, the lunar surface, and let's go to Mars. Because it's human nature to explore and curiosity, and, oh, by the way, we can benefit life on Earth. So, bottom line, I think it's just a focus. And now that we kind of shift and let's do more,

because we can, we're usability and technology's improving. But it's a heavy lift. It's not easy. Otherwise, we would have knocked it out in a couple of years. We're still a couple years away. Yeah, I don't know what to think. It's just what is that? 1969 to them. What is that 50? I'm 51 at 73. So that's an extra four is 55 Yeah, like 56 years. Yeah 56 years. We have not gone back. That's just odd to me. That's really odd but

Whatever. So you think we did? I alright. odd. But whatever, so you think we did? I think we did. Alright, alright. When do you think we'll be back? Are we going back? Well, yes. I mean, Elon wants to go to Mars. We're, um, the... The plan is two.

Back to lunar surface in two. And Mars in four. Back in four back in two and two years yeah I do think that's you know that's realistic like I said there's there's a lot of things that need to be solved and NASA's doing amazing work to get us there with the partnerships and collaborations with SpaceX and other organizations. But we got to figure out how it's going to be done and done safely. Because it's like with our mission, it was a no-fail. Otherwise, we're going to set back these programs years if something catastrophic happens.

Yeah. And the public's not willing, you know, the risk we took back in the day, you know, the fifties and sixties was a lot, a lot, a lot more significant than we're willing to accept these days. And, you know, we're, we're kind of risk averse and it can be a positive and a negative, you know, to some extent, cause it can be paralysis through analysis. At some point we got to put put up shut up and go. It seems like civilian space exploration is like

really going, becoming a lot more advanced than NASA. It's almost seems like it's, it's well beyond what NASA can do. Am I, am I off on that? I mean, isn't SpaceX going up to rescue the NASA guys that have been stuck in space for like eight months? You're starting off with the tricky ones. It's a, it's a partnership for sure. NASA's, they do this for 11, they've been doing it for decades, 60 plus years, whatever it's been.

And we typically always want to make sure that we never lose sight of these accomplishments. We're standing on the shoulders of giants of what they've been able to accomplish. And we, meaning commercial space collectively, would not be where we're at without everything they've been able to accomplish. And moving forward, it is definitely a partnership. Is it a one-way partnership or is it a two-way? I mean, the government isn't great at, you know, sharing. I'm just, you know, is it really?

I think it's two-way. I mean, just look at our program. You know, we did the first commercial spacewalk. To do that, SpaceX wanted to develop a brand new EVA suit, extravehicular activity, do a spacewalk. And that's never been done in over 40 years. NASA has the EMU suit that they currently use. SpaceX is going to figure it out on their own. So they took their baseline suit, the IVA suit, the one they currently wear to and from the space station, in a very, you know, less than three years, two and a half year time span, took that suit and developed what we wore, which is more or less the prototype

EVA suit. Now, to do that on a very streamlined budget, not a multi-billion dollar program, you know, they monster garage this thing to develop a suit that is extremely viable and will be, you know, the baseline going forward as far as what they're gonna develop regarding a suit with humans bouncing on the surface of the moon and Mars in capacity,

not a handful of suits like NASA has. The concept is, you know, these starships are gonna launch hundreds of passengers. You know, in Elon's vision, he stated in the the past, three of these a day with full of passengers going either to the low Earth orbit, to a station, to the moon, to Mars, you know, it's sci-fi, but that's what we're accomplishing and that's what SpaceX is accomplishing and other organizations are accomplishing. Because I, you know, when I got involved with this program years ago, I didn't really understand the concept of boosters landing

on their own, chopsticks, catching boosters, reusability. I'm like, there's no way. This is far-fetched. But look at us. I mean, tonight, Test 8 is launching in Starship and each time they launch they're learning new things you know it might not land successfully in the ocean Indian Ocean but it certainly well could and they're gonna catch the booster with the chopsticks and this is just a next step

to achieve that ultimate goal of multiple launches daily, going to the moon, going to Mars. Why do you think the, why do we want to bring hundreds of passengers into space? Um, why not? I mean, it depends on who you ask on on what you believe, and justifying these significant projects and programs. But we certainly aren't good stewards of our planet. We haven't been. Whether you wanna call this an insurance policy,

or you wanna go down the curiosity route of let's explore. Because who knows what's out there? And are those resources that we could capitalize on? You know, the population issues, the climate issues, you know, when is it going to make a turn for the worst? An asteroid, you know? you know, when is it going to make a turn for the worst? An asteroid, you know? They're talking about 2024, whatever asteroid name they have.

It's supposed to, you know, a probability of 5%, 6%. And by 2032, don't quote me on these numbers. But that's catastrophic to certain parts of the planet. So again, it's like, if we have the opportunity and the resources and the intellect to pursue some of these goals, why not? Hey, I'm not against it. I'm just, I don't have anybody to talk to this stuff about

that's been up there. So I think it's just a fascinating subject. I mean, we haven't found any water or anything on Mars, have we? I don't know. Or frozen? We found frozen water or anything on Mars? I don't know. Yeah.

I mean, it's just interesting. I mean, how would we sustain there with no nothing? We don't really know anything. Do we know anything? This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Who's your support system? For me, it's my family and my inner circle of friends. They've always got time to listen

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Got a couple of robots running around there. Just landed on the moon with another robot company. So they're trying. I mean it's all about exploration. We did it decades ago with exploring countries and across oceans. So it's not too much far off that. Have we found anything significant that that would help sustain human life on the moon or Mars that you're aware of? Not that I'm aware of I mean it's gonna rely upon innovative technologies to figure out how we you know because it can't be a one in my, this can't be a one-way mission to Mars. Yeah.

And it's eight months to get there, and it's eight months home, and however long you need to do the mission on the surface. Eight months? It's eight months? Yeah. I think that's... It's a long car ride, buddy. Long car ride.

Well, the volume of these vehicles are pretty big. It's a lot bigger than what we lived in, which is a lot bigger than what they went to the moon. Yeah. How long did it take them to get to the moon? I think it was two and a half, four and a half days, a couple days. Traveling 25,000 miles an hour to escape gravitational pull. Damn.

Damn. Damn. All right, we'll move on. This is from Brian. How did you get your call sign when you got named at your first squadron? And during your time flying the F-16, did you ever fly any CAS missions supporting JTACS on the ground?

Love the JTACS. That was my favorite mission, was working with you guys. SEALs, three letter identifiers. Those were the best missions. Because you're supporting your brothers and sisters on the ground doing the mission. So to answer the second question, yes.

I did a lot of casts. I flew the F-16 for 20 years and it's a multi-role platform so you do air-to-air and you know that it's the jack-of-all-trades, master of none. So you're constantly dabbling all these different modalities and mission sets but the reason why I chose the F-16 was for the underground missions and specifically the CAS. In fact, my last assignment was Aviano Air Base in Italy. We deployed to Afghanistan doing Resolute Support and Freedom Sentinel, doing counterterrorism

missions, dropping bombs and working with you guys and other agencies. That was by far the highlight of my career. What year was that? That was 15. So it's kind of the height of ISIS. There wasn't much of that presence. It was more al-Qaeda. But we were just working our way up the chain,

looking for high-value targets, trying to beat out the Predators because that was when the Predator was kind of making its big push on unemployment. Very very accurate platform. In fact, when I went through weapons school, top gun school, that was the focus of my thesis was integrating CAS missions with F-16s and Predator. That's a long story, but to answer his question, yeah, a lot of missions with JTAX, controllers, doing CAS. Call sign.

Call sign. So it's KID, it's K-I-D-D, two D's. When you go through your career, it's usually something you F up, you screw up or play off your name. So, I got call signs like Pooter, which kind of play off Poteet. I had Biff for a while, then I had Money, the movie Swingers back in the 90s. And then I ended up getting married, so I was no longer money. I was kind of a small change.

You weren't a swinger anymore. Was never a swinger. Clarification. But I lost the call sign money and then I got named kid and every fighter squadron, how you get your call sign, the naming ceremony is always different. And I was in the triple nickel, 555th fighter squad, a very historic Robin Oles from Vietnam War,

the best fighter squad in the Air Force. How we did the ceremony is you're kicked out so they can talk about you. Usually it's a drink fest. So you don't really hear the reasons why you get named until you get brought back into the ceremony. And they've selected a couple different stories of why. There's usually one that's PG that's releas. And then there's another reason why.

So the releasable story is that kid, I looked young back in the day. My first name is actually William. So Billy the kid. There was already a kid in the sister squad on the 510th, the Buzzards, but he was KID. So they added an extra D. And there's other reasons why it ended up being kid That unfortunately, I Come on this was this was JD Jack Daniels I might be over there. Well, we got All right, all right, I won't press you but

All right, all right, I won't press you. But all right, so let's move into the life story here. So I know you were born here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Chattanooga. When did you move to New Hampshire? So I was born in 73, 51. We were born in Chattanooga, but I was actually, I lived five years just across the border, north, Deepwoods, Georgia. Middle to low income fam.

Lot of connections with Fort Oglethorpe, Chickamauga Park, kind of the, my uncle had a double wide and half the trailer was a private collection. I think he had one of the largest private collections of Civil War artifacts. I just remember as a kid rummaging into, you know, his collection there's really cool stuff like bullets with teeth marks, ceramic bullets from amputations, biting the bullet, the whole concept. Those are some of my memories as a kid. But when I was five, we moved.

My dad worked for a company called Combustion Engineering. He worked there for 50 years, worked up from janitor all the way up to a manager. But he got transferred up to New Hampshire Seacast. So we moved to a town called Durham and pretty much started grade school in the town of Durham, actually went grade school, elementary, middle school, high school and college all in the same town. Really? Yeah.

But stayed there all the way to college. What were you into as a kid? What's that? What were you into? Sports. Sports? I was very competitive, obsessively competitive. 80s. So I was big into like the Celtics, the Red Sox, we would always go to games, Patriots, as well as the Bruins. But

it was, it was obsessive to the point of you know I would sacrifice all my friends and foes to get to the front of line for whatever you know line enough for class and it ended up you know parent-teacher conferences trying to figure out ways to kind of channel that gladiator attitude I had. A little bit of bribery I kind of was able to figure out how to channel it to something a little more productive, which became sports. So, sun up to sun down. Back in the day when you actually could stay out past sunset as a kid riding your bike

and just looking for my next contest of how to compete. That was my childhood and became- You have siblings? Older brother. Year and a half older. Great relationship. Family was a little bit, I would say maybe unemotional. Kind of kept to ourselves.

But I would spend my time just rowing, looking for trouble. What sports? I played everything. Baseball, soccer, basketball was big throughout my life. I got a job at the golf course, so I picked up golf. I started, I was a good golfer. I played on the high school team as a middle schooler, but then they cut the team.

So I had to figure out another sport, which became running. So I actually got involved in running pretty early on. And that became my focus. I wanted basketball to be it. Larry Bird back in the Celtics era in the 80s was a big deal. But I was a real five foot nine inches tall. I knew it wasn't a likelihood of,

it wasn't in the cards playing at the next level in college. Terrible, terrible student. Cs and Ds across the board. Really? Yeah. I couldn't focus before all the diagnosis, but I just couldn't pay attention. I was really good at setting athletic goals and succeeding on the pitch, the field, the diamond, the track, but I could not apply those same strategies in the classroom.

By the time I got to high school, I'm like, I'm not going to college if I don't figure out a path. And for me, it was like, okay, I'm okay at sports. Let me see if I can leverage those talents and use that as a path to getting to college. So that's when I focused on running. Ended up winning the state championship race my junior year and it was it was kind of that performance and my dedication to the sport that that got me recruited to run division one at at University of New Hampshire. I applied

to UNH that school and University of Tennessee at Knoxville. And that was it. And I got recruited and I only got in because of the coach. So plan worked. So plan worked, thankfully. But even to college, man, academics was, it's just the traditional education method is not my jam. Yeah. You know, sit through class, pay attention, take notes, memorize, regurgitate it in an

exam that you may or may not use this information in your life. So that's kind of where I found a different option. What was your major? What did you? It's called outdoor education. What is that? So it's education through experiential learning. So how that is different is that you're taught a basic skill set.

So all my classes were like scuba diving, rock climbing, winter mountaineering, whitewater rafting, Nordic skiing, advanced backpacking. I actually had an advanced backpacking class. Damn. And you would go and you would be taught some basic skills. But you immediately go out into the field and you apply these and you learn in the field.

And it was only by happenstance that I came across. My buddy of mine brought me to class one day. In fact, I remember it was, I signed up for ROTC, another kind of a serendipitous moment that I had joining ROTC, but I was already signed up and I'm in full service dress. And it's middle of the winter, three feet of snow on the ground, and he's like, hey, come with me

to one of my outdoor education classes. I'm like, okay. I'm very impulsive, so I'm like, all right, let's do this. So I go to class, and it's in a gymnasium. It's not in a normal classroom. And there are students in the back of the class in the storage lockers going through all this gear. And I'm in my full service, just hand me down,

polyester uniform, a big trench coat, you know, cheap patent leather shoes and stand out like a sore thumb. And we walk up to the class and the teacher starts talking and he's like, all right, this is advanced winter backpacking and we're going to build a Quincy in the snow for the next three hours. And I'm like, I'm not dressed for this and I don't know if this is going to work out. We'll come to find out my teacher is a Navy SEAL. He was a Navy SEAL for 20 years. And he takes us out back and we start building this Quincy. And for those who are unfamiliar, Quincy is like an igloo, but instead of blocks, you dig down to the surface, you pile a bunch

of snow up, you let it set. Once it's set into a big old dome, you kind of dig a little entrance. Once you get inside, you dig all around. You leave about four to six inches for a wall. Once you dug it all out, you take a little propane stove, you light it, you glaze, heat up the inside, it glazes over, and now you have this impenetrable structure, this winter shelter. And you get, you know, 12, 15 people to stand on top of the structure.

It's only four to six inches, and it holds the weight. And now it's like 23 degrees warmer inside this igloo, this quincy. And man, I have a blast. I am soaking wet. I'm just on my hands and knees digging this structure and he's giving all these life lessons, talking about combat and because he's, you know, I'm wearing this uniform and it was just like this profound experience. And I'm like, this is the way I can get an education or in a degree so I can go into the military because I didn't think I'm you know I've got three and a half years left to get a degree in order to go into the military because

I'm the ROTC program and I'm like my grades aren't cutting it right now but you know this is something. Why did you pick ROTC? What caught your interest in that anyways? So I was walking to class freshman year, fall semester one day, and this flyer on a bulletin board caught my eye. And it was a picture of a fighter jet. It was just an advertisement encouraging students to come experience the Air Force way of life. Sign up to be a passenger aboard a KC-135 air refueling aircraft at the local Air National Guard unit out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

P's used to be an Air Force base, STRATCOM. They launched F-111s on alert there. It was actually an alternate landing site for the space shuttle back in the shuttle program. Heated runway 13,000 feet long. Anyways, they have a guard unit there, KC-135. Now it's the KC-46, the replacement refueler in the Air Force. And I'm impulsive, I sign up. And when I signed up, I didn't fully grasp the consequences of my actions because there's a couple secrets about myself that's probably gonna jeopardize credibility. Extremely prone to motion sickness.

Always have been, always will be. You stick me an Uber, 15 minutes long, I'm done. Are you kidding me? Yeah, 15 minutes long, I'm done. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I still get nauseous. Scared of heights. I hate heights. Me too.

Actually, Afghanistan, they took us up in a helicopter. I was a command position. And the PJs took me up in a helicopter, and they knew I was scared of heights. And doors open up at like 14,000 feet. Man, it freaked the shit out of me. Anyways, so, and I'd never flown an aircraft before in my life at 18 years old.

We didn't have the money to go anywhere. But here's my chance. I'm gonna sign up and I'm gonna go. So I command I sign up, and bus takes us, So I command I sign up and bus takes us, big old school bus drops us off at the plane and we board this aircraft and I take my seat. And again, I've never been in an aircraft and it's hot, it's dark, there's no windows and this gutted plane,

couple seats up front and I start to panic. I'm like, I start sweating, I get, you know, I get heart rate goes up, breathing shallow, and I'm like, I don't want to do this. How do I get out? But there's a couple of cute girls next to me. I can't back out now, I gotta man up. And so, air crew comes out and briefs us

on what we can anticipate and they're like, all right, we're gonna start off with some Low approaches do some training. I'm like, I have no idea what that is Let's do this and we're gonna go out to the airspace and refuel some f-16s. And and so Close the door and take off and they immediately level off and they come back around and they land and take off again 20 minutes in this flight, I just lose my lunch. I'm puking. It's like a CNET alien. It's just, it's bad.

And I pass out. Two hours later, crew chief wakes me up, says, hey, son, come with me. Walks me back to the observation where they do the refueling. The boom operator sits back there. And I'm like working my way up there, Just trying not to puke on anyone or anything and he takes a seat starts doing his pre-fueling checks and

Trying to distract me and I take the observation seat next to him and he's like, alright, there's there's two fighters on the horizon They're about to reform. I pull up to within a couple feet of our window, and man, it's like a scene out of Top Gun. There's a fighter pilot, he's wearing his helmet, his mask, he's giving me a little shock eyes. He boom plugs the aircraft and we start communicating. He's asking questions, he's telling us about his mission. I'm just like, that is awesome. That was the little spark.

Everyone's got their motivation, but that was the little spark everyone's got their motivation But that was the the fire that was lit within me and I completely forgot about the last two hours I just I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I didn't care what it took. I knew I had a lot of challenges in front of me But I had to figure out how to how to get in that cockpit nice And then I figured out the education piece with outdoor education. Wow, wow. So I mean, there's got to be a lot of studying

to be a pilot and an astronaut. And so I mean, I would imagine there's a lot of fooled so so let's but let's move on so you graduated college then what I did pretty well in ROTC anything active I do pretty good so I, or if I have interest in it. So I was a pretty good cadet. I graduate, distinguished graduate, and I get selected for a program called EuroNATO Joint Jet Pilot Training, NJEPT. And it's a specified pilot training program out of Shepard Air Force Base Wichita Falls.

And it's all the NATO countries participate. They send instructors and students who are gonna be flying fighter jets. So it's specific to flying a fighter aircraft. Whereas the other pilot training bases, there's two tracks. Well, there's three if you count Helos. Everyone starts off on the same platform. It's a T6 now.

I flew a T37, just a side-by-side little dog whistle loud jet trainer fully aerobatic The G onset rate in those aircrafts are you know I get chills every time I think about my first year of pilot training because I would puke almost every single flight and

At the six year or the six month point for those other bases you split you go If you've got the heavy track, you're gonna go fly a c17 c130 c5 You're gonna go to the t1 Lear jet looking aircraft if you're gonna go fly fighters or bombers you go to the t38 Well this program that I went to there's only or bombers, you go to the T-38. Well, this program that I went to, there's only one track. You go from T-37 to T-38s and you go in the fighter. What you end up with after pilot training, which is, you know, that's a whole other story as far as what is required, but it's somewhere around two to two and a half years to get through the training process. It's needs of the Air Force.

Everything's stratified, probably feels very similar. It's stratifications. So you're performing number one, two, three, four, all the way down to whatever your class has. And when it comes time for your assignment night, it's like, all right, the Air Force needs two F-16 pilots for F-15Cs, this many F-15Es, A-10s, and you just go down the list and you pick. So first ranked student gets to pick whatever they want.

Yeah. And then it just goes on from there. Now it's like F-22s, F-35s. So back to your question, I went to Shepard Air Force Base and I did this program. And I was about there two and a year and a half to get through the training there. And then you go off and do supplemental training, depending on what aircraft and survival training, centrifuge, and then you do all these top-off qualifications before you actually get to combat operations, operational assignments, which is at that two and a half year point. So hold on, let's backtrack.

So pilot training is how long to get to pick what you're gonna fly. The actual training is a year, but there are certain elements or milestones you have to accomplish, like survival training. You might go before you even start pilot training, or it might be something in the middle, or it might be something at the very end. Centrifuge is something you have to go through because you're gonna start flying

higher performance aircrafts that can that you need to qualify yourself In these certain profiles of pulling G's Because some people have a really difficult time if you don't understand the the G strain maneuver It's just some people aren't physiologically cut out for pulling some of those high performance G profiles that you'll experience in a fighter jet. So the training is actually a year, it's about a year and a half, but then there's an extra six months you'll have to go through to learn how to fly an F-16 or an F-22 or an F-35.

So I was there a year and a half before I went off to my base to learn how to fly the F-16. And it was a miserable experience for me. Flying the F-16? No, pilot training. Why? Motion sickness, academics. Yeah, how did you get through the academics?

I mean, I thought I was going to be a pilot just as a hobby. I was like, oh, this might be kind of cool. And then I looked at all the shit I had to study and I was like, fuck that, I'm not doing it. Yeah. I was like, ground school? No, not doing it. So I mean, how did you, it sounds like you were a horrible, horrible student.

I, man, I was challenged then, I was challenged at 16, I was challenged weapon school, I was challenged space. And it was, it's more my hard-headed mindset. Because if I apply myself, I think I could. It was, it's more my hard-headed mindset. Because if I apply myself, I think I could do okay. You have to have a drive. You do. You have to have a drive, like you really want that end goal and that's the only way you're able to concentrate

and get through the shit that you don't wanna do. Like study. In pilot training, even looking back, I'm like, well, I went through weapons school and I went through space. Pilot training was nothing compared to what I went through later. But at the time, I'm coming off outdoor education,

four years of scuba diving, rock climbing, mountaineering. My final exam in Nordic skiing was five days in Vermont doing Nordic skiing. As long as you didn't get a cold weather injury, you got an A. We were in bed and breakfast and a hot tub in the afternoon and skiing all day long. A little hidden secret. But now I go to pilot training and the expectation is, dude, this is a big boy program, you know. And oh, by the way, I went right after graduation because I just, I was gung-ho. I just wanted to get going.

So I literally graduate three days later, I'm on the road moving to Texas. And my classmates were all top graduates at the Air Force Academy. So they're coming off aerospace engineering, astrophysics, you know, that's one of the premier academic programs in the country. And oh, by the way, these are the top graduates. So this is who I'm competing against, you know, and that stratification. And it was, it was a steep, steep learning curve. Yeah, I bet. One of the best parts of having my own show is getting to do what I love with a team that

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You know, you got to apply yourself in the actual stick and rudder coordination piece. But there is the academic piece. You got to prove yourself there before they're going to put you in a cockpit. We had these things and I still have nightmares about them. It's stand up. And it's like there's boldface.

You have to memorize certain emergency procedures that's specific to the aircraft. And it's like almost a haze where in the morning you have stand up and they'll call on you. They'll randomly select, all right, kid. Back then I don't remember what it was. Pooter, stand up. All right, this is your scenario. You got your aircraft and you have an engine failure and you're this far away and this parameters and it's just, you're in the hot seat

and you gotta verbatim give the procedures and then all the amplifying systems knowledge and it's just to prove and test your level of competency. And that was my nemes. And if you don't do well enough, Pooter, sit down. Next guy. And you don't get to fly that day. You're grounded until you have some remedial training.

I was notorious. All right, Pooter, here's your second chance. No shit. Dude, you suck. Sit down. How did you overcome the motion sickness? It took a long, long time. A lot of driving.

I actually had to hide it from my instructors. Thankfully, the 38 is, you know, is that tandem? You know, it's brought back, and you're separated. Where the 37 was next to each other. So you see exactly what's going on in the cockpit, but in 38 you're in front. But I would have to puke and swallow. I would literally puke in my mask and just suck it up.

Because you get to a certain point where you know depending on what your issue is. You would just puke in your mask? Yeah this might be TMI but no I'm like sometimes where does it go? If you can you can hold it long enough you can either you know and my recommendation is if how do you concentrate? flying a jet Well, well trying like trying like held up hold vomit down if if you do have to My recommendation is always eat something you don't mind eating again bananas. Yeah, it's a good choice I remember one time my first you would you would puke and then swallow it again.

You just got to fight through it. And then what happened again? I had a great instructor. He was Norwegian and he, hardcore dude, loved to party, drove this old 1980s Cadillac with the big old steer horns on the hood, hood ornament. He was awesome. He was sympathetic to my cause so he would know because I'd be doing this heaving going on I'm trying to fly this aircraft and pay attention

and Especially the aerobatics once you get to the airspace But my first flight of 38 I thought was over it, you know six months All right It's getting a little better getting a little better because eventually you get to a point where like they stick you in the berenie chair You know to force it out of you, try to just break your will. None of that was working for me.

And I would just hide it, via techniques already talked about. But my first flight in the 38, man, it came on so quick. It just, it came out of my mask, and all over my visor. And I'm like doing this out of my mask and all over my visor. And I'm like doing this windshield wiper, trying to clear my visor, because my pilot's in the back.

And I suffer through a sub, well below average execution on my dollar ride, my first flight. I think I made it, I think I made it. And he climbs out of it and he climbs up into my cockpit, and he's looking around and he goes, not a chance. Because there's puke all over the dashboard of this, so I didn't pass that ride. So hold on, does it go, is it like an initial, is it an initial motion sickness,

and then you puke and then it's gone for the rest of the flight, or is it like an initial, is it an initial motion sickness and then you puke and then it's gone for the rest of the flight? Or is it like the whole thing? It ebbs and flows. You know, you get a little bit better. So it's like sea sickness. You're just, you're in it. Shit.

Yeah. And you still wanted to be a pilot? Oh yeah. Holy shit, man. Yeah, I was determined. Stubborn, strong-willed, ego, and I don't know what it was, but I'm like, I have, I can't fail. This is, I gotta figure it out.

Because there's one kid in my class that left. He just, I'm done. I got, tapping out, I'm out. But I just, I wanted to figure it out. I, you know, you do. I mean, I can eat a greasy pork sandwich and go do aerobatics as long as I'm flying. Stick me in the back seat and someone else is flying.

So you have overcoming? Yeah. Okay. You know, people talk, is it physiological? Is it's logical, is it psychological? I think it's a combination of a lot of things in a year. Thankfully, space is not there's no correlation. Because space adaptation syndrome is impacts 50% of astronauts. What is it called? Space adaptation syndrome. And it's, because you,

we'll get to it, but like you experience all these g-forces on the way up. And then it's a long ride. So it's about nine minutes, you're pulling four and a half G's. And then when that second stage separates, you're thrust forward, you're hanging in your straps and now you're in space floating. you're hanging in your straps and now you're in space floating. And so that transition, it can force this cross coupling illusion of tumbling. And it impacts everyone differently. It can be seconds, it can be minutes, it can be long durations of this tumbling and it's different axis, depending on who you are.

Do you know if you're going to get it before you go to space? So it's, it's, it's space? So it's a big surprise. And puking in space with zero gravity. Oh man. You saw the movies, Apollo 13. I was ecstatic. I was on cloud nine, I was on a drug, man. I was so pumped. Once I realized I got to orbit, I'm floating, I get through this tumbling sensation

because you're forced to deal with your circumstances. There's no like, I'll suck this up for 30 seconds on a roller coaster or you know, you find a fighter jet, can you ease off and fly straight level for a few potatoes? No, you are forced to deal with your circumstances. There's no reset button. And that's very challenging because that capsule is rotating. It's got to maintain line of sight with satellites for communication purposes.

So as it's going around, it's rotating. So you look outside and you see the horizon. That makes sense. This is the top of the capsule and this is the bottom. You come inside, you float around, and you look back outside and it's completely opposite. And now it's like, whoa. After a while, your body adapts and human body is amazing. I would be a couple hours into it. I'd be on my iPad, laptop, whatever, iPhone, doing some science and research. I'd be completely inverted, working, just hanging, inverted,

when that's the top and that's the bottom, but it just, you lose all reference. But back to, back to motion sickness. Yeah, I more or less got over it. I still get, especially if someone's shitty driver and hmm. Wow. Wow. That's well more information than any other hurdles. That was it for pilot training was academics in the in the motion sickness.

That was it for pilot training was academics in the in the motion sickness Fear heights I get over it's planes are fine. It's structures. Yeah ledges. I have that too Okay I figured that I hate I Yeah, jump school was not fun for me. Yeah, I fucking hated it. Yeah terrified of heights we we've uh Went free dive or free free diving. Yeah. Skydiving. Part of the space training. And jumping out of a plane was... Oh shit, you had to do it? Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, got you out the door. The only thing that got me out the door is I didn't want to look like a pussy in front of everybody else. That's it.

But I had a bum shoulder. So this is the only program. I don't even know if we want to go here. But it was with the Air Force Academy. It's the only program in the world that is the first jump is free fall and solo. What? Yeah.

And you're scared to death of fights? Oh man, that's so, I gotta hear this. Unfortunately, I had hurt my shoulder years back, dislocated it. And I actually dislocated it in space training in the capsule. In full on spacesuit. And it's this emergency procedures. It's we got to, we just splashed down in the, you know, in the Pacific ocean. And now we got to do this emergency egress.

So it's, you know, rush, see how quickly we can get out of the capsule. So my responsibility is the swimmer on the, with all my Ironmans was to get out first. And I got to throw the boat, the inflatable boat out in the water and pull the cord. And as I'm pulling, it completely dislocated my shoulder. And so this was an injury from years prior, so now I have this, I was able to get it back in because these suits, these are expensive suits, and the docs came in and were trying to get my shoulder

back in, but I'm in this suit. I'm in this helmet, it's one piece. There's no way you can get up into the shoulder. So over time, we were able to finally pop it back in. And that event kind of just let this, like, you know, all stretched out. So it was, but skydiving didn't help. Actually, my first jump I had to pull with my left hand. Worked out fine.

But that kind of ended my skydiving career until I had surgery post space. Damn. Have you ever, just a random question, you're a diver too, right? You had mentioned, you did some scuba diving in school. Have you ever been scared of heights underwater? Have you ever come up like you're diving, you're diving on the ocean floor and then you hit a ledge?

No, I don't think I've ever been that deep. Shoreline off the Atlantic and the North is pretty shallow. I get it, I get it on that. Do you really? Yeah. I never thought I would. Looking down? Yeah. I remember diving over a ledge once, and I was like, oh, shit.

Let's go back over here. Yeah. How deep? I don't know how deep it was. I can't remember. But I do remember the feeling, getting it under water, which you'd think you would never get because you'd have that. You know, it's not like you're gonna fall,

but there's just that look off the ledge where you can't see the bottom of it. I love watching those free divers, free, holding their breath for five, six minutes. That's pretty wild. Yeah. So what place did you graduate at? I was just, I think I was fourth or fifth out of 12.

And then we had some NATO country. Two Dutch, two Dane, two German. So we had a big class, 20 or so. I think I was fourth, fifth, sixth, somewhere right around there. What's everybody want? Honestly, it depends on what you, what mission you want to do.

Cause they all kind of function the same. I mean, well, if you ask a pilot who's flown them, there's certainly big, dramatic differences. I mean, are we talking like F-16 and C-130? No. So, my drop, again, Air Force Needs, my drop had, I want to say, four F-15Cs. Didn't have any 15Es, which is the two seat strike platform.

Um, it's the mud hand. It carries a lot of munitions, air to ground mission, but you have a whizzo, you got a backseater, um, four or five F 16s, two A 10s. And then it's like, uh, there might be a couple instructor, to go right back into pilot training to be an instructor, if you don't end up in a fighter jet that you wanted. It's kind of an option. And then there was some bombers, a B-52, B-1.

And so when I picked, I had the choice between a 15C and a 16. And I wanted a multi-role platform. I wanted to do air to ground. I wanted to do CAS. But I also loved the sexiness of an air to air mission. You know, dog fighting and you know, doing that type of mission.

And yeah, 16 is multi-role. So depending on what base you go to will be the focus of your mission. Like I ended up, first assignment was Korea, then I went to Italy, and then I went to weapon school. But those first Korea was all about interdiction. You know, there's gonna be an initial air threat if we ever go to war with North Korea.

It's gonna be capacity. They're just gonna overwhelm you You know, there's going to be an initial air threat. If we ever go to war with North Korea, it's going to be capacity. They're just going to overwhelm you with these teenage Migs, these old antiquated, you know, third gen type platforms. No capability and no competency, but they're just going to try to overwhelm the South. Have you ever wound up in a dog fight? No, that-

Damn! Damn! No, all simulated. They're very, very rare. You know, back in World War II in Vietnam, since then it's been a... I figured. It's been a handful. Man, that would be fucking awesome. It would be awesome. But technology these days, it's all about not being seen. Yeah. So if you get to emerge, it's, it's because either you screwed up or, you know, you just didn't get the information you needed. Yeah. Yeah. So I ended up in the F16 was my choice. And, um,

is that what you initially wanted? You wanted the F-16. I did. And you got it. Yeah. So that had to be awesome pay for you. And part of it is about the location as well. So you leave private training with a specific airframe. And then once you get to that base for training, for me it was Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix.

You spend six months learning how to fly the F-16 to employ it. So now you've gone from the very basics, flying instruments, flying formation, just a little bit of aerobatic. That's it. You're competent, you're safe enough, you hopefully won't kill yourself.

And now when you learn how to fly the F-16, you go deeper. You start doing BFM, basic five maneuvers, the dog fighting, one V1. And then you do TI, tactical engagements. Now it's working the geometry for a reform to an engagement, a visual engagement. And then you start adding more and more aircraft.

Now it's ACT where it's like 4V4 and you're actual, you know, you're doing long range stuff beyond visual range. And if you end up in a visual range, you're competent enough to do that type of dog fighting. And then you kind of go through this whole air to air flow and then you got to focus on the air to ground piece. So you start off by going to a range and you're dropping these little blue bombs for scoring purposes and you're trying to focus your skill sets on learning the basics of how to employ and fly the aircraft with specific parameters.

So you're comfortable in certain air speeds and altitudes and ranges and how the aircraft feels and you're shooting the gun, a 20 millimeter gun. And then again, that progresses. Now you're going to do close air support and you're working with troops on the ground, JTACs and SEALs are calling in engagements and you're employing in close proximity to ground forces. How fast, how, how, what's the fastest you've gone in an F-16? Um, it's Mach 2, 2.05 is roughly two times, Mach 2 is twice, two times the speed of sound and,

you know, it's roughly 700 for, for the layman's explanation, it's around 750 miles an hour. roughly 700 for the layman's explanation it's around 750 miles an hour it changes based on pressure altitude temperatures all that um but two times that so 1500 miles an hour whoa um it's all relative 100 miles an hour it's all relative i mean now you talk about you know sixth gen coming online this you know three four mock Gen coming online, this, you know, 3-4 Mach. And it doesn't really feel intense until you get low on the deck, flying fast, low, because you have that ground rush. You know, the trees are going by pretty fast. I would imagine.

But there's a lot of restrictions. So you can't break the sound barrier unless you're in a specific restricted airspace, which is few and far between in the US. So if you're breaking the sound barrier, it's above 30,000 feet or higher. And the sensation isn't there. You just see a little buffet on your dial. Otherwise, you just continue to push.

What were you flying in regular pilot school? As far as the airframe? Yeah. T-37 is the first aircraft. Two-seat, two-engine, very do they call it, the MiG-28 in Top Gun, F5. It's this NASA flies them, very stubby wing, sleek, long, airframe, twin engine, very fast. And then, so you do that for six months ap piece, total of a year, and then you go off and you fly your platform. Okay, so the speed wasn't, it wasn't anything new to you.

No, the T-38, I don't know if you did a mock run, I don't think you did. I don't even know if it could handle it. But most of these like older generation fighters, it's like right up to the mock. All the fourth gen except for the A-10 are built to go above mock. Damn. What's the lowest you've been flying? Altitude? Mock. Yeah. Oh.

Hard to get up there. You gotta do it in a dive just because the air's thicker down low. You're burning through JPA pretty quick. Couple thousand feet, nothing. I mean, 450, 500 knots, I don't know, five, 600 miles an hour on the deck is fun. That's enough because if, you know, shit happens quick when you're going that fast and low. Thunderbirds is we get, we have permission to fly low, you know, fifty hundred feet,

pretty low. Depending on the maneuver we're doing, the formation that you're flying. So that's where you really get a sensation. Talk about unwavering level of trust. And when you're flying, because we're flying anywhere from three feet to 18 inches apart, and you're that low.

And if you're in the formation, you're flying, I mean, that aircraft is 18 inches apart. You're white knuckled when you first start. You've been flying this aircraft. For me, I'd been flying it for eight, nine years. I'm very competent in flying it. But when you're that close and that level of trust and that precise, it's like white knuckled.

You're just death grip. Just over time, you get really comfortable. You're just death grip. Just over time you get really comfortable. You're smoking a lucky, eating breakfast and you're 18 inches apart. But it's only because you're given the opportunity to go through intense training. I mean, two, three times the amount of flying that a normal fighter pilot would typically fly in a year. 500 hours versus 150, 180 hours. Wow. Wow.

And all you're doing is doing one thing, not CAS and interdiction and OCA and DCA and BFM. Those are fun, but a lot of that is just employing using the sensors, whereas Thunderbirds, I didn't even turn that shit on. Gotcha. It's all about the formation. So, all right, so let's walk back through, yeah, sorry. No, it's- Let's walk back through, so you said OCA and DCA, what is all that?

What are those acronyms? Offensive counter air, defensive counter air. It's just different mission sets depending on what the scenario is. So, if we're getting invaded by China or Russia and we're protecting DC, we're going to set up caps with hopefully we attack them with other things and ships. But kind of the last line of defense is going to be what we have in the air in these caps and we're protecting the motherland and anything comes at us.

That's what we're, but the focus is to stay back defensive posture. That's DCA. And then you have different category of missions called OCA, Offensive County Air. That might be like an interdiction mission, like, OK, we're going to attack North Korea. We're not. But if we were, there's key targets that we have pre-planned that we want to go blow up. And we're going to send Bunker Busters, GB-24s, or whatever we have these days, big 2000 pound bombs. This is OC, this is offensive counter air interdiction. I'm going to fight my way in,

deliver my, you know, my, my munition, turn around and leave. So we are, you know, on an offensive posture. Gotcha. Gotcha. So what, what, what, what section do you start with in, in school? Building block. It's baby steps. So you'll start off, okay, can I fly this aircraft? You'll spend 10, 12 sorties getting comfortable in the aircraft. You'll solo, because there are two seaters, but it's meant to be a single seat fighter aircraft. That was the other reason why I wanted the F-16 is I wanted to be the sole responsible person involved.

And then you learn instruments. If the weather's bad, can I recover this aircraft to a base that's socked in? So you've got to learn how to fly instruments. Got it. Okay. Let's move on. Let's start doing tactical stuff. And that's where you'll do, all right, we're how to fly instruments. Got it, okay. Let's move on. Let's start doing tactical stuff. And that's where you'll do, all right, we're going to fly formation.

Get comfortable flying formation because that aircraft is extremely responsive. Like literally the stick moves like that much. It's all fly by wire. And throttle obviously moves a lot more but versus like a P-51 or F-4 or an A-4, that stick moves a lot. It's hydraulics. So flying formation, it doesn't take much. Honestly, it's like this thought process. You think about it and subconsciously you start doing it.

So you overcorrect in the beginning. You just, that's where the nausea comes in, is just you porpoise. Because it's out of equilibrium, because that's what makes it such a high performance aircraft is that it's not a stable platform. So you're constantly looking for that sweet spot when you fly.

After a while, it becomes second nature. Now you're worried about, well, the ship between your legs, the radars and the targeting pods and the situational display and the queuing systems, all that kind of stuff. That's the focus. Second nature, the flying is, you know, you don't even think about it.

Do you get used to certain planes? Oh yeah. You do? Mm-hmm. Okay, so when you deploy, I mean, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I mean, so you really know the plane. Mm-hmm. Okay, so when you deploy I mean I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I mean you so you really know the plane Mm-hmm you do if you jump in another one

You notice differences. Yeah, everything's set up differently and and how you flip certain switches and they all kind of have an intuitive Infrastructure that you could easily learn one system to the next. I don't mean like an F-16 to an F-15. I mean like can you... I mean it's your plane. It's like a... I don't know. It's like if you put somebody else's baseball glove on it's still a baseball glove but it's not your baseball glove. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it? Do you know if you're loading

jump into another self 16? Is it the exact same or or that's that's a question. So you have like a rifle like I have my rifle set up the way I like my rifle set up as a seal. Yeah. And but if I have somebody else's rifle, I'm like, oh shit, I don't like I can use, and I can be extremely effective with it, but I would rather have mine. Yeah. It feels different.

That sounds like a Full Metal Jacket quote. Well, I mean, you know what I'm saying, though. My rifle, this is my, this is my gun. I know my trigger pull, I know everything about it. Right. And. So you have your name on one aircraft. And you have your confidence in your rifle. Like, you zeroed it, you set it up. And so you have your name on one aircraft. And you have your confidence and your rifle.

Like you zeroed it, you set it up the way you like it set up. Yeah. All that kind of shit. If you have somebody else's, you lose that, you know, shit, is this thing sighted in? Is it sighted into me? I don't know. Right. Is it like that with the planes?

To a certain extent. So you have your name on an aircraft, and you have a dedicated crew chief, and he's got his name on his or her name on the other side. And you typically try to fly that tail, but the maintenance of these airframes, it could be down for months going through phase. Pull the panels off, and all this is broken.

We've got to fix it. So it's constantly, the inventory's being moved around. phase, they pull the panels off and they, you know, all this is broken, we got to fix it. So it's constantly, inventory is being moved around. So, you know, you might fly your tail maybe 30, 40% of the time, that's probably a little aggressive. Except for when I was in the Thunderbirds, you fly so much and you're so queued into that aircraft, you know exactly how it's bent and you know how to trim up the aircraft because you can't, different airspeeds, it's going to fly differently and it's going to lean one direction or the other. So you know exactly how much input you need on the trim to kind of level it out. And you know, on certain maneuvers,

when you get to the top, you know, you're 18 inches apart, and we're doing this arrowhead maneuver where I move up, I was slot, so I was number four, so I was behind number one. So I'm anywhere from three feet to 18 inches, but in the arrowhead, I actually slide up and in, so I get even closer. And it's literally, but in the Arrowhead, I actually slide up and in, so I get even closer. And it's literally, as close as this mic, is the nozzle, the afterburner nozzle of the

Boss, the number one aircraft. And when you get up in the top of a loop, you're like 150, 175 knots, so it's mushy. It's not responsive like an aircraft would be on the deck at 450 knots. So it takes a lot more inputs and you're not used to flying the aircraft a lot in that regime. So by flying the same aircraft over and over and over, you know exactly how much throttle you need, especially if you're deviating to a different show site, you might be at 2,000 pressure altitude.

Now you go to Cheyenne, Wyoming and it's 5,000 or 6,000. So the air is thinner, so it's gonna respond a lot different. And the more you know your aircraft, the more accurate and precise You're gonna be able to fly it in those locations But in a combat situation combat unit operational squadrons You typically don't fly the same aircraft over and over so you you will have to set it up the way you want it

And some have different you know Just different things that you like or don't like. But interesting. Okay. All right. So you can get used to any of them relatively fast. You do.

And you have to. It's just the nature of the base and the inventory and the phase of the aircraft. But you were asking something about experience. You only know, you think you know more than you actually do at different levels of your career. Like, I thought it was pretty shit hot coming out of B-course F-16 training. I'm going to my first combat unit. And then by the time I got to weapons school, I looked back and I'm like, Oh my God, I'm glad I didn't kill myself.

And some of those missions night MVGs in South Korea, it's scary type flying. And then after weapons school, you know, you further along you get, it's like, you don't know what you didn't know back then. And you're just glad you survived all these different, you know Phases of your life going through a career of a you know, flying fighters. Yeah So you get through you get through f16 school with house graduation Graduation again seems to be I don't maybe it's a lot like the seals as far as there's it's got to be pretty Surreal it is

Usually there's drinking involved You gotta let go somehow some way yeah Yeah Pilot training. It's a big deal to get your wings. You still have my wings that were pinned on, took them to space. You just, again, I don't reflect too much my personality. I'm always looking. I get it. I get it.

I'm the same way, but I mean, there's got to be a ton of tradition, right? There's got to be a ton of tradition in becoming an There's gotta be a ton of tradition in becoming an F-16 pilot, or any type of fighter pilot. I mean, how do they pin your wings on? You know, that was anticlimactic. There wasn't anything too sexy about the ceremony in pilot training. The real traditions that we love and cherish are in the fighter squadrons, in the operational

combat units, and every squadron is different. There's a lot of heritage because it goes all the way back to World War I, II, Vietnam, on up. And those traditions have long lasted. So you said what, there's 12, you said there was about 12 people in the original, plus the foreigners, which we won't count. But, because they don't, I mean, they don't, we're not training them how to fly F-16s.

They will go fly, I had a, there's a Turkish, Singapore has a squadron actually, that Luke teaches F-16s. But typically they'll go back and do their own thing. So how many Americans were there regular before you moved into the F-16 school? I think there was like 12. Yeah. So how many go to F-16 school?

I think we have five. Five? Because there was maybe it was more than 12. There was like four or five light grays, F-15Cs that went to Tindall Air Force Base in Florida. There was five or six F-16s that went to Luke, and then there was two A-10 pilots, and then there was a B-1 and a B-52, and then two instructor pilots that stuck around.

I think that's right, to whatever that equals. So what's it like showing up to your command then? So you go to Luke and now it's like that base is dedicated to teaching. It's the F-16 schoolhouse. So it's fighter squadrons, but it's still people who, you know, the instructors are all operational experience combat. And now go back to the schoolhouse to teach. It's a good, you know, quality of life for the families. You're not deploying, you're just, you're just doing the, the

nine to five kind of teaching young punks how to be S-16 pilots. And it's a six month rotation. So it's just constant. It's probably going to, um, North Island. Okay. Coronado for instructors. I don't know, maybe. That's probably more the weapon school at Nellis.

So you go, so it's regular pilot school, F-16, then you teach? No, I was just making a comment about the instructors that taught us how to be F-16 pilots. They have experience. They were out in the field doing combat missions at operational units around the world. And they'll do that for an assignment or two,

you know, from three to six years. And then they'll come back to be instructors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's very similar. And then they might go back, you know, do an assignment there for three years, and then they'll go back into an operational. So I guess what I'm getting at is what's, I mean, you kind of said, it sounded like graduation was kind of anticlimactic.

So what's it like when you show up to your command after you graduate F-16 pilot school? So when you're in there with experienced fighter pilots. You get a little bit of taste at F-16, starts getting this little more combat flare, operational mindset, still a schoolhouse, but there's naming traditions and you know, Fridays in the bar and you're still doing combat training And then there's a graduation for that. And then it's off to your unit. And that is, those are combat units.

This is when we're actually doing the no shit, you know, stuff. And depending on where you go, I went to Korea, Osan Air Base in Korea, which was to me, it's like one of those kind of, it's a remote location. So there's not that many families. You can do a command sponsor where the whole family will show up, but 69, 70% of the squadron is bachelors.

So there's not families there. So the mentality in Korea is like, light your hair on fire, drinking a lot, going downtown, partying, flying awesome combat missions. It's push it up mentality. And it's kind of one of the only remaining, there's two bases in Korea, Kunsan, Osan. I don't know how it's changed in the last 10 years since I've been out, but that was a good, just a introduction indoctrination to the combat mentality.

Are you welcomed or are you treated like an FNG? No, you're an FNG, but you have your LPA, Lieutenant Protection Association. It's the mafia, the Lieutenant Mafia. So there's the senior level, the Lieutenant Colonel, the commander, the director of operations, the DO, and then you got all the crusty old majors, and then you have captains, and then you have the punk lieutenants.

And I think there was nine of us. It was awesome. One, it was just an amazing experience, especially being in Korea. I mean, you saw some crazy shit in Korea. This was in the nine, late nineties. Um, what kind of crazy shit? Oh, just, just crazy shit. Like what? Drinking related crazy shit. Um, you'd go up to a soul for the weekend. Just we had money to burn and release some steam and energy from all the combat focused training that we were doing. So it's like the seal tapes.

It's a work hard, play card culture. Absolutely. Absolutely and um Alright before we get into it, let's take a break before we before we get into Korea But I do want to ask is that you weren't a Breitling? I am what is what don't don't make fun of me What's with the battery died on me? So it's perpetually 320 Nice So it's perpetually 320. Nice. It died on me on the way here. I'm too cheap to get a battery to replace it. What's with pilots and Breitling?

I know it's a pilot's watch. This is my Thunderbird watch. So this is the one with the Thunderbird patch. Oh damn, that's cool. So it's kind of an heirloom. I took it to space. So this has been to space. I have one from Weaponschool.

It's got my Weaponschool patch on it. I don't know They're just cool watches. Is it emergency? This has an ELT But if the battery doesn't work out of you ever deployed one. No They told us do not Break glass only an emergency. Yeah. Yeah, cool, cool. Alright, well let's take a break. Cozy Earth products are designed to transform your 5 to 9, the time that matters most, into you time at the coziest sanctuary. Cozy Earth's best selling bamboo sheets are buttery soft, temperature regulating, and

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by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. All right, Scott, we're back from the break. We're in Korea. It's your first station as a F-16 pilot. You met your wife there I did how'd you guys be she was she just graduated from college and her older brother was an f-16 pilot so post graduation she decided to go visit her

brother with her other brother and And we hit it off. She was actually dating another guy at the time. Nothing happened, but we stayed connected when she left. And then we started corresponding. This was back in the late 90s where MCI calling cards, late 90s where MCI calling cards, email didn't exist at the time. So there's no correspondence that way. It was just a couple of phone calls now and then. And when I decided to go visit her in Minnesota, where she lived for the weekend, vice versa. She came back to Korea for a couple days. Spent a total of like four or five days together. And then she decided to move to Italy with me on my next assignment.

After living with, just spending four or five days together. Couple days together. And then she's moving to Italy. She's moving to Italy. Yeah. Right on. We knew. We named our kids before we even, you know, hung out. Right on.

They call it hanging out. What was it about her? Oh my gosh, now you're... Man, she's absolutely beautiful. She's caring. She's beautiful. She's caring. She's fun. I don't know. We just knew right off the bat.

Didn't take much to persuade her and vice versa. But we moved to Italy together. Um, that was my second assignment. So Korea is only a year because it's remote. Anything significant happen in Korea? With F 16 blowing shit up. No, no, it's pretty stable over there. Um, you're, you're constantly prepared for an invasion.

Um, big party, an invasion. Big party. Big party. Nice. I know. Nice. Parties. A lot of, probably to and from Seoul. Sounds like a UCOM in the SEAL teams.

Yes. Maybe a Thailand deployment. Thailand. Although I never did get to do it. Even today. Oh really? Those are pretty wild. Okay.

You've been to Thailand? You don't remember? Yeah. Philippines? No, I've never been to Thailand. Japan and Korea. Where's your favorite place? By far Italy. No shit, Italy?

Yeah, as far as what? What's the criteria? I don't know. Out of everywhere you've been in the world? Italy? Yeah, as far as what? What's the criteria? I don't know. Anywhere you've been in the world, out of everywhere you've been in the world, Italy? That's where you like to be? Yeah. Why? The culture, the environment, the food, the wine.

What about the culture? They're so laid back and relaxed. We were so uptight in the US and it's just constant coming and going. That was the biggest deal. That's interesting. I mean, you're a super competitive guy since childhood, roaming around the streets, looking for people. I can be. Everyone else just chill out. It's me full throttle.

No, we lived there three years and then an extra three years. So total of six, three with before kids and three after kids. So we got to explore kind of two different worlds, I guess, two different timeframes. But the culture is just laid back. And Aviano is like, it's about an hour north of Venice.

It's right at the base of the Dolomites. So everything north is the Alps and everything south is farmland flats vineyards And it's rural. It's there's no Venice's an hour port of Nona is the biggest town. It's I don't know half the size of Nashville, maybe And there's no base housing. So you live amongst the local villages and it literally it's, you know, 1500, 1600 villages. And it's just a pocket where some creeks meets and you know, crevices in the mountains. And we lived in San Giovanni de

Pochonega, just a small town right up nestled Actually, it's really cool because the hotel there Mussolini and Hitler stayed in not that that's cool, but tiny tiny little town just beautiful and the Everyone's just laid back just Adamani Adamani, Adamani, we'll get to it tomorrow, Adamani. You know, the reposo in the middle of the day, one to three, everything shuts down.

August is completely shut down. So when you get there, it's just like, you have this wake up, you know, this culture shock. Because you're expecting convenience stores on the corner. And 24-7 and get what you need. And no, you, you go at the pace of the locals. Um, and once you get used to it, it's just like, this is chill. I biked all up and down where they do the Giro races and stuff like that.

It's just, it's just beautiful. And the food it's, I swear it's the water that comes out of the aqueducts underneath the mountains. So simple, very, very simple ingredients. But the food is the best ever. Right on. Same with the wine. Right on.

Yeah. So we go back once a year actually. Oh really? Yeah. Going back this week. My buddy who's on the Thunderbirds, he's the commander of Aviano, the airbase there, and I'm going to be speaking at one of his events. Very cool, very cool. So what were you doing in Italy? What was the mission? So I was assigned to the triple nickel

555th fighter squadron. There's two squadrons there and it's just this constant rotation 555th Fighter Squadron, there's two squadrons there and it's just this constant rotation who's deployed. What's tough about Aviano is that it's centrally located in USAFE, UConn. So you're constantly pulled in so many different directions because you're close proximity to more or less everything that's of interest. So whether it's a show of force, you know, the Baltic policing, flying it out of Romania or Poland, show of forces around the world, Africa, Morocco. How long does it take an X-16 to get from central Italy to Poland? That's a good ways.

No, it's a couple. It's not like we fly super fast, because when you do that, it's like a race car. You're eating gas. Okay. So it's not like you have the legs, you're limited on range, and you're gonna be conservative. So you're flying airline speeds,

and if you're relying upon those tankers, then you gotta fly their speed. Or work some rejoin in route So it's nothing everyone asked, you know, how quickly can you get across the country and stuff like that? It's And you typically don't gotcha. It's a typical flag time You can stretch it f-16s if you external, depends on how much gas you're carrying, but we would do, you could probably stretch it out two and a half, three plus hours, if you're really back on the throttle and high altitude

and winds are good and blah, blah, blah. Okay. But it's not, you don't want to stay too long. The longest flight I ever had, this was actually one of my favorite deployments. It was Punk Lieutenant. We do these traditions as fighter pilots. We have flat top February, mustache March.

In Korea, we deployed to Alaska for Cope Thunder, just operation exercise. It's middle of the winter, so there's no sun. So we have like, we're pasty white and we got these flat tops. So we're there for a couple, you know, raging as much as you can rage in, you know, middle of Alaska. And then we're going to take our jets and go shoot some missiles for test down in Panama City, spring break. So you got these pasty white dudes and these overgrown haircut, flat tops,

and we start to grow these cheesy mustaches. We thought we were somebody. So that was that nine corps of lieutenants, the LPA. We did that, it was like a month and a half we were on the road just doing fun stuff. So anyways, I can't remember where I was going with that. Oh, longest sortie, longest sortie. Coming home from that, we launched from Omaha, Nebraska, and we, we stretch

it all the way to get home to Korea. It's the longest I've ever been in F16. It was 13.2 sortie, 13 hours. Wow. Um, it was 13.2, sorry, 13 hours. Wow. It was extremely painful. I'll bet. You know, we got, I can't remember how many aircraft, eight-ish, eight or 12.

And one of the flight leads in my formation, I'm a wingman, just a young punk, and it's day into night, and then there's weather now in Korea, so it's raining and you're sleeping, you know, it's a long, you're popping drugs to stay awake and then it's time to get your game on because you're going to, you're landing in weather at night, wet runway. And when my flightly took off 13 hours prior, he had a brake failure. And at night, you know, you ambiolight and embigies, you're going to turn some lights down or turn them off or, you know, pop them to pull out the bulb.

He was getting annoyed by his brake failure light. So he pops it out so you don't see it anymore. 13 hours go by and he completely forgets about it. So he's in the f-16 in front of me he lands brick one puts the nose down applies the brake and nothing. So back up you know at that point is to put the hook down and take the cable and if you take the cable the runways completely shut down So I'm this lieutenant. I I'm in the touchdown approaching his aircraft in front of me and I

He's like a boarder boarder. I came or what he said, but he's like brake failure So, you know, you know, you've been flying for 13 hours. It's raining The last thing you're thinking about is your instrument departure When you're just trying to put this aircraft on the deck and all you want to do is get out of this cockpit. But pouring rain, wet runway, got to take off and now we got to divert up to Suan which is just another base. So your asses and elbows just trying to pull up charts and land this aircraft safely. That was the longest sortie I ever flew.

It was a long damn time. And was the longest sortie I ever flew. It was 30 years. It's a long damn time. Yeah. And it's no bigger than this seat. I mean, it's, I got a fist width between the top of the helmet and the canopy and you got little rails you can put your arms in. I'm not a big guy.

There's some, I got a buddy who's 6'5". And he flew Vipers. Oh man. But it's actually sitting height. So it's from your butt to the top of your head. If you have short stubby legs, you can be six five. But if you got a, or no vice versa, if you got long legs, you're fine. If you get short stubby legs and you got a long torso, that's the issue.

Yeah. That's the reason why the seat is as banked back there is because it just fits into the cockpit. The ACEs 2 seat. Interesting. So anything significant operationally happened in Italy? We deployed, this was late 90s, early 2000s, before 9-11, we were still doing Operation Northern Watch, Southern Watch. So you had the North Swath and the South Swath of Iraq that was no-fly zone for them. They'd launch their MIGs to do these mock runs, but they wouldn't get anywhere near and we would sit there and patrol.

Every once in a while, you'd go after a couple targets, AAA pieces that were getting too close to the no-fly zone that were a threat to us patrolling. And then we took on the Sandy Roll CESAR, F-16s, which is a challenge. Leave that to the A-10s and the Helios. But we deployed to Incirlik, Turkey. We'd fly across to the Northern watch. Kuwait, we'd do the Southern watch. So we did a bunch of those deployments.

And then 9-11 hit. And I was in my second year. I had one more year left at Aviano. And I was in my boss's office, the 06, and I walk in and he's got the only TV on base because this is again 2001 in Italy and they just didn't have that kind of technology and we're watching the tower go down and we immediately went into alert posture because we didn't know what they were gonna expect of us You know after you know in Reflection it was it took a while where there was any true movement and deployments and so we can do much from that

location Takes a deployment to get in that that takes some some effort. And there's a cycle process. There's units back in the States that are on. So it's, it just depends on where you're at. And you can same with the SEALs as far as when you're tasked to go do something. But we're certainly not going to respond like you typically would. So as things began to heat up, I got selected for weapons school, fighter weapons school, now called the Air Force Weapons School because there's more than just fighters there. There's

everything in the Air Force inventory. It has a weapons school now, but back then it was called the fighter weapons school. It's the Air Force version of Top Gun, but it's six months long. It's like getting your PhD in all things tactics. So I was selected for that, and then I went to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, which is pretty much all the all thing tactics. What is, so what exactly is weapons school? So it's a six month long program.

You go under the banner of your MDS, your airframe. For me it was F-16s. So I go to the F-16 Fighter Weapons School. And the hierarchy of within the fighter community is you start off as a wingman, and then eventually maybe a couple of years, you'll start off as a wingman, and then eventually, maybe a couple years, you'll go in as a two-ship flight lead. So now you can lead around a wingman.

And then from there, you'll go to a four-ship flight lead. So now you can lead four aircraft. From there, you'll be an instructor. Your next step is to be an instructor. And then once you become an instructor instructor you can become a flight evaluator Just given exams check rides But once you become a seasoned instructor you can apply and compete for fighter weapons school and the idea behind fighter weapons school is to

hone your skills tactics techniques and procedures for all things f-16s, as well as everything else in the inventory, and you become a weapons officer. And so every unit's gonna have a dedicated weapons officer who's more or less in charge of that organization's preparation for combat. There might be a couple, they're called patchwares. It's a bullseye patch, gray. The commander might be a patchware, the DO might be a couple patch, they're called patchwares. It's a bullseye patch, gray. The commander might be a patchware,

the DO might be a patchware. There might be a couple, but the dedicated position that you're more or less your commitment, if you go to this school, your commitment is to be at least for three years, a patchware, a weapons officer. Okay. And you are the expert. You are teaching your youngest wingman to your most seasoned IP.

You're responsible for training them and preparing them for combat deployments. And it's cyclical. You know, you'll go through different phases. You'll, hey, you know, here's my training plan for the year. We're going to focus on air to air. We're going to focus on CASP during this month. And then we're going to do our combat prep for the specific mission we're going to do

in Afghanistan, Iraq. And then we're going to deploy. And so he's responsible for developing that. You go to Korea to be a weapons officer. Your primary job is to prepare for war against North Korea. So he's, he or she's focused on developing those plans. Interesting. So that's the role behind weapon school.

And it's six months and it's the most intense thing I've ever done. Really? Oh yeah. It's you sleep, eat and breathe all things tactics. You have no responsibilities other than just to graduate. You know, the day you show up, you get a manual that's stacked that high on the research philosophy or radar philosophy. It's kind of a haze, but they're like, hey, here's your manuals. You have two days to study this and you're going have an exam. So it's just this overwhelming fire hose effect

because you're taught all this stuff, going through the ranks to up to instructor pilot. That's five, six, seven years before you get to this point, post pilot training. But you take it to a whole new level. You'll fly one mission and it's phase-based. It's that building block approach. So you start off BFM, that 1v1 dogfighting skills. You're going to hone those skills.

Then the 2v2, and then the 4v4, and then these huge, massive employments towards the end of the graduation to include all the air to ground missions. So you're learning everything you possibly can throughout each phase. And you might fly a one hour flight assorting BFM-1 mission. You'll put five, six hours of prep into that. You'll fly for one hour and you might debrief it for 10 hours.

You're dissecting every single thing that you did to hone your skills and become the best tactician that you possibly can be. You can be going to debrief, sun setting, and by the time you come out and sun's rising, you go grab dinner at the, or breakfast at the two five club or something, um, across the street at Nellis, but that's your life for six months and, um, everyone's, you know, on edge and am I going to survive this program? Am I going to make it through? Yeah.

Because there is a washout, right? And it's very intense it through? Yeah. Because there is a washout rate and it's very intense. Interesting. Yeah. Let's talk about when is the first time that you flew a combat mission? There's certainly different flavors of combat. Some of the missions up in Korea, you're flying the patrol along the board, those are considered combat.

The Northern Watch, Southern Watch, every once in a while you would employ against some triple APs out in the middle. Honestly it wasn't until the Torsiana, my career when I deployed to Afghanistan at the heat of ISIS 2015 doing counter terrorism missions that it was like every day you're employing. You remember the first one? I do. Yeah. So our configuration load, what we're carrying for munitions, we have... All my bros are going to give me shit if I can't remember. There's a GBU 38 and a GBU 54. These are 500-pound bombs.

They're guided either coordinates that you put in or laser. You can use your targeting pod and a laser designated With the same PRF code and designate a target, but those are typically not fast movers. Those are stationary targets Buildings ks-19 piece out in the open or camouflage, you know based on the Intel you're trying to figure it out or camouflage based on the intel you're trying to figure it out. And we carry a Maverick, so that's the Tankbuster. That's I think a 300 pound warhead that it's a missile and that can be guided same, but it's typically guided, the way you employ it is as a two ship so you got one aircraft that's gonna roll in three to five nautical mile wheel rolling at a certain altitude

and pulling at the target general area put the thing on the thing launch the the Maverick finish it just rockets off your aircraft and the other wingman is up stacked up high and through all the coordination, the nine line, the verification of target identification, the designator's up stacked up high and he's just staring at his four by four inch screen targeting pod. He's got the thing on the thing

and he's lazing that target 20, 30 second time of flight and shack the target. And so my first employment was against a vehicle that was on the move. And, you know, depending on your timing and when you flew these missions day, night, sometimes they got hot. It was like every time you went up,

it was kind of, you're getting targets. And the way that it was run back then was just kind of a progressive approach on we're not gonna hit your average, what were they called, MAMS, Military Average Male Age. I can't remember the three dash one term for them. Um, but it, it wasn't like we were just going after your basic terrorist. They were progressively looking for a higher value target based on resources

and, and, you know, all the Intel and scenario and what was going on at that time in Afghanistan. So I had one vehicle that had five mams, the males, all terrorists, all verified. We'd been tracking it for days because they'd find one guy, humant, we'd figure out who it was, and we'd watch him for the next, you know, proof of fly, or you know, what is it called? You were in on this planning process?

No, most of this was done. I did a little bit of, at the jock at Bagram, but it wasn't, most of us was, we were just getting the intel feed before we took off. We'd fly a four hour sortie, refuel every once an hour kind of thing. And we'd be given a region. We flew out of Bagram, so we're centrally located.

So we were flying all over. And it was pretty hot along the Pakistan border up by Tajikistan was pretty hot. And then some of the mountains up in the northeast corner. But we would have more and more confidence as things developed. And we're like, okay, this is a high probability, sortie kind of thing. And we get the initial intel. And then once you get on scene in the AO,

they would give you an Intel update and a nine line if there was a potential for a target. And now you're building your situational awareness over the target area and once you get the information, you put it in your systems and now you're just trying to get eyes on to the target. And then you gotta go through the verification depending on who you're talking to.

Most of it, we're talking people who are in the jock with feed from, you know, high def predators. And then, you know, we had a certain type of munition, the predators had hell fires, but depending on how big the target was or how critical it was, you were going to choose the platform that best suited that target, weaponary in the target set. And this was a vehicle that had five terrorists in it.

And we decided to, it was on the move. So we decided to do a maverick attack and my wingman was gonna be the shooting platform and I was gonna lays it and as As soon as he rolled in he Neglected to go master arm hot So there's there's an option on the on the master arm switch that goes simulate off or master arm hot. Well it's just a habit pattern to go into the sim

because training, you know, 99% of your flying is training. So he goes to sim, rolls in, shoots, shit, doesn't come off the aircraft because it's loud, it just whoosh. And so he has to recover because you have a very, very small window in range kind of thing. So as soon as he comes off, he spooks the vehicle.

So it stops all five, just run. Oh shit. So we burn the target at this point, and we're like, that was our chance. They're gone to the wind. So we leave and we stand off out of earshot. But we have enough gas and a couple hours left, so we just wait for the next update. Well, lo and behold, they decide, oh, they're gone.

Let's get back in the vehicle. So they all slowly, one by one, come back. And they're like, holy shit, this is developing. Let's get back in this. So, we get a little bit closer and again continue to earshot. And then we switch roles. So, I'm going to roll in and employ and my wingman lazes it. I'm just...

But he was pissed. Hey, had his chance. So, you his chance. So you did it. Yeah. How'd that feel? Um, it's pretty intense. You know, it's, uh, at the time it's like ISIS, you know, we're watching people,

orange jumpsuits, stuck in cages, drowned and burned alive. So there was, there was a lot of rage, I guess, in our mindset changed too, because what we're taught in survival training, you know, be able to talk your way out, resist the, the, um, any torture you might experience if you're ever caught and how to evade and once that all started developing it was all bets are off man. I'm bringing an extra nothing compared to what you guys are carrying but I'm gonna bring an extra couple clips.

I had one dude who was carrying a machete that was strapped to his leg like that's gonna do anything. God bless him. But it was like, if you have to go down, you either get hit, your engine fails, good luck. I fight to the death kind of mentality versus play your game, figure it out, try to manipulate your situation until someone arrives kind of thing. But you know, and it was real.

We had two guys that got hit. Total golden BB kind of theory. He was doing an employment and whether it was an AK-47, some guy on the side of a mountain, he can, you know, plinking shots, put a hole in his ventral fin, those fins in the back of the aircraft, put a big old hole right through that. No idea until he got on the ground and did his post-flight check, but he's like, holy shit, there's a big hole. And then one guy, he was flying too low, too long, and they took a shot at him and it hit his AMRAAM, his AIM-120 missile, which is on the wing tips. It's for air-to-air employment, which is never going to happen in Afghanistan.

But it hit the missile and the missile caught on fire. So the wing tip of his aircraft's on fire. And so he's in emergency, he's trying to get back to Bagram and I'm sitting supervisory position. And so I have a radio with me and I hear this and I'm going out to see this. But thankfully the airflow eventually put the fire out. You didn't have to punch or anything like that.

But we're flying a single seat, single engine aircraft. So it's very reliable. Gee and Pratt Whitney, depending on what airframe, what flavor F-16 you're flying, but it's still only one engine. And it, you know, there's no glide ratio in the Viper it's gonna fall like a rock and you're gonna have to punch. How did it feel for you though? You described your wingman's approach and mess with the Sims and then you just by your approach?

It's satisfying, too grotesque. You know, in combat, the highs and lows you experience are, it's all too familiar with any type of combat. And I think the most intense emotional experience is having to make decisions that will hopefully save the lives of the friendlies on the ground, but you also have to deal with the consequences of your actions, that you're taking the life of the enemy. I pray that when I meet my day,

I'm judged based on, making the right decisions based on the information I had at the time. But it's heavy, you gotta deal with it. It happened a lot on this deployment. You took a lot of lives. Quite a few. Um, yeah. When did that start to affect you?

What did you start thinking about? Answering to God at the end. It's always been there and I I think it's, you know, Was it there on the approach? No, no, there is a moment that I, and I don't know if other fighter pilots experience it, but it's like right before you push the button, squeeze the trigger. It's like right before you push the button, squeeze the trigger, there's just this intense, not apprehension, but just massive adrenaline rush on

do I have all the information that I need? Am I making, and I don't know if it's the same for pulling a trigger on a gun, but I've employed it all. I shot the gun in anger. I've 500 pound bombs, Mavericks. It's, there's always this, I hope this is the right decision, but, and I think you have more time to think about it when it's those scenarios where it's an element of surprise. There are situations where they're shooting at me and I have zero hesitation.

I wouldn't even call it hesitation. It's just this intense feeling of I hope this is the right decision. Because it's, you know, I think it's one thing to look through a scope or be close to the enemy, but I'm, you know, up at 20,000 feet. Did it make you feel like your career was complete? Yes. I'll be honest, absolutely. You know, time means everything.

I think there's like, in any combat role, fighter pilot, ground guy, tank, whatever it is. You know, the mission is to go and to kill people. And there's a selfishness in that. And. I think. I think a lot of people. Think they may have a failed career if they never get the opportunity to take somebody's life in combat. And that's how we think of it.

We think of it as I never got to kill somebody. But is this how we're trained? I think that's, I think it is. It may be not how we're trained, but it's how the culture is you know because And how fucked up is that mm-hmm if you think about it? I never got the opportunity to fucking kill somebody to employ an anger. Yeah Whereas you know most normal people would say You know I never I never had to do that.

I never had to kill somebody. And so I think the culture makes you, it manifests that inside of you. But at the same time, when you're talking about meeting, meeting, you know, God or Jesus and answering, answering, you know, to all those scenarios that you played out, you know what I mean? There's also, I mean, there is a selfishness, because I know what you're talking about. And but it's also comes down to, you know, I mean, you're a Christian, we're going to get into, you know, we're going to get into, you know, we're going to get into that, your experience later.

But you know, I think it all comes down to what's in your heart, right? You know, you think you're doing the right thing, right? They think they're doing the right thing. They're just doing what they believe is right. And you're just doing what you believe is right. Right? Absolutely. If you don't do that thing,

in several employments I had, quite a few. It's like, if I don't, because right now they're getting shot at and who knows how that's going to develop their hunker down. The threats got RPGs and you know, they're pinned down. And so if, if I do hesitate or I miss a switch or I'm willing to make that decision based on knowing It's helping My side I guess yeah

No, I mean it's and they're thinking the same thing. Yeah. If they don't plant that bomb on the side of the road and kill Americans, then more of them are going to die. It's really kind of fascinating to think about. Yeah, and... Because everybody is legitimately just doing what they think is right. So who sets the guidelines? You know, who? God? Yep.

But when did that, you know, when did you, when did that kind of stuff start entering your head? It was always there. Um, because there's always that moment when you're pushing, there's always the free fall of the ammunition, you know, the time of flight anywhere from 20 seconds out to a minute, depending on how you're releasing it. But that whole time is just like,

it's very compartmentalized. It's like check and double check that I've done everything that I possibly can to mitigate any collateral damage concerns. But then the whole flight home, you're thinking about it. And then going through the debrief and analyzing the BDA after the fact. I mean, I don't know if you ever fully get over it other than, you know, it's there and I'll

have to answer for it. Well I mean on the other, on the other, you know, we're not talking about civilian casualties here, but then on the other hand, everybody's very aware of the consequences. Everybody's, everybody involved, you know know is aware of what? the ultimate consequences You are aware what happens if you go down you talk, you know orange jumpsuits the headings burning you alive Whatever torture and

There they're just as aware The consequences if they get compromised That there's gonna be a 500 pound bomb, you know the lens on their vehicle. And so, you know It's voluntary. Mm-hmm. Everybody's everybody on both sides is fully aware of what the consequences of engaging and more is. I guess that's why we sign up to serve. Yep.

So, you know, I don't know, I think a lot about it. But you know, the whole thing is, you know, Jesus knows what's in your heart. And I think that's all that matters. Absolutely. We're definitely influenced by our experiences too. And that's why, especially the older I get, the more centered I want to be on following Jesus. And I mean look how screwed up our world is. It's easy to get caught thinking the sky is falling and the world's gonna end.

But if you're centered in your faith, we're not in control, we're all sinful. We have free will, and that's probably our demise. You know, but, we're not in control. I hope I made the decisions that I did in combat for the right reasons. How long were you over there? Fighter squadrons typically do like six month rotations. So that time was six months in 2015. Before that, they were anywhere from 90 days to six months.

We were coming and going. We'd spent half. Aviano, that central located. I mean, you barely had time to enjoy the country because you were constantly coming and going. You'd come back to the States to do red flag exercises, big coalition force type exercises with hundreds of aircraft

at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, where we spent six years for various assignments. But yeah, that deployment was six months. How many missions did you fly, do you know? I was flying every other day, probably every two days sometimes. I was in a leadership position, so you got the squadrons, and then above that is the group and the wing. I was at the group level, but flying with the squadrons, I was just old. End of my career, I was 20 year point so I would fly as much as they let me. Yeah.

Yeah, that's crazy man. I haven't done one of these type of interviews in a little bit. Yeah, it's... Yeah, it's... You strike a chord with the whole feeling complete in a career. And I don't know if it's just the fighter pilot or the operator mentality. It's the war fighter mentality, man. It is the warrior mentality. Because that is certainly how it is in our world. I've done things that take me off that track with the Thunderbirds and tests and aggressors.

But it's almost a blessing and a curse. I mean, you get to experience, maybe not you get, you experience something that, I mean, there's just next to nobody that experiences that. No. In fact, I've been speaking more keynotes and stuff and one of my stories is combat and it's like, I almost have to take a step back because even doing interviews and talking about it, it's like, you gotta put this in perspective.

How do you apply this to someone who doesn't necessarily go to work that's life or death situation other than you know our frontline providers. It's yeah it's a tough conversation to have too. I'm struggling to articulate exactly how I feel at this point it's just because it's definitely there. No doubt, especially as you get older, you know, and kids and... Would you want your kids to go to war? When I want them to go to war. If your kid wanted to be an F-16 pilot or whatever, whatever the equivalent is today.

You call me old? You know. Yes, it is. It's almost a legacy platform. Would you want them to have those experiences? If you ask me what I want them to serve, I would be honored. I will never pressure my kids if they want to be whatever they want. I could care less. I just want them happy and to pursue something that they're passionate about, not some societal expectation. Sports, employment, jobs, whatever, academics,

I just want them to pursue something they are passionate about, because that's exactly what I did, and I feel very blessed and happy of what I went through. So if they wanted to serve, I would be very proud and honored. And there's a chance, a couple of my teenagers might. But if they don't, I don't care.

As long as they're living a life that they're happy with. I certainly don't want them serving just because of me. Uh-huh. Now to get to your, I've been avoiding your question. I want them to go to war. I would say no. And that's, I don't know if that's selfish and the fact that I don't want my kids at risk

and the shit I've seen and been through. Because there were plenty of times, not even in combat, just I was a split decision of death not even in combat, just I was a split decision of death because of just the nature of the business. You know, I planned a Thunderbird show and I delayed a rejoin too long and the aircraft pulled nine Gs. I pulled 10.5 Gs because I thought

it was gonna hit the ground. And you know, I recovered a hundred feet from the ground, which is in a fighter jet, that's damn close. And so it's just like, those split decisions could have gone completely different. I've had plenty of people. Good buddy of mine, I was stationed in Aviano, Trojan Gilbert, he was in combat and he was strafing.

And recovery for a strafe is like 75 feet so you get in amongst them and when you're shooting the gun And he ended up dying in combat and so it's just like It It's it doesn't take much You know, yeah, but you could also get hit by a car walking across the road It doesn't take much, you know. You could also get hit by a car walking across the road. Well, I think, you know, I'm more asking, would you, you know, do you want... I think about this all the time, you know.

Especially with the kids, you know. And, uh... I mean, you know who I have on this show and this The stuff that we talk about and the toll that it takes and the burden you have to fucking live with afterwards And all I mean, I don't know what I don't know what it's like for pilots but I mean the suicide rate amongst special ops guys is just Astronomical you can see it. You can see the load We're all carrying it. You can see the load we're all carrying. I mean, immediately. And I just, I think about that. I mean, it really fucking changes you.

How? Like, how do you see it? Body language, care themselves, you can see it in their eyes. I mean, it's like stoic emotionless, lack of humor. Is that fucking heaviness? Is that because of enduring all the experiences? Or is it the intensity of the experience? Or is it- I don't know, I think the verdict's still out on that. I think it's just all of it.

I think it's resentment, because other people didn't have to experience it. They don't understand. I think it's the experience itself. I think it's the guilt, it's the loss. I think it's all of it wrapped up up and that's the product that you get. I think you guys certainly have it a lot worse because you're down there. It's a lot different from 20, 30,000 feet. Yeah, maybe, maybe not,

but you know, it sounds like you're struggling with it. Yeah. Maybe that's what brings me closer to my faith. Hopefully it's not like me trying to justify, but. Yeah. Hopefully it's not like me trying to justify. But yeah. How did you find your faith? Um, so I grew up, we went to church, uh, in Georgia, but it was more of a formality. I think the extended family was part of the expectation,

but I don't remember much of it. Sunday school, getting donuts at Krispy Kreme afterwards, that was about it. Once we moved up at age five, we didn't step foot in a church. It wasn't just a part of my upbringing. I always believed there was something. I just didn't. I was ignorant.

I just didn't have the education or mentorship. And it actually wasn't until... In fact, I didn't even know if I was baptized. We grew up Lutheran. And then married my wife, and she's very strong Christian. And 2011, I was,

we were, I can't remember where we were stationed, but we were on vacation in Minnesota. Her parents' house, live on a lake, cabin on the lake. And our kids are, I can't remember, two, four, and six. Two girls and a boy. And our four-year-old's gonna be baptized. And so that's part of the trip to up north.

And so we're up there for vacation, things are all going on. And it's 4th of July and we're having prep for fireworks. We get the whole, all the dads are getting together. The kids have been playing on the lake all day and it's evening. Now they're, you know, shepherd inside, take baths and get in their jammies

and get ready for the fireworks. And we go out back, not the lakeside. We go up garage, it's like 300 yards away. Tree lines, it's out of earshot and everything. tree lines, it's out of earshot and everything. And my four year old daughter, Maddie, she sneaks out of the house, sneaks down to the dock, she's looking for a toy she left, and she reaches over and falls off the dock into the water.

And I'm up completely earshot away. Can't see, can't hear anything. We're in the garage working, music's going. And all of a sudden I'm overcome with panic. I just complete panic. Hair in the back of my head, I just start freaking out and I just run out of the garage and I run around the house. I don't even know where I'm going.

I just run towards the water. I don't even know what I'm looking for, but I'm just panicking, starting to yell. All of a sudden, I see a body out in the water. It's Maddie face down in the water, about, I don't know, 50 yards off the dock. I dive in, pull her to the dock and resuscitate her, and she comes back pretty quick. And it just, I'm screaming to God, you know, please save my daughter. We take her to the ER, and she gets checked out, and absolutely nothing wrong. No idea how long she was down. The doctor thinks she was down for probably about two to three minutes. And

the sheer divine coincidence of the entire situation is that we were baptized just hours before together because she was scheduled to get baptized and my wife says, hey, we don't know if you've been baptized. Do you want to get baptized with Maddie? And I'm like, sure, I'll go along to get along. I believe in something, sounds like a good idea. We bond. And this was literally hours before saving her life.

And you know, that was God. Divine intervention. You know, there that was God. Divine intervention. You know, there's no way it wasn't. Because I was, I was heads down in the garage, couldn't hear anything, and I just sheer panic. So he was getting my attention. And I'm still, you know, processing my faith. It's a journey. I am fully committed.

It's, you know, a common question when you go to interviews and stuff like that. It's like, what are you reading? You know, what's the latest book you read? I'm just reading the Bible. I find my guidance and messages and you name it. I'm reading the Bible just to, because I think that's the answer to everything.

When did this happen? What's the timeline here? 2011. So this was 14 years ago. Yeah, so that's what brought me closer to Christ. And it's only getting more and more intense or matured over the years. You know, going to space, there's just moments that you're trying to

make sense of everything. And it's just this, it's a battle, it's a journey, it's challenging because back to that home, you know, we have free will. We can think, we have the freedom to think anything we want and make the decisions that we want. But I'm trying to focus my life on making the decisions that puts God first. And that, you know, it's kind of why I want to speak more at this point in my life, is to share my stories. And hopefully God can use me as a voice to get His message out. Pete If you had any more experiences?

Nothing that intense. You know, there were moments on orbit where I'm trying to reflect and you know, it's this I had this overwhelming sensation of feeling insignificant on orbit. Just looking down knowing there's eight billion people down there on the planet. And I'm traveling around every hour and a half and 17,500 miles an hour. And I'm just trying to make sense of it all

and put significance behind it. And I've been reminded constantly when I get into the word and start reading, it's just like, it's not about me. It's stop making it about you. There's a greater good. There's a greater cause. There's a higher purpose. I'm just, I'm so stubborn and I need to learn how to listen better because that's what I, you know, that's that journey, that's that struggle that I feel is like, we just constantly bouncing off the bumpers through life. And it's like, it's selfish endeavors.

And then I got to bring it back to more of a centrally focused faith walk and yeah, a bit of a ramble well that's pretty big experience it was for me um and it was and you said your daughter was in there for they estimate 20 minutes no two to three minutes two okay to, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where the hell did I get 20 minutes? Yeah, she was- We were two to three minutes, I mean, holy shit. I mean, she was blue when I pulled her up.

Never felt so helpless in my life, you know? Feel like you're invincible. What did you do? CPR? I started resuscitating. She started, you know, after 30 seconds or so, she starts coughing up and getting a little bit of her color back and she comes to and then we're

worried about you know brain function at that point oxygen deprivation and take her to the ER and like check her out absolutely nothing wrong with her she's a healthy little four-year-old, pigtails. Yeah. Now she's a pain in the ass 17-year-old. What do you mean reflection on your up in space? Um, I could certainly talk about this when we get to space, but it's, it's, they call it the overview effect and it affects people differently.

It's the, this literally, it's, it's a cognitive shift that happens in your perception of, it could be your perception of visual, what you're seeing of the planet, life perspective. It can be spiritual, it can be intellectual. But when you see the planet from, especially with the altitude that we went to, it's the highest that anyone's been in 50 years since Apollo 17. It's the highest Earth orbit ever flown.

And it's almost like this, my immediate response or feeling was like, it's this visual illustration of what life must have been like back in the creation of the heavens and the earth, because all you can see is oceans and continents. You can't make out any details, you know, because when we, that's on the apogee, the furthest part of the orbit, it's, it's highly cyclical. So it's pretty close on the perigee, the backside was really close 190 kilometers. So it's 1400 by 190. So it's very far. And then we skim. And when you're skimming the atmosphere, it's like you can see contrails, you can see geographical features, all these land masses, but up above, it looks like what the planet must have looked like, its creation.

So when you have this perspective and you're going through this overview of fact, it's just, for me, it was that feeling initially of insignificance and trying to make sense of it all. And it's what's unique, and it's almost like this, and that's why I'm so interested in some of your podcasts, like the NDE's and when Pastor Burke talks about some of the things that he's interviewed, the 1,500 people with the NDE experiences, it's like, and this is by no means anywhere near what they've gone through. But the light, the radiant light projected on the earth versus seeing it from the surface, looking through the atmosphere and it's filtered by all the different gases.

It's just this radiant glow. And it's almost like this transcendence of your senses. It's not just visual. It's almost like you can feel the radiant glow of the light of the planet. And it's bright, but it's not like looking up at the sun kind of blinding light. It's just this radiant and it's constantly evolving because you're traveling so fast and sunrises and sunsets are happening every 90 minutes. Our orbit was 106 minutes, just based on its shape.

And it starts off, the phenomenon's called the thin blue line. It's the dawning of a new day. It's just this arc of a blue purplish hue as the sun starts penetrating the atmosphere. And it just grows and starts to split into this radiant sunbeams. And then it starts to light up the entire planet.

And then vice versa on the backside on the sunset as you see the night start to eat up. And then even at night, so when at night you're seeing all the cultural lighting, we saw the Northern Lights, so all the green beautiful waves. You see all the stars, billions of stars, because you don't have the light pollution

that you're used to seeing. The moon obviously glowing. You're seeing strings of Starlink satellite systems. And then you have this pulsing of the Draco engines. It's just these constant engines that are firing to keep you oriented in the capsule based on, you know, the priority is to point the satellite, the antennas towards the satellite

for communication purposes. So that puts out this like constant hues of orange and yellows and all of that together. You're just constantly seeing something new. And it's just, it's not something you stare at a sunset for five, 10 minutes as the sun goes down. It's just this constant evolution of this radiant glow. And it just feels like it's more than just visual.

That makes any sense. Again I'm having a hard time articulating. It's only been five, six months since we were up there. And that's, the ISS, they're up there for six months. They're at 400 kilometers. We went an extra thousand kilometers past that. So slightly different perspective. Yeah.

Does that strengthen your faith? 100 percent. I am a firm believer God created everything. I don't see how it couldn't. It'd be a sequence of millions and millions of miracles to happen. You know, you look at the planet and then you look at the other direction, it's intimidating. I mean, it's black. There's the think what's out there, endless, you know, that is intimidating. I'm hoping at some point in my life I'll make more sense of the experience and I hope I didn't miss my opportunity while I was there trying to absorb because we're you know you're very operated mindset it's you're focused on the mission we got 40 science research experiments I don't want to screw it up and we got the spacewalk on day three and the starlink test going on

and all this radiation testing we're going through. And you know, that's, you got this mission mindset but this is also something that very few people have experienced. And I hope at some point I can communicate and articulate that impact it had on my perspective. Yeah. See, I don't know, man. You know, we're talking, you know, back to the decision making and all this, you know, killing people, combat. What's it gonna be like when we meet him? You know, things like that. I just...

One, if he was done with you, then I don't think he would have experienced that up there. You know what I mean? I think he's still working on everybody no matter what you've done and it's those experiences that that draw you to the light and I you know I don't know I think about this kind of stuff all the time and I think is he still working on you or is the books written you're just I think you're in your next chapter I think he's working on you all the way until the end It's a tricky world. You know, I think there's only two influences on this world. There's fucking good and there is evil.

And that's it. And it's kind of weird the way you just described the earth with the lightness and the darkness and continuously rotating because I just, I don't remember who I was talking to or how this even came up but I had described it as I Was talking to somebody about the end Kind of like revelations type stuff like the end because everybody's oh, you know is the sky falling are we and then times I mean a lot of people think we are and everybody's looking for the signs. And the way I described it was I think, I don't think anybody knows when

the end is. I mean, even in the Bible it says nobody, Jesus doesn't even know when the end is. And the way I kind of like think it's happening is if you look at like a marble, like a two-tone marble, but maybe it's fluid in there, and the two colors are just constantly fighting each other for what takes over the marble. I think that's very similar to good and evil. And there are times that it looks

like evil is potentially taking up more surface area than good. And then and then things start to change. And then you see Abraham, you know what I'm saying? And I think that's just constant. It's just a constant battle for total control of the planet. And what that looks like. And it's it's it's the two influences, you know, going to work against each other and and even like this conversation right now, you know, that we're having,'s gonna it's gonna get people thinking and

people that it's gonna get people thinking that have never thought about that before and the colors are gonna start to change and more good is gonna start to overcome more darkness and and the way you just described the planet with that with the with the light in the dark, I mean, that's kind of how I think of this all man and And it's just constantly evolving. It's always changing just like that marble. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely. And, and, and he knows how tricky evil can be. I mean, we were both immersed in a culture where that became the normal. I, I, I got to kill somebody. I finally got the opportunity to kill somebody or I never got to kill anybody. You know, and that's, that's not fucking a good way to think.

You know, but I mean, you get, you, you enter into, you enter into the military at a young age, you're with all your idols, the people that you want to be, the F-16 pilots, the lineage all the way back to World War I, and you want to live up to what those guys have done. And I've joined the SEAL teams, and I want to live up to the Vietnam generation and the World War II guys. It becomes you. It becomes you, you immerse yourself into that culture and then it seems good.

It seems good. It's a fucking deception. It's a deception, whether you're doing it for the country or what it, yeah, we all did it for the country, right? Well, who says the country's good, right? You know, and who says that country's bad and yeah, we can talk about 9-eleven and all that kind of stuff And you know what I mean, but but You know, what were we doing there for 20 years, right? 20 fucking years, you know, and so It and so when I say like he's still working on you. I

mean And so when I say like he's still working on you, I mean, it's not over, you know. You're either going to succumb to good or you're going to come to evil. And I think there's seasons of it. And when you start steering one way, the other way is trying to pull you back. And both of them, you know what I mean? And they talk about deception and how Satan is the master of deception. And he uses temptation, whether that's money or sex or living up to a culture. Yeah. You know, and, and, and it may seem good. Maybe, you know, maybe it is. But it's, it's, it's,

it's, you know, we're just fucking humans, man. Yeah, I love that analogy. I mean, my first thought was, and I didn't even comprehend it until you mentioned it, but you talk about good and evil, light and dark. I felt this warm glow looking at the planet. Just loved, it was mesmerizing. I wanted to put my eyes off it. And you look through the Fort Hatch towards space

and it's just this intimidating. It's almost like you're at that cliff scuba diving and that black abyss over the ledge. You know, you feel a lot more security, probably where the ambient light's coming from. Yeah, there's something there I like. But how do we, I mean, you talk about that marble and the constant, whether it's a struggle or not search, but constant evolution looking for equilibrium. This is rhetorical, but how do we influence more good than evil as that morph continues

to happen with the marble of good and evil? Yeah, that's a good question. Or do we, it's in God's hands, right? But it, I mean, I think, you know, we talk about free will and I think that is, that is really the only free will that we have. It's good and evil. It's good and evil. You can either choose to believe or choose not to believe. Because everything else is so fucking contorted and twisted and deceptive.

You know, there's just so much deception out there. And I think that, that... I think that you cannot Is hard as this sounds I think you cannot succumb You cannot sacrifice your values for temptation Does that make sense you should not or you physically can I think you should not because that is staying true to yourself, which is good and In temptation is everywhere it's money it's sex that's culture. Mm-hmm. It's it's all of that stuff and and

You just see people every day you know they sacrifice their values for temptation and they justify if you catch yourself justifying you know why you did something or or do you know what I'm talking about and we've all done it right absolutely all done it I did this to this person probably wasn't that great of a you know what I'm talking about? We've all done it, right? Absolutely. We've all done it. I did this to this person, probably wasn't that great of a, you know, wasn't a good thing to do, but now I'm stuck in the justification process like that. Well, I had to do that because this happened to me and that happened. They did this to me and so this is how I justify it or, or, you know, somebody fucked you over or you fuck somebody over and you have to then then you catch them justifying or justifying yourself why, why you made the

decisions that you made. And that alone in itself is that's succumbing to evil, evil. Do you think I've always tied authenticity to being true to your values. Do you think you can be authentically evil? Or do you think people are naturally authentically good? And as long as they are authentic, they can maintain true values. as long as they are authentic, they can maintain true values. I think that we are more evil than we are good, because it takes more effort to be good and not succumb to temptation than it does to be evil and succumb to all that shit because the reward doesn't come until the end to be good the reward to be evil which is is immediate you know it's an

immediate reward so we're evil and weak. Shit hot. Yeah. You want to take a break? Sure. Let's take a break. Access to benefits like behind-the-scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end-of-the-month live Zoom calls with me, exclusive merch, and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com slash Vigilance

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That was a good conversation. the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. Yeah, yeah, that was heavy. Where were we? I have no idea. Yeah. Any more thoughts on that? Plenty. Um, but that's what he's doing. He's at work. You know? He's got my attention, that's for sure.

I just wish I could... I mean, he's trying to save us from this. That's the whole thing, right? Well, look how stubborn the prophets were, man. He had a tough time listening and he's telling them outright, I'm gonna die for your sins. And they had a hard time believing. And they were with him, you know?

Thankful we do have them the stories in the Bible though, yeah, you know, he just he sprinkles these things in our lives like Like your daughter. Mm-hmm, you know and it's And that sounds like a very profound moment, you know Not just cuz you saved your daughter's life, but spiritually, you know, it's we're all looking for some type of proof, right and Because it is it's hard to believe this stuff. It's it's just it is and But when you get those little Sometimes they're not always little sometimes they're sloppy the face, just like what happened to you.

I mean, that's what that is. It's, in my opinion, that's what that is. That is, here's what you needed, so that you can believe. And from what I've noticed in my journey, and I'm not very far along in this either, it sounds like our childhood was very similar. I mean, I grew up Catholic and.

I didn't really, you know, it was a hassle to go to church. I didn't want to go. They want to go to Sunday school. I didn't want to do any of that. And I never I never took it seriously until what? I guess about two years ago, you know and ever since then like I just I'm just always paying attention and I see Now I even see little things that get they get dropped, you know and

and I just look at I like, oh, that's all right, I'm on the right path or that's the sign that I needed. And I think it happens all the time. Absolutely. But we just don't, we don't the humility. Yeah to listen we think we have all the answers. Yeah or We're so distracted in our own bullshit that we're not it's impossible to see it because we're not we're not looking and so the You know the more I can get out of the noise and and start paying it it's just like having your eyes wide open you know everywhere they come they come all

the time it's pretty cool pretty cool stuff especially when you know it's real and you know what it is and you're convicted yeah it's just building that conviction is what's tough yeah though that stuff that you were talking about with earth and though that that this made me i just had that conversation or just use that marble reference like I think it Was last weekend. I can't really who the hell I was talking to but That's just how I envision it, you know, that's just how I envision what's going on in the world and how it's all How it all plays out, you know, but But what got you so what got you interested in becoming an astronaut anyways? Relationships that I'd built and fostered over the years.

When I was coming off the Thunderbird assignment, I met a gentleman by the name of Jared Isaacman, very successful entrepreneur, no military background, but started his very successful multi-billion dollar payment processing company, Parents Basement when he was 16. His passion has always been aviation, so he progressed, started the hobby early, 18 years old, and just worked his way up in the civilian world. And he started a civilian air show demonstration team. Former fighter pilots, former Thunderbirds. And I was not a part of that,

but I had met them while they were doing air shows, just through the community. And then that's when I first met Jared, and then a couple years later, I'm the commander of the aggressor squadron for the Air Force. So there's two units within the Air Force that have dedicated missions of doing adversary support, OPFOR, just replicating the bad guys.

China, Russia tactics, and that's your sole purpose in life versus, and there's only two units, one in Vegas and one in Alaska. Otherwise, if you're like stationed in Italy or Korea, you're generating your own bad guys organically. So you'd be in your F-16, you'd dumb it down and simulate foreign tactics, threat tactics, help me train, and then we'd swap roles next day.

It's not a very good use of resources. But there's two units dedicated to do this. And one's in Vegas where we have a lot of the Red Flag exercises, the big coalition exercises. The weapon school is located there. So there are a lot of reasons why people go to Vegas to train. Airspace is good, Area 51 area. And I was the commander of that organization.

So that was my job. And his air show gig went on for about two years. And he wanted to do something bigger. And he's always been a patriot. Service has been a big part of, you know, who he is. And he had the resources to kind of, you know, develop some of this novel ideas. And one of them was, let's turn this fleet of fighters doing air shows into a commercial adversary organization. And now we can provide this service to the military, DOD, Air Force, Navy, Army in a casserole, and the Marines. And it's gonna be a fraction of the cost.

So instead of doing it organically all over the world, you know, 20 grand an hour at the cheapest, let's do something where it's a fraction of the cost using old fleets of fighters that he will acquire. A4s, L159s, F1s, countries that are either disbanding their fleets of old fighter jets, not that there's not a big market out there, there's not many customers, or they're upgrading their fleet of generation aircraft to the next level. So he goes out proactively and acquires a fleet from New Zealand, a fleet from Czech Republic, from Spain, from France, and builds the largest privately owned fleet of fighter jets. Wow.

And this is while I was an aggressor. So we had a little bit of interaction. He's just bouncing ideas off me and just seeing if it's, you know, what's the likelihood of the Air Force interested in this kind of concept. And so he builds this company, you know, build it and they will come kind of before he even had a contract. And they did put in a lot of hard work. And eventually when I retired, I was coming off Afghanistan,

I'm like the last thing I wanna do is go fly airlines. That's a typical career path coming out of the military. And long story short, my wife was diagnosed with cancer when I was deployed, right before I was deployed. And she's got to pick up the family, a 10, an eight, and a six-year-old, move from a foreign country pick up the family, a tennis, an eight and a six year old, move from a foreign country back to the U S establish care in Boston with our oncologist and her husband's deployed to combat zone.

So God bless her and her service to her country. Um, so I was coming off of Afghanistan and I, the last thing I want to do is go fly airlines. I, that's not my, it's not my jam. I, I needed to do something different. So he was building this company and I'm like, Hey, you got any room for an old fighter pilot? Because I was staring at like, if I stayed in the military beyond 20, it's, you know, Colonel, you're gonna, one year remote here and a joint staff here

and you have less and less control over your career. And we didn't know what Kristen's future was gonna look like with her issues. So he brings me on the team and he secures a contract with the Air Force, just a basic proof of concept contract. And that just ignited the industry, turned into a $6 billion.

It was like four primary players in this field. They would just acquire all these fleets of aging fighters, kind of sweeten them up with better avionics, more capability, but the platform was still kind of a third generation, fourth generation. So it gave more iron in the sky for F-22s and F-35s to train against. So we established this first contract in Vegas,

started supporting the Super Bowl of all Super Bowls, Red Flag exercises and weapons school. We did that for about five years. That was a blast. But I started off flying, but I'm like, I kinda wanna do something different, so I got involved in the business development side. So I did that for about five years.

He ends up selling the company because he's going public with his other company. And as soon as he left, the culture changed and I lasted about a month and I'm like, I'm out. And so he pulls me over to Shift4 to do business development or strategy. Fish out of water. So I was doing FinTech trying to figure it all out.

Just learning from him and his team. And they're recently gone public. It's kind of a big deal company. But he started having conversations with SpaceX So he starts building this relationship and It ended up being the the first opportunity for a commercial flight the first all civilian mission to space

so he secures the relationship and the contract for this mission. And, you know, he's got a core of individuals like me, and he brings us all together and he's like, Hey, here's, here's my vision. And, you know, we're all excited, we might get to go to space. And he's like, no, this is not taking your buddies fishing. You know, this is something bigger. We're gonna, we're gonna make an impact with this. So that's where we started to develop.

And this was 2020, right in the middle of COVID. We came up with this concept of the first all civilian mission space. We're going to randomly select this crew. And within six months, we're going to train them for space, take elements of NASA's training, because they take three to four years before they go to space. So we obviously don't have that luxury and resources. So, and Commercial Spaces is about to make this huge paradigm shift in their philosophy. There's only been, there was only two, I think, civilians that had been to space.

One on a Soyuz or both on a Soyuz, I think. I'm not sure. Someone's going to fact check me on that one. But this was like, this is the big deal. And so we randomly selected his crew and we wanted to partner with a nonprofit so we could have a continued impact, positive impact on life on earth. So we, well, back up even a second. Once he pitched this idea, I'm doing whole FinTech VP of strategy. I'm like, I'll do whatever you want.

This is more up my alley. And so I take on the role as the mission director. That's a little false humility on my part in the fact that a mission director sits in mission control and controls. That's not what I was doing. I was doing all the legwork, the coordination, the fundraising, the logistics, sitting through the training, but more is just because I was doing all these cats and dogs.

So we ended up partnering with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital because he's done other, he's supported Make-A-Wish. This means a lot to him. And we had this platform and this opportunity to continue to improve life on earth, but let's, you know, let's explore what's out there as well. So we ended up giving one seat to St. Jude. And then we were gonna do a sweepstakes for another seat and a contest for the fourth seat. So we ended up selecting Christmas.

I think it was either right after, day after Christmas or not. We have a conversation with the CEO at St. Jude and we ended up giving one seat to Hailey Arseneau. I think she was 28 at the time. She was a cancer survivor. She beat cancer when she was 10. She went on to be a physician's assistant at St. Jude because they saved her life. Great story. She's a rock star. So we picked her and then we did a sweepstakes at the Super Bowl commercial in 21 and that kicked off our sweepstakes to raise money

for St. Jude. Everything 100% for St. Jude. Whatever we made in this project was St. Jude. Ends up being $250 million. Wow. In a six-month period. So we do sweepstakes 30 days, and then we're going to randomly pull a name out of the hat. And each seat had a quality or concept behind it, leadership, hope, generosity, and prosperity were the three seats, if you will. Jared's leadership, hope was Haley, generosity was the sweepstakes, donations, and come to find out we picked a name out of a hat,

and the individual who was selected medically disqualified himself. And so based on his generosity, he's like, I got to give the seat back. I can't do this flight, but I appreciate that. And we're like, no, this is your seat. You can do whatever you want with it. And so he actually, through his generosity, gives it to one of his buddies who also made a donation. And that was Chris Szymbrowski.

And then we did a contest for the last seat. And that's the whole, you know, he was an entrepreneur. He had many opportunities or he, you know, through his hard work created opportunities and entrepreneurship and he's a big believer in that. So we had a contest, you know, through his hard work, created opportunities and entrepreneurship, and he's a big believer in that, so we had a contest, you know, someone who was starting a small business. And we, social media helped us,

all these marketing companies that helped us, and we, a panel of celebrities picked, you know, the best video promoting their small business. So, Dr. Cyan Proctor was the individual pick for that seat. So the crew is set, it's like end of February, beginning of March, immediately pick them up, take them to training, and over the next less than six months they go through training.

And we do various things for the training. training. And we do various things for the training. Centrifuge, the altitude chamber for pressure altitude, just getting an idea of your hypoxic symptoms and stuff like that. And then all the simulator training. We climbed Mount Rainier for some experiential training. Some of the things that astronauts already do. We just kind of fighter jets, we train them. Jared and I obviously flew and the other two crew members, or yeah, we'd swap the three in our back seats. So we'd give them experience in fighter jets and blah, blah.

So we go, we do this and it's hair on fire for six months, just coming and going constantly, going to headquarters, SpaceX headquarters in going, constantly going to SpaceX headquarters in LA. We go to Johnson Space Center for training with NASA, collaboration elements. And then we go to Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, because all human space flights out of there. The majority of the launches, almost 95% of them, there's been a couple that weren't off

of pad 39 alpha, but it's the historic one, shuttles, Apollo, right there in Cape Canary. And then they go to space. They spent three days in orbit. Very successful splashdown in the Atlantic. And, you know, we wrap it up in September. Did a Netflix documentary called Countdown,

five part series, kind of explains the entire project. It's pretty cool. The week or the month leading up to their launch, conversations about the next project began because we're having too much fun. But this is, we never do things, it's always what's the next step up. And so we started to formulate a program

which became the Polaris program, which is a three part, up to three missions. And it's a developmental space flight program. And this is analogous to Project Gemini. So if you look at NASA's history, you got initial space flight with Project Mercury. Prove that we could get to space. And then you leapfrog, that was the 50s,

and then leapfrog over to the late 60s and 70s when we went to the moon. You got the Apollo program. Well in between there, in the 60s, over a five-year span, there's 12 missions called Project Gemini. And the purpose behind that developmental program was to solve some big challenges. They had to figure out how to dock vehicles in space, to do a spacewalk, to do long duration missions, longer duration missions than Mercury, multi-crew missions.

These are all things they had to solve before they headed to the moon. So in a similar fashion, we kind of built the Polaris program off of a developmental concept where we're helping identify what challenges does SpaceX and other companies face trying to get back to the lunar surface and Mars and beyond. The first two missions of the Polaris program are aboard the Falcon 9 with the Dragon Castle and then the third flight is supposed to be the first human spaceflight of Starship, which will, might be launching in the next couple hours, test flight eight. Wow.

Largest rocket ever built, bigger than Saturn V. That's the vehicle that will, that I believe will go back to the moon and that will go to Mars. So that's the idea behind the Polaris program. And then the first mission we did in September, it's called Polaris Dawn. And based on our conversations with SpaceX and Elon about what do we want to accomplish, again, what challenges?

Well, we got to do a spacewalk. The idea is that we want hundreds, if not thousands, of people bouncing on the surface of the moon, we got to build a space suit. And we got to do a space walk. So let's do the first commercial space walk. Well, we're pushing the envelope. So let's extend the capabilities of the Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule and go further and further and farther than anyone has been in over 50 years.

And what came out of that is let's set the Earth orbit altitude record. It was originally set by Gemini 11 back in 1966, Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon, went up to 1368 kilometers. Put that in context, the station's right around 400, Starlink's right around 350, 300-350 kilometers. Where do we want to go? Well, ideally, let's go touch the lower portions of the Van Allen belt, higher radiation level caused by the gravitational pull.

And let's just push the envelope. So it was about the spacewalk, it was about the altitude, and then communication is a big challenge, especially when we talk about going to Mars. Eight months, you know, the broadband requirements and the latency issues imagine sending back a combine that's 30 minutes old if not hours what's it? Becomes obsolete at that point You've already solved whatever issue you're working on or your situation is a hell of a lot worse So Starlink is the future of communication with it being laser based

Well, Starlink is the future of communication with it being laser-based. Let's see if we can get it to work from space for the very first time. Works on Earth, great. We would take these dishes, we actually took some to the Ukraine in the beginning of the war to drop off. So St. Jude satellite hospitals, because they were getting destroyed in the beginning, so they had to relocate and take all these patients and kids to Poland and Macedonia. We delivered some Starlinks, so Jude could set up their hospitals and have telecommunications or telemedicine capability with doctors back at Memphis.

So works on Earth. We've got to figure out if it works on in space, which was a cosmic feat in and of itself for the engineers to figure that one out. And then, oh, by the way, we're going to be up there for five days. That's the life of, you know, that's about as long as you can exist up there in that capsule alone, not docking with a space station. Let's fill it with science and research and we'll focus those 40 experiments on, again, what are the challenges the human body faces for these longer duration missions in the

future? Because that's going to be the, you know, kid's opinion, that's the biggest limb factor. Lim Because that's going to be the kids' opinion. That's the biggest limb factor. Limiting factor is going to be the human body. Because austere environment of space, it's tough. Besides being a vacuum, you've got to deal with zero gravity, loneliness, psychological issues. We are meant for 1G on Earth. Yeah.

So those were the four main objectives. And then we spent three years training for those objectives. How did you get picked? So based on my contributions during Inspiration 4, and the fact that I had operational test background, I did a lot of tests. There's a unit called the 422 testing evaluation squadron at Nellis where we do, we test new

weapons, new software, new computer systems and on the platform. It's not a test pilot Chuck Yeager type developmental test. That's done at Edwards. That's done testing on the platform. This is more specific to weapons and software upgrades and capabilities. So I've had background experience in doing operational test. And this being a test program, it was kind of a logical fit. I caveat that with there are plenty of people in this world that could have been in my seat. I know I'm very blessed to have this opportunity and again, God's influence for sure,

especially going through the training. Because you've got Jared, very experienced astronaut, been to space already, already highly intellectual individual, knows these systems inside and out. And oh, by the way, we're going up in the same capsule he's already been up in. So he's, he didn't even have to study. He does, because he's a dedicated individual.

And then we have our two other crew members, and we kind of, this is a collaboration partnership with SpaceX, so we gave two seats to SpaceX. And we selected Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. And they were both engineers that were involved in the first mission. So Sarah, she was a graduate at CU Boulder, one of the smartest individuals I've ever met.

She was hired as a SpaceX engineer to be the lead astronaut trainer. So she teaches astronauts how to operate the vehicle. So she knows the systems inside and out. In fact, she's teaching our instructors things as we go through this program. And then Anna Mennon, she's got a master's in biomedical engineering.

She used to work at NASA and she was hired by SpaceX to pretty much write the procedures, the nominal procedures, contingencies for our vehicle. So again, these two know the systems inside and out. And then you got kid, outdoor education, barely graduates college. So I know my place. It kind of tainted my attitude or approach in the beginning

and it took some failed training events to wake me up. And that kind of gets back to that whole, it's not about me. There's a lot riding on this. And I need to step up because I'm being way too reliant upon my crew to pull me along. Because, you know, we go into this program, it's developmental. We only have three years to focus on these huge milestones. So it's like, hey, we're going to assume everyone's knowledge is right around here. We're only going to focus on this top tier stuff. And I'm kind of going along, get along. I'm also, I have this fear of failure, fear of judgment and doubt.

Not that they would ever judge me, but it's like, I'm hanging on and I'm, you know, when I'm asked questions, it's like, I'll deflect with humor. I'll respond questions with questions. Um, phone a friend, use way too much leverage on the crew. Not fully grasping, Hey, this takes a full team. This takes all four crew members, because there might be situations where, you know, they lean on me in time of need,

and if I fail them because I didn't get my game where it needs to be, this could go really bad. And, you know, my wake-up call was actually, you know, it was a training scenario, we're in the simulator. There's, there's kind of three levels of training that we did. We did, um, physiological training. That's the centrifuge, the altitude chamber, the vacuum chamber, the zero G flights. There's the, um, the practical training that we went through the experiential

mountaineering, um, scuba diving, skydiving, flying fighter jets. Then there's the procedural where we spend a majority of our time, and the simulator. They would give us very difficult situations, scenarios, some very unlikely, but it's to test our knowledge and our experience and our teamwork and all that stuff. One of the scenarios was Jared is incapacitated, for whatever reason, he's out. And now we gotta do an emergency deorbit. And based on the configuration of the cockpit,

or the capsule, there's three displays. And Jared and I sit in the middle as the commander of the pilot. And we are the only ones with access to those three screens. And that's where all the systems and procedures are. And then the outboard seats, Sarah Nana, mission specialist, they can't see the screens

when they're strapped in their seat. You know, 90% of the mission, we're out of our seats floating around and doing whatever and you have access to the screens, you just float underneath and, well Jared's incapacitated. Well in nominal procedures procedures he's doing everything and I'm backing him up. I'm just kind of verifying what he's doing

action-wise and checks and balances. Well he's out. So kids there to save the day and I fail miserably. It's most humbling experience because I can't keep up. I make the wrong decisions. I can't rely upon these two because I can't keep up. I make the wrong decisions. I can't rely upon these two because they can't see what I'm looking at on the screen. It was just, it was an epic fail. And that was the attitude adjustment that I had. I'm like, I gotta step up.

I gotta change. I gotta be more humble. Have more humility in the fact that I need to rely upon my, and be honest with my weaknesses and lean on my crew members because they got to get, help me get my knowledge where it needs to be. And I need to be, I need to be authentic in the fact that if I'm going to set goals to get my knowledge to where it needs to be, I got to be true to myself and know where my limits are. But it's got to get to a certain threshold.

Because again, getting back to this is 100%, this is zero fail. We have to have mission success, or we're gonna set the entire space exploration program, not just SpaceX, but everybody back. And we're doing things, we're doing some crazy shit. Yeah. Anyways, that's a lot.

That's it, wow. And how long was this timeline? Three years? Three years we were supposed to launch. The big, the biggest challenge in talking about space, I go on all day long, how smart these people are, the long pole in the tent was the development of the EVA suit.

So they had to build a brand new suit that, you know, the IVA suit they wear to and from the station, it's meant to pressurize in the case of a depressed situation and keep astronauts alive. But it's not meant intentionally to go outside of the capsule in the vacuum of space. So they had to build a new suit. So they took the prototype, the IBA suit,

and spent years enhancing, you know, with a big focus on thermals. It's a 250 degree plus or minus swing when you're either in the sun or in the eclipse of the planet. Wow. So it's plus or minus 250 degrees. Mobility is a concern because it's pressurized. And we had to come up with a way to bring the entire capsule down to vacuum because we don't have the luxury of an airlock like they have in the space

station. So, we have to bring the entire capsule, which means we're all four going to be pressurized, which has never been done before. Never had four astronauts involved in the same spacewalk. has never been done before. Never had four astronauts involved in the same space walk. So we had to come up with this novel pre-breathe approach profile where we're going to bring the pressure down in the capsule, increase the oxygen levels. Cause we're all, we're trying to mitigate the risk of DCS. What's DCS? Decompression sickness, nitrogen bubbles, scuba concerns.

Yeah. Um, because if we, if we do it too rapidly or cause, cause on the, on the space station and the airlock, they're going to pre-breathe a hundred percent oxygen and it's going to purge all those nitrogen bubbles out of your system. So DCS isn't a huge concern. It's still minor, but it's not huge. UCS isn't a huge concern. It's still minor, but it's not huge. We don't have enough gas, oxygen, on board

to purge our entire system. So we have to come up with this stair-step approach where we'll increase the oxygen, mitigate the risk, bring the pressure down so we get closer and closer so we're climatizing the body to those lower pressures with increased oxygen levels, and we're not eating up our gas consumption too soon. Anyways, so back to the suit, their big focus in the development over that three year period was thermals, mobility. They came up with these new funky joints, certain bearings on all these joints to have

mobility because you want it pliable. When you're not pressurized, you want to be able to move. It's a one piece. It's got a big old spiral zipper around the waist. Just a zipper. You just cinch it down. It's maybe almost like a dry suit. But it handles pressure.

So we were just over five PSI delta. So as we're coming down, you know, we're at 14.7. It's at, you know, sea level. And then, you know, as you go up to the Mount Everest, it's, I don't know where it's at, 9, 10 PSI. And then eventually you're going to work it down until you can't survive anymore. And that pressure delta is always going to be a plus five. So as long as we maintain that plus five, the suit's pressurized and we can bring it all the way down to a vacuum and then open the hatch and go outside.

And so that was a big focus is coming up with all these different thermal layers, like 12 different layers. The visor had to be changed. They added a helmet mounted site or yeah, more of a HUD, not a queuing system. We didn't laser. It just projected like pressure, temperature, duration. Like a heads up display? Yeah. Okay. It's exactly what it was. A little monocle. And it's just this team was insane. They would, it's like a monster garage. So they would piecemeal. I'd be walking around this Frankenstein suit, this arm is completely different,

and this bearing's different, and we would be trying out all this stuff. We'd go home on Friday, we'd fly back on Monday for more training, and it's completely revamped. Hey, we're gonna try out this HUD with this monocle. See what you like, give us some feedback. And this was what it was like over the course

of two and a half years going through this program is developing and you look at the initial Like, holy shit, I'm going to space in the suit to the final product. It was like it was insane. Damn. decades for other EVA suits to be developed and billion dollar programs. This was done on millions, I don't know how much it cost, but in two and a half years. Granted, I mean, it's umbilical, so we're attached to the vehicle

to pump in that oxygen, nitrogen, nitrox. But, full faith and confidence, this is only, it's probably revamped. You know, it's been six months. They're probably on, you know, version 6 to 9 at this point on a new suit. They'll come up with some self-contained. They got it. You know, they're...

Wow. Like, I was like, I'm like the 51 year old, I'm like the oldest dude. They're all like 20 something 30 year olds. Brilliant, brilliant, very passionate. I just, I love that organization because Elon and Gwen, they set the vision. There's no doubt. This is the vision for the organization, but they're very flat Structure where everyone is empowered And everyone feels empowered and that just breeds and fosters this environment of passion so You know, they're willing to work those long hours and long days because they're they're doing things that are changing the world

you know Starlink and Everything they're doing things that are changing the world. You know, Starlink and everything they're doing at SpaceX and what they're able to accomplish in such a short period. And they have this, you know, the fail fast mentality. Like when you see Starship, if it blows up, it blows up. Doesn't matter. We're gonna learn so much from that and they'll take it and make the next version even better. What do you tell on your family?

They're gonna be worried about this, right? I'll tell you, it was, yeah. We had our moments. It was tough. Yeah. Deploying to combat is one thing. You know, when you intentionally sign up to go to space on a developmental test spaceflight. Especially when you thought we were into our retirement years, yeah, it was tough. God bless her for hanging on and putting up with me. Is she glad you did it?

Yeah, I mean, certainly pride is not a great thing to... She's proud of all the accomplishments and what we did and she's very thankful it's over obviously and I'm safe Like I said, she's she's a believer and she knew is in God's hands But it's still a leap of faith, especially watching that rocket go off Being strapped to that rocket is an unwavering level of trust. Because I'm not in control. You know fighter jet. Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing the inputs. I can control that and oh by the way if shit's not working out I can punch any jet. Rocket ship's a lot different. Yeah, what's I mean? Okay, so how long did it take you to get up there?

So, um... And how exactly did this go? Was the spacewalk at the same altitude as the... No, everything was done different altitudes. Um... Highly elliptical meaning we'd go far and then pass on the backside really close. So 1400 kilometers by 190. Our entry altitude was 1200 by 190.

So that was just to kind of go through some checks in the systems. And then after a couple orbits, we bumped up. We did some phase burns to get up to that 1400. We set the record. We did about eight orbits at that altitude to do some radiation testing. And then we brought it back down to 750-ish. And that's where we did the spacewalk. So was that the last thing?

No, that was day three. So it's five days. So the first day bleeding into the second day was the altitudes and then we phased down immediately and then the third day is when we did the spacewalk and then the rest of the days were all science and research, starlink testing, everything else. Well, let's walk, let's walk. So initial entry into space. So even touched on this, I mean, even the even strapping in, you

know, I don't know if I told you, it produces 1.7 million pounds of thrust. So that's equivalent of 70 F-16s. 69 F-16s because I'm a fighter pilot. One F-16 is Mach 2, 1500 miles an hour, pulling 9 Gs. This thing is like the equivalent of 70. And what's the big delta, people ask me what's it like comparing to find a fighter versus a spaceship. A spaceship. Is I'm in control in a fighter. So if I'm not digging the G forces, I can ease off.

In a spacecraft, it just continues to accelerate. Doesn't give a shit how you feel. And it's different G forces. So in a fighter jet, it's continues to accelerate. Doesn't give a shit how you feel. And it's different G-forces. So in a fighter jet, it's head to toe, this is the Z-axis, I believe. So it's centrifugal force that, when you pull back on that stick, it's centrifugal force that causes that G-force.

And that pulling of the blood and lower extremities, the fear of passing out because the blood leaves the brain, that's why you wear the G suit and do the G string to kind of restrict that blood flow. That is a lot different because in a spaceship based on the orientation of the seat, the G forces is through the chest. So it's this, and it builds up to about four and a half Gs.

And so once you, you know, right before liftoff, this rocket is alive. It's venting, it's hissing, it's making all these knocks and pings. It's swaying. So the Strombeck gets retracted and it's just sitting there balancing, just waiting to go. And you can feel this sway.

And it's just like. Oh man. And all you're doing is watching the clock you're strapped in you're I mean they they cinch on you you know in Apollo 13 put your foot on your yank it and they don't they don't mess up the suit but it's pretty damn tight and visors down and you know here we go you know by the way how long are you in there before takeoff or before launch what do you call launch that's that's a whole different story I got I have an old man bladder Yeah, I was wondering that I mean besides that I mean, I don't I mean, I don't know how you were

in and Pre-mission going to combat but me I feel like I got a pee like every every two minutes like oh shit I gotta go again. Oh shit. I gotta go Like didn't you hear the helos? Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm a guy gotta go People always ask me what was were you scared? But that's a lot of anticipation dude. I I wasn't scared I was scared about drowning in my own pee I peed eight times because we went delay after delay for weather and I would I couldn't hold it so I'm you know we wear these they're

called mags maximum absorbency garment depends and I went eight times and I'm drenched and I'm freezing I got trench foot it's just like pooling and it's like I'm in the middle of this and I'm freezing my butt off, shaking. I'm literally just shivering. I'm like, let's just get to space so I can get into some warm clothes. And then I'm thinking to myself, zero gravity.

Is this gonna float up into my helmet? You just see the headline now, astronaut drowns in his own hang. He, I don't know. So that's what was going through my mind during this launch phase. But back to the launch, it just, you know, once the clock expires, those nine Maryland engines, they just come alive and And it's like an earthquake. It just shakes your world.

You know, you can't concentrate on anything. It's just, and it's like slow-mo, because it just lifts off. And it just slowly starts to build and accelerate and faster and faster. And the first segment is two and a half minutes, and you're watching the clock, and you're watching your profile,

and you're going up, it's an inclination of 51.6 degrees and it takes you right up the coastline. And the reason why is if anything happens, the capsule will eject you off the booster and splash down in the Atlantic Ocean. So you have all those resources along the coast versus going directly out over the Atlantic and now you're in the middle of the ocean, and you never get recovered kind of thing. So it's accelerating, and you're going faster, and faster, and faster, and two and a half minutes as you're waiting for MECO, main engine cutoff,

and the G-forces start to build up, and it's four and a half G, so it just feels like somebody is just sitting on your chest. And there's a lot of pressure on the neck, so it's hard to talk and breathe, and it's just, it's an endurance event. So in a fighter jet, it's just, you pulse nine G's and you deplete your energy state.

So you can't, can sustain nine G's. But four and a half for two and a half minutes is fairly intense. And then MECO happens, and when MECO happens, it's just a big old boom, and you get launched forward in your straps, and you float because of that de-acceleration, because you're no longer connected to the booster,

and you're waiting for the separation to happen, and it's the longest 10 seconds of your life, because you have to have the adequate separation for the second stage to light. This is a big old Merlin vacuum engine. It's only one engine, but it's massive. 220,000 pounds of thrust for one engine. And as soon as that engine light, it's just a bam,

you're back in the seat. And now you're on a six minute ride. And those G-forces build back up to four and a half. And now you're just on this trajectory ride and those G forces build back up to four and a half. And now you're just on this trajectory. Eventually you get to about 200 kilometers and you level off because you're kind of above the atmosphere and you're just accelerating and you're trying to get as fast as possible. And you get up to 17,500 miles an hour is orbital velocity. This keeps you in orbit.

Otherwise you get pulled back down into Earth because gravity is constantly pulling on you, even at 17.5, but you're just falling in the same orbit all around Earth. But if you go slower, eventually gravity pulls you back into the atmosphere, you hit all the gases in the atmosphere and you slow down, drag. But once you get up there, you accelerate, 17.5, Mach 25, you're going five miles a second,

and you're waiting for that Seco to happen, second stage cutoff. And that's where that second stage will separate. And when that happens again, it's just this boom. You've separated, now you're floating, and now you're in that transition. That fluid shift, organs are shifting, brain lift. Did I explain this?

I don't even remember if I did or not. A little bit. I talked about the space adaptation, the disorientation, that tumbling. Other things that happen is the fluid in your body is shifting. So it's free floating. So your organs are actually kind of moving around and your brain is floating in CSF but gravity is pulling on it. Well up there it starts to shift up and it floats inside your skull and it causes this like space fog. It's almost like this fullness. And if you see images of us, we look full, like bloated, swollen. It's almost like if you hang upside down from your bed, that blood rush, it's just constant.

And it's something you have to get used to. And it can have an impact. Like I had this chronic headache, mild headache. I actually, I did an experimental surgery for this mission a couple years prior. One of the big concerns is anterocranial pressure. So the fluid in your spine, the CSF in your brain, the pressure changes zero gravity. So it actually applies pressure to the ocular nerve

and changes the shape of your eyeball. It flattens your eyeball and it affects the visual acuity. And it actually can cause temporary blindness. Couple of astronauts have had temporary blindness. So you imagine the concern, you're on your way to Mars and you go blind or you lose significant visual acuity. We don't know much about it because we've only done non-invasive experiments, contact lenses that take pressure measurements, little guns you squeeze and point into the eye, take

measurements, but those are all non-invasive. They're not as accurate as we would like. And NASCA, NASA being somewhat risk adverse, they've never been a invasive experiment. There's no real volunteers, and commercial isn't really a thing yet. Well, kids dumb enough. Yeah, I'll do it. So I signed up for this experimental surgery where they're going to surgically implant a transducer into my,

underneath my rib cage. And that transducer takes measurements and it's got a catheter that runs up into my spinal column. So they drill a hole into my spinal column and they slide up about 10 centimeters of this catheter. And now that fluid can flow into the transducer and we have this wand. Just brush the wand over the transducer and it takes a measurement. So you take measurements before, during, and after. And now you can understand the pressure changes so we can learn more about it. Unfortunately, I did the surgery

and for some reason the technique used, the catheter backs out of my spinal column and so I just have a big hole leaking CSF. And that was debilitating. I couldn't function. I literally just lay down. It's just this massive, massive headache. And I have the utmost respect for hydrocephalus patients. The swelling of the brain is absolutely debilitating. So they had to do emergency blood patch into my spinal column and then eventually had to do another surgery to remove all the shit in my...

I had 11 surgeries the one year leading up to space. Damn. Random shit. Damn. Appendix, gallbladder, ERCPs, this, hernias, you name it. Old. But it was a... So you go straight up to...

Sorry, yes. Yeah, you go straight to... You said there were some... You did a couple of orbits at a lower altitude and then shot up to... What was it? 1408.1 is the record, which will be broken in no time once we continue to explore and push the envelope. And then we did that for eight orbits because the radiation level was a concern. Cycles on the hardware, software,

as well as the human body, didn't wanna expose too much. It was the equivalent of like three to four months living on the ISS, what they're exposed to in our eight orbits. It's a pretty intense band of radiation called the Van Allen belts. And then we brought it down to 750-ish, I think it was. You were up there for how many days? Three days?

No, up there was just eight orbits. So 106 minutes times eight, whatever that equals, hour and a half, I don't know, 12 hours, 12, 14 hours. So when you were up there, I mean, could you see the whole earth at once? No, there was, I wish I had pictures. Do you have pictures? Oh yeah, absolutely. iPhone, we took thousands of pictures with our iPhone. Can you send me some?

Absolutely. They're all over the internet. We have a Flickr page I'll send you that's got really cool videos, time lapse. The best pictures actually are from outside the capsule. It looks like CGI. It looks fake. It's not. Just like the moon.

But it's just they modified, again, standard SpaceX badass. They had a camera outside, a selfie cam with a fisheye lens outside the hatch, the nose cone. So it had this beautiful picture of the spacewalk, just time lapse of all the evolution of the light, all that stuff. So I'll send you plenty. So could you see the hole? No, you could see a good portion of it.

But we weren't far enough away. There was enough underneath. And you know, windows aren't that great. I mean, there's two windows. They're about that big. And then the Ford hatch, the actual hatch has a window in it. What's it like looking out into nothing? Very eerie. Sometimes you depend on the lighting, but you can see stars and sometimes you couldn't.

Especially when the Draco's are firing, all you see is this hue of yellows and reds from the fuel exhaust. But there were times where it's just billions of stars. More than you could ever imagine. We did see constellation of Starlink. It passed like 70 kilometers away-ish, which is pretty close. I mean, relatively speaking, they track all that. It's called MMOD, micrometeorite orbital debris.

Any shit that's worthy of anything that big would put a hole in your in your castle but um what was I mean what was a what was the routine up there were you guys just did you have to be redoing stuff oh yeah or no it was it was constant um we packed a lot 10 pounds of shit into a six-pound sock it was it was a lot um cuz we of shit into a six pound sock. It was a lot. Because we wanted to make it, I mean, how many astronauts have there been?

You know, we gotta maximize this opportunity and leverage every minute and second we have. So we had a very intense timeline. And then you talk about all the adaptation to the environment, it's just like, you're, you're challenged. Any downtime? Sleep. I slept maybe three, four hours a night.

I was lucky. It's tough. I mean, if you're a back sleeper, it's, it's okay. Cause by the time you fall asleep, you're flat as a board, levitating, like exorcist type above the bed. And these seats are like bucket seats, almost like a racing kind of seat. But you loosely connect the seatbelt

because you would float away. But by the time you fall asleep, and falling asleep is tough, because since you're floating, you feel like you're falling. So it was just, once you hit like REM, it's like you get startled and wake up because you feel like you're falling. And so you go through this cycle

until eventually you get so tired, and I'm just, you fall asleep. And then when you wake up, you're just this flat as a board. Wow. We'd have these little down sleeping bags, just these little profile kind of things for comfort. Jared would sleep up on the top.

I think Sarah slept on the bottom. I slept in my seat. It was just wherever you could find space. What are you guys eating? You know, it's like, so people ask, what does mountaineering have to do with spaceflight? Well, there's a lot of consistencies. And you know, when you climb a mountain, and we did, one of our guides took us, Ed Vesers.

I don't know if you know Ed, he's the only American to summit all 14, 8,000 meter peaks without oxygen, American. Anyways, he took us down to Cotopaxi, Ecuador, in 19,328 foot volcano. Multiple days, get up close to the summit. By the time you get up there, man, you're hungry, you're dehydrated,

you're sleep deprived, you're dealing with oxygen, you know, issues with altitude, you're in confined space on the tent, and very consistent to how you feel in a capsule. This gets to your question. You're just not that hungry. You're eating camp food because we're going to bring this entire capsule down the vacuum. So if there's much, if there's a lot of water in any of the food, it just taps it. It's just going to freeze it and of water in any of the food, it just taps it. It's just going to freeze it and you know it's not going to taste good. So we had a little bit of fresh food to kick off. Cold pizza, these empanadas

and little little Hawaiian roll sandwiches. Otherwise that was gone. I was the only one eating. I mean I'm you know being an endurance guy I'm just like rahhh. I mean, I'm, you know, being an endurance guy, I'm just like, rah. And I felt great. So my crew members were like, here kid. And so I was the only one eating this stuff. But otherwise it's like Clif bars, beef jerky, that kind of stuff. Just to sustain till you get five days, five days.

I mean, you didn't really wanna sleep, but you felt like you had to do something. You want to make the most of it. But all of our time was science and research. And then the prep leading up to the spacewalk, that was a big deal. Because you guys- How much time do you get to look at Earth

and look at the vastness of space. I mean, just little glimpses. Yeah, because in the brightness of the sun, it's not worthy of pictures, so it's not like we're focused, because it's so bright and it's dark in the capsule, so it's really tough photography-ography wise, it was more the transitions that were like, Oh my God, that's amazing. thin blue line and then as sunrise and sunsets

happened that that was really cool. The low altitudes catching, you know, crossing over, you know, Egypt and the Gaza or Giza and the Nile and Suez and Israel. That was beautiful because your profile, the way you fly around the earth is pretty consistent. You're descending over Europe into Africa, India, Australia, and then you start climbing back up through the US and then back down. It's just how the orbit is with the rotation and interest in this. How long would it take to orbit the earth? 106 minutes for our orbit 100. It's usually like 90 minutes for like the station Hour and a half to get around we were an hour and 46 minutes. That's because of this highly elliptical profile that we did with

the furthest is called the apogee and that was on 1408 and then the lowest closest on the backside of that orbit is called perigee and that was the 190 kilometers which is like your skim in the atmosphere. It's close. Wow. Yeah. You're skimming the atmosphere. It's close. Wow. No. So we were just doing, you would catch a glimpse while you're doing all the science and research. Blood samples and simple stuff that we don't think about

that we have to solve for. Like triage. You know, you stick 100 passengers on a starship solve for, like triage. You stick 100 passengers on a Starship that's headed to Mars, shit's going to happen. Cardiac arrests, you're going to have to incubate, CPR, whatever. Those aren't easy things to do, especially

in the volume of a Starship, where you don't have leverage, per se. Whereas a small capsule, we had to do a CPR test, little compression thing, little trainer kind of thing, click, click, click. And just simply getting leverage to do CPR for two minutes because it's equal and opposite reaction. You push and now you're floating. Yeah.

How do you get leverage? You just put your feet on the ceiling. And so you'd have to move the patient over to one seat because you can't get to the patient underneath the other two seats. You got to think about every little detail. Airway assessment. So the shape, everything changes shape wise. So your airway becomes more constricted. So if you're going to incubate and need to stick something down someone's throat, it's a different shape. So we don't know exactly what those changes are. So I did a endoscope camera exam of my airway. So this camera, this long little antenna, just stick it down the nose, down to the airway,

and you're taking images before, during, and after the flight, and all the smart people will go back and take this information. CGMs, someone's gonna have diabetes who goes to space. A simple CGM little device doesn't work so well in space. So just simple stuff, drawing blood.

Because as soon as blood, it's floating. So you're so used to gravity on some of these devices that draw blood, they weren't working in space. So we had to test new ones to draw blood. So what, does there have to be suction? There's a little bit, it's like, part of it was centrifugal force. The one we tested didn't work.

It was a device you just slap on, you push a button and it's supposed to like draw, but it was having difficulties because zero gravity. The fluid is just floating. Another cool test was it was an ambulance in a box. Literally just a suitcase, Pelican case, and it had all these leads. And so you go

on cardiac rest, we're sticking all these leads on, doing a, and we can do an EKG, an oxygen, blood pressure, pulse, anything and everything. All that's fed through Starlink down to the smart doctors on Earth. And they can monitor patients from space

with this new device, and it's never been tested before. Well, very interesting. Cool stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, wow. So let's, so the space walk. Mm-hmm. So, um, this was... I mean, that had to scare the shit out of you, right?

Yeah, it's... I think getting down to vacuum. Especially looking out into nothing. That was... The fear came before that. And it was as you started to go down to vacuum. Because this suit, it's the only space suit that is a single panel of a visor. This iridium, whatever, glow gold plated kind of thing. It is the only suit that is a single layer.

You know the EMU suits they wear, they're multi-layered and you know, different shades and stuff like that. So it's literally just this thin between you and death. You know, because if you lose pressure, pray that it's a slow leak and you can repressurize the capsule in time but. Probably not.

Yeah. I didn't want to think about that too much. But you're watching the one on the HUD, because that's your suit pressure, and it should be additional five PSID above whatever the capsule is. So, you know, if we're at like 10, I hope, I'm reading 15. And then as it comes down, you know, eventually I see five and I know the capsule, we're in a vacuum. So we can just simply open the hatch.

And so that is just a, and then it's just this whole compartmentalized, the box breathing, you know, I'm just, because you're in this confined space. And if you're claustrophobic at all, I mean, there were, there were events in training where you're playing along with the scenario and you're rushing around because something happened is an emergency situation and the visor is down. And it's 12 layers thick. And the idea is to retain your heat. But that is a huge concern.

Because at some point you cross a threshold where your body can't cool itself anymore. You're just gonna cook inside the suit because it can't cool fast enough. The airflow isn't that great. There's some vents right here just right by the visor and the gas from the umbilical. But if you catch yourself overheating too fast, it's a point of no return kind of feeling. And you start to like have this hyperventilation feeling because you're just trying to calm yourself down. And so you would experience this in training

because you're jumping all around and you're at one G, having to fight the pressure of this suit and it's just, so it's almost like that meditative state you had to get into for the spacewalk because of you did not want to like ever get yourself anywhere near. I never did, you know, especially where I was sitting and what I did, my role during the spacewalk, because I stayed in my seat. So we only had enough gas to send two astronauts out at 15 minute increments.

That's all we had. But technically the hatch, it's literally right there. I mean space is right there. I just didn't get to stick my head out. I wanted to but I'm locked in my seatbelt. And same with Anna. And then Jared and Sarah were the ones that in the middle seats did the swap. So it was one at a time? One at a time, that's all it fits. Because you're pressurized. So the volume in the capsule, when you're pressurized, especially Jared's not a small human,

he's six something, six two. Or six four, I don't know what it is. But he takes up a lot of that volume. You know, I'm just a widow guy. So I'm over my side and Anna's over her side and Sarah's small. So enough room for him to get up, do his thing, 15 minutes, did some mobility testing out there. I mean, outside, Holy shit, by yourself? I thought you'd have a buddy or something.

You have a Kevlar cord for a tether, and then you have the umbilical. So it's, um... And then I guess I could grab him if I had to. What are they doing out there? Mobility tests. He got a beautiful view. So as soon as he opened the hatch, well, we actually had an issue with the hatch opening,

I can talk about, but as soon as he got the hatch open, man, Earth just filled that entire, it was unbelievable. And I got a great view of it, and Jared got a great view. About halfway through his window, sunset happened. So it got all black. So Sarah actually went out and it was just black. We were in the eclipse of the planet. So it was pretty dark when she went out.

There's ambient light from the capsule, and there's lights up there there and she's got a light on her visor, but it's our camera. But the hatch, so our protocol was, Jared is going, once we get down to vacuum, everything's good, he's going to unlock it, break the seal, get out of the way, and it's going to be automated because they were concerned about him exerting too much force and generating heat and that was a big concern. Well as soon as he unlocked and broke the seal, it would automatically close on its own. Come to find out the residual

pressure from our suits was forcing the hatch to close. So he would open a little bit more, but it wasn't enough. Finally, you know, again, based on the training that we went through and the rehearsals and these scenarios, we were, it was meant for it. Our backup game plan was just to do a manual, Jared's just gonna open the hatch. So that was the first issue, the only issue that we had was he had to default to a manual hatch opening, which was kind of cool. And so he opens it and there's Earth.

And he goes outside. First commercial space walk. It was... Wow. It was surreal. And a lot of people loved, there were a lot of doubters out there. You know, social media is an evil thing, but a lot of people doubted what we were doing, what SpaceX was able to accomplish. I'm sure Elon gets it constantly.

Just starting the rocket business and doing boosters landing on drone ships and now catching boosters with chopsticks. It's not a matter of if, it's just when. When are we gonna accomplish all these things? And so he comes back in and then Sarah goes out and then she gets her 15 minutes. And then we're just, our role underneath

was just to manage the umbilical cords and safety monitoring the systems because if anything happens it's like abort abort abort, get back inside, close the hatch, repressurize. And we could live in those suits for hours if not days, pressurized, and we would eventually repressurize and de-orbit if anything ever happened man Yeah, how long do you think it'll be before the majority of Americans have been to space

You know, it's absolutely inevitable I believe it for sure it's gonna happen the concept of launching these starships and As soon as it starts taking the first human, it's not going to be long after that. Because they're already building out the, it's called ECLS or the architecture, the infrastructure inside these. They have prototypes of, they got them down at Starbase in Texas where they do the launches. These mockups of what it would look like in theory. It's almost like these little cubicles. They're spiral stacked inside this immense, you know, I don't know if it's 30 by 30,

30 foot diameter across, but ours was 12 feet. I think it's 12 feet, 12 or 14 feet. I think it's 12 feet is the diameter of our capsule. This is like 30 and it's like You have all this volume to float across and and and the idea is these little cubicles Almost like these Japanese trains that have little just enough space to lay down but hundreds of these spiral Stacked up inside this capsule.

And you got multiple levels. So now you have all the living quarters and then you got the eating quarters and then you got the operations where the crew of, you know, six to nine people in charge of the vehicle are gonna operate. And then you have all these passengers that are just going for the ride.

But I think we're ways away. I think we're- I feel like my kids are going to take a school field trip there. To space, to low earth orbit. Yeah. But it's, this thing is the lymph back, the body. 50% space adaptation syndrome gets sick, could you imagine a hundred people? No. And 20, 30 people puking? What a shit show. It would be bad.

So hopefully we can solve some of that. I don't know if it's drugs or, I don't know. What's it like coming back? Well, another thing we did onbit is the Starlink tests. Oh yeah. I don't, I mean I can briefly cover this but so the idea was we're going to do a global music event. Sarah Gillis is a professionally trained violinist.

Absolutely beautiful. Extremely talented. And we're going to do this global event, event, this flash mob where all these orchestras around the world are gonna perform and she's gonna perform in space and it's all gonna be broadcast via Starlink because it's never been tested up there. And we weren't sure about the probability of success. It was just an unknown.

Cause you got to, it's all lasers, you know, and these little glass, I don't know what they are on the actual star link that they had align all these things and they're traveling 17.5 and you're traveling 17.5 to figure out the math and make all this happen. And now you're passing through their orbit in your elliptical,

because they're circular, they're at 350, let's call it. And you're passing through them, so you gotta communicate, and it's just like, smart people figure that stuff out. So we didn't know if it was gonna work. As soon as we got up there, they're like,

we think your wifi is working. Can you guys get on your iPhone and see if it's working? We literally, and so the way you communicate with anyone in space is it's ground stations, strategically placed all over the planet, and as you're going around, you're communicating line of sight to all these stations. Or you utilize what's called TDRS satellites,

just national assets that I think there's only five or six out there and it's high demand, national security kind of stuff. And you time share based on if you're on the ISS and if we were gonna utilize that, it's gonna be about maybe 80% coverage. Otherwise we're in blackout, we're not talking to anyone kind of thing.

Starlink is hopefully gonna change that. And so they say, hey, we think in blackout, we're not talking to anyone kind of thing. Starlink is hopefully gonna change that. And so they say, hey, we think it's working, can you guys get on your iPhones and check? Literally, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding, all these messages start populating in my phone. And we're like, can we call our families? We literally, I call my family. So I dial my wife and she patches in and we're FaceTime.

My kids are at school, I got two in high school, one in college. They step out of their classroom and every one, picture, we have like snapshots of our phone. There we are, talking to our family. And I can only think back to when I met my wife and I'm in Korea and she's back in Minnesota and we're using these MCI calling cards

and I get maybe five, 10 minutes out of it. And I deployed to Kuwait and I got two phone calls five minutes each over 90 days. And that's all I talked. And oh, by the way, I proposed to her the day before I deployed and we got married three days after I got back from my deployment. And so we're engaged. I talked to her twice.

Geez. Anyways, so I think back to just, I don't know, what was that, 25 years ago? And now here we are. I'm in space. I'm 1,400 miles up. I'm traveling 17,500 miles an hour. I'm currently over Africa on my way to India. And my kids are in school and I'm talking, you know, it's just absolute mind blowing what we have access to.

Yeah. So talk about information flow. I mean, we took some Starlink to Philippines. So St. Jude could set up some of these at remote locations. And so all these people who live in jungles now have access to this telemedicine. Otherwise, who wouldn't, you know? And it's just, now we got Starlink down to our phones and it's just, just living a different world.

We do, we do. Man, so coming home. Mmm. So, um, it's a drawn out process to get ready because you've got to strap everything in because it's a violent ride. I think it's more violent coming home than it is going up. Your body is deconditioned. So you're used to zero gravity, but we've only been there for five days. I mean these astronauts on the space station when When they come when Butch and Sunny come home in a couple weeks, um,

You know, they've been up there for six plus months. They're way deconditioned. So it's tough because you're not using the skeletal system, your ligaments, your tendons, your muscles like you normally do. That's why they dedicate hours, three hours a day to working out up there on the station. Our five days, you still feel deconditioned. So the moment you start this reentry, and what happens is you turn the capsule around,

you fire the Draco engines into the direction of your velocity, and that slows you down. So as you begin to slow down, now gravity starts taking over, and you enter your de-orbit profile. And as soon as you start coming down, you hit the atmosphere. And that's what really slows you down. Because you have all this drag. But it also generates plasma, heat, fire.

So that's what you enter the blackout phase. So as you start, the first step of the whole process is to separate from the trunk. So you've got the capsule and then you've got this extension that's called the trunk. It's got solar panels because this entire vehicle is energy depleting. So we need the solar panels for energy, for power. So you separate from the trunk a couple hours prior and it's just this big old thump and that's okay we're committed because we can't survive in this capsule for for too long. We got to come home. So you're coming home anyways. You get in your suit,

you get in your seat, you strap in and engines start firing and it's just this constant repetitive doot doot doot as these engines are firing to slow you down. And then it just slowly starts to build this vibration, this chatter. And as you start to hit the atmosphere, you got your two little windows and you can see just enough and you initially initially see these sparks. It almost looks like campfire sparks up high. And then all of a sudden it turns into these streaks. And then it just turns into fire.

You are literally on fire. And it's like, I think it's like 2,600 degrees. So you're cooking. You're praying that TPS, the thermal protection system, the, your protection on the belly is, is working. Yeah. If any MMOD hit that stuff, you didn't know about it. Well, you probably wouldn't find out.

You just, you wouldn't survive it. And then you hit blackout and it's just, you're hauling ass. And it's shaking and you're hauling ass. And it's shaking and you start to build up those G forces again, cause you're slowing down. You're going from 17.5 down to like 350 miles an hour. So this is just massive G forces. Again, four and a half, but it's a lot longer. And the fact that you haven't been at Gs on orbit,

It's a lot longer and the fact that you haven't been at G's on orbit, 0.2 feels, whoa, I feel heavy, 4 1 2. It's like, okay, I don't know how long I can sustain this before I feel like I'm gonna pass out. You're so hyped up on adrenaline anyways. And then you're just watching the clock for certain milestones. You're looking for the drug shoots to come out. And then once the drug shoots come out, they'll pull the shoots eventually. And those are explosives.

So it's another big old, you know, the panel gets blown, pulled, and you know, they're superimposed images on our display so I can actually see it happen. So it's the first Point of relief is okay. The drugs are out. They look good. They're not tangled or anything like that like a parachute and Then the big moment is when those shoots come out and it's just a big all it's almost like a car crash It's just this boom Big four four big shoots come out and then now it's just a soft ride down The the impact is is like a crash, like a fender bender. It's pretty intense.

That's why it's only built for water landings versus land. You'd break your back if you landed on the land. And then you're just trying to get used to gravity and you're bobbing, you know, waiting for them to pull the recovery because again, it's SpaceX, they got everything in top fashion. They have this dedicated boat. It's literally within a mile of where they splash down. They know exactly where you're going to end up. They pull that boat.

They send out special ops guys, bunch of PJs, they all have military backgrounds. They're on their jet skis, and they're fast boats, and they pull right up to the capsule. They do some sniff tests because hypergoles is a big concern. It's just this fuel that can kill you if you breathe too much of it. So they do a sniff test to make sure there's no leaks. Put some straps on the capsule, then they pull the big boat up right behind you.

They get this crane and they just literally just pick you up, put you on the deck, slide you right up to a deck where the hatch is and they open the hatch. Doctors come in, check you over, give me a thumbs up because millions of people are watching the broadcast and you don't wanna, when you step out or you can't stand up or for whatever reason, they check you out.

And then one by one, it's like wave to the families and crowds and then they do a med check, helicopter comes, get in the helicopter and they buy you back for the reunion, the family reunion, and the hangar. How was it seeing your family? It was awesome. I think that was actually one of the highlights because it was, you know, getting motion just thinking about it's just like this relief knowing that she's at ease now because for me I, I'm living and breathing, man.

I'm on cloud nine. This is my jam. But for her, knowing that it's like, it's over, and she can kind of just let go, because she's trying to hold it together for the kids this whole time, and you know, from the launch to the spacewalk to the splashdown, it's just all these. And having to think about the inevitable,

not the inevitable, but God forbid, the worst thing that could happen, you know. Having to live with that, thinking about it for years leading up to this, it was just kind of emotional. It's over for her. It was just kind of a emotional, it's over for her. Damn. Well, that's a hell of a journey, man. Ha ha ha ha.

That is a hell of a journey. Yeah, it's um... It was only September 15th we splashed out and launched on the 10th. We were up there on the 11th, September 11th, talked to Folds of Honor in space, which was cool. We called Dan Rooney and a couple of the families, the CEO, so that was cool.

Sarah did her music event and Anna wrote a book, child's, children's book for her kids. So she read that on Orbit. We all kind of got a little taste. Very interesting. Yeah. Is there anything I should have asked that I didn't ask. That was a lot. Well you know when we met at inauguration you had offered to take me up in an F-16.

Oh I did? You did. I'll settle for the first podcast in space. Oh the first podcast in space. I think that is definitely, that's right up your alley man. That would be awesome. We got the connectivity for it, for sure. Yeah, sure, we could do it live.

Why not? You gotta pick your, who would you interview? All right, let's turn the tables. Let me ask you questions. Who would you interview in space? Well, I mean, you know, Elon seems pretty fitting. So, but then that would be, that would be really something, wouldn't it? Yeah. But would you go? Yeah. Space. That was actually one thing that that upon reflection getting down, you know, I'm trying to make sense of it all. And I keep on ego

why they're bringing it back to myself. And what was it? What was, you know, the significance of it all and blah, blah, blah. and then I have the conversation with people and they're like oh my god what was it like they immediately go into this mental simulation where they put themselves in the situation and it's a hell no there's no way I'll go I just don't know if I could do that or I'll sell my firstborn to go to space kind of attitude. And that's what makes me realize, okay, stop making it about yourself. It's so much more than that.

It's about inspiring this next generation to want to go, to be that person. I talk to my wife about this all the time. I mean, I think the possibility of our kids going to space is greater than them not. Things are just evolving so fast, you know. I think it'll become the norm before I die. If I live up, you know?

And it's not just the moon and Mars. It's gonna be low Earth orbit as well. I mean, they're gonna create habitable structures, whether it's a bunch of stars. The volume in a starship is equivalent to the ISS. So the entire structure of the ISS up there is the same as a Starship. So now, SpaceX has dozens of these lined up down there and just waiting to launch to test.

They can manufacture these and they give us the numbers when we go down there for tours and stuff. It's crazy, it's mind-blowing how quickly they can build these rockets. And they're only getting more and more efficient. You know, that's his business model. It's like, okay, widget X, the production of widget X by company Y is slowing us down. Let's bring this in-house, 3D print it, and do it ourselves. And that takes out that whole delay.

So, you know, they become more and more efficient. And again, these engineers are empowered to do that with the ability to take risk as needed, safety always being the primary concern, to be able to create all these starships. and it will be you know reality when they're launching All the time. Yeah constantly and now you you take these starships one of them How about docking three four these together and now you have three or four space stations up there? Create hotels and you know, yeah ever research labs 3d prints morgan's It's a fascinating subject.

It's, I guess, you know, the new frontier. Mm-hmm. Well, Scott, what an interview, man. I covered a lot of ground there. And man, it was an honor to sit here with you and learn about your life and get into some pretty deep discussions and talking about space and God and everything, man.

It's been, it's been an honor. Thank you. Honor's mine, man. I just appreciate the opportunity. What you're doing is absolutely amazing. All the power to you. I wish you a lot of success because you're changing lives and just getting the message out, whatever it might be. This is, it's, this is,

this is the message that people need to hear. Not necessarily my story, but all the things and people you interview and, you know, you've talked about, like DJ, you know, he would never have a platform like this. And now everyone knows his story and the sacrifices that he's made. And there's dozens and dozens more like like DJ that you're allowing this opportunity so we owe you the thanks brother it's cool to

be able to do it thank you thank you but all right Scott God bless brother The scene you did and this is the one that got me. Join us. It's Big Talk. You remember when I had to shave my head? Oh, I think I was angry with this one. On Smallville. Yeah, I mean, I get it. The scene you did, and this is the one that got me fired. OK. What? Here we go. I love the excursions with me and Welling.

It's everything that Superman stands for. It's Talkville. Talkville, we always talk about it. It's a great thing. The Smallville Rewatch Podcast. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.