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

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Speaker 4 Scott Poteet, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 This is

Speaker 4 quite an experience. So thank you.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you know, we've been looking forward to this. We met at inauguration and

Speaker 5 had a quick, I don't know, maybe 15-minute conversation there. And I've always wanted to have an astronaut on the show.
So,

Speaker 5 yeah, thank you for coming.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 There's There's only like

Speaker 4 six or seven or six fifty

Speaker 4 astronauts have gone into space. So

Speaker 4 blessed to have that opportunity and just excited to talk about it.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And then who knows what kind of rabbit holes we'll go down here. But yeah, like I said, thank you for coming and I'm looking forward to this.
So

Speaker 5 everybody starts off with an introduction here. So

Speaker 4 Scott Kidd Poteet.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Over 400 of those hours were in combat, supporting operations like Northern Watch, Southern Watch, Joint Guardian, Freedom's Sentinel, and Resolute Support.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 You are the mission director for Inspiration 4, the world's first all-civilian spaceflight in 2021.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 You're a triathlete who has completed, who has competed in 15 Iron Man races, including four world championships and Kona.

Speaker 5 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.
Amen. So, welcome to the show once again.

Speaker 5 If you watch, you know, everybody gets a gift.

Speaker 4 Use these on your next iron man.

Speaker 6 I will.

Speaker 5 I appreciate that. Vigilance elite gummy bears.
I'll give you a couple more of those to take home. Yeah.
Those are hard to come by. Hand they're made in the USA.

Speaker 4 They're still legal at all 50.

Speaker 5 They're still legal. We haven't made any changes yet.
But

Speaker 5 I don't think we're going to either.

Speaker 4 But then,

Speaker 5 so I have just one more thing before we really get going here. So I have a Patreon account.
Patreon is

Speaker 5 a subscription online community.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 they're the ones that supported us,

Speaker 5 that...

Speaker 5 got us everything from the cameras to the employees to moving into this to

Speaker 5 everything.

Speaker 5 And so one of the things I do in that community is I

Speaker 5 them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question.

Speaker 5 And they had some good questions.

Speaker 4 Oh, it's the most nerve-wracking question, I'm sure.

Speaker 5 So this one's from me.

Speaker 4 Oh, no.

Speaker 4 Is that legal?

Speaker 5 I'm part of the community, too. And

Speaker 5 so this one's for me.

Speaker 4 Is that because no one asked a question? Oh, no, no.

Speaker 5 The original question, I'll ask you two. Okay.

Speaker 5 But I'm going to ask ask mine first because I've been dying to talk to an astronaut about this because we do dive into some conspiracies here, as you know. Did we go to the moon or what?

Speaker 5 I've been wanting to talk to an astronaut about this for.

Speaker 5 There it is.

Speaker 5 We have not been back to the moon since 1969.

Speaker 5 Why haven't we gone?

Speaker 4 Why?

Speaker 6 Oh, man.

Speaker 4 I think we just shifted our focus

Speaker 4 as a country. You know, NASA had different priorities once we went to the moon, which I do believe we have.

Speaker 5 You do think we did. I do.

Speaker 4 I do.

Speaker 4 I don't know. I mean,

Speaker 4 I would imagine

Speaker 4 there would have been a lot more leaks out there.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm with you. I think about that.
It's really hard to keep that big of a secret.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 But why haven't we gone back? I mean,

Speaker 5 we don't just just go anywhere and then like, oh, fuck it. There's nothing here.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 4 Like,

Speaker 5 really?

Speaker 5 Give me a break.

Speaker 4 It's not easy.

Speaker 4 There's a sequence of miracles that happened. I mean, think about the computer power of what they had back in the Apollo program.
We have more in our iPhones these days.

Speaker 4 So it wasn't an easy task.

Speaker 4 And then once it was accomplished,

Speaker 4 in my opinion,

Speaker 4 the focus shift to low Earth orbit,

Speaker 4 building a station,

Speaker 4 accomplish the science and research that has been the focus for the last few decades.

Speaker 4 Amazing things have come out of that.

Speaker 4 You can do a lot more at zero gravity and

Speaker 4 with the science and research. And we experienced that on our mission with our 40 experiments that we had lined up.

Speaker 4 And that's just, you know, let's build out the station.

Speaker 4 Let's explore 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,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 allowing these companies and organizations to kind of

Speaker 4 go off on these new tangents and explore,

Speaker 4 we're not only going to address low Earth orbit over the next, you know, coming years, it's all about, okay, let's go back to the moon, the lunar surface, and let's go to Mars

Speaker 4 because it's human nature to explore and curiosity. And, oh, by the way, we can benefit life on Earth.

Speaker 4 So, you know, bottom line, I think it's just a focus.

Speaker 4 And now that we kind of shift and let's do more because we can. Reusability and technology is improving.

Speaker 4 But it's a heavy lift.

Speaker 4 It's not easy. Otherwise, we would have, you know, knocked it out in a couple of years.

Speaker 4 We're still a couple of years away.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you know, I don't know what to think. It's just, what is that? 1969 to the...
What is that? 50.

Speaker 4 51 at 73, so that's an extra four. It's 55.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Like 56 years. Yeah.
56 years. We have not gone back.
That's just odd to me. That's really odd.
But

Speaker 5 whatever. So you think we did? All right, Dad.
All right. All right.

Speaker 5 When do you think we'll be back?

Speaker 5 Are we going back? Well,

Speaker 5 Elon wants to go to Mars.

Speaker 4 The plan is two.

Speaker 4 Back to the lunar surface in two

Speaker 4 and Mars in four.

Speaker 5 Back in two, in two years.

Speaker 4 I do think that's realistic.

Speaker 4 Like I said, there's a lot of things that need to be solved.

Speaker 4 And NASA's doing amazing work to get us there with the partnerships and collaborations with SpaceX and other organizations.

Speaker 4 But we've 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.

Speaker 4 Otherwise, we're going to set back these programs years if something catastrophic happens.

Speaker 4 And the public's not willing. You know, the risk we took back in the day, you know, the 50s and 60s, was a lot

Speaker 4 more significant than we're willing to accept these days. And, you know, we're kind of risk-averse.

Speaker 4 And it can be a positive and a negative, you know, to some extent because it can be paralysis through analysis.

Speaker 4 At some point, we got to put up or shut up and go.

Speaker 5 It seems like civilian space exploration is

Speaker 5 like

Speaker 4 really going

Speaker 5 becoming a lot more advanced than NASA.

Speaker 5 It almost seems like

Speaker 5 it's well beyond what NASA can do. 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?

Speaker 4 You're starting off with the tricky ones.

Speaker 4 It's a partnership for sure.

Speaker 4 NASA's, they do this for 11. They've been doing it for decades, 60 plus years, whatever it's been.

Speaker 4 And we typically always want to make sure that we never lose sight of these accomplishments. You know, we're standing on the shoulders of giants of what they've been able to accomplish.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 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, I'm just,

Speaker 5 you know, is it really?

Speaker 4 I think it's two-way. I mean, just look at our program.
You know, we did the first commercial spacewalk.

Speaker 4 To do that, we, SpaceX wanted to develop a brand new EVA suit, extravehicular activity, do a spacewalk. And that's never been done in over 40 years.

Speaker 4 NASA has the EMU suit that they currently use.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 you know, less than three years, two and a half year time span, took that suit and developed

Speaker 4 what we wore, which is more or less the prototype EVA suit. Now,

Speaker 4 to do that on a very streamlined budget, not a, you know, a multi-billion dollar program, you know, they

Speaker 4 monster garaged this thing to develop a suit that is extremely viable and will be, you know,

Speaker 4 the baseline going forward as far as what they're going to develop regarding a suit with humans bouncing on the the surface of the moon and and mars in in capacity not a handful of suits like like nasa has this is the concept is you know these starships are going to launch hundreds of passengers um you know in elon's vision he's stated in 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.

Speaker 4 You know, it's sci-fi,

Speaker 4 but that's what we're accomplishing. And that's what SpaceX is accomplishing and other organizations are accomplishing.
Because I,

Speaker 4 you know, when I got involved with this program years ago,

Speaker 4 I didn't really understand the concept of boosters landing on their own, chopsticks, catching boosters, reusability.

Speaker 4 I'm like, there's no way. This is like, this is far-fetched.
But look at us. I mean, tonight, test eight is launching in Starship.

Speaker 4 And each time they launch, they're learning new things. You know, it might not land successfully in the ocean, Indian Ocean, but

Speaker 4 it certainly well could. And they're going to catch the booster with the chopsticks.
And this is just a next step to achieve that ultimate goal of

Speaker 4 multiple launches daily, going to the moon, going to Mars.

Speaker 5 Why do you think the

Speaker 5 why do we want to bring hundreds of passengers into space?

Speaker 4 Why not? I mean,

Speaker 4 it depends on who you ask, on what you believe, and

Speaker 4 justifying these significant projects and programs. But

Speaker 4 we certainly aren't good stewards of our planet. We haven't been.

Speaker 4 Whether you want to call this an insurance policy or you want to go down the curiosity route of let's explore because who knows what's out there

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 4 are those resources that we could capitalize on um

Speaker 4 you know the population issues the climate issues uh

Speaker 4 you know when is it going to make a turn for the worst an asteroid you know

Speaker 4 They're talking about 2024, whatever asteroid name they have. It's supposed to, you know, a probability of 5, 6%.

Speaker 4 And by 2032, don't quote me on these numbers.

Speaker 4 But that's catastrophic to certain parts of the planet. So

Speaker 4 again, it's like, if we have the opportunity and the resources and the intellect

Speaker 4 to pursue some of these goals,

Speaker 5 why not? Hey, I'm not against it. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I don't have anybody to talk to this stuff about that's been up there.
So I think it's, it's just a fascinating subject. I mean,

Speaker 5 we haven't found any water or anything on Mars, have we?

Speaker 5 Or frozen. We found frozen water or anything on Mars? I don't know.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I mean, it's just interesting.
I mean, how would we sustain there with no

Speaker 5 nothing?

Speaker 5 We don't really know anything. Do we know anything?

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Speaker 4 Got a couple of robots running around there, but I mean, just landed on the moon with another robot company.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 they're trying. I mean, it's all about exploration.
We did it

Speaker 4 decades ago with exploring countries and across oceans. So it's not too much far off that.

Speaker 5 Have we found anything significant that would help sustain human life on the moon or Mars that you're aware of?

Speaker 4 Not that I'm aware of. I mean, it's going to rely upon...

Speaker 4 innovative technologies to figure out how we you know because it can't be a one in my opinion this can't be a one-way mission to Mars.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And it's eight months to get there, and it's eight months home, and however long you need to

Speaker 4 do the mission on the surface.

Speaker 5 It's eight months. Yeah, I think that's a long car ride, buddy.
It's a long car ride.

Speaker 4 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, you know, what they went to the moon in.

Speaker 5 How long did it take them to get to the moon?

Speaker 4 i think it was two and a half four and a half days a couple days

Speaker 4 yeah

Speaker 4 traveling 25 000 miles an hour to escape gravitational pull damn damn all right

Speaker 5 we'll move on this is from brian how did you get your call sign when you got named oh at your first squadron and during your time flying the f-16 did you ever fly any cast missions supporting j tex on the ground

Speaker 4 love the JTEX. That was my favorite mission was working with you guys, SEALs, three letter identifiers.

Speaker 4 Those were the best missions. Because

Speaker 4 you're supporting your brothers and sisters on the ground doing the mission.

Speaker 4 So to answer the second question, yes, I did a lot of CAS.

Speaker 4 I flew the F-16 for 20 years and it's a multi-role platform. So you do air-to-air and

Speaker 4 it's the jack of all trades, master of none. So you're constantly dabbling all these different modalities and mission sets.

Speaker 4 But the reason why I chose the F-16

Speaker 4 was for the airground missions and specifically the CAS.

Speaker 4 In fact, my last assignment was Aviano Air Base in Italy. We deployed to Afghanistan doing Resolute Support and Freedom Sentinel, doing counterterrorism missions,

Speaker 4 dropping bombs and

Speaker 4 working with you guys and other agencies. And that was by far the highlight of my career.

Speaker 5 What year was that?

Speaker 4 That was 15.

Speaker 4 So it was kind of the height of ISIS.

Speaker 4 There wasn't much of that presence. It was more al-Qaeda, but we were just

Speaker 4 working our way up the chain, looking for high-value targets.

Speaker 4 Trying to beat out the predators because that was when the predator was kind of making its big push on employment.

Speaker 4 Very, very accurate platform. In fact, when I went through weapon school, top gun school, that was the focus of my

Speaker 4 thesis was integrating CAS missions with F-16s and Predator. That's a long story, but

Speaker 4 to answer his question, yeah, a lot of missions with JTACs, controllers, doing CAS.

Speaker 4 Call sign. Call sign.

Speaker 4 So it's KID, It's K-I-D-D, two Ds.

Speaker 4 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 Pooh, which kind of play off Poteet.

Speaker 4 I had Biff for a while, and then I had money,

Speaker 4 the movie Swingers back in the 90s.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 I was never a swinger. Okay.

Speaker 4 Clarification.

Speaker 4 But I lost the call sign money and then I got named kid. And every fighter squadron, how you get your call sign, it's the naming ceremony is always different.

Speaker 4 And I was in the triple nickel, 555th fighter squadron, very historic. Robin Oles from the Vietnam War, best fighter squadron in the Air Force.

Speaker 4 How we did the ceremony is you're kicked out so they can talk about you. Just

Speaker 4 usually it's a drink fest.

Speaker 4 So you don't really hear the reasons why you get named until you get brought back into the ceremony.

Speaker 4 And they've selected a couple different stories of why. There's usually one that's PG, that's releasable, and then there's another reason why.

Speaker 4 So the releasable story is that kid, I looked young back in the day. My first name is actually William.
so Billy, the kid.

Speaker 4 There was already a kid in the sister squad in the 510th, the Buzzards, but he was KID. So they added an extra D.

Speaker 4 And there's other reasons why it ended up being kid

Speaker 4 that unfortunately. Come on.
I see other reasons.

Speaker 5 Come on.

Speaker 4 If this was JD, Jack Daniels, I might be able to.

Speaker 4 Well, we got him. We got one of them.

Speaker 5 All right, all right. I won't press it.

Speaker 5 All right, so let's move into the life story here. So I know you, you were born here in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Speaker 4 Chattanooga.

Speaker 5 When did you move to New Hampshire?

Speaker 4 So I was born in 73, 51.

Speaker 4 We were born in Chattanooga, but I was actually, I lived five years just across the border, North Deepwoods, Georgia.

Speaker 4 Middle of the low-income fam.

Speaker 4 A 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.

Speaker 4 I think he had one of the largest private collections of Civil War artifacts.

Speaker 4 I just remember as a kid rummaging into, you know, his collection. There's really cool stuff like

Speaker 4 bullets with teeth marks. ceramic bullets from amputations, biting the bullet, the whole concept.
So

Speaker 4 those are some of my memories as a kid. But when I was five, we moved.
My dad

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 New Hampshire Seacoast. So we moved to a town called Durham

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Really?

Speaker 4 But stayed there all the way.

Speaker 5 What were you into as a kid? What's that? What were you into?

Speaker 4 Sports.

Speaker 4 Sports. I was very competitive, obsessively competitive.

Speaker 4 80s.

Speaker 4 So I was big into like

Speaker 4 the Celtics, the Red Sox. We would always go to games.

Speaker 4 Patriots,

Speaker 4 as well as the Bruins.

Speaker 4 But it was obsessive obsessive to the point of,

Speaker 4 you know, I would sacrifice all my friends and foes to get to the front of the line for whatever, you know, lining up for class.

Speaker 4 And it ended up, you know, parent-teacher conferences trying to figure out ways to kind of channel that gladiator attitude I had.

Speaker 4 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 sundown.

Speaker 4 I'm 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. And

Speaker 4 that was my childhood. And it became...

Speaker 5 Do you have siblings?

Speaker 4 Older brother, year and a half older.

Speaker 4 Great relationship.

Speaker 4 Family was a little bit,

Speaker 4 I would say maybe unemotional.

Speaker 4 Kind of kept to ourselves.

Speaker 4 But I would spend my time just

Speaker 4 roaming,

Speaker 4 looking for trouble.

Speaker 5 What sports?

Speaker 4 I played everything.

Speaker 4 Baseball, soccer, basketball was big throughout my life.

Speaker 4 I got a job at the golf course, so I picked up golf.

Speaker 4 Started

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So I actually got involved in running pretty early on, and that became my focus.

Speaker 4 I wanted basketball to be it. You know, Larry Bird back in the Celtics era in the 80s was a big deal.

Speaker 4 But I was a realist, you know, five foot nine inches tall. I knew it wasn't, you know,

Speaker 4 a likelihood of it wasn't in the cards playing at the next level in college.

Speaker 4 Terrible, terrible student. C's and D's across the board.
Really? Yeah,

Speaker 4 I couldn't focus

Speaker 4 before all the diagnosis,

Speaker 4 but I just couldn't pay attention.

Speaker 4 I was really good at setting athletic goals and succeeding on the, you know, pitch, the field, the dime, and the track, but I could not apply those same strategies in the classroom.

Speaker 4 And it was by the time I got to high school, I'm like,

Speaker 4 All right, I'm not going to college if I don't figure out a path. And

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 to getting to college.

Speaker 4 So that's when I focused on running.

Speaker 4 Ended up winning the state championship race my junior year, and it was kind of that performance and my dedication to the sport that got me recruited to run Division I at

Speaker 4 University of New Hampshire.

Speaker 4 I applied to UNH, that school, and University of of Tennessee at Knoxville

Speaker 4 and that was it. And I got recruited and I only got in because of the coach.

Speaker 5 So the plan worked.

Speaker 4 So the plan worked, thankfully.

Speaker 4 But even the college, man, academics was

Speaker 4 just the traditional education method is not my jam. Yeah.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So that's kind of where I found a different option.

Speaker 5 What was your major? What did you?

Speaker 4 It's called outdoor education.

Speaker 5 What is that?

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 it's

Speaker 4 education through experiential learning.

Speaker 4 So how that is different is that you're taught a basic skill set.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 all my classes were like scuba diving, rock climbing, winter mountaineering, whitewater rafting, Nordic skiing. You can get it.
Advanced backpacking. I actually had an advanced backpacking class.

Speaker 5 Damn.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 that I came across. My buddy of mine brought me to class one day.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And there are students in the back of the class and the storage lockers going through all this gear. And

Speaker 4 I'm in my full services, hand-me-down polyester uniform, a big trench coat, you know, cheap patent leather shoes and

Speaker 4 stand out like a sore thumb.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, I'm not dressed for this and I don't know if this is going to work out. Well, come to find out, my teacher is a Navy SEAL.

Speaker 4 He was a Navy SEAL for 20 years.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 you dig down to the surface, you pile a bunch of snow up, you let it set.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Once you you dug it all out, you take a little propane stove, you light it, you glaze, heat up the inside, it glaze over, and now you have this impenetrable structure, this winter shelter.

Speaker 4 And you get, you know, 12, 15 people to stand on top of the structure. It's only four to six inches, and

Speaker 4 it holds the weight.

Speaker 4 And now it's like 20, 30 degrees warmer inside this igloo, this Quincy.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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, earn a degree, so I can go into the military.

Speaker 4 Because I didn't think, you know, I've got three and a half years left to get a degree

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Why did you pick ROTC?

Speaker 5 What caught your interest in that, anyways?

Speaker 4 So I was walking to class freshman year, False Semaster, one day, and

Speaker 4 this flyer on a bulletin board caught my eye, and it was a picture of a fighter jet.

Speaker 4 And it was just an advertisement encouraging students to come experience the Air Force way of life.

Speaker 4 Sign up to be a passenger aboard a KC-135 aerofueling aircraft at the local Air National Guard unit out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Pease, used to be an Air Force base,

Speaker 4 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 foot long.

Speaker 4 Anyways, they have a guard unit there, KC-135s. Now it's the KC-46, the replacement refueler in the Air Force.

Speaker 4 And I'm impulsive. I sign up.

Speaker 4 You know, and when I signed up,

Speaker 4 I didn't fully grasp the consequences of my actions because

Speaker 4 here's a couple secrets about myself. It's probably going to jeopardize credibility.

Speaker 4 Extremely prone to motion sickness.

Speaker 4 Always have been, always will be. You stick me in Uber

Speaker 4 15 minutes long. I'm done.
Are you kidding me? I still get nauseous.

Speaker 4 Scared of heights.

Speaker 4 I hate heights.

Speaker 5 Me too.

Speaker 4 Actually, Afghanistan. They took us up in a helicopter.
I was a command position.

Speaker 4 And the PJs took me up in a helicopter. They knew I was scared of heights.
And doors open up at like 14,000 feet. Man, it freaked the shit out of me.

Speaker 4 Anyways,

Speaker 4 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 going to sign up and I'm going to go.

Speaker 4 So I commit, 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.

Speaker 4 There's no windows in this gutted plane, a couple seats up front. And I start to panic.
I'm like,

Speaker 4 I start sweating. I get, you know, I get,

Speaker 4 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 mean, I can't back out now.

Speaker 4 I got to man up.

Speaker 4 And so

Speaker 4 air crew comes out and briefs us on what we can anticipate. And they're like, all right, we're going to start off with some low approaches, do some training.
I'm like, I have no idea what that is.

Speaker 4 Let's do this. And we're going to go out to the airspace and refuel some S-16s.
And so.

Speaker 4 Close the door and take off and they immediately level off and they come back around and they land and take off again.

Speaker 4 20 minutes in this flight, I just lose my lunch. I'm puking.
It's like a CNAT alien. It's just, it's bad.
And I pass out.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I'm like working my way up there, just trying not to puke on anyone or anything. And he takes a seat and starts doing his pre-fueling checks and trying to distract me.

Speaker 4 And I take the observation seat next to him. And he's like, all right, there's two fighters on the horizon.
They're about to reform.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 He's, you know, he's giving me a little shot, guys.

Speaker 4 And he, boom, plugs the aircraft and we start communicating. He's asking questions.
He's telling us about his mission. And I'm just like, that is awesome.
You You know, that was the little spark.

Speaker 4 Everyone's got their motivation.

Speaker 4 But that was the fire that was lit within me. And I completely forgot about the last two hours.
I just wanted to be a fighter pilot. I didn't care what it took.

Speaker 4 I knew I had a lot of challenges in front of me,

Speaker 4 but I had to figure out

Speaker 4 how to get in that cockpit.

Speaker 5 Nice.

Speaker 4 And then I figured out the education piece with outdoor education. Wow, wow.

Speaker 5 So, yeah, I mean,

Speaker 5 but there's got to be a lot of studying to be a pilot and an astronaut. And so, I mean,

Speaker 5 I would imagine there's a lot.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 5 so let's, let's move on. So, you graduated college, then what?

Speaker 4 I did pretty well in the ROTC. Anything active, I do pretty good at.

Speaker 4 So I was, or if I have interest in it.

Speaker 4 So I was a pretty good cadet. I graduate, distinguished graduate, and I get selected for a program called Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training, NJEPT.

Speaker 4 And it's a specified pilot training program out of Shepard Air Force Base, Wichita Falls. And it's all the NATO countries participate.

Speaker 4 They send instructors and students who are going to be flying fighter jets. So it's specific to flying a fighter aircraft.
Whereas the other pilot training bases, there's two tracks.

Speaker 4 Well, there's three if you count helos.

Speaker 4 Everyone starts off on the same platform. It's a T6 now.
I flew a T37, just a side-by-side little

Speaker 4 dog whistle, loud jet trainer,

Speaker 4 fully aerobatic.

Speaker 4 The G-onset rate in those aircrafts are, ugh,

Speaker 4 I get chills every time I think about my first year of pilot training because I would puke almost every single flight.

Speaker 4 And at the six year or the six month point for those other bases, you split.

Speaker 4 You go, if you're going the heavy track, you're going to go fly a C-17, C-130, C-5, you're going to go to the T-1, Learjet looking aircraft.

Speaker 4 If you're going to go fly fighters or bombers, you go to the T-38.

Speaker 4 Well, this program that I went to, there's only one track. You go from T-37 to T-38

Speaker 4 and you go in the fighter.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's needs of the Air Force.

Speaker 4 Everything's stratified. It probably seals very similar.

Speaker 4 It's stratifications. So you're performing.
Number one, two, three, four, all the way down to whatever your class has.

Speaker 4 And when it comes time for your assignment night, it's like, all right, the Air Force needs

Speaker 4 two F-16 pilots for F-15Cs this many F-15Es A10s and you just go down the list and you pick so first

Speaker 5 first and

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 4 So back to your question, I went to Shepherd Air Force Base and I did this program.

Speaker 4 And I was about there two and a half or 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,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 So hold on, let's backtrack. So

Speaker 5 pilot training is how long to get to pick what you're going to fly.

Speaker 4 The actual training is a year, but there are certain

Speaker 4 elements or milestones you have to accomplish, like survival training.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Centrifuge is something you have to go through because you're going to start flying higher performance aircrafts that can...

Speaker 4 that you need to qualify yourself in these certain profiles of pulling Gs, because some people have a really difficult time. If you don't understand the G-strain maneuver,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So the training is actually a year. It's about a year and a half, but then there's an extra six months

Speaker 4 you have to go through to learn how to fly an F-16 or an F-22 or an F-35.

Speaker 4 So I was there a year and a half

Speaker 4 before I went off to my base to learn how to fly the F-16. Okay.

Speaker 4 And it was

Speaker 4 a miserable experience for me.

Speaker 5 Flying the S F-16?

Speaker 4 No, pilot training. Why?

Speaker 4 Motion sickness, academics.

Speaker 5 Yeah, how did you get through the

Speaker 5 How did you get through the academics? I mean, I thought I was going to be a pilot just as a, you know, as a hobby. I was like, oh, this sound might be kind of cool.

Speaker 5 And then I looked at all the shit I had to study and I was like, fuck that. I'm not doing it.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I was like, ground school? No, not doing it.

Speaker 5 But, so, I mean, how, how did you, it sounds like you were a horrible,

Speaker 5 horrible student.

Speaker 4 I, I, man, I,

Speaker 4 I was challenged then. I was challenged F-16s.
I was challenged weapons school. I was challenged space.

Speaker 4 And it was, it's more my hard-headed mindset.

Speaker 4 Because if I apply myself, I think I could

Speaker 4 do okay.

Speaker 5 You have to have a drive.

Speaker 4 You do.

Speaker 5 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 want to do.

Speaker 5 Like study.

Speaker 4 And pilot training, even looking back, I'm like, well, I went through weapons squad and I went through space.

Speaker 4 Pilot training was nothing compared to what I went through later.

Speaker 4 But at the time, I'm coming off outdoor education, four years of scuba diving, rock climbing, mountaineering. I mean, my final exam in Nordic skiing was five days in Vermont doing

Speaker 4 Nordic skiing. As long as you didn't get a cold weather injury, you got an A.

Speaker 4 We were in Ben breakfast in a hot tub in the afternoon and skiing all day long.

Speaker 4 A little hidden secret. But now I go to pilot training and the expectation is, dude, this is this big boy program, you know.

Speaker 4 And oh, by the way, I went right after graduation because I just, I was gung-ho. I just want to get going.
So I literally graduate three days later, I'm on the road moving to Tennessee, or to Texas.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And, oh, by the way, these are the top graduates. So this is who I'm competing against, you know, in that stratification.
And

Speaker 4 it was, it was a steep, steep learning curve. Damn, but

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Speaker 4 Thankfully, there's the flying piece. You know, you got to apply yourself in the actual stick and rudder coordination piece.
But there is the

Speaker 4 academic piece. You got to prove yourself there before they're going to put you in a cockpit.
And we had these things, and I still have nightmares about them. It's stand-up.

Speaker 4 And it's like there's boldface like you have to memorize certain emergency procedures for that's specific to the aircraft. And it's like almost a haze where,

Speaker 4 you know, in the morning you have stand up and you gotta, they'll call in you. They'll randomly select, all right, kid, back then I don't remember what it was, Pooter, stand up.

Speaker 4 All right, this is your scenario. You got your aircraft and, you know, you have an engine failure.

Speaker 4 and you're this far away and this parameters and it's just you're in the hot seat and you got to verbatim, give the procedures, and then all the amplifying systems knowledge. And

Speaker 4 it's just to prove and test your, your level of competency. And that was my nemesis.

Speaker 4 And if you don't do well enough, you know, Pooter, sit down. Next guy.
And you don't get to fly that day. You're grounded until you have some remedial training.

Speaker 4 I was notorious.

Speaker 4 All right, Pooter, here's your second chance.

Speaker 5 No, shit.

Speaker 4 Dude, you suck. Sit down.

Speaker 5 How did you overcome the motion sickness?

Speaker 4 It took a long, long time. A lot of driving.
I actually had to hide it from my instructors.

Speaker 4 Thankfully, the 38 is,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 is that tandem?

Speaker 4 You know, it's front and back. Yeah.
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 the 38, you're in front.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 you know, depending on what your issue is.

Speaker 5 You would just puke in your mask. Yeah.

Speaker 4 This might be TMI, but.

Speaker 5 No, I'm like.

Speaker 4 Sometimes.

Speaker 5 Where does it go?

Speaker 4 If you can hold it long enough, you can either.

Speaker 4 And my recommendation is if.

Speaker 5 How do you concentrate flying a jet?

Speaker 4 While

Speaker 5 trying like hell to hold vomit down?

Speaker 4 If you do have to,

Speaker 4 my recommendation is always eat something you don't mind eating again. Bananas is a good choice.

Speaker 4 I remember one time I first...

Speaker 5 You would puke and then swallow it again.

Speaker 4 You just got to fight through it.

Speaker 5 I had a great instructor.

Speaker 4 He was Norwegian, and he

Speaker 4 hardcore dude, loved to party, party

Speaker 4 drove this old 1980s Cadillac with the big old steer horns on the on the hood hood ornament he was awesome

Speaker 4 he was sympathetic to my cause so he would know because I'd be doing this heaving going on and I'm trying to fly this aircraft and pay attention

Speaker 4 and especially the aerobatics once you got to the airspace but my first flight in a 38 I thought I 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 barony chair you know to force it out of you, try to just break your will.

Speaker 6 Um,

Speaker 4 none of that was working for me,

Speaker 4 and I would just hide it

Speaker 4 via techniques already talked about. But, um, my first flight in the 38, man, it came on so quick, it just came out of my mouse, mask, and all over my visor.

Speaker 4 And I'm like doing this windshield wiper trying to clear my visor because my

Speaker 4 pilot's in the back.

Speaker 4 And, you know, I suffered through a sub

Speaker 4 below, well below average execution on my dollar ride, my first flight. And 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.

Speaker 4 And he goes, not a chance. Because there's puke all over the dashboard of this.

Speaker 4 So I didn't pass that ride.

Speaker 5 So hold on. Does it go, is it like an initial,

Speaker 5 is it

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 4 It ebbs and flows.

Speaker 4 You know, you're better sickness.

Speaker 5 Like you're just, you're in it.

Speaker 5 Shit.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And you still,

Speaker 5 and you still wanted to be a pilot?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. Holy shit, man.
Yeah, I was determined.

Speaker 4 Stubborn, strong-willed, ego.

Speaker 4 I don't know what it was, but I'm like, I have, I can't fail. This is,

Speaker 4 I got to figure it out. Because there was one kid in my class that left.
He just, I'm done.

Speaker 5 I got

Speaker 4 tapping out. I'm out.

Speaker 5 But I just, I wanted to figure it out.

Speaker 4 I, you know, you do. I mean,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 So you have overcome it.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Okay. You know, people talk, is it

Speaker 4 physiological? Is it it psychological? I think it's a combination of a lot of things. Inner ear.

Speaker 4 Thankfully, space is not, there's no correlation.

Speaker 4 Because space adaptation syndrome impacts 50% of astronauts. What is it called? Space adaptation syndrome.
And it's, because you, and we'll get to it, but like...

Speaker 4 You experience all these G-forces on the way up,

Speaker 4 and then it's a long ride. So it's about nine minutes.
You're pulling four and a half Gs.

Speaker 4 And then when that second stage separates, you're thrust forward, you're hanging in your straps, and now you're in space floating. And so that transition,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And it's different axis, depending on who you are.

Speaker 5 Do you know if you're going to get it before you go to space? So

Speaker 5 it's a big surprise.

Speaker 4 And puking in space with zero gravity.

Speaker 5 Oh, man.

Speaker 4 You saw the movies, you know, Apollo 13.

Speaker 4 I was ecstatic. I was on Cloud 9.
I was on a drugs, man. I was so pumped once I realized I got to orbit.
I'm floating.

Speaker 4 I get through this tumbling sensation because you're forced to deal with your circumstances.

Speaker 4 There's no like, I'll suck this up for 30 seconds on a roller coaster or, you know, you're flying a fighter jet. Can you ease off and fly straight and level for a few potatoes?

Speaker 4 No, you are forced to deal with your circumstances.

Speaker 4 There's no reset button. And that's very challenging

Speaker 4 because that capsule is rotating. You know, it's got to maintain line of sight with satellites for communication purposes.
So as it's going around, it's rotating.

Speaker 4 So you look outside and you see the horizon. And that makes sense.
This is the top of the capsule and this is the bottom.

Speaker 4 You come inside, you float float around, and you look back outside, and it's completely opposite.

Speaker 4 And now it's like, whoa.

Speaker 4 After a while, your body adapts, and the human body is amazing. You know, I would be, you know, a couple hours into it, I'd be on my iPad, laptop, whatever, iPhone, doing some science and research.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 5 But back to

Speaker 4 motion sickness. Yeah, I

Speaker 4 more or less got over it. I still get, especially if someone's shitty driver and

Speaker 4 wow.

Speaker 4 Anyways. Wow.
That's more information than any other hurdles?

Speaker 4 That was it for pilot training was academics and the in the motion sickness.

Speaker 4 Fair heights I get over.

Speaker 4 Planes are fine. It's structures.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Ledges.
I have that too. Okay.

Speaker 4 I figured that I hate

Speaker 4 yell.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Jump school was not fun for me.
Yeah. I fucking hated it.
Yeah. Terrified of heights.

Speaker 4 We we

Speaker 4 went free dive or free free diving, yeah. Skydiving.

Speaker 4 Part of the space training. And jumping out of a plane was.

Speaker 5 Oh shit, you had to do it? Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. What 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.

Speaker 4 That's that's it.

Speaker 4 Um, but I had a bummed shoulder. This was so.
This is the only program. I don't even know if we want to go here, but um, it was with the Air Force Academy.

Speaker 4 Um, it's the only program in the world that is the first jump is free fall and solo.

Speaker 5 Um, what, yeah,

Speaker 5 yeah, and you're scared to death of fights, yeah. Oh, man.

Speaker 5 I got to hear this.

Speaker 4 Unfortunately, I had hurt my shoulder

Speaker 4 years back, dislocated it. And I actually dislocated it in space training in the capsule

Speaker 4 in full-on spacesuit.

Speaker 4 And it's this emergency procedures.

Speaker 4 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. rush see how quickly we can get out of the capsule

Speaker 4 so my responsibility as the swimmer on the with all my Ironman's was to get out first

Speaker 4 and I got to throw the

Speaker 4 the the the boat the inflatable boat out in the the water and pull the cord and as I'm pulling I completely dislocate my shoulder. And so this was an injury from years prior.
So now I have this.

Speaker 4 I was able to get it back in because these suits,

Speaker 4 these are expensive suits. And

Speaker 4 the docs came in and were trying to get my shoulder back in.

Speaker 4 But I'm in this suit. I mean, it's a helmet.
It's one piece. There's no way you can get up into the shoulder.

Speaker 4 So over time, we were able to finally pop it back in. And that event kind of just let this

Speaker 4 like you know all stretched out. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So it was, um but skydiving didn't help so

Speaker 4 i actually my first jump i had to pull with my left hand um

Speaker 4 worked out fine

Speaker 4 but that kind of ended my uh my skydiving career until i had surgery post space

Speaker 5 damn did you 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?

Speaker 5 Have you ever come up like you're diving, you're diving on the ocean floor and then you hit a ledge?

Speaker 4 No, I don't think I've ever been that deep.

Speaker 4 Shoreline

Speaker 4 off the Atlantic in the north is pretty shallow.

Speaker 5 I get it. I get it on that.
Do you really?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I never thought of that. 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?

Speaker 5 I don't know how deep it was. I can't remember.
But But

Speaker 5 I do remember the feeling

Speaker 5 getting it underwater, which you would think you would never get because you have that,

Speaker 5 you know, it's not like you're going to fall, but there's that, just that look off the ledge where you can't see the bottom of it.

Speaker 4 I love watching those free divers

Speaker 4 holding their breath for breath holds. Five, six minutes.

Speaker 4 That's pretty wild. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So when did you

Speaker 4 what

Speaker 5 place did you graduate at? Were you?

Speaker 4 I was

Speaker 4 just, I think I was fourth or fifth out of twelve.

Speaker 4 And then we had some

Speaker 4 NATO country. We had

Speaker 4 two Dutch, two Dane,

Speaker 4 two German.

Speaker 4 So we had a big class, 20 or so. I think I was

Speaker 4 fourth, fifth, sixth, somewhere right around there.

Speaker 5 What's everybody want?

Speaker 4 Honestly, it depends on

Speaker 4 what mission you want to do. Because they all kind of function the same.
I mean,

Speaker 4 well, if you ask a pilot who's flown them, there's certainly big dramatic differences.

Speaker 5 I mean, are we talking like

Speaker 5 F-16

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 5 C-130?

Speaker 4 No, so my drop, again, Air Force Needs, my drop had...

Speaker 4 I want to say four F-15Cs,

Speaker 4 didn't have any 15Es, which is the two-seat strike strike platform.

Speaker 4 It's the Mud Hand. It carries a lot of munitions.
Air-to-ground mission, but you have a WISM. You get a backseater.

Speaker 4 Four, five F-16s, two A-10s,

Speaker 4 and then it's like there might be a couple instructor to go right back into pilot training to be an instructor.

Speaker 4 If you don't end up in a fighter jet that you wanted, it's kind of an option. And then there were some bombers, B-52, B-1.

Speaker 4 And so when I picked, I had the choice between a 15C and a 16.

Speaker 4 And I wanted a multi-role platform. I wanted to do air-to-ground.
I wanted to do casts.

Speaker 4 But I also loved the sexiness of an air-to-air mission. You know,

Speaker 4 dogfighting and, you know,

Speaker 4 doing that type of mission. And EF-16 is multi-role.
So depending on what base you go to will be the focus of your mission.

Speaker 4 Like I ended up, first assignment was Korea, then I went to Italy, and then I went to weapons school. But those first, Korea was all about interdiction.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 you know, third-gen type platforms.

Speaker 4 No capability and no competency, but they're just going to try to overwhelm the South.

Speaker 5 Have you ever wound up in a dogfight?

Speaker 4 No,

Speaker 4 damn.

Speaker 6 No,

Speaker 4 all simulated.

Speaker 4 They're very, very rare. You know, back in World War II in Vietnam, since then, it's been a

Speaker 5 hundred.

Speaker 4 Man, that would be fucking awesome. It would be awesome.
But technology these days, it's all about not being seen. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So if you get to a merch, it's it's because either you screwed up or you know you just didn't get the information you needed.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 4 so I ended up in the F-16 was my choice.

Speaker 5 Is that what you initially wanted? You wanted the F-16. I did.
And you got it. Yeah.
So that had to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 4 And part of it is about the location as well.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 BFM, basic five maneuvers, the dog fighting,

Speaker 4 1v1.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Now it's ACT where it's like 4v4.

Speaker 4 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 the type of dog fighting

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 comfortable in certain airspeeds and altitudes and ranges and how the aircraft feels, and you're shooting the gun, a 20-millimeter gun.

Speaker 4 And then, again, that progresses. Now, you're going to do close air support.
You're working with troops on the ground, JTACs and SEALs. You're calling in

Speaker 4 engagements and you're employing in close proximity to ground forces.

Speaker 5 What's the fastest you've gone in an F-16?

Speaker 4 It's Mach 2, 2.05 is roughly

Speaker 4 Mach 2 is twice two times the speed of sound, and it's roughly 700, for the layman's explanation, it's around 750 miles an hour. It changes based on pressure altitude, temperatures, all that,

Speaker 4 but two times that. So 1,500 miles an hour.

Speaker 4 Whoa.

Speaker 5 It's all relative. 1,500 miles an hour.

Speaker 4 It's all relative. I mean, now you talk about, you know, 6-gen coming online.
This,

Speaker 4 you know, 3-4 Mach, it's

Speaker 4 and it doesn't really feel intense until you get low on the deck flying flying fast low because you you have that ground rush you know the trees are going by pretty fast

Speaker 4 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 u.s

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 What were you flying in regular pilot school?

Speaker 4 As far as the airframe?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 T-37 is the first aircraft. Two-seat, two-engine, very low-power jet.
The next aircraft was a T-38.

Speaker 4 It's the,

Speaker 4 what do they call it, the MiG-20, MiG-28 in top gun

Speaker 4 F5. It's this

Speaker 4 NASA flies them

Speaker 4 very stubby wing sleek long

Speaker 4 Airframe

Speaker 4 twin engine very fast. Okay.
And then so you do that for six months apiece total of a year and then you go off and you fly your platform.

Speaker 5 Okay, so the speed wasn't it wasn't anything new to you?

Speaker 4 No, the T-38,

Speaker 4 I don't know if you did a Mach Ron. I don't think you did.
I don't even know if it could handle it.

Speaker 4 But most of these older generation fighters, it's right up to the Mach.

Speaker 4 All the fourth gen, except for the A-10,

Speaker 5 are built to go above Mach.

Speaker 5 Damn. What's the lowest you've been flying?

Speaker 4 Altitude? Mach. Yeah.
Oh.

Speaker 4 It's hard to get up there. You got to do it in a dive just because the air is thicker down low.

Speaker 4 You're burning through JP8 pretty quick.

Speaker 4 A couple thousand feet. Nothing.

Speaker 4 I mean, 450, 500 knots, I don't know, five, six hundred miles an hour on the deck is

Speaker 4 fun.

Speaker 4 That's enough.

Speaker 4 Because if, you know, shit happens quick when you're going that fast and low.

Speaker 4 Thunderbirds is, we get, we have

Speaker 4 permission to fly low,

Speaker 4 you know, 50, 100 feet,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And when you're flying, because we're flying anywhere from three feet to 18 inches apart,

Speaker 4 and you're that low.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 if you're in the formation, you're flying, I mean, that aircraft is 18 inches apart.

Speaker 5 You're

Speaker 4 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 confident in flying it.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 over time, you get really comfortable. You're smoking a lucky eating breakfast and you're 18 inches apart.

Speaker 4 But it's only because you're given the opportunity to go through intense training. I mean,

Speaker 4 two, three times the amount of flying that a normal fighter pilot would typically fly in a year. 500 hours versus 150, 180 hours.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 4 Wow. And all you're doing is doing one thing, not CAS and Interdiction and OCA and DCA and BFM.
Those are fun.

Speaker 4 But a lot of that is just employing using the sensors, whereas

Speaker 4 Thunderbirds, I didn't even turn that shit on.

Speaker 4 It's all all about the formation.

Speaker 5 So, all right, so let's walk back through. Yeah, sorry.
No, it's let's walk back through.

Speaker 5 So, you said OCA and DCA.

Speaker 5 What is all that? What are those acronyms?

Speaker 4 Offensive counter-air, defensive counter-air. It's just different mission sets depending on what the scenario is.
So,

Speaker 4 if we're getting invaded by China or Russia, and we're protecting DC,

Speaker 4 we're going to set up caps with, hopefully we attack them with other things and ships.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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 counter-air.

Speaker 4 That might be like an interdiction mission. Like, okay, we're going to attack North Korea.
We're not. But if if we were, there's key targets that we have pre-planned that we want to go blow up.

Speaker 4 And we're going to send bunker busters, GB24s, or

Speaker 4 whatever we have these days, big 2,000-pound bombs.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Gotcha. Gotcha.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 what section do you start with in school?

Speaker 4 Building block, baby steps. So you'll start off, okay, can I fly this aircraft? You'll spend, you know, 10, 12 sorties getting comfortable in the aircraft.
You'll solo because there are two-seaters,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then you learn instruments. Okay, if the weather's bad, can I recover this aircraft to

Speaker 4 a base that's socked in? So you 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 going to fly formation.

Speaker 4 Get comfortable flying formation. Because that aircraft is extremely responsive.
Like literally the stick moves like that much. It's all fly-by-wire.

Speaker 4 And throttle obviously moves a lot more, but versus like a P-51 or F-4 or an A4,

Speaker 4 that stick moves a lot. It's hydraulics.

Speaker 4 So flying formation doesn't take much. Honestly, it's like this thought process.
You think about it and

Speaker 4 subconsciously you start doing it. So you overcorrect in the beginning.
You just,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Now you're worried about all 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.

Speaker 4 Second nature, the flying is,

Speaker 4 you know, you don't even think about it.

Speaker 5 Do you get used to certain planes?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 You do?

Speaker 5 Okay. So when you deploy, I mean, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I mean, so you really know the plane.

Speaker 4 You do.

Speaker 5 And if you jump in another one,

Speaker 5 you notice differences.

Speaker 4 Yeah, everything's set up differently and how you flip certain switches. And they all kind of have an intuitive

Speaker 4 infrastructure that you could easily learn one system to the next.

Speaker 5 I don't mean like an F-16 to an F-15. I mean

Speaker 5 like, can you,

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 If you're alluding to. If you jump into another F-16, is it the exact same?

Speaker 5 That's an interesting question.

Speaker 5 Like a rifle. Like I have my rifle set up the way I like my rifle set up as a seal.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 But if I have somebody else's rifle, I'm like, oh, shit, I don't like, I can use it and I can be extremely effective with it, but I would rather have mine. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It feels different.

Speaker 4 That sounds like a full metal jacket quote.

Speaker 5 Well, I mean, you know what I'm saying, though. My rifle is just my, this is like, I said, I know my trigger pull.
I know, I know everything about it, you know? Right.

Speaker 4 And so you have your name on one aircraft.

Speaker 5 And you have your confidence in your rifle. Like you zeroed it, you set it up the way you like it set up.
Yeah, you all that kind of shit.

Speaker 5 If you have somebody else's, you lose that, you know, shit, is this thing sided in? Is it sided into me?

Speaker 4 I don't love them. Right.

Speaker 5 Is it like that with the planes?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And you typically try to fly that that tail, but the maintenance of these airframes, they could be down for months going through phase.

Speaker 4 They pull the panels off and they, oh, you know, all this is broken. We got to fix it.
So it's constantly, the inventory is being moved around. So,

Speaker 4 you know, you might fly your tail maybe 30,

Speaker 4 40% of the time. That's probably a little aggressive.

Speaker 4 Except for when I was in the Thunderbirds,

Speaker 4 you fly so much and you're so

Speaker 4 queued into that aircraft, you know exactly how it's bent and you know how to trim up the aircraft because you know you can't

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And you know on certain maneuvers when you get to the top, you know, you're 18 inches apart. We're doing this this arrowhead maneuver where I am, I move up.
I was slot. So I was number four.

Speaker 4 so I was behind number one.

Speaker 4 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 as close as this mic is the nozzle, the afterburner nozzle of

Speaker 4 the boss,

Speaker 4 the number one aircraft. And when you get up in the top of a loop,

Speaker 4 you're like 150, 175 knots. So it's mushy.
It's It's not responsive like an aircraft would be on the deck at 450 knots. So it takes a lot more inputs.

Speaker 4 And you're not used to flying the aircraft a lot in that regime.

Speaker 4 So you, you know, by flying these same aircraft over and over and over, you know exactly how much throttle you need,

Speaker 4 especially if you're, you know, deviating to a different show site, you might be at

Speaker 4 2,000 pressure altitude. Now you go to like Cheyenne, Wyoming, and it's 5,000 or 6,000.
So the pressure, the air is thinner, so it's going to respond a lot different.

Speaker 4 And the more you know your aircraft, the more accurate and precise you're going to be able to fly it in those locations.

Speaker 4 But in a combat situation, combat unit operational squadrons,

Speaker 4 you typically don't fly the same aircraft over and over. So 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.

Speaker 5 Interesting. Okay.

Speaker 5 All right. So you can get used to any of them relatively.
You do.

Speaker 4 You have to. It's just the nature of the base and the inventory and the phase of the aircraft.
But

Speaker 4 you were asking something about experience.

Speaker 4 You only know.

Speaker 4 You think you know more than you actually do at different levels of your career. Like,

Speaker 4 i 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 look back and i'm like oh my god i'm glad i didn't kill myself in some of those missions night mvgs

Speaker 4 in south korea it's

Speaker 4 scary type flying and then after weapon school you know you further along you get it's like

Speaker 4 You don't know what you didn't know back then. And you're just glad you survived all these different, you know,

Speaker 4 phases of your life going through a career of

Speaker 4 flying fighters.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So you get through you get through F-16 school.

Speaker 5 What, how's graduation?

Speaker 4 Yeah. Graduation again seems to be, I don't know, maybe it's a lot like the SEALs as far as there's.

Speaker 5 It's got to be pretty surreal.

Speaker 4 It is.

Speaker 4 Usually there's drinking involved.

Speaker 4 You got to let go somehow, some way.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Pilot training, it's a big deal to get your wings. You know, I still have my wings that were pinned on, took them to space.

Speaker 4 You just, again, I don't reflect too much, my personality. I'm always looking.

Speaker 5 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 F-16 pilot or any type of fighter pilot. I mean,

Speaker 5 I think what do they pin your wings on?

Speaker 4 You know,

Speaker 4 that was anticlimatic.

Speaker 4 There wasn't anything too sexy about the ceremony in pilot training. The real traditions that we love and cherish

Speaker 4 are in the fighter squadrons, in the operational combat units, and every squadron's different. There's a lot of heritage because it goes all the way back

Speaker 4 to the World War I, to Vietnam,

Speaker 4 on up.

Speaker 4 And those traditions have long lasted.

Speaker 5 So you said, what, there's, there's 12, was there, you said there was about 12 people in the original

Speaker 5 plus the foreigners, which we won't count.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 because they don't, I mean, they don't,

Speaker 5 we're not training them how to fly F-16s.

Speaker 4 They will go fly.

Speaker 4 I had a, there's a

Speaker 4 Turkish

Speaker 4 Singapore has a squadron, actually, at Luke, teaches F-16s.

Speaker 4 But typically they'll go back and do their own thing.

Speaker 5 So how many Americans were there regular before you moved into the F-16 school?

Speaker 5 I think you said there was like 12. Yeah, I think so.
So how many go to F-16 school?

Speaker 4 I think we have five.

Speaker 5 Five?

Speaker 4 Because there was, maybe it was more than 12. There was like four or five light grays, F-15Cs, that went to Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida.
There was five or six F-16s that went to Luke,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I think that's right.

Speaker 5 So what's it like showing up to your command then?

Speaker 4 So you go to Luke, and now it's like that base is dedicated to teaching. It's the F-16 schoolhouse.

Speaker 4 So there's, it's fighter squadrons, but it's still people who, you know, the instructors are all operational experience, combat,

Speaker 4 and now go back to the schoolhouse to teach.

Speaker 4 It's a good, you know, quality of life for the families. You're not deploying.
You're just. You're just doing the nine-to-five kind of teaching young punks how to be F-16 pilots.

Speaker 4 And it's a six-month rotation, so it's just constant. It's probably going to

Speaker 4 North Island,

Speaker 4 Coronado for

Speaker 4 instructors. I don't know, maybe.

Speaker 4 That's probably more the weapons school at Nellis.

Speaker 5 So you go, so it's regular pilot school, F-16.

Speaker 5 Then you teach?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And they'll do that for an assignment or two, you know, anywhere from three to six years. And then they'll come back to be instructors.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's very similar.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 they might go back, you know, do an assignment there for three years, and then they'll go back into an operational.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 So what's it like when you show up to your command after you graduate F-16 pilot school? So when you're in with you're in there with experienced

Speaker 4 fighter pilots.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 you're still doing combat training.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And depending on where you go, I went to Korea, Osan Air Base in Korea,

Speaker 4 which was to me, it's like one of those kind of

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So there's not families there. So the mentality in Korea is like,

Speaker 4 light your hair on fire,

Speaker 4 drinking a lot, going downtown, partying, flying awesome combat missions.

Speaker 4 It's push-it-up mentality. And it's kind of one of the only remaining,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 just a

Speaker 4 introduction, indoctrination to the combat mentality.

Speaker 5 Are you welcomed or are you treated like an FNG?

Speaker 4 No, you're an FNG,

Speaker 4 but you have your LPA Lieutenant Protection Association. It's the mafia, the lieutenant mafia.

Speaker 4 So there's There's the senior level, the lieutenant colonels, the commander, the director of operations, the DO, and then you got all their crusty old majors,

Speaker 4 and then you have captains,

Speaker 4 and then you have the punk lieutenants. And I think there was nine of us.
It was awesome.

Speaker 4 It was just an amazing experience, especially being in Korea. I mean, you saw some crazy shit in Korea.
This was in the late 90s.

Speaker 5 What kind of crazy shit?

Speaker 4 Oh, just

Speaker 4 crazy shit.

Speaker 5 Like what?

Speaker 4 Drinking-related crazy shit.

Speaker 4 You'd go up to Seoul for the weekend.

Speaker 4 Just,

Speaker 4 we had money to burn and

Speaker 4 release some steam and energy from all the combat-focused training that we were doing.

Speaker 5 So it's like the seal tapes. It's a work-hard, play-card culture.
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 All right, before we get into it, let's take a break before we get into Korea. But I do want to ask you, is that you're wearing a Breitling? I am.
What is with you?

Speaker 4 Don't make fun of me because the battery died on me.

Speaker 4 So it's perpetually 320.

Speaker 4 Nice.

Speaker 4 It died on me on the way here.

Speaker 4 I'm too cheap to get a battery to replace it.

Speaker 5 What's with pilots and Breitling? I know it's a pilot's watch.

Speaker 4 This is my Thunderbird watch. So this is the one with the Thunderbird patch.

Speaker 5 Oh, damn. That's cool.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 So it's

Speaker 4 kind of an heirloom. I took it to space.
So this has been to space.

Speaker 4 I have one from Weapons School. It's got my weapons school patch on it.

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 4 They're just cool watches.

Speaker 5 Is it emergency?

Speaker 4 This has an ELT,

Speaker 4 but if the battery doesn't work, I don't know.

Speaker 5 Have you ever deployed one? No.

Speaker 4 They told us do not

Speaker 4 break glass only in an emergency. Yeah, yeah, cool.

Speaker 5 All right, well, let's take a break.

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Speaker 5 All right, Scott, we're back from the break. We're in Korea.
It's your first station as a F-16 pilot.

Speaker 5 You met your wife there. I did.

Speaker 5 How'd you guys meet?

Speaker 4 She was, she just graduated from college and her older brother was an F-16 pilot.

Speaker 4 So post-graduation, she decided to go visit her brother with her other brother.

Speaker 4 And we hit it off.

Speaker 4 She was actually dating another guy at the time. Nothing happened,

Speaker 4 but we stayed connected when she left.

Speaker 4 And then we started corresponding. This was back in the late 90s where MCI calling cards.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Email didn't exist at the time. So there's no correspondence that way.

Speaker 4 It was just a couple phone calls now and then.

Speaker 4 And when

Speaker 4 I decided to go visit her in Minnesota, where she lived,

Speaker 4 for the weekend.

Speaker 4 Vice versa. She came back to Korea for a couple of days.
We spent a total of like four or five days together.

Speaker 4 And then she decided to move to Italy Italy with me on my next assignment.

Speaker 5 After living with just spending

Speaker 5 five days together, a couple days together, and then she's moving to Italy.

Speaker 4 She's moving to Italy,

Speaker 4 yeah, right on. We knew, we named our kids before we even, you know, hung out

Speaker 4 they call it hung hanging out.

Speaker 5 What was it about her?

Speaker 5 Oh my gosh, now you're

Speaker 4 man, she's she's absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 6 Um,

Speaker 4 She's caring.

Speaker 4 She's fun.

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 4 We just knew

Speaker 4 right off the bat.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 didn't take much to persuade her and vice versa.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 4 we moved to Italy together.

Speaker 4 That was my second assignment. So Korea's only a year because it's remote.

Speaker 5 Anything significant happen in Korea?

Speaker 4 With

Speaker 4 blowing shit up? No.

Speaker 4 No, it's pretty stable over there.

Speaker 4 You're constantly prepared for an invasion.

Speaker 5 Big party.

Speaker 4 Big party. Nice.

Speaker 4 Nice. Parties.
A lot of

Speaker 4 traveling to and from Seoul.

Speaker 5 Sounds like a UCOM in the SEAL teams. Yes.
Maybe a Thailand deployment. Thailand.
Although I never did it.

Speaker 4 Back in the day.

Speaker 5 Even today.

Speaker 5 Korea is

Speaker 5 pretty wild. Okay.

Speaker 5 Have you been to Thailand?

Speaker 4 You don't want to have an idea.

Speaker 4 Philippines. No, I've never been to Thailand.
Japan and Korea.

Speaker 5 Where's your favorite place?

Speaker 4 By far, Italy.

Speaker 5 Oh, shit.

Speaker 4 Italy? Yeah. As far as what?

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 5 Anywhere you've been

Speaker 5 out of everywhere you've been in the world, Italy,

Speaker 5 that's where you like to be?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Why? um the culture um the environment the food the wine what about the culture they're so laid back and relaxed we are so uptight in the US and it's just constant

Speaker 5 coming and going that was the biggest it's interesting I mean you're a super competitive guy since childhood roaming around the streets looking looking for people I can be everyone else just chill out yeah

Speaker 4 me full throttle No.

Speaker 4 We lived there three years and then an extra three years. So a total of six, three with before kids and three after kids.

Speaker 4 So we got to explore kind of two different worlds, I guess, two different time frames. But

Speaker 4 the culture is just laid back. And it's Aviano is right.
It's about an hour north of Venice. It's right at the base of the Dolomites.

Speaker 4 So everything north is the Alps and everything south is farmland, flats, vineyards.

Speaker 6 And it's rural.

Speaker 4 There's no Venice is an hour. Porta None is the biggest town.
It's, I don't know, half the size of Nashville, maybe.

Speaker 4 And there's no base housing. So you live amongst the local villages.
And literally, it's, you know, the 1,500, 1,600 villages.

Speaker 4 And it's just a pocket. where some creeks meets and you know crevices in the mountains.
And we lived in

Speaker 4 San Giovanni de Pulchenego, just a small town right up nestled.

Speaker 4 Actually, it's really cool because the hotel there

Speaker 4 Mussolini and Hitler stayed in. Not that that's cool, but

Speaker 4 tiny, tiny little town, just beautiful.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 4 everyone's just laid back, just adamani, adamani. We'll get to it tomorrow.
Adamani.

Speaker 4 You know, the Riposo 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

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's just, it's just beautiful. And the food,

Speaker 4 I swear it's the water that comes out of the aqueducts underneath the mountains.

Speaker 4 So simple. Very, very simple ingredients,

Speaker 4 but the food is the best ever.

Speaker 4 Right on. Same with the wine.
Right on.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So we go back once a year, actually.
Oh, really? Yeah. Going back this week.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 very cool very cool so what were you doing in italy what was the what was the mission um so i was assigned to the triple nickel 555th fighter squadron there's two squadrons there and it's just this constant rotation um who's deployed what's tough you tough about aviano is that it's centrally located in uh you safe ukon um

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 Baltic policing flying out of Romania or Poland,

Speaker 4 show of forces around the world, Africa, we went to Morocco.

Speaker 5 How long does it take an X-16 to get from central Italy to

Speaker 4 Poland?

Speaker 5 But that's a good ways.

Speaker 4 No, that's a couple.

Speaker 4 It's not like we fly super fast because when you do that, it's like a race car. You're eating gas.
Okay.

Speaker 4 So it's not like you have the legs, you're limited on range and you're going to be conservative. So you're flying airline speeds.

Speaker 4 And if you're relying upon those tankers, then you got to fly their speed or work some rejoin in route.

Speaker 4 So it's nothing, everyone asking, you know, how quickly can you get across the country and stuff like that? It's

Speaker 4 you typically don't.

Speaker 5 Gotcha.

Speaker 5 What's the typical flight time?

Speaker 4 You can stretch it, F-16s, if you, you external tanks depends on how much gas you're carrying but

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 you don't want to stay too long the longest flight i ever had this was actually the one of my favorite deployments it was Punk Lieutenant.

Speaker 4 And we do these traditions as fighter pilots. We have flat top February, mustache March.

Speaker 4 And so in Korea, we deployed to Alaska for Cope Thunder, just operation

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Spring break. So you've got these pasty white dudes and these overgrown haircut flat tops and these, we start to grow these cheesy mustaches.
We thought we were somebody.

Speaker 4 So that was that nine Corps of Lieutenants, the LPA.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Oh, longest sortie. Longest sortie.
Coming home from that

Speaker 4 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 f-16 it was 13.2 uh sortie 13 hours wow um

Speaker 4 it was extremely painful i'll bet and you know we got i can't remember how many aircraft eight ish um

Speaker 4 eight or 12.

Speaker 4 And the one of the flight leads in my formation, I'm a wingman, just a a young punk,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then it's time to get your game on because you're landing in weather at night, wet runway.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 when my flight lead took off 13 hours prior, he had a

Speaker 5 brake failure.

Speaker 4 And at night, you know, you ambient light and MBGs, you're you're going to turn some lights down or turn them off or, you know, pop them to pull out the bulb.

Speaker 4 And 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.

Speaker 4 He lands brick one,

Speaker 4 puts the nose down, applies the brake, and nothing.

Speaker 4 So backup, you know, at that point is to put the hook down and take the the cable. And if you take the cable, the runway is completely shut down.
So I'm this lieutenant.

Speaker 4 I'm in the touchdown approaching his aircraft in front of me. And

Speaker 4 he's like, abort, abort. Or I can't remember what he said, but he's like, brake failure.
So, you know,

Speaker 4 you've been flying for 13 hours. It's raining.
The last thing you're thinking about is your instrument departure.

Speaker 4 When you're just trying to put this aircraft on the deck and all you want to do is get out of this cockpit.

Speaker 4 But pouring rain, wet runway, got to take off and now we got to divert up to Suwon which is just another base so your asses and elbows just trying to pull up charts and land this aircraft safely but that was the longest sortie I ever flew it was 30.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I'm not a big guy.

Speaker 4 There's some, I got a buddy who's 6'5 and he flew vipers.

Speaker 4 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 6'5.

Speaker 4 But if you got a,

Speaker 4 or no, vice versa, if you've got long legs, you're fine. If you got short, stubby legs and you got a long torso, that's the issue.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 That's the reason why the seat is banked back there is because it just fits into the cockpit, the ASUS II seat.

Speaker 5 Interesting.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 anything significant operationally happened in Italy?

Speaker 4 We deployed, this was late 90s, early 2000s, before

Speaker 4 9-11.

Speaker 4 We were still doing Operation Northern Watch, Southern Watch.

Speaker 4 So you had the North Swath and the South Swath of Iraq. That was no-fly zone for them.
They'd launch their...

Speaker 4 MEGs to do these mock runs, but they wouldn't get anywhere near. And we would sit there and patrol.

Speaker 4 You know, 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.

Speaker 4 And then we ended up in a we took on the Sandy Roll CSAR as F-16s, which is a challenge. Leave that to the A-10s and the Hilos, but we deployed to Instrument Turkey.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 in my second year. I had one more year left at Aviano.

Speaker 4 And I was in my

Speaker 4 boss's office, the 06.

Speaker 4 And I walk in and he's got the only TV on base because this is again 2001 and in Italy and they just didn't have that kind of technology. And we're watching the tower go down.

Speaker 4 And we immediately went into alert posture because we didn't know what they were going to expect of us.

Speaker 4 You know, after, you know, in reflection,

Speaker 4 it took a while before there was any true movement and deployments. And it's not like we can do much from that location.
It takes a deployment to get, and that takes some effort.

Speaker 4 And there's a cycle process. There's units back in the States that are on.
So it just depends on where you're at.

Speaker 4 And 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.

Speaker 4 So as things began to heat up, I

Speaker 4 got selected for weapons school, fighter weapons school, now called the Air Force Weapon School, because there's more than just fighters there. There's everything in the Air Force inventory.

Speaker 4 has a weapon school now, but back then it was called the Fighter Weapon School. It's the Air Force version of top gun

Speaker 4 but it's six months long

Speaker 4 it's like getting your phd in all things tactics so

Speaker 4 um 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

Speaker 4 so it's a six month long pro uh program um you go um

Speaker 4 under the banner of your mds your air airframe. For me, it was F-16s.
So I go to the F-16 Fighter Weapons School.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 the hierarchy

Speaker 4 within the fighter community is you start off as a wingman, and then eventually, maybe a couple of years, you'll go in as a two-ship flight lead.

Speaker 4 So now you can lead around a wingman.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then once you become an instructor, you can become a flight evaluator, just given exams, check rides.

Speaker 4 But once you become a seasoned instructor, you can apply and compete for fight or weapons school.

Speaker 4 And the idea behind fight or weapons school is to hone your skills, tactics, techniques, and procedures for all things F-16s, as well as everything else in the inventory.

Speaker 4 And you become a weapons officer. And so every unit's going to have a dedicated weapons officer who is more or less in charge of that organization's preparation for combat.

Speaker 4 There might be a couple patch, they're called patchwears. It's a bullseye patch, gray.

Speaker 4 The commander might be a patchware. The DO might be a patchware.
There might be a couple, but the dedicated position that you're...

Speaker 4 you're more or less your commitment to go if you go to this school your commitment is to be at least for three years a patchware, a weapons officer.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 4 And you are the expert. You are teaching your youngest wingmen to your most seasoned IP.
You're responsible for training them and preparing them for combat deployments.

Speaker 4 And it's cyclical.

Speaker 4 You'll go through different phases.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 You go to Korea to be a weapons officer. Your primary job is to prepare for war against North Korea.
So

Speaker 4 he or she's focused on developing those plans. Interesting.
So that's the role behind weapons school.

Speaker 4 And it's six months, and it's the most intense thing I've ever done. Really? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 You sleep, eat, and breathe, all things tactics. You have no responsibilities other than just to graduate.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 You have two days to study this, and you're going to have an exam, you know, so it's just this overwhelming fire hose effect because it's, you know, 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 um post-pilot training

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 4 but you take it to a whole new level

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 4 you know you'll fly one mission and it's phase-based it's that building block approach so you start off bfm that that 1v1 dog fighting skills you're going to hone those skills then the the 2v2

Speaker 4 and then the 4v4 and then these huge massive employments towards the end of the graduation to include all the air-to-ground missions.

Speaker 4 So you're learning everything you possibly can throughout each phase. And you might fly a one-hour flight assorting

Speaker 4 BFM-1 mission.

Speaker 4 You'll put five, six hours of prep into that. You'll fly for one hour.
and you might debrief it for 10 hours.

Speaker 4 You're dissecting every single thing that you did did to hone your skills and become the best tactician that you possibly can be.

Speaker 4 You can be going to debrief, sun's setting, and by the time you come out, sun's rising, you go grab, you know, dinner at the breakfast at the 2.5 club or something across the street at Nellis, but that's your life for six months.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 everyone's, you know, on edge and am I going to survive this program? Am I going to make it through? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because there is a washout rate, and it's very intense.

Speaker 5 Interesting.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Let's talk about...

Speaker 5 When is the first time that you

Speaker 5 flew a combat mission?

Speaker 4 There's certainly different flavors of combat.

Speaker 4 Some of the missions up in... Korea, you're flying the patrol along the border.
Those are considered combat. The Northern Watch, Southern Watch,

Speaker 4 every once in a while you would employ against some AAA piece out in the middle.

Speaker 4 Honestly, it wasn't until towards the end of my career when I deployed to Afghanistan at the heat of ISIS

Speaker 4 2015

Speaker 4 doing counter-terrorism missions that it was like every day you're employing.

Speaker 5 You remember the first one?

Speaker 4 I do.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So our configuration, loadout, what we're carrying for munitions, we have,

Speaker 4 oh my bros are going to give me shit. If I can't remember, there's a GBU38 and a GBU54.
These are 500 pound bombs. They're guided either coordinates that you put in or laser.

Speaker 4 You can use your targeting pod and a laser designator. with the same PRF code and designate a target.
But those are typically not fast movers. Those are stationary targets,

Speaker 4 buildings, KS-19 piece out in the open or camouflage, you know, based on the intel you're trying to figure it out.

Speaker 4 And we carry a Maverick. So that's the tank buster.
That's, I think, a 300-pound

Speaker 4 warhead that

Speaker 4 it's a missile. And that can be guided, same, but it's typically guided.
It's the way you employ it is a two-ship.

Speaker 4 So you got one aircraft that's going to roll in three to five nautical mile wheel roll in at a certain altitude and point at the target, general area, put the thing on the thing, launch the Maverick, and it's, whoosh, it just rockets off your aircraft.

Speaker 4 And the other wingman is up stacked up high, and through all the coordination, the nine-line, the verification of target identification.

Speaker 4 The designator is is up stacked up high, and he's just staring at his four by four inch screen targeting pod.

Speaker 4 He's got the thing on the thing, and he's lasing that target 20, 30 second time of flight, and shack the target.

Speaker 4 And so my first employment

Speaker 4 was against a vehicle that was on the move. And,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 Depending on your timing and when you flew these missions, day, nights, sometimes it got hot. It was like every time you went up, it was kind of you're getting targets.

Speaker 4 And the way that it was run back then was just kind of a progressive approach on we're not going to hit your average,

Speaker 4 what were they called, ma'ams,

Speaker 4 male, or military average male age. I can't remember the.
the 3-1 term for them.

Speaker 4 But it wasn't like we were just going after your your basic terrorist.

Speaker 4 They were progressively looking for a higher value target based on resources and

Speaker 4 all the intel and scenario and what was going on at that time in Afghanistan. So

Speaker 4 I had one vehicle that

Speaker 4 had five MAMS,

Speaker 4 the males, all terrorists, all verified.

Speaker 4 We've been tracking it for days because how you know 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,

Speaker 5 what is it called? You were in on this planning process?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 refuel every once an hour kind of thing and we'd be given a region

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 up by Tajikistan, was pretty hot, and then some in the mountains up in the northeast corner.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 we'd have more and more confidence as things developed. And we're like, okay, this is a high probability sortie kind of thing.

Speaker 4 And we get the initial intel.

Speaker 4 And then once 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.

Speaker 4 And now you're building your situational awareness over the target area.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then you got to go through the verification, depending on who you're talking to. Most of it, we're talking people who are in the dock

Speaker 4 with feed from, you know, high death

Speaker 4 predators.

Speaker 4 And then, you know, we had a certain type of munition.

Speaker 4 The predators had hellfires, but depending on how big the target was or

Speaker 4 how critical it was, you were going to choose the platform that best suited that target, weaponary in the target set.

Speaker 4 And this was a vehicle that had five

Speaker 4 terrorists in it.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 we decided to, it was on the move, so we decided to do a Maverick attack.

Speaker 4 And my wingman

Speaker 4 was going to be the shooting platform, and I was going to lays it.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 4 as soon as he rolled in, he neglected to go master arm hot.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 there's an option on the master arm switch that goes simulate, off, or master arm hot. Well, it's just a habit pattern to go into sim

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 It just, whoosh.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So we burn the target at this point.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 we're like,

Speaker 4 that was our chance.

Speaker 4 They're, 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, you know, update.

Speaker 4 Well, lo and behold, they decide, oh, they're gone. Let's get back in the vehicle.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then we switch roles. So I'm going to roll in and employ and my wingman lases it.

Speaker 5 But he was pissed.

Speaker 4 Hey.

Speaker 4 Had his chance.

Speaker 5 So you did it. Yeah.
How'd that feel?

Speaker 4 It's pretty intense.

Speaker 4 You know, it's...

Speaker 4 At the time, it's like ISIS. You know, we're watching people,

Speaker 4 orange jumpsuits, stuck in cages, drowned and burned alive. So there was,

Speaker 4 there was a lot of rage, I guess. And

Speaker 4 our mindset changed too, because what we're taught in survival training, you know,

Speaker 4 be able to talk your way out, resist

Speaker 4 any torture you might experience if you're ever caught and how to evade.

Speaker 4 Once that all started developing, it was, all bets are off, man. I'm bringing extra nothing compared to what you guys are carrying, but I'm going to bring an extra couple clips.

Speaker 4 I had one dude who was carrying a machete that was strapped to his leg, like that's going to do anything. God bless him.

Speaker 4 But it was like, if you have to go down, you either get hit, your engine fails,

Speaker 4 good luck.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 You know, I'd fight to the death kind of mentality versus,

Speaker 4 you know, play your game, figure it out, try to manipulate your situation until someone arrives kind of thing. But, you know, and it was real.
I mean, we had two guys that got hit.

Speaker 4 Total golden BB kind of theory.

Speaker 4 He was doing an employment, and

Speaker 4 whether it was a AK-47, some guy on the side of a mountain, taking, you know, blinking shots, put a hole in his ventral fin, those fins in the back of the aircraft, put a big old hole right through that.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then one guy,

Speaker 4 he was flying too low, too long,

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 they took a shot at him, and it hit his AMRAM, his AIM-120 missile,

Speaker 4 which is on the wingtips. It's for air-to-air.

Speaker 4 employment, which is never going to happen in Afghanistan. But it hit the missile and the missile caught on fire.
So

Speaker 4 the

Speaker 4 wingtip of his aircraft's on fire.

Speaker 4 And so he's emergency. He's trying to get back to Bagram.
And I'm sitting in

Speaker 4 supervisory position.

Speaker 4 And so I have a radio with me and I hear this and I'm going out to see this.

Speaker 4 But thankfully the airflow eventually put the fire out. He didn't have to punch or anything like that.
But we're flying a single seat single engine aircraft. So it's very reliable.

Speaker 4 Gee and Pratt Whitney, depending on what airframe you're, what, what flavor F-16 you're flying, but

Speaker 4 it's still only one engine.

Speaker 4 And it, you know, there's no glide ratio in the Viper. It's going to fall like a rock and you're going to have to punch.

Speaker 5 How did it feel for you, though? You described your wingman's

Speaker 5 approach.

Speaker 5 and miss with the Sims, and then you just breezed right by your

Speaker 5 approach.

Speaker 4 It's satisfying, too grotesque.

Speaker 4 You know, in combat, the highs and lows you experience are

Speaker 4 all too familiar with any type of combat.

Speaker 4 And I think the most intense

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I pray that when I meet my day, I'm judged based on

Speaker 4 making the right decisions based on the information I had at the time.

Speaker 4 But it's heavy.

Speaker 4 You got to deal with it.

Speaker 4 It happened a lot on this deployment.

Speaker 5 You took a lot of lives.

Speaker 4 There were quite a few.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 When did that start to affect you?

Speaker 5 When did you start thinking about

Speaker 5 answering to God at the end?

Speaker 4 It's always been there, and I think it's,

Speaker 5 you know, was it there on the approach?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 There is a moment that, and I don't know if other fighter pilots experience it, but it's like right before you push the button, squeeze the trigger,

Speaker 4 there's just this intense,

Speaker 4 not apprehension, but just

Speaker 4 massive adrenaline rash on

Speaker 4 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 on a gun, but

Speaker 4 I've employed it all. I've shot the gun in anger.
I've 500-pound bombs, Mavericks. It's,

Speaker 4 there's always this, I hope this is the right decision,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 and I think you have more time to think about it when it's those scenarios where it's an element of surprise.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Because it's,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Did it make you feel like your career was complete?

Speaker 4 Um, yes, I'll be honest, absolutely.

Speaker 6 Um,

Speaker 4 you know, timing's everything.

Speaker 5 I think there's like

Speaker 5 in any combat role, fighter pilot, ground guy, tank, whatever it is,

Speaker 5 you know, the mission is to go and to kill people, and there's a selfishness in that,

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I think

Speaker 5 a lot of people

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 We think of it as, I never got to kill somebody.

Speaker 4 But is this how we're trained?

Speaker 5 Do you think it's like that? that? I think it is.

Speaker 5 It may be not how we're trained, but it's how the culture is.

Speaker 5 You know, because

Speaker 5 and how fucked up is that?

Speaker 5 If you think about it, I never got the opportunity to fucking kill somebody.

Speaker 4 To employ an anger, yeah.

Speaker 5 Whereas, you know, most normal people would say,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 I never had to do that. I never had to kill somebody.

Speaker 5 And so I think the culture, you know makes you

Speaker 5 it it it manifests that inside of you but but at the same time you know 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

Speaker 5 you know what I mean there's also

Speaker 5 I mean there is a selfishness because I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 5 But it also comes 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 that, uh, your experience later.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 5 you know, I think it all comes down to what's in your heart, right?

Speaker 5 You know, you think you're doing the right thing, right?

Speaker 5 They think they're doing the right thing,

Speaker 5 they're just doing what they believe is right, and you're just doing

Speaker 5 what you believe is right,

Speaker 5 right? Right?

Speaker 4 Absolutely. And

Speaker 4 if you don't do that thing,

Speaker 4 in several

Speaker 4 employments I had, quite a few, it's like, if I don't,

Speaker 4 because right now they're getting shot at. And who knows how that's going to develop? They're hunkered down.

Speaker 4 The threat's got RPGs and

Speaker 4 they're pinned down.

Speaker 4 And so

Speaker 4 if I do hesitate or I miss a switch or

Speaker 4 I'm willing to make that decision based on knowing

Speaker 4 it's helping

Speaker 4 my side, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 4 No, I mean it's...

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 It's really kind of, you know, it's just fascinating to think about.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and

Speaker 5 because everybody is legitimately just doing what they think is right.

Speaker 4 So who sets the guidelines? You know, who?

Speaker 4 God.

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 5 But when did that, you know, when did you, when did that kind of stuff start entering your head?

Speaker 4 It was always there

Speaker 4 Because there's always that moment when you're pushing there's always the free fall of the munition, you know

Speaker 4 the time of flight anywhere from 20 seconds out to a minute depending on you know how you're releasing it but

Speaker 4 That whole time is just like

Speaker 4 it's very compartmentalized.

Speaker 5 It's like

Speaker 4 check and double check that I've done everything that I possibly can to mitigate any collateral damage concerns.

Speaker 4 But then the whole flight home, you're thinking about it.

Speaker 4 And then going through the debrief and analyzing the BDA

Speaker 4 after the fact.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Well, I mean, on the other, on the other,

Speaker 5 you know, I mean, we're not talking about civilian casualties here, but then

Speaker 5 on the other hand, everybody's very aware of the consequences.

Speaker 5 Everybody involved, you know, is aware of what the ultimate consequence is.

Speaker 5 You are aware what happens if you go down. You talk, you know, orange jumpsuits, beheadings, burning you alive,

Speaker 5 whatever, torture.

Speaker 5 And they're just as aware of the consequences if they get compromised.

Speaker 5 That there's going to be a 500-pound bomb, you know, that lands on their vehicle. And so, you know,

Speaker 5 it's voluntary.

Speaker 5 Everybody on both sides is fully aware of what the consequences of engaging in war is.

Speaker 4 I guess that's why we sign up to serve.

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 I don't know. I think a lot about it, but, you know, the whole thing is,

Speaker 5 you know, Jesus knows what's in your heart, and I think that's all that matters.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 We're definitely influenced by our experiences too.

Speaker 4 And that's why,

Speaker 4 especially the older I get, the more centered I want to be

Speaker 4 on following

Speaker 4 Jesus. And

Speaker 4 I mean, look how screwed up our world is.

Speaker 4 It's easy to get caught

Speaker 4 thinking the sky is falling and the world's going to end.

Speaker 4 But if you're centered in your faith,

Speaker 4 we're not in control. We're all sinful.
We have free will, and that's probably our demise, you know, but

Speaker 4 we're not in control.

Speaker 4 I hope I made the decisions that I did in combat for the right reasons.

Speaker 5 How long were you over there?

Speaker 4 Fighter squadrons typically do like six-month

Speaker 4 rotations.

Speaker 4 So that time was six months. In 2015, before that, they were anywhere from 90 days to six months.

Speaker 4 We were coming and going. We'd spent half

Speaker 4 Aviano, that central located. I mean, you

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 coalition force-type exercises with hundreds of aircraft at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, where we spent six years for various assignments.

Speaker 4 But yeah, that deployment was six months.

Speaker 5 How many missions did you fly, do you know?

Speaker 4 I was flying every

Speaker 4 other day,

Speaker 4 probably, every two days, sometimes. I was in a leadership position, so

Speaker 4 you know, you got the squadrons,

Speaker 4 and then above that is the group and the wing. I was at the group level, but flying with the squadrons.

Speaker 4 I was just old

Speaker 4 into my career. I was

Speaker 4 20-year point. So

Speaker 4 I would fly as much as they'd let me.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's crazy, man. I haven't done one of these type of interviews in a little bit.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 You strike a chord with the whole

Speaker 4 feeling complete in a career.

Speaker 4 And I don't know if it's just the fighter pilot or the operator mentality.

Speaker 5 It's the world fighter mentality, man. It is the warrior mentality.

Speaker 4 Because that is certainly how it is in our world.

Speaker 4 I've done things that take me off that track with the Thunderbirds and Test and Aggressors.

Speaker 4 But it's almost a blessing and a curse.

Speaker 5 I mean, you get to experience,

Speaker 5 maybe not you get, you experience something that

Speaker 5 I mean, there's just next to nobody that experiences that.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 In fact, I've been

Speaker 4 speaking more keynotes and stuff, and one of my stories is combat, and it's like

Speaker 4 I almost have to take a step back because even doing interviews and talking about it, it's like

Speaker 4 you got to put this in perspective. How do you apply this to someone who doesn't necessarily go to work? That's a life or death situation other than, you know, our

Speaker 4 frontline providers.

Speaker 4 It's,

Speaker 5 yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 It's a tough conversation to have, too.

Speaker 4 I'm struggling to articulate exactly how I feel at this point. It's just because it's definitely there.

Speaker 4 No doubt of it, especially as you get older, you know, and

Speaker 4 kids.

Speaker 5 Would you want your kids to go to war?

Speaker 4 Would I want them to go to war?

Speaker 5 If your kid wanted to be an F-16 pilot or whatever, whatever the equivalent is today.

Speaker 4 You call me old?

Speaker 5 You know.

Speaker 4 It is. It is.
It's a legacy platform.

Speaker 5 Would you want them to have those experiences?

Speaker 4 If you asked 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.

Speaker 4 I could care less. I just want them happy and to pursue something that they're passionate about, not some societal expectation.

Speaker 4 Sports,

Speaker 4 employment, jobs, whatever,

Speaker 4 academics.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So if they wanted to serve, I would be very proud and honored.

Speaker 4 And I...

Speaker 4 There's a chance. A couple of my teenagers might.

Speaker 4 But if they don't,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Now, to get to your, I've been avoiding your question, would I want them to go to war? I would say no.

Speaker 4 And that's,

Speaker 4 I don't know if that's selfish in the fact that I don't want my kids at risk and the shit I've seen and been through.

Speaker 4 Because there were plenty of times, not even in combat, just

Speaker 4 I was

Speaker 4 a split decision of death because of just the nature of the business.

Speaker 4 You know, I fought a Thunderbird show and I delayed a rejoin too long and the aircraft pulled nine Gs. I pulled 10.5 Gs because I thought I was going to hit the ground.

Speaker 4 And, you know, I recovered 100 feet from the ground, which is in a fighter jet, that's that's damn close.

Speaker 4 And so it's just like

Speaker 4 those split decisions is

Speaker 4 could have gone completely different I've had plenty of people

Speaker 4 good buddy of mine I was stationed in Avellano Trojan Gilbert he was in combat and he was strafing and recovery for strafe is like 75 feet so you get in amongst them and when you're shooting the the gun

Speaker 4 and he end up

Speaker 4 dying in in combat. And so it's just like

Speaker 4 it

Speaker 4 it's it doesn't take much, you know. Yeah.
But you can also get hit by a car walking across the road.

Speaker 5 Well, I think, you know, I'm more asking, would you, you know, do you want,

Speaker 5 I think about this all the time, you know. Especially with the kids, no.
And,

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 astronomical you can see it you can see the load

Speaker 5 we're all carrying and i mean immediately

Speaker 5 and i just i think about that i mean

Speaker 5 it really fucking changes you how

Speaker 4 like how do you see it body language carry themselves you can see it in their eyes

Speaker 5 i mean it's like stoic emotionless

Speaker 5 lack of humor

Speaker 5 it's just a fucking heaviness is that because of

Speaker 4 enduring all the experiences or is it

Speaker 5 the intensity of the experience or is it i don't know i think i think the verdict's still out on that i think it's just all of it i think it's I think it's resentment because other people didn't have to experience it.

Speaker 5 They don't understand.

Speaker 5 I think it's the experience itself. I think it's the guilt.
It's the loss. I think it's all of it, you know, wrapped up and

Speaker 5 that's the product that you get.

Speaker 4 I think you guys certainly have it a lot worse.

Speaker 4 Because you're down there. It's a lot different from 20,000, 30,000 feet.

Speaker 5 Yeah, maybe, maybe not, but you know, it sounds like you're struggling with it. Yeah,

Speaker 4 maybe that's what brings me closer to

Speaker 5 my faith.

Speaker 4 Hopefully, it's not like me trying to justify,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 5 yeah.

Speaker 5 How did you find your faith?

Speaker 4 So I grew up, we went to church

Speaker 4 in Georgia, but it was more of a formality. I think the extended family was

Speaker 4 part of the expectation, but I don't remember much of it. Sunday school, getting donuts and krispy cream afterwards.
That was about it. Once we moved up at age five,

Speaker 4 we didn't step foot in a church. It wasn't just, it wasn't part of my upbringing.

Speaker 4 I always believed there was, you know, something. I just didn't.

Speaker 4 I was ignorant. I just didn't have the

Speaker 4 education or

Speaker 4 mentorship.

Speaker 4 And it actually wasn't until,

Speaker 4 in fact, I didn't even know if I was baptized. We grew up

Speaker 4 Lutheran.

Speaker 4 And then married my wife, and she's very, very strong Christian.

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 4 and 2011

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 4 i was

Speaker 4 we were i can't remember where we're stationed um but we were on vacation in

Speaker 4 uh minnesota her parents house live on a lake cabin on the lake um and our kids are

Speaker 4 i can't remember um two, four, and six,

Speaker 4 two girls and a boy.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 our four-year-old is going to be baptized. And so that's part of the trip to up north.

Speaker 4 And so we're up there for vacation. Things are all going on.
And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Now they're, you know, shepherd inside to take baths and get in their jammies and get ready for the fireworks.

Speaker 4 And we go out back,

Speaker 4 not the lakeside. We go up garage.
It's like 300 yards away. Tree lines.
It's out of earshot and everything.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 complete panic. Hair on the back of my head, I just, I start freaking out and I just run out of the garage and I run around the house and I don't even know where I'm going.

Speaker 4 And I just run towards the water and I'm, I don't even know what I'm looking for, but I'm just panicking, starting to yell.

Speaker 4 And all of a sudden I see a body out in the water and it's Maddie face down in the water, about, I don't know, 50 yards off the dock. And

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 4 dive in, pull her to the dock and resuscitate her. And she, you know, she comes back pretty quick.

Speaker 4 And it just, I'm screaming to God, you know.

Speaker 4 Please save my daughter.

Speaker 4 And we take her to the ER and she gets checked out and absolutely nothing wrong.

Speaker 4 No idea how long she was down. The doctor thinks she was down for probably about two to three minutes.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 the

Speaker 4 sheer divine coincidence of the entire situation is that we were baptized just hours before together

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I believe in something, sounds like a good idea. We bond, and this was literally hours before saving her life.
And

Speaker 4 you know, that was God

Speaker 4 divine intervention. I, you know, there's no way it wasn't because I was

Speaker 4 heads down in the garage, couldn't hear anything, and I just sheer panic.

Speaker 4 Um, so he was getting my attention, and I'm still,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 processing my faith. It's, it's a journey.

Speaker 6 Um,

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 I'm just reading the Bible.

Speaker 4 I find

Speaker 4 my guidance and messages and you name it.

Speaker 4 I'm reading the Bible just

Speaker 4 because I think that's the answer to everything.

Speaker 5 When did this happen? happen? What's the timeline here?

Speaker 4 2011.

Speaker 5 2011.

Speaker 4 14 years ago.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and so that's

Speaker 4 what brought me closer to Christ.

Speaker 4 And it's only getting more and more

Speaker 4 intense or

Speaker 4 matured over the years.

Speaker 4 You know, going to space, there's just moments that you're trying to

Speaker 4 make sense of everything.

Speaker 4 And it's just this,

Speaker 4 it's a battle. It's a journey.

Speaker 4 It's challenging because back to that whole, 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.

Speaker 4 But I'm trying to focus my life on making the decisions that puts God first. And that, you know,

Speaker 4 it's kind of why I want to speak 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.

Speaker 5 Have you had any more experiences?

Speaker 4 Nothing that intense.

Speaker 4 You know, there were moments on orbit where I'm trying to reflect and,

Speaker 4 you know, it's, this

Speaker 4 I had this overwhelming sensation of feeling insignificant on orbit, just looking down, knowing there's 8 billion people down there on the planet, and I'm traveling around every hour and a half and

Speaker 4 17,500 miles an hour, and I'm just trying to make sense of it all and put significance behind it.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 There's a greater good. There's a greater cause.
There's a higher purpose.

Speaker 4 I'm just, I'm so stubborn, and

Speaker 4 I need to learn how to listen better.

Speaker 4 Because that's what I, you know, that's that journey, that's that struggle that I feel is like

Speaker 4 we just constantly bouncing off the bumpers

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 yeah

Speaker 5 it's a bit of a ramble well that's pretty big experience

Speaker 4 it was for me

Speaker 4 that it was

Speaker 5 and you you said your daughter was in there for they estimate 20 minutes no two to three minutes two to okay 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

Speaker 4 she was blue when i pulled pulled her up. Never felt so helpless in my life.
You know, feel like you're invincible.

Speaker 5 What did you do? CPR?

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 then we're worried about, you know, brain function at that point and oxygen deprivation. Take her to the ER.

Speaker 4 Like, check her out.

Speaker 4 Absolutely nothing wrong with her.

Speaker 4 She's a healthy little four-year-old, pigtails.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Now she's a pain in the ass, 17-year-old.

Speaker 5 What do you mean, reflection when you're up in space?

Speaker 4 I can certainly talk about this when we get to space, but it's

Speaker 4 they call it the overview effect, and it affects people differently.

Speaker 4 It's the, this literally, it's a cognitive shift that happens in your perception of,

Speaker 4 it could be your perception of visual, what you're seeing of the planet,

Speaker 4 life perspective.

Speaker 4 It can be spiritual, it can be intellectual.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's the highest Earth orbit ever flown.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 it's almost like this,

Speaker 4 my immediate response or feeling was like, it's this visual illustration of what life must have been like back at the creation of the heavens and the earth, because all you can see is oceans and continents.

Speaker 4 You can't make out any details,

Speaker 4 you know, because when we, that's on the apogee, the furthest part of the orbit, it's

Speaker 4 highly cyclical. So it's

Speaker 4 pretty close on the perigee. The backside was really close, 190 190 kilometers.
So it's 1,400 by 190. So it's very far, and then we skim.

Speaker 4 And when you're skimming the atmosphere, it's like you can see contrails, you can see geographical features, all these land masses.

Speaker 4 But up above,

Speaker 4 it looks like, you know, what the planet must have been looked like at its creation.

Speaker 4 So when you have this perspective and you're going through this overview effect, it's just

Speaker 4 for me,

Speaker 4 it was that feeling initially of insignificance and trying to make sense of it all.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 NDEs. And when Pastor Burke talks about some of the things that he's interviewed, the 1,500

Speaker 4 people with NDE experiences, It's like,

Speaker 4 and this is by no means anywhere near what they've gone through.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's just this radiant glow. And it's almost like this transcendence

Speaker 4 of your senses. It's not just visual.

Speaker 4 It's almost like you can

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And it starts off, the phenomenon is 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.

Speaker 4 And it just grows and starts to split into this radiant sunbeams. And then it starts to light up the entire planet.

Speaker 4 And then vice versa on the backside on the sunset, as you see the night start to eat up. And then even at night.

Speaker 4 At night, you're seeing all the cultural lighting. We saw the northern lights, so all the green, beautiful waves.

Speaker 4 You see all the stars, billions of stars, because you don't have the light pollution that you're used to seeing.

Speaker 4 The moon, obviously glowing.

Speaker 4 You're seeing strings of Starlink satellite systems.

Speaker 4 And then you have this pulsing of the Draco engines. It's just these constant...

Speaker 4 engines that are firing to keep you oriented in the capsule based on you know, the priorities to point the satellite, uh, the antennas towards the satellite for communication purposes.

Speaker 4 Um, so that puts out this like constant hues of orange and yellows, and

Speaker 4 and all of that together. You're just constantly seeing something new,

Speaker 4 and it's just it's not something you stare at a sunset for five, ten minutes as the sun goes down.

Speaker 4 It's just this constant evolution of this radiant glow, and it just feels like it's more than just visual.

Speaker 4 That makes any sense.

Speaker 4 Again,

Speaker 4 I'm having a hard time articulating. It's only been, you know, five, six months since we were up there.
And that's,

Speaker 4 you know, the ISS, they're up there for six months. They're at 400 kilometers.
We went an extra thousand kilometers past that.

Speaker 4 So slightly different perspective.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Does that strengthen your faith?

Speaker 4 100%.

Speaker 4 I am

Speaker 4 a firm believer God created everything.

Speaker 4 I don't see how it couldn't. It'd be

Speaker 4 a sequence of millions and millions of miracles to happen.

Speaker 4 You know,

Speaker 4 you look at the planet and then you look at the other direction, it's intimidating. I mean, it's black.
There's

Speaker 5 to think

Speaker 4 what's out there, endless, you know, it's

Speaker 4 that is intimidating.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Because we're, you know, you're very operated mindset. It's you're focused on the mission.
We got 40 science and research experiments. I don't want to screw it up.

Speaker 4 And we got the spacewalk on day three, and the Starlink test going on, and all this radiation testing we're going through. And,

Speaker 4 you know, that's you got this mission mindset, but

Speaker 4 this is also something that very few people have experienced.

Speaker 4 And I hope at some point i can

Speaker 4 communicate and articulate

Speaker 4 that impact it had on my perspective

Speaker 5 yeah

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 what's it going to be like when we meet him

Speaker 5 you know things like that?

Speaker 4 I just,

Speaker 5 one,

Speaker 5 if he was done with you, then I don't think he would have experienced that up there.

Speaker 5 You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 I think he's still working on everybody, no matter what you've done.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it's those experiences that

Speaker 5 draw you to the light. And, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 5 I think about this kind of stuff all the time.

Speaker 5 And I think...

Speaker 4 Is he still working on you or is the books written? You're just

Speaker 4 in your next chapter.

Speaker 5 I think he's working on you all the way until the end.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And that's it. And it's kind of weird the way you just describe the earth with the lightness and the darkness and continuously rotating.

Speaker 5 Because I just, I don't remember who I was talking to or how this even came up.

Speaker 5 But I described it as

Speaker 5 I was talking to somebody about the end.

Speaker 5 Kind of like revelations type stuff, like the end, because everybody's all, you know, is the sky falling? Are we in end times?

Speaker 5 I mean, a lot of people think we are and everybody's looking for the signs and um

Speaker 5 the way i described it was i think if

Speaker 5 i don't think anybody knows when the end is i mean even in the bible it says nobody

Speaker 5 jesus doesn't even know when the end is and and the way i kind of like think it's happening is if if you look at like a marble, like a two-tone marble,

Speaker 5 you know, but maybe it's fluid in there. And the two colors are just constantly fighting each other for what takes over the marble.
You know, I think that's very similar to good and evil.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 there are times that

Speaker 5 it looks like evil is potentially taking up more surface area than good.

Speaker 5 And then And then things start to change. And then you see

Speaker 5 you know what I'm saying? And I think that's just constant, it's just a constant battle for

Speaker 5 total control of the planet

Speaker 5 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 it'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 going to start to overcome more darkness.

Speaker 5 And the way you just described the planet with that with the light and the dark. I mean, that's kind of how I think of this all, man.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it's just constantly evolving. It's always changing, just like

Speaker 5 that marble.

Speaker 5 Do you know what I mean? Absolutely.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 5 he knows how tricky

Speaker 5 evil can be.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 5 we were both immersed in a culture where that became the normal.

Speaker 5 I got to kill somebody.

Speaker 5 I finally got the opportunity to kill somebody. Or I never got to kill anybody.

Speaker 5 You know, and that's...

Speaker 5 That's not fucking a good way to think. You know, but I mean, you get, you, you enter into,

Speaker 5 I mean, you enter into the military at a young age, you're with all your idols, the people that you want to be, the, the F-16 pilots, the, that, that have, you know, the lineage all the way back to World War I, and you want to live up to what those guys have done.

Speaker 5 And I joined the SEAL teams, and I want to live up to the, to the Vietnam generation and the World War II guys. And, you know, like, like, it's just, it becomes you.

Speaker 5 It becomes you, you immerse yourself into that culture and then it seems good. It seems good.
It's a fucking deception.

Speaker 5 It's a deception, whether you're doing it for the country or whatever.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we all did it for the country, right? Well, who says the country is good?

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 5 You know, and who says that country's bad? And yeah, we can talk about 9-11 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.

Speaker 5 20 fucking years? You know, and so

Speaker 5 when I say like he's still working on you,

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 5 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, I think there's seasons of it.

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 they talk about deception and how how satan is the master of deception and he can he can

Speaker 5 and he uses um

Speaker 5 he uses temptation you know whether that's money or sex or

Speaker 5 living up to a culture. Yeah.
You know, and and and it may seem good.

Speaker 5 It may be, you know, maybe it is, but it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, we're just fucking humans, man. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I love that analogy. I mean, my first thought was,

Speaker 4 and I didn't even

Speaker 4 comprehend it until you mentioned it, but you talk about good and evil, light and dark.

Speaker 4 I felt this warm glow looking on the planet. Just loved, it was mesmerized.
I even wanted to take my eyes off it. And you look through the Ford hatch towards space and it's just this intimidating.

Speaker 4 It's almost like you're at that cliff scuba diving and that black abyss

Speaker 4 over the ledge. You know, you feel a lot more security, probably where that ambient light's coming from.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there's something there I like.

Speaker 4 But how do we, I mean, you talk about that marble and the constant,

Speaker 4 whether it's a struggle or

Speaker 4 not search, but

Speaker 4 constant evolution, looking for equilibrium.

Speaker 4 And this is rhetorical, but how do we influence

Speaker 4 more good than evil as that

Speaker 4 morph continues to happen with the marble of good and evil?

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's a good question. Or do we it's

Speaker 4 from God's hands?

Speaker 5 I mean, they say everything's in God's hands, right? But

Speaker 5 it...

Speaker 5 I mean, I think, you know, we talk about free will, and I think that is...

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Because everything else is... so fucking contorted and twisted and decept.
You know, there's just so much deception out there. And I think that

Speaker 5 I think that you cannot,

Speaker 5 as hard as this sounds, I think you cannot succumb.

Speaker 5 You cannot sacrifice your values for temptation.

Speaker 5 Does that make sense?

Speaker 4 You should not or you physically cannot?

Speaker 5 I think you should not

Speaker 5 because that is staying true to yourself, which is good.

Speaker 5 And temptation is everywhere. It's money.
It's sex,

Speaker 5 culture,

Speaker 5 it's all of that stuff.

Speaker 5 And you just see people every day. You know, they sacrifice their values

Speaker 5 for temptation, and they justify. If you catch yourself justifying, you know,

Speaker 5 why you did something or, or, do you know what I'm talking about? We've all done it, right? Absolutely. We've all done it.

Speaker 5 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, well,

Speaker 5 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,

Speaker 5 you know, somebody fucked you over, or you fucked somebody over, and you have to, then you catch them justifying or justifying to yourself

Speaker 5 why you made the decisions that you made.

Speaker 5 And that alone in itself is that's succumbing to evil. Evil.

Speaker 4 Do you think I've always tied authenticity to

Speaker 4 being true to your values? Do you think you can be authentically evil?

Speaker 4 Or do you think people are naturally

Speaker 4 authentically good?

Speaker 4 And as long as they are authentic, they can maintain

Speaker 4 true values.

Speaker 5 I think that we are

Speaker 5 more evil than we are good.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Because the reward doesn't come until the end to be good.

Speaker 5 The reward to be

Speaker 5 evil

Speaker 5 is immediate. It's an immediate reward.

Speaker 4 So we're evil and weak.

Speaker 4 Chit on.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 You want to take a break?

Speaker 5 Sure. Let's take a break.

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Let's get back to the show.

Speaker 5 That was a good conversation.

Speaker 4 I have a lot to think about.

Speaker 4 I'm 51.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that was heavy.

Speaker 4 Where were we?

Speaker 4 I have no idea.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Any more thoughts on that?

Speaker 4 Plenty.

Speaker 4 But that's what he's doing. He's at work.

Speaker 4 You know?

Speaker 4 He's got my attention, that's for sure. I just wish I could.

Speaker 5 I mean, he's trying to save us from this.

Speaker 5 That's the whole thing,

Speaker 4 right?

Speaker 4 Well, look how

Speaker 4 stubborn the prophets were. Man, they had a tough time listening, and he's telling them

Speaker 4 outright,

Speaker 4 I'm going to die for your sins.

Speaker 4 And they had a hard time believing.

Speaker 4 And they were with him, you know?

Speaker 4 Thankful we do have the stories in the Bible, though.

Speaker 5 Yeah. You know, he just, he sprinkles these things in our lives, like

Speaker 5 your daughter.

Speaker 5 You know?

Speaker 5 And it's,

Speaker 5 I mean, that sounds like a very profound moment, you know,

Speaker 5 not just because you saved your daughter's life, but spiritually. You know, it's we're all looking for some type of proof, right?

Speaker 5 And because it is. It's hard to believe this stuff it's it's just it is

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 5 but when you get those little

Speaker 5 sometimes they're not always little sometimes they slap you in the face just like what happened to you i mean that's that's what that is it's

Speaker 5 in my opinion that's what that is that is

Speaker 5 here's what you needed

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 so that you can believe.

Speaker 5 And from what I've noticed in my journey,

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 I didn't really, you know, it was a hassle to go to church. I didn't want to go.

Speaker 5 I didn't want to go to Sunday school. I didn't want to do any of that.

Speaker 5 I never took it seriously until what, I guess, about two years ago.

Speaker 5 You know, and ever since then, like, I just

Speaker 5 I'm just always paying attention and I see

Speaker 5 now I even see little things that get that get dropped you know

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 and I just look at them like oh that's

Speaker 4 all right I'm on the right path or

Speaker 5 that's the sign that I needed and

Speaker 5 I think it happens all the time.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 But we just don't.

Speaker 4 We don't have the humility to listen. We think we have all the answers.

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 5 Or we're so distracted in our own bullshit that we're not.

Speaker 5 It's impossible to see it because

Speaker 5 we're not looking. And so the

Speaker 5 more I can get out of the noise and and start paying attention.

Speaker 5 It's just like having your eyes wide open, you know, everywhere.

Speaker 5 They come all the time.

Speaker 5 It's pretty cool. Pretty cool stuff.

Speaker 5 Especially when you know it's real and you know what it is.

Speaker 4 And you're convicted. Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's just building that conviction is what's

Speaker 4 tough.

Speaker 5 Yeah, though

Speaker 5 that stuff that you were talking about with Earth,

Speaker 5 that just made me, I just had that conversation, or just used that Marble reference. Like, I think it was last weekend.
I can't remember who the hell I was talking to, but

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 how it all plays out.

Speaker 4 Yep. But

Speaker 5 what got you, so what got you interested in becoming an astronaut anyways?

Speaker 4 Relationships that I'd built and fostered over the years.

Speaker 4 When I was coming off the Thunderbird assignment, I met a gentleman by the name of Jared Isaacman,

Speaker 4 very successful entrepreneur, no military background, but

Speaker 4 started his very successful multi-billion dollar payment processing company, parents' basement when he was 16.

Speaker 4 His passion has always been aviation. So

Speaker 4 he progressed, started the hobby early, 18 years old, and just worked his way up in the civilian world.

Speaker 4 And he started a civilian air show demonstration team.

Speaker 4 Former fighter pilots, former Thunderbirds.

Speaker 4 And I was not a part of that, but I had met them while they were doing air shows, just through the community.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So there's two units within the Air Force that have dedicated missions of doing adversary support, OP4,

Speaker 4 just replicating the bad guys.

Speaker 4 China, Russia tactics. And that's your sole purpose in life versus

Speaker 4 And there's only two units, one in Vegas and one in Alaska. Otherwise, if you're like stationed in Italy or Korea,

Speaker 4 you're generating your own bad guys organically. So you'd be in your F-16, you'd dumb it down and simulate

Speaker 4 foreign tactics, threat tactics, help me train, and then we'd swap roles next day. It's not a very good use of resources.

Speaker 4 But there's two units dedicated to do this.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Airspace is good, Area 51 area.

Speaker 4 And I was the commander of that

Speaker 4 organization. So that was my job.

Speaker 4 And his air show gig went on for about two years.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And he had the resources to kind of, you know, develop some of this

Speaker 4 novel ideas. And one of them was,

Speaker 4 let's turn this fleet of fighters doing air shows into a commercial adversary

Speaker 4 organization. And now we can provide this service to the military, DOD, Air Force, Navy, Army, and in a cast role, and

Speaker 4 the Marines. And it's going to be a fraction of the cost.
So instead of doing it organically all over the world,

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 countries that are either disbanding their fleets of old fighter jets.

Speaker 4 There's not a big market out there. There's not many customers.

Speaker 4 Or they're upgrading their fleet of generation aircraft to the next level.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 what's the likelihood of the Air Force, you know, interested in this kind of concept.

Speaker 4 And so he builds this company, you know, build it and they will come kind of before he even had a contract.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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 want to do is go fly airlines.

Speaker 4 That's a typical career path coming out of the military. And

Speaker 4 long story short, my wife was diagnosed with cancer when I was deployed, right before I was deployed.

Speaker 4 And she's got to pick up the family, a 10, an eight, and a six-year-old, move from a foreign country back to the U.S.,

Speaker 4 establish care in Boston with her oncologist, and her husband's deployed to a combat zone.

Speaker 4 So, God bless her and her service to her country.

Speaker 4 So, I was coming off of Afghanistan, and the last thing I want to do is go fly airlines.

Speaker 4 It's not my jam.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 if I stayed in the military beyond 20, it's, you know, Colonel, you're going to one-year remote here and a joint staff here, and you have less and less control over your career.

Speaker 4 And we didn't know what Kristen's future was going to look like with her issues.

Speaker 4 So he brings me on the team and he secures a contract with the Air Force, just a basic proof of concept contract.

Speaker 4 And that just ignited the industry, turned into a $6 billion.

Speaker 4 It was like four primary players in this field. And they would just acquire all these fleets of aging fighters, kind of sweeten them up with better avionics, more capability.

Speaker 4 But the platform was still kind of a third. generation, fourth generation.

Speaker 4 So it gave more iron in the sky for F-22s and F-35s to train against.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 we established this first contract in Vegas, started supporting the Super Bowl of all Super Bowls,

Speaker 4 red flag exercises and weapon school. And

Speaker 4 we did that for about five years.

Speaker 4 That was a blast. But I started off flying, but I'm like, I kind of want to do something different.
So I got involved in the business development side.

Speaker 4 So I did that for about five years.

Speaker 4 He ends up selling the company because he's going public with

Speaker 4 his other company.

Speaker 4 And as soon as he left, the culture changed. And I lasted about a month and I'm like, I'm out.

Speaker 4 And so he pulls me over to Shift 4 to do business development or strategy.

Speaker 4 Fish out of water.

Speaker 4 So I was doing fintech, trying to figure it all out,

Speaker 4 just learning from him and his team.

Speaker 4 And they're

Speaker 4 recently gone public. It's kind of a big deal company.

Speaker 4 But he started having conversations with SpaceX.

Speaker 4 So he starts building this relationship.

Speaker 4 And it ended up being the

Speaker 4 first opportunity for a commercial flight, the first first all-civilian mission to space.

Speaker 4 So he secures the relationship and the contract for this mission.

Speaker 4 And, you know, he's got a core of individuals like me, and he brings us all together and he's like, hey,

Speaker 4 here's my vision.

Speaker 4 And, you know, we're all excited. We might get to go to space.

Speaker 4 And he's like, no, this is not taking your buddies fishing. You know,

Speaker 4 this is something bigger.

Speaker 4 We're going to make an impact with this.

Speaker 4 So that's where we started to develop, and this was 2020, right in the middle of COVID.

Speaker 4 We came up with this concept of the first all-civilian mission to space. We're going to randomly select his crew.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So we obviously don't have that luxury and resources. So

Speaker 4 and commercial space is about to make this huge paradigm shift in their philosophy.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 Someone's going to fact-check me on that one.

Speaker 4 But this was like, this is the big deal.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So we,

Speaker 4 well, back up to you in 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.

Speaker 4 And so I take on the role as the mission director.

Speaker 4 That's a little

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 we ended up partnering with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Speaker 4 because he's done other, he supported Make-A-Wish. He just, this means a lot to him.
And we had this platform and this opportunity to continue to improve life on earth.

Speaker 4 But let's, you know, let's explore what's out there as well.

Speaker 4 So we ended up giving one seat to St. Jude.

Speaker 4 And then we were going to do a sweetstakes for another seat and a contest for the fourth seat.

Speaker 4 So we ended up selecting Christmas.

Speaker 4 I think it was either right day after Christmas or not. We have a conversation with the CEO at St.
Jude, and we end up giving one seat to Haley Arseneau.

Speaker 4 I think she was 28 at the time. She was a

Speaker 4 cancer survivor. She beat cancer when she was 10.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 she went on to be a physician's assistant at St. Jude because they saved her life.
Great story. She's a rock star.

Speaker 4 So we picked her, and then we did a sweepstakes, Super Bowl commercial in 21, and that kicked off our sweepstakes to raise money for St. Jude.
Everything

Speaker 4 100% for St. Jude, whatever we made in this project with St.
Jude. Ends up being $250 million.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 4 And, you know, less than a six-month period. So we do sweepstakes 30 days, and then we're going to randomly pull a name out of the hat.

Speaker 4 And, you know, and each seat had a

Speaker 4 quality or concept behind it. Leadership, hope, generosity, and prosperity were the three seats, if you will.
Jared's leadership, hope was Haley,

Speaker 4 generosity was the sweepstakes, donations. And come to find out, we picked a name out of a hat,

Speaker 4 and the individual who was selected medically disqualified himself.

Speaker 4 And so based on his generosity, he's like,

Speaker 4 I got to give the seat back.

Speaker 4 I can't do this flight, but I appreciate that.

Speaker 4 And we're like,

Speaker 4 no, this is your seat. You can do whatever you want with it.

Speaker 4 And so he actually, through his generosity, gives it to one of his buddies, who also made a donation. And that was Chris Sombrowski.

Speaker 4 And then we did a contest for the last seat. And that's the whole, you know, he was an entrepreneur.

Speaker 4 He had many opportunities or he, you know, through his hard work, created opportunities and entrepreneurship. And

Speaker 4 he's a big believer in that. So we had a contest, you know, someone who was starting a small business.
And

Speaker 4 social media helped us, all these marketing companies helped us. And

Speaker 4 a panel of celebrities picked

Speaker 4 the best video promoting their small business. So Dr.
Cyan Proctor. was the individual picked for that seat.

Speaker 4 So the crew set, it was 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.

Speaker 4 And we do various things for the training.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We climbed Mount Rainier for

Speaker 4 some

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 or yeah, we'd swap the three in our back seats. So we'd give them experience in fighter jets and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 4 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 L.A.

Speaker 4 We go to Johnson Space Center for training with NASA, collaboration elements, and then we go to

Speaker 4 Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, because all human space flights out of there.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 right there in Cape Canaveral.

Speaker 4 And then they go to space. They spent three days in orbit.

Speaker 4 Very successful. Splashdown in the Atlantic.
And,

Speaker 4 you know, we wrap it up in September.

Speaker 4 Did a Netflix documentary called Countdown, five-part series, kind of explains the entire project. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 4 The week or the month leading up to their launch, conversations about

Speaker 4 the next project began because we're having too much fun.

Speaker 4 But this is, we never do things,

Speaker 4 it's always what's the next step up.

Speaker 4 And so we started to formulate a program

Speaker 4 which became the Polaris program,

Speaker 4 which is a

Speaker 4 three-part, up to three missions. And it's a developmental spaceflight program.

Speaker 4 And this is analogous to Project Gemini.

Speaker 4 So if you look at NASA's history, you got initial spaceflight with Project Mercury, prove that we could get to space.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 These are all things they had to solve before they headed to the moon.

Speaker 4 So in a similar fashion,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 The first two missions of the Polaris program are aboard the Falcon 9 with the Dragon capsule.

Speaker 4 And then the third flight is supposed to be the first human spaceflight of Starship, which might be launching in the next couple hours. Test Flight 8.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 4 Largest rocket ever built, bigger than Saturn V. That's the vehicle

Speaker 4 that I believe will go back to the moon and that will go to Mars.

Speaker 4 So that's the idea behind the Polaris program. And then the first mission we did in September is called Polaris Dawn.

Speaker 4 And based on our conversations with SpaceX and Elon about what do we want to accomplish, again, what challenges,

Speaker 4 well, we got to do a spacewalk. If the idea is that we want hundreds, if not thousands of people bouncing on the surface of the moon, we got to build a spacesuit.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 and we got to do a spacewalk. So let's do the first commercial spacewalk.

Speaker 4 Well, we're pushing the envelope. So let's extend the capabilities of the Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule and go further and fast, you know, further and farther than anyone has been in over 50 years.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Put that in context, the station's right around 400.

Speaker 4 Starlink's right around 350, 300, 350 kilometers.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And let's just

Speaker 4 push the envelope. So it was about the spacewalk, it was about the altitude.
And then communication is a big challenge.

Speaker 4 especially when we talk about going to Mars, eight months, you know, the broadband requirements and the latency issues. Imagine sending back a combite that's 30 minutes old, if not hours.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So 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 our Earth, great.

Speaker 4 We would take these dishes. We actually took some to the Ukraine in the beginning of the war to drop off.
So St.

Speaker 4 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. And

Speaker 4 we delivered some Starlinks so St. Jude could set up their hospitals and have telecommunications or telemedicine capability with doctors back at

Speaker 4 Memphis.

Speaker 4 So works on Earth. We got to figure out if it works

Speaker 4 in space, which was a cosmic feat in and of itself for the engineers to figure that one out.

Speaker 4 And then, oh, by the way, we're going to be up there for five days. That's the life of,

Speaker 4 you know, that's about as long as you can exist up there in that capsule alone, not docking with a space station.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 Because that's going to be the, you know, kids' opinion, that's the biggest limb factor. Limiting factor is going to be the human body.

Speaker 4 Because

Speaker 4 the austere environment of space is, it's tough. You know, besides being a vacuum, you got to deal with zero gravity, loneliness, psychological issues.
Just

Speaker 4 we are meant for 1G on Earth.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So

Speaker 4 those were the four main objectives.

Speaker 4 And then we spent three years training for those objectives.

Speaker 5 How did you get picked?

Speaker 4 So based on my contributions during Inspiration 4

Speaker 4 and the fact that I had operational test background, I did a lot of tests.

Speaker 4 There's a unit called the 422 Test and Evaluation Squadron at Nellis where we do

Speaker 4 we test new weapons, new software, new computer systems on the platform. It's not a test pilot, Chuck Yeager type developmental test.

Speaker 4 That's done at Edwards. That's done testing on the platform.

Speaker 4 This is more specific to weapons and software upgrades and capabilities. So I've had background experience in doing operational test.

Speaker 4 And this being a test program,

Speaker 4 it was kind of a logical fit.

Speaker 4 I caveat that with

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 God's influence for sure,

Speaker 4 especially going through the training.

Speaker 4 Because you got Jared,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 He's already been up in.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 he didn't have to study. He does, because he's a dedicated individual.

Speaker 4 And then we have two other crew members, and we kind of, this is a collaboration partnership with SpaceX.

Speaker 4 So we gave two seats to SpaceX.

Speaker 4 And we selected Sarah Gillis and Anna Minnen.

Speaker 4 And they were both engineers that were involved in the first mission. So Sarah, she was graduated at CU Boulder,

Speaker 4 one of the smartest individuals I've ever met.

Speaker 4 She was hired as a SpaceX engineer to be the lead astronaut trainer. So she teaches astronauts how to operate the vehicle.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then you got kid, outdoor education, barely graduates college. So

Speaker 4 I know my place.

Speaker 4 It kind of tainted my

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 it's not about me.

Speaker 4 There's a lot writing 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.

Speaker 4 We only have three years to focus on these huge milestones.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 I'm hanging on. And I'm, you know,

Speaker 4 when I'm asked questions, it's like I'll deflect with humor. I'll respond questions with questions.

Speaker 4 Phone a friend,

Speaker 4 use

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 you know they lean on me in time of need

Speaker 4 and if i fail them because i didn't get my game where it needs to be

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 physiological training. That's the centrifuge, the altitude chamber, the vacuum chamber, the zero-G flights.
There's the

Speaker 4 practical training that we went through, experiential, mountaineering, scuba diving, skydiving, flying fighter jets.

Speaker 4 And then there's the procedural where we spend a majority of our time in the simulator.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 4 they would give us very difficult situations, scenarios, you know, some very unlikely, but, you know, it's to test our knowledge and our experience and our teamwork and all that stuff.

Speaker 4 And one of the scenarios was Jared is incapacitated. For whatever reason, he's out.

Speaker 4 And now we got to do an emergency deorbit.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 they can't see the screens when they're strapped in their 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.

Speaker 4 You just float underneath them.

Speaker 4 Well, Jared's incapacitated. Well, in nominal 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.

Speaker 4 Well, he's out.

Speaker 4 Kids there to save the day, and I fail miserably. It's the most humbling experience because I can't keep up.
I make the wrong decisions.

Speaker 4 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 got to step up.

Speaker 4 I got to, I got to change. I got to be more humble,

Speaker 4 you know, 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.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But it's got to get to a certain threshold if,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 because again, getting back to this is 100%,

Speaker 4 this is zero fail.

Speaker 4 We have to,

Speaker 4 you know, have mission success or we're going to set the entire space exploration program, not just SpaceX, but everybody back.

Speaker 4 And it, you know, we're doing things, we're doing some crazy shit. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Anyways, that's a lot.

Speaker 5 That's it. Wow.
And how long was this timeline? Three years?

Speaker 4 Three years.

Speaker 4 We were supposed to launch.

Speaker 4 The big,

Speaker 4 the biggest challenge. And talking about space, I go on all day long how smart these people are.

Speaker 4 The long pole in the tent was the development of the EVA suit.

Speaker 4 So they had to build a brand new suit that,

Speaker 4 you know, the IVA suit they wear to and from the station,

Speaker 4 it's meant to pressurize in the case of a depressed situation and keep astronauts alive. But it's not

Speaker 4 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 IVA suit, and spent years enhancing,

Speaker 4 you know, with a big focus on thermals,

Speaker 4 because a 250 degree plus or minus swing when you're either in the sun or in the eclipse of the. Wow.
Wow. So it's plus or minus 250 degrees.

Speaker 4 Mobility is a concern because it's pressurized.

Speaker 4 So, 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So we had to come up with this novel pre-breathe approach profile where we're going to bring

Speaker 4 the pressure

Speaker 4 down. in the capsule, increase the oxygen levels, because we're trying to mitigate the risk of DCS.

Speaker 5 What's DCS?

Speaker 4 Decompression sickness,

Speaker 4 nitrogen bubbles,

Speaker 4 scuba concerns.

Speaker 4 Because if we do it too rapidly,

Speaker 4 because on the space station and the airlock, they're going to pre-breathe 100% oxygen, and it's going to purge all those nitrogen bubbles out of your system. So DCS isn't a huge concern.

Speaker 4 It's still minor, but it's not huge. We don't have enough gas, oxygen on board

Speaker 4 to purge our entire system.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 so

Speaker 4 back to the suit,

Speaker 4 their big focus in the development of over that three-year period was thermals, mobility. They came up with these new funky joints, um,

Speaker 4 uh, 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,

Speaker 4 you know, it's a one-piece, it's got a big old spiral zipper around the waist. It's just a zipper, you know, you just cinch it down as maybe almost like a dry suit,

Speaker 4 but it handles pressure. So, we were just over five psi delta.
So

Speaker 4 as we're coming down, you know, we're at 14.7

Speaker 4 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, you know, 9, 10 psi.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So as long as we maintain that plus five,

Speaker 4 the suit's pressurized and we can bring it all the way down to a vacuum and then open the hatch and go outside.

Speaker 4 And so that was a big focus: coming up with all these different thermal layers, like 12 different layers.

Speaker 4 The visor had to be changed. They added a helmet-mounted sight, or yeah, more of a HUD, not a queuing system.
We didn't laser.

Speaker 4 It just projected like pressure, temperature,

Speaker 4 duration.

Speaker 5 Like a heads-up display? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Okay. That's exactly what it was.
A little monocle. And it's just, this team was insane.
They would, it's like a monster garage.

Speaker 4 So they would piecemeal, I'd be walking around this Frankenstein suit, this glove is, this arm is completely different and this bearing is different. And we would be trying out all this stuff.

Speaker 4 We'd go home on Friday. We'd fly back on Monday for more training and it's completely revamped.
Hey, we're going to try out this HUD with this monocle.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 like, holy shit, I'm going to space in this suit to the final product.

Speaker 4 It was like,

Speaker 4 it was insane. Damn.
And that took, you know,

Speaker 4 decades for other EVA suits to be developed and billion-dollar programs. This was done on, you know,

Speaker 4 millions. I don't know how much it costs, but

Speaker 4 and and in two and a half years granted i mean it's umbilical so we're attached to the vehicle to pump in that oxygen and nitrogen and nitrox um

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 full faith and confidence this is only you know it's probably revamped you know it's been six months they're probably on you know version six six to nine at this point on a new suit and they'll come up with some self-contained

Speaker 4 they they got it you know they're

Speaker 4 like,

Speaker 4 I was like, I'm like the 51-year-old. I'm like the oldest dude.

Speaker 4 They're all like 20-something, 30-year-olds.

Speaker 4 Brilliant, brilliant, very passionate.

Speaker 4 I just, I love that organization because Elon and Gwen, they, they set the vision. There's no doubt this is the vision for the organization.
But they're very flat

Speaker 4 structure. where everyone is empowered and everyone feels empowered.
And that just breeds and fosters this environment of passion.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 everything they're doing at SpaceX and

Speaker 4 what they're able to accomplish in such a short period.

Speaker 4 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 going to learn so much from that, and they'll take it and

Speaker 4 make the next

Speaker 4 version even better.

Speaker 5 But what are you telling your family? They're going to be worried about this, right?

Speaker 4 I'll tell you, it was,

Speaker 4 yeah,

Speaker 4 we had our moments.

Speaker 4 It was tough.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Deploying to combat is one thing.

Speaker 4 You know, when you intentionally sign up to go to space on a developmental test spaceflight.

Speaker 4 Especially when you thought we were into our retirement years.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it was tough.

Speaker 4 God bless her for hanging on and putting up with me.

Speaker 5 Is she glad you did it?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, certainly

Speaker 4 pride is not a great thing to.

Speaker 4 But she's proud of all the accomplishments and what we did, and she's very thankful it's over, obviously, and I'm safe.

Speaker 4 Like I said, she's a believer, and she knew it was in God's hands.

Speaker 4 But it's still a leap of faith, especially watching that rocket go off.

Speaker 4 Being strapped to that rocket is...

Speaker 4 an unwavering level of trust because I'm not in control. You know, fighter jet.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I'm doing the inputs. I can control that.
And oh, by the way, if shit's not working out, I can punch and eject.

Speaker 4 Rocket ships a lot different?

Speaker 5 Yeah, what's, I mean, how, okay, so how long did it take you to get up there?

Speaker 4 So, um.

Speaker 5 And how exactly did this go?

Speaker 5 Was the spacewalk at the same altitude as the.

Speaker 4 No, everything was done different altitudes.

Speaker 4 Highly elliptical, meaning we'd go far and then pass on the backside really close. So 1,400 kilometers by 190.

Speaker 4 Our entry

Speaker 4 altitude was 1,200 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 1,400.

Speaker 4 We set the record. We did about eight orbits at that altitude to do some radiation testing.

Speaker 4 And then we brought it back down to 750-ish.

Speaker 4 And that's where we did the spacewalk.

Speaker 5 So was that the last thing?

Speaker 4 No, that was day three. So it was five days.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then the rest of the days were all science and research, Sterling testing, everything else.

Speaker 5 Well, let's walk. Let's walk.
So, initial entry into space.

Speaker 5 So, even

Speaker 4 I mean, even the even strapping in, you know, I don't know if I told you.

Speaker 4 It produces 1.7 million pounds of thrust.

Speaker 4 So, that's equivalent of 70 F-16s,

Speaker 4 69 F-16s, because I'm a fighter pilot.

Speaker 4 One F-16 is Mach 2, 1,500 miles an hour, pulling nine 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,

Speaker 4 you know, spaceship.

Speaker 6 Spaceship.

Speaker 4 Is

Speaker 4 I'm in control in a fighter. So if I'm not digging the G forces, I can ease off.

Speaker 4 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 head to toe.
This is the Z-axis, I believe.

Speaker 4 So it's centrifugal force that, you know, when you pull back on that stick, it's centrifugal force that causes that G-force and that pooling of the blood and lower extremities, the fear passing out because the blood leaves the brain.

Speaker 4 That's why you wear the G-suit and do the G-strain

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So it's this, and it, and it builds up to about four and a half Gs.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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...

Speaker 4 and all you're doing is watching the clock. You're strapped in.
I mean, they, they cinch on you, you know, in a poly 13, put your foot on your yank it.

Speaker 4 They don't, they don't mess up the suit, but it's pretty damn tight. And

Speaker 4 visors down. And, you know, here we go.

Speaker 5 You know, by the way. How long are you in there before takeoff?

Speaker 5 Or before launch? What do you call it? Launch?

Speaker 4 That's a whole different story.

Speaker 4 I have an old man bladder.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I was wondering that. I mean, besides that, I mean, mean, I don't know how you work

Speaker 5 in pre-mission, going to combat, but me, I feel like I got a pee like every

Speaker 5 two minutes. Like, oh, shit, I got to go again.

Speaker 5 Oh, shit, I got to go again.

Speaker 5 Like, then you hear the helos, oh, you know, that

Speaker 5 got to go.

Speaker 4 People always ask me, what was, were you scared?

Speaker 5 I mean, that's a lot of anticipation.

Speaker 4 Dude,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I couldn't hold it. So I'm, you know, we wear these, they're called mags, maximum absorbency garment.

Speaker 5 Depends.

Speaker 4 And I went eight times and I'm drenched and I'm freezing. I got trench foot.
It's just like pooling.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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, please, let's just get to space so I can get into some warm clothes.

Speaker 4 And then I'm thinking to myself,

Speaker 4 zero gravity. Is this going to float up into my helmet?

Speaker 4 You just see the headline now, astronaut drowns in his own

Speaker 4 tang. He, I don't know.

Speaker 4 So that's what was going through my mind during this launch phase.

Speaker 4 But back to the launch, it just, you know, once the clock expires, those nine Maryland engines, they just, they just come alive and it's like an earthquake. It just shakes your world.

Speaker 4 You can't concentrate on anything. It's just,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And the reason why is if anything happens, the capsule will eject off the booster and splash down in the Atlantic Ocean.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So it just accelerating and you're going faster and faster and faster. And two and a half minutes is you're waiting for Miko, main engine cutoff.

Speaker 4 And the g-forces start to build up and it's it's four and a half G so it just feels like somebody is just sitting on your chest.

Speaker 4 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 Gs and you deplete your energy state.

Speaker 4 So you can't can sustain nine Gs. But four and a half

Speaker 4 for two and a half minutes is fairly intense. And then Miko happens.
And when Miko happens, it's just a big old boom.

Speaker 4 And you get launched forward in your straps and you float because of that deacceleration

Speaker 4 because that, you know, you're no longer connected to the booster. And you're waiting for the separation to happen.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's only one engine, but it's massive, 220,000 pounds of thrust for one engine. And as soon as that light, as soon as that engine light, it's just a BAM, you're back in the seat.

Speaker 4 And now you're on a six-minute ride and those g-forces build back up to four and a half.

Speaker 4 And now you're just on this trajectory.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And you get up to 17,500 miles an hour is orbital velocity. This keeps you in orbit.

Speaker 4 Otherwise you get pulled back down into Earth because gravity is constantly pulling on you, even at 17,500, but you're just falling in the same orbit all around Earth.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But once you get up there, you accelerate, 17.5, Mach 25, you're going five miles a second,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 You've separated, now you're floating, and now you're in that

Speaker 4 transition,

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 fluid shift, organs are shifting, brain lift.

Speaker 4 Did I explain this? I don't even remember if I did or not. A little bit.

Speaker 4 I talked about the space adaptation, the disorientation, that tumbling. Other things that happen is the fluid in your body is shifting.

Speaker 4 So it's free floating. So your organs are actually kind of moving around.
And your brain is floating in CSF, but gravity's pulling on it.

Speaker 4 Well, up there, it starts to shift up and it floats inside your skull, and it causes this like space fog.

Speaker 4 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 is just constant.

Speaker 4 And it's it's something you have to get used to. And it can have an impact.
Like, I had this chronic

Speaker 4 um headache mild headache i actually um

Speaker 4 i did an experimental surgery for this mission um a couple years prior

Speaker 4 one of the big concerns is uh intracranial pressure so the fluid in your spine the csf in your brain

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And it actually can cause temporary blindness. A couple astronauts have had temporary blindness.

Speaker 4 So you imagine the concern: you're on your way to Mars and you go blind or you lose significant visual acuity.

Speaker 4 We don't know much about it because we've only done non-invasive experiments, contact lenses that take pressure measurements,

Speaker 4 little guns that you squeeze and point into the eye, take measurements. But those are all non-invasive.

Speaker 4 They're not as accurate as we would like.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 NASA being somewhat risk adverse,

Speaker 4 there've never been an invasive experiment. There's no real volunteers, and commercial isn't really a thing yet.
Well,

Speaker 4 kid's 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

Speaker 4 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 we just

Speaker 4 you know 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

Speaker 4 so we can learn more about it. Unfortunately,

Speaker 4 I did the surgery,

Speaker 4 and for some reason,

Speaker 4 the technique used, the catheter, backs out of my spinal column. And so I just have a big hole, leaking CSF.

Speaker 4 And that was

Speaker 4 debilitating.

Speaker 5 I couldn't function.

Speaker 4 I literally just,

Speaker 4 you know, lay down. I couldn't, I couldn't, you know, it's just this massive, massive headache.
And I have the most, utmost respect for hydrocephalus patients.

Speaker 4 The swelling of the brain is just absolutely debilitating.

Speaker 4 So they had to do an emergency blood patch into my spinal column, and then eventually had to do another surgery to remove all the shit in my ears.

Speaker 4 I had 11 surgeries

Speaker 4 the one year leading up to space.

Speaker 5 Damn.

Speaker 4 Random shit. Damn.

Speaker 4 Appendix, gallbladder, ERCPs, this

Speaker 4 hernias, you name it.

Speaker 4 Old.

Speaker 4 But it was a...

Speaker 5 So you go straight up to... Sorry, yes.
Yeah, you go straight to...

Speaker 5 You said there was some...

Speaker 5 You did a couple of orbits at a lower altitude and then shot up to...

Speaker 4 What was it? 1,408.1

Speaker 4 is the record.

Speaker 4 Which will be broken in

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Cycles on the hardware, software, as well as the human body, didn't want to expose too much. It was the equivalent of like three to four months living on the ISS, what they're exposed to, in our

Speaker 4 eight orbits.

Speaker 4 It's a pretty intense band of radiation called the Van vanilla and belts and then we brought it down to

Speaker 4 750 ish i think it was

Speaker 4 you were up there for how many days three days no up there it was just eight orbits so 106 minutes times eight whatever that equals hour and a half uh i don't know twelve hours

Speaker 5 twelve fourteen hours so when you were up there i mean could you see the whole earth at once uh no uh there was

Speaker 4 i wish i had pictures pictures.

Speaker 5 Do you have pictures?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah, absolutely. iPhone.

Speaker 4 We took thousands of pictures with our iPhone.

Speaker 5 Can you send me some? Absolutely.

Speaker 4 They're all over the internet.

Speaker 4 We have a Flickr page I'll send you that's got really cool

Speaker 4 videos,

Speaker 4 time-lapse. The best pictures actually are from outside the capsule.
It looks like CGI. Looks fake.
It's not. Just like the moon.

Speaker 4 But it's this, they modified, again, standard SpaceX badass

Speaker 4 They had a camera outside a selfie cam with a fisheye lens outside the the hatch The nose cone so they had this beautiful picture of the the spacewalk just time-lapse of all the you know the evolution of the light all that stuff.

Speaker 4 So I'll send you plenty. So could you see the whole no you could see good portion of it um

Speaker 4 but you couldn't we weren't far enough away. There was was enough underneath.
And

Speaker 4 windows aren't that great. I mean, there's two windows.
They're about that big.

Speaker 4 And then the Ford hatch,

Speaker 4 the actual hatch has a window in it.

Speaker 5 What's it like looking out into nothing?

Speaker 4 Very eerie.

Speaker 4 Sometimes you depend on the lighting, but you could see stars and sometimes you couldn't.

Speaker 4 Especially when the Dracos are firing, you all you see is this hue of of

Speaker 4 yellows and reds from the from the fuel exhaust

Speaker 4 but there were times where it's just billions of stars I mean more than you could ever imagine

Speaker 4 we did see constellation of Starlink

Speaker 4 it passed like 70 kilometers away-ish

Speaker 5 which

Speaker 4 It's pretty close. I mean, relatively speaking.

Speaker 4 They track all that. It's called MMOD, micrometeorite, orbital debris.
Any shit that's, you know, worthy of, well,

Speaker 4 anything that big would put a hole in

Speaker 4 your capsule. But

Speaker 5 what was, I mean,

Speaker 5 what was the routine up there? Were you guys just...

Speaker 5 Did you have to be... Were you doing stuff? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 No,

Speaker 4 it was constant.

Speaker 4 We packed a lot,

Speaker 4 10 pounds pounds of shit into a six-pound sock. It was

Speaker 5 a lot.

Speaker 4 Because we wanted to make it. I mean,

Speaker 4 how many astronauts have there been? You know, it's, we got to maximize this opportunity and leverage every minute and second we have. So we had a very intense timeline.

Speaker 4 And then you talk about all the adaptation to the environment. It's just like you're, you're challenged.

Speaker 5 Any downtime?

Speaker 4 Sleep.

Speaker 4 I slept maybe three, four hours a night. I was lucky.

Speaker 4 It's tough. I mean, if you're a back sleeper, it's okay.
Because by the time you fall asleep, you're flat as a board, levitating, like exorcist type above the bed.

Speaker 4 And these seats are like bucket seats, almost like a racing kind of seat.

Speaker 4 But you loosely connect the seatbelt because you would float away.

Speaker 4 But by the time you fall asleep and falling asleep is tough because since you're floating, you feel like you're falling.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And so you go through this cycle until eventually you get so tired, I'm just, you fall asleep. And then when you wake up, you're just this

Speaker 4 flat as a board.

Speaker 6 Wow. Wow.

Speaker 4 We'd have these little, you know, down sleeping bags, just these little profile kind of things for comfort.

Speaker 4 Jared would sleep up on the top. I think Sarah slept on the bottom.
I slept in my seat. Anna, you know, it was just wherever you could find space.

Speaker 5 What are you guys eating?

Speaker 4 You know, it's like, so people ask, why do you mount, what does mountaineering have to do with spacefight? Well,

Speaker 4 there's a lot of consistencies. And, you know, when you, when you climb a mountain, and we did, one of our guides took us, Ed Wiesers.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 Cotapoxy, Ecuador, in 19,328-foot volcano, multiple days, get up close to the summit.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Very consistent to how you feel in a capsule. And this gets to your question.
You're just not that hungry.

Speaker 4 You're eating camp food um because we're going to bring this entire capsule down to vacuum so if there's much if there's a lot of water in any of the food it just zaps 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

Speaker 4 um these empanadas and little little Hawaiian roll sandwiches.

Speaker 4 Otherwise, that was gone. I was the only one eating.
I I mean, I'm, you know, being an endurance guy, I'm just like,

Speaker 4 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 cliff bars, beef jerky,

Speaker 4 that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Just to sustain till you get five days, five days. I mean, you didn't really want to sleep, but you felt like you had to do something.

Speaker 4 You want to make the most of it.

Speaker 4 But all of our time was science and research. And then the prep leading up to the spacewalk, that was a big deal.

Speaker 5 I mean, how much time do you get to

Speaker 5 look at Earth and

Speaker 5 look at the vastness of space? I mean,

Speaker 4 some little glimpses. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because

Speaker 4 in the brightness of the sun, it is, it's.

Speaker 4 You know, 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

Speaker 4 photography wise.

Speaker 4 It was more the transitions that were like, oh my god, that's amazing.

Speaker 4 The thin blue line and then as sunrise and sunsets happen, that was really cool. The low altitudes catching, you know,

Speaker 4 crossing over, you know, Egypt and the Gaza or

Speaker 4 Giza and the Nile and Suez and Israel, that was beautiful. Because your profile, the way you fly around the Earth,

Speaker 4 it's pretty consistent.

Speaker 4 You're descending over Europe into Africa, India, Australia, and then you start climbing back up through the U.S. and then back down.
It's just how the orbit is with the rotation.

Speaker 4 Interesting.

Speaker 5 How long would it take to orbit the Earth?

Speaker 4 106 minutes for our orbit.

Speaker 5 100 minutes.

Speaker 4 It's usually like 90 minutes for the station.

Speaker 4 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 a 1408.

Speaker 4 And then the lowest, closest on the back side of that orbit is called perigee, and that was the 190, 190 kilometers, which is like you're skimming the atmosphere. It's

Speaker 4 so we were just doing,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 that we have to solve for like um

Speaker 4 triage

Speaker 4 you know you stick a hundred passengers on a on a starship that's headed to mars shit's gonna happen

Speaker 4 cardiac arrests um you're gonna have to incubate CPR, whatever.

Speaker 4 Those aren't easy things to do, especially in the volume of like a starship where you don't have leverage per se. Whereas small capsule,

Speaker 4 we had to do a CPR test, little compression thing, little trainer kind of thing, click, click, click.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Yeah, how do you get leverage?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's, you to think about every little detail.

Speaker 4 Airway assessment. So the shape, everything changes shapewise, so your airway becomes more constricted.

Speaker 4 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 an

Speaker 4 endoscop

Speaker 4 camera exam of my airway.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 CGMs. Someone's going to have diabetes who goes to space.
A simple CGM little device doesn't work so well in space. So just simple stuff, drawing blood.

Speaker 4 you know as soon as blood it's floating

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 So what does there have to be suction?

Speaker 4 There's a little bit. It's like

Speaker 4 part of it was centrifugal force.

Speaker 4 The one we tested didn't work.

Speaker 4 It was a device you just slap on, you push a button, and it's supposed to like draw, but it...

Speaker 4 It was having difficulties because zero gravity. The fluid is just floating.

Speaker 4 Another cool test was

Speaker 4 it was an ambulance in a box, literally just a suitcase, pelican case, and it had all these leads. And so you go into cardiac rest.

Speaker 4 We're sticking all these leads on, doing a, and we can do an EKG and oxygen, blood pressure, pulse, anything and everything. All that's fed through Starlink down to the smart doctors on Earth.

Speaker 4 And they can monitor patients from space with this new device. It's never been tested before.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 very interesting.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 5 So let's, so the spacewalk.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 this was.

Speaker 5 I mean, that had to scare the shit out of you, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah. It's.

Speaker 4 I think

Speaker 4 getting down to vacuum.

Speaker 5 Especially looking out into nothing.

Speaker 4 That was

Speaker 4 the fear came before that.

Speaker 4 And it was as you started to go down to vacuum.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Um, so it's literally just this thin between you and death, you know.

Speaker 4 Because if you lose pressure, pray that it's a slow leak and you can repressurize the capsule in time, but

Speaker 4 probably not, yeah, I didn't want to think about that too much.

Speaker 6 Um,

Speaker 4 but you're, you know, you're, you're watching

Speaker 4 you're watching the one in the HUD because that's your suit pressure,

Speaker 4 and it's it, it should be additional five psi d above whatever the capsule is so you know if we're at like 10 i hope i'm reading 15

Speaker 4 and then as it comes down

Speaker 4 you know eventually i see five

Speaker 4 and i know

Speaker 4 the capsule we're in a vacuum so we can just simply open the hatch and so that is just a

Speaker 4 And then it's just this whole compartmentalized box breathing. You know, I'm just

Speaker 4 because you're in this confined space. And if you're claustrophobic at all, I mean,

Speaker 4 there were events in training where you're playing along with the scenario and you're rushing around because something happened is, you know, an emergency situation and the visor is down.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 You're just going to cook inside the suit

Speaker 4 because it can't cool fast enough. The airflow isn't that great.
There's some vents right here on the visor, just right by the visor, and the gas from the umbilical.

Speaker 4 But if you catch yourself overheating too fast, it's a point in no return kind of feeling.

Speaker 4 And you start to like have this hyperventilation feeling because you're just trying to calm yourself down.

Speaker 4 And so you would experience this in training because you're, you're jumping all around and you're at 1G having to fight the pressure of this suit. And it's just,

Speaker 4 so it's almost like that meditative state you had to get into for this spacewalk because of

Speaker 4 you did not want to like ever get yourself anywhere near. I never did.

Speaker 4 Especially where I was sitting and what I did, my role during the

Speaker 4 spacewalk, because I stayed in my seat. So

Speaker 4 we only had enough gas to send two astronauts out 15-minute increments. That's all we had.
But technically the hatch, it's literally right there. I mean, space is right there.

Speaker 4 I just didn't get to stick my head out. Wanted to, but I'm locked into my seatbelt.
And same with Anna.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 Jared and Sarah were the ones that in the middle seats. did the swap.

Speaker 5 So it was one at a time? One at a time.

Speaker 4 That's all it fits. because you're pressurized.

Speaker 4 So the volume in the capsule, when you're pressurized, especially Jared's not

Speaker 4 a small human, he's six something, six, two,

Speaker 4 or six, one. I don't know what he is.
But he takes up a lot of that volume. You know, I'm just a widow guy, so I'm over my side.
Nana's over her side, and Sarah's small.

Speaker 4 But so enough room for him to get up, do his thing, 15 minutes, did some mobility testing out there.

Speaker 5 I mean, be outside

Speaker 5 holy shit by yourself I thought that I thought you'd have a buddy or something yeah

Speaker 4 you have a Kevlar cord for a tether

Speaker 4 and then you have the umbilical

Speaker 4 so it's um

Speaker 4 and then I guess I could I can grab him if I had to

Speaker 5 What are they doing out there?

Speaker 4 Mobility tests.

Speaker 4 He got a beautiful view. So as soon as he opened that hatch, well, we actually had an issue with the hatch opening.
I can talk about, but as soon as he got the hatch open,

Speaker 4 man,

Speaker 4 Earth just filled that entire, it was, it was unbelievable.

Speaker 4 And I got a great view of it. And Jared got a great view.
About halfway through his window,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 There's ambient light from the capsule and there's lights up there and she's got a light on her visor, but it's our camera.

Speaker 4 But the hatch, so

Speaker 4 our protocol was

Speaker 4 Jared is going, once we get down to vacuum, everything's good, he's going to unlock it,

Speaker 4 break the seal,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Well, as soon as he unlocked and broke the seal, it would automatically close on its own.

Speaker 4 Come to find out, the residual pressure from our suits was forcing

Speaker 4 the hatch to close.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 it was meant for it.

Speaker 4 Our backup game plan was just to do a manual, Jared's just going to open the hatch. So that was the first issue.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And he goes outside.

Speaker 4 First commercial spacewalk. It was

Speaker 4 surreal.

Speaker 4 And a lot of people love, there there were a lot of doubters out there.

Speaker 4 You know, social media is an evil thing, but

Speaker 4 a lot of people doubted

Speaker 4 what we were doing,

Speaker 4 what SpaceX was able to accomplish.

Speaker 4 I'm sure Elon gets it constantly. I mean,

Speaker 4 just starting the rocket business and doing boosters landing, you know, on drone ships and now catching boosters with chopsticks.

Speaker 4 It's

Speaker 4 not a matter of if, it's just when. When are we going to accomplish all these things?

Speaker 4 And so

Speaker 4 he comes back in and then Sarah goes out and then she gets her 15 minutes.

Speaker 4 And then we're just...

Speaker 4 Our role

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And we could, you know, we could live in those suits for hours, if not days, pressurized. And we would eventually, you know, repressurize and deorbit if anything ever happened.

Speaker 5 Man.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 How long do you think it'll be before the majority of Americans have been to space?

Speaker 4 You know, it's absolutely inevitable. I believe it, for sure.
It's going to happen. The concept of launching these starships.
And as soon as it starts taking

Speaker 4 the first human, it's not going to be long after that.

Speaker 4 Because they're already building out the, it's called Eclipse or the architecture, the infrastructure inside these.

Speaker 4 They have prototypes of, they got them down at Starbase in Texas where they do the launches.

Speaker 4 These mock-ups. of what it would look like in theory.
And it's almost like these

Speaker 4 little cubicles. They're spiral stacked inside this immense,

Speaker 4 you know, it's, I don't know if it's 30 by 30, 30 foot diameter across, but it's, 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.

Speaker 4 This is like 30, and it's like, you have all this volume to float across.

Speaker 4 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 the operations where the crew of

Speaker 4 you know six to nine people in charge of the vehicle are going to operate and then you have all these passengers that are

Speaker 4 just going for the ride

Speaker 4 but I think we're ways away.

Speaker 5 I think we're I feel like my kids are going to take a school field trip there.

Speaker 4 To space, to low Earth orbit.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 But it's

Speaker 4 this thing is the lymphatic, the body.

Speaker 4 You know, if 50% space adaptation syndrome gets sick, could you imagine 100 people?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 20, 30 people puking. What a shit show.

Speaker 4 It would be bad. So hopefully we can solve some of that.

Speaker 4 I don't know if it's drugs or I don't know.

Speaker 5 What's it like coming back?

Speaker 4 Well, another thing we did on orbit is the Starlink tests.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, I can briefly cover this, but

Speaker 4 so the idea was we're going to do a global music event. Sarah Gillis is a professionally trained violinist.
Absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 4 Extremely talented.

Speaker 4 And we're going to do this global event, this, you know, Flash mob where all these orchestras around the world are going to perform and she's going to perform in space and it's all going to be broadcast via Starlink

Speaker 4 because it's never been tested up there.

Speaker 4 And we weren't sure about the

Speaker 4 probability of success. It was just an unknown.

Speaker 4 Because you've got to, it's all lasers, you know, and these little glass.

Speaker 4 I don't know what they are on the actual Starlink that they had aligned 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.

Speaker 4 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 got to communicate.
And it's just like

Speaker 4 smart people figure that stuff out. So we didn't know if it was going to work.

Speaker 4 As soon as we got up there, they're like,

Speaker 4 we think your Wi-Fi is working. Can you guys get on your iPhone and see if it's working? We literally,

Speaker 4 and so the way you communicate with anyone in space is it's ground stations strategically placed all over the planet.

Speaker 4 And as you're going around, you're communicating line of sight to all these stations. Or you utilize what's called Tidris satellites, just national assets.

Speaker 4 I think there's only five or six out there, and it's high demand, national security kind of stuff. And you timeshare based on if you're on the ISS.

Speaker 4 You know, if we were going to utilize that, it's going to be about maybe 80% coverage. Otherwise, we're in blackout.
We're not talking to anyone kind of thing.

Speaker 4 Starlink is hopefully going to 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 My kids are at school. I got two in high school, one in college.
They step out of their classroom and everyone, picture, we have like snapshots of our phone. There we are talking to our family.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 I deployed to Kuwait and I got two phone calls. five minutes each over 90 days.
And that's all I talked.

Speaker 4 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. So, and so we're engaged.
I talked to her twice, geez.

Speaker 4 Anyways, so I think back to just I don't know, what was that, 25 years ago? Um, and now here we are.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 school, and I'm talking, you know, it's just absolute mind-blowing

Speaker 4 what we have access to.

Speaker 4 Talk about information flow. I mean,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Otherwise, who wouldn't, you know, and it's just,

Speaker 4 now we got Starlink down to our phones, and

Speaker 4 it's just living a different world.

Speaker 5 We do, we do

Speaker 5 man,

Speaker 5 so coming home.

Speaker 4 So, um,

Speaker 4 it's a drawn-out process to get ready because you got to strap everything in because it's a violent ride.

Speaker 4 I think it's more violent coming home than it is going up.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 when Butch and Sonny come home in a couple weeks,

Speaker 4 you know, they've been up there for six plus months. They're way deconditioned.

Speaker 4 So it's tough because you're not using the skeletal system, your ligaments, your tendons, your muscles like you normally do.

Speaker 4 That's why they dedicate hours, three hours a day to working out up there on the station. But our five days, you still feel deconditioned.

Speaker 4 So the moment you start this re-entry, 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.

Speaker 4 So as you begin to slow down, now gravity starts taking over and you enter

Speaker 4 your deorbit profile.

Speaker 4 And as soon as you start coming down, you hit the atmosphere. And that's what really slows you down

Speaker 4 because you have all this drag and

Speaker 4 but it also generates plasma heat fire so that's what you enter the blackout phase

Speaker 4 so as you start the the first step of the whole process is to separate from the trunk so you got the capsule and then you got this extension that's called the trunk it's got solar panels because this this entire vehicle is energy depleting so we need the solar panels for for energy for power.

Speaker 4 So you separate from the trunk a couple hours prior, and it's just this big old.

Speaker 4 And that's, okay, we're committed because we can't survive in this capsule for too long. We got to come home.
So you're coming home anyways.

Speaker 4 You get in your suit, you get in your seat, you strap in, and

Speaker 4 engines start firing, and it's just this constant, repetitive

Speaker 4 as these engines are firing to slow you down

Speaker 4 and then it just it just slowly starts to build this vibration this chatter and and as you start to hit the atmosphere it's you get your two little windows and you can see just enough and you initially see like these sparks almost looks like campfire sparks up high and then all of a sudden it turns into like these streaks and then it just turns into fire you are literally on fire and it's like i think it's like 2600 degrees so it's you're cooking and you're praying that TPS, the thermal protection system,

Speaker 4 your protection on the belly is working.

Speaker 4 Because

Speaker 4 if any MMOD hit that stuff, you didn't know about it,

Speaker 4 well, you probably wouldn't find out. You just, you wouldn't survive it.

Speaker 4 And then you hit blackout and it's just, you're hauling ass.

Speaker 4 And it's shaking and you start to build up those g-forces again because you're slowing down. You're going from 17.5 down to like 350 miles an hour.
So this is just massive g-forces.

Speaker 4 So again, four and a half, but it's a lot longer. And the fact that you haven't been at G's on orbit,

Speaker 4 point two feels, whoa, I feel heavy. Four and a half.
It's like, okay,

Speaker 4 I don't know how long I can sustain this before I feel like I'm going to. pass out.

Speaker 4 You're so hyped up on adrenaline anyways.

Speaker 4 And then you're just watching the clock for certain milestones. You're looking for the drug chutes to come out.

Speaker 4 And then once the drug shoots come out, they'll pull the shoots eventually. And those are explosives.
So it's another big ol',

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 point of relief is, okay, the drugs are out. They look good.
They're not tangled or anything like that, like a parachute.

Speaker 4 And then the big moment is when those shoots come out and it's just a big old, it's almost like a car crash. It's just this, boom, big, four, four big shoots come out.

Speaker 4 And then now it's just a soft ride down.

Speaker 4 The impact is like a car crash, like a bender bender.

Speaker 4 It's pretty intense. That's why it's only built for water landings versus land.

Speaker 4 You'd break your back if you landed on the land.

Speaker 4 And then you're just trying to get used to gravity and you're bobbing you know um waiting for them to pull the recovery because again it's space x they got everything in top fashion they have this dedicated boat it's literally within a mile of where you splash down they know exactly where you're going to end up

Speaker 4 they pull that boat they send out special ops guys a bunch of pjs they all have military backgrounds they're on their jet skis wee and uh and their fast boats and they pull right up to the capsule.

Speaker 4 They

Speaker 4 do some sniff tests because

Speaker 4 hypergulls 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,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 slide you right up to a deck where the hatch is and they open the hatch.

Speaker 4 Doctors come in, check you over, give me a thumbs up because millions of people are watching the broadcast and you don't want to,

Speaker 4 when you step out or you can't stand up or for whatever reason, they check you out.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 fly you back for the reunion, the family reunion in the hangar.

Speaker 5 How was it to in your family?

Speaker 4 It was awesome. I think that was actually one of the highlights because it was, you know, getting emotional just thinking about it.
It's just like this

Speaker 4 relief

Speaker 4 knowing that she's at ease now. Because for me, I'm living and breathing.
Man, I'm, I'm on cloud nine. This is, this is, this is my jam.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 you know, from the launch to the spacewalk to the splashdown, it's just all these. And having to think about the inevitable, or not the inevitable, but

Speaker 4 God forbid, the worst thing that could happen, you know, having to live with that, thinking about it for years leading up to this,

Speaker 4 it was just kind of an emotional. It's over for her.

Speaker 5 Damn.

Speaker 5 Well, that's a hell of a journey, man.

Speaker 5 That is a hell of a journey.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's um

Speaker 4 It was only September 15th we splashed down launched on the 10th

Speaker 4 We were up there on the 11th

Speaker 4 September 11th talked to Folds of Honor in space, which was cool. We called Dan Rooney and a couple of the families

Speaker 4 the CEO so that was

Speaker 4 That was cool.

Speaker 4 Sarah did her music event and Anna wrote a book,

Speaker 4 a children's book for her kids. So she read that on Orbit.

Speaker 4 We all kind of got a little taste.

Speaker 5 Very interesting.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Is there anything I should have asked that I didn't ask?

Speaker 5 That was a lot.

Speaker 5 Well, you know, when we met at inauguration, you had offered to take me up at an F6.

Speaker 4 Oh, I did? You did.

Speaker 5 I'll settle for the first podcast in space.

Speaker 4 Oh, the first podcast in space. I think that is definitely

Speaker 4 right up your alley, man.

Speaker 4 That would be awesome. We got the connectivity for it, for sure.

Speaker 4 Yeah, shit. We could do it live.

Speaker 4 Why not?

Speaker 4 You got to pick your

Speaker 4 who would you interview? All right, let's turn the tables.

Speaker 4 Let me

Speaker 4 ask you questions. Who would you

Speaker 4 interview in space?

Speaker 5 Well, I mean, you know,

Speaker 5 Elon seems pretty fitting.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 5 but, man,

Speaker 5 that would be really something, wouldn't it?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 But.

Speaker 4 Would you go?

Speaker 4 Yeah. To space?

Speaker 4 That was actually one thing that

Speaker 4 upon reflection, getting down, you know, I'm trying to make sense of it all, and I keep on

Speaker 4 ego-wise or bring it back to myself. And what was it? What was the significance of it all? And blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 in the situation.

Speaker 4 And it's a

Speaker 5 hell no, there's no way I'll go.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 stop making it about yourself.

Speaker 4 It's so much more than that. It's about inspiring this next generation

Speaker 4 to want to go, to be that person.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Things are just evolving so fast. You know, I think it'll become the norm before I die

Speaker 2 if I live up.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 it's not just the moon and Mars. It's going to be low Earth orbit as well.
I mean, they're going to create habitable structures, whether it's a bunch of stars.

Speaker 4 The volume in a starship is equivalent to the ISS.

Speaker 4 So the entire structure of the ISS up there is the same as a starship.

Speaker 4 So now,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's crazy. It's mind-blowing how quickly they can build these rockets.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And again, these engineers are empowered to do that,

Speaker 4 you know, with

Speaker 4 the ability to take risk as needed. you know, safety always being the primary concern, to

Speaker 4 be able to create all these starships. and

Speaker 4 it will be, you know, reality when they're launching

Speaker 4 all the time. Yeah, constantly.
And now you take these starships, one of them. How about docking three, four of these together? And now you have three or four space stations up there.

Speaker 4 Create hotels and, you know,

Speaker 4 whatever.

Speaker 4 Research labs and 3D print some organs.

Speaker 5 It's a fascinating subject.

Speaker 5 I guess, you know,

Speaker 5 the new frontier.

Speaker 5 Well, Scott,

Speaker 5 what an interview, man.

Speaker 5 Covered a lot of ground there. And,

Speaker 5 man, it was an honor to sit here with you and

Speaker 5 learn about your life and got into some pretty deep discussions and talking about space and God and everything, man. It's been

Speaker 5 an honor. Thank you.

Speaker 4 Honor's mine, man. I just appreciate the opportunity.

Speaker 4 What you're doing is absolutely amazing. And

Speaker 4 all the power to you.

Speaker 4 I wish you a lot of success

Speaker 4 because you're changing lives and just getting the message out, whatever it might be. You know, it's,

Speaker 4 this is.

Speaker 4 This is the message that people need to hear. Not necessarily my story, but all the things and people you interview.
And,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And there's dozens and dozens more like DJ that you're allowing this opportunity. So

Speaker 4 we owe you the thanks, brother.

Speaker 5 It's cool to be able to do it.

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 5 All right, Scott. God bless, brother.
All right, brother.

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