The Art of Manliness - #654： How to Astronaut

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast if you grew up

00:00:11.260 in the 80s like me there's a good chance you really wanted to go to space camp and you really

00:00:14.980 wanted to be an astronaut probably had a lot of questions about what it was like to live in space

00:00:18.680 and if those questions were never answered or if you've forgotten the answers my guest today

00:00:22.500 tell you everything you ever wanted to know his name is colonel terry verts he's been to space

00:00:26.380 twice second time serving as commander of the international space station for 200 days terry

00:00:30.860 also helped in the imax movie a beautiful planet and is the author of how to astronaut an insider's

00:00:35.220 guide to leaving planet earth terry and i begin our conversation with the planning set in childhood to

00:00:39.060 becoming an astronaut via going to the air force academy and becoming a pilot we talk about how

00:00:43.520 long it took him to make it to space once he joined nasa the training he underwent for years which

00:00:47.600 required being a skill acquiring polymath and how aspects of that training which included flying

00:00:51.980 jets and wilderness survival courses didn't always directly correlate to his job as an astronaut

00:00:56.140 but we're still essential in being adept at it we also discussed the physical fitness training terry

00:01:00.320 did both before his missions and after leaving the earth and whether he suffered any long-term

00:01:04.060 health issues from being in space for so long from there we get into what a typical day is like

00:01:07.480 when you're floating through 16 sunsets including what space food looks like these days and whether

00:01:11.620 they're really eating astronaut ice cream up there what it's like to sleep while weightless and of

00:01:15.280 course the most burning of questions how do you go to the bathroom in space we then discuss the

00:01:19.320 importance of emotional and mental skills when you're living for months at a time in a space station and what it

00:01:23.620 was like to leave the station to take a spacewalk and see earth from above and we had our conversation

00:01:27.700 with how terry physically and psychologically adjusted to returning to earth whether yearns to

00:01:31.560 go back up again and what he thinks the future of space exploration holds consider this show the

00:01:35.940 stint at space camp your parents never signed off on or because you never won double dare when the prize

00:01:40.640 was a trip to space camp i always wanted that out of the show's over check out the show notes at

00:01:43.960 aom.is slash astronaut all right terry verts welcome to the show it is very good to be with

00:01:57.360 you guys so you are an astronaut an international space station commander and you got a book out

00:02:01.980 how to astronaut an insider's guide to leaving the planet earth but i love about this was a fun read

00:02:07.800 because it answers all those questions that you had when you were a kid about what's it like to work

00:02:12.120 in outer space what's it like to be an astronaut but also i think the big takeaway that i got from

00:02:17.120 this book as i read it as an adult and how i could apply this i mean obviously i probably won't go to

00:02:21.880 space who knows elon musk might make that happen for me he might but it's like right he might but

00:02:26.420 this idea of skill acquisition like i was just really impressed with how many things you had to

00:02:30.520 learn as an astronaut so before we get into that let's talk about your career as an astronaut how long

00:02:35.580 you've been an astronaut and what missions have you flown right so i showed up at nasa in 2000

00:02:41.260 and i actually left in 2016 so i left a few years ago and i flew two missions during that time i went

00:02:47.360 up on spatial endeavor on a two-week flight and then i went back a few years later with the russians on

00:02:53.760 a soyuz for expedition 42 and 43 and that was a 200 day flight so spent a little over seven months in

00:02:59.840 space total and so let's talk about how is this something you always want to do as a kid because i

00:03:04.060 know every kid probably had that i want to be an astronaut moment when they're asked in second grade

00:03:08.060 like did you have that and you like set a plan like i'm gonna this is what i'm gonna do this

00:03:11.860 and do this and do this next to become an astronaut i did so it is a as a little kid i was just

00:03:18.300 fascinated i read a book about apollo that was the first book i ever read so i grew up with posters of

00:03:23.300 airplanes and rockets and galaxies and you know that's what covered my room all the walls in my room

00:03:29.280 and i read a book called the right stuff when i was 13 and that really showed the way you know the

00:03:34.740 early astronauts had been fighter pilots and test pilots and went to nasa and so i didn't know

00:03:40.660 anything about it i was the first you know my mom and dad didn't go to college and i was kind of the

00:03:44.780 first person in this career path and so i taught myself the stuff i needed to do and it started off

00:03:52.100 at the air force academy i was an f-16 pilot and eventually an astronaut no yeah i was i saw that you

00:03:57.060 went to the air force i remember when i was a kid i had that plan i was like i'm gonna go to the

00:04:00.100 air force academy and become a fighter pilot so i can become an astronaut i remember i had this moment

00:04:04.600 i went to the air force academy and they were talking about like what it takes to be and i think

00:04:08.140 i was like 13 i was like yeah i don't know if this is for me and that killed it definitely it's a

00:04:13.940 good place to be from right not necessarily a good place to be at but uh yeah it was just it was

00:04:20.900 one of the steps along the way and i mean i'm so thankful i went there but you brought up an

00:04:25.320 interesting point people always say how long does it take to be an astronaut how long is the training

00:04:31.020 and the you know you when you get to nasa you're an ask can they want to make you feel special so

00:04:36.920 you're an astronaut candidate they call you an ask can so you do that for about a year and a half or

00:04:42.020 so but the reality is it's a lifelong process it's a lifetime of learning it started when i was a

00:04:48.120 little kid you know my parents supported me that i got a telescope they didn't know anything

00:04:52.020 about it so i had to teach myself how to use a telescope i got a camera they weren't photographers

00:04:56.360 so i had to learn focus and exposure and all that stuff they got me a trs80 computer when i was a

00:05:02.040 little kid well probably in middle school i guess so i had to teach myself basic because the computer

00:05:07.300 wouldn't do anything there was no memory or anything so you turn it on and if you wrote a

00:05:11.060 program it would do something other than that it just didn't do anything so i had to teach myself

00:05:15.240 basic so that learning to learn you know and enjoying learning started when i was a little

00:05:21.680 kid and it's still going on today and it's really a lifelong process it's not just like one specific

00:05:28.460 career path well it seems like one of the big skills you have to have as an astronaut is learning

00:05:33.420 how to learn like that metacognition that meta learning it's like i said it's lifelong it's so

00:05:38.900 important and there's a lot of professions where there's a specific thing you do like if you want to be a

00:05:43.700 dentist you go there's a path you learn your training and then you kind of do the same thing

00:05:49.400 forever if you're an accountant you go through business school and you pass the cpa and you know

00:05:55.160 you probably do the same thing forever but when you're an astronaut it's not like in star trek where

00:06:00.560 everybody has a different color shirt and you know that you know the red guys are gonna go get

00:06:04.740 killed by the aliens and the yellow guys in charge and the blue guys the doctor that's because they had

00:06:09.900 100 people on enterprise right for the space station we only had a handful of people so everybody had to

00:06:15.060 do everything i was the crew medical officer i was the dentist i did a filling in space it was the first

00:06:19.440 ever filling i did you know maintenance on equipment i did spacewalks i did 250 different experiments on

00:06:25.320 science experiments and i'm not a phd even if you are a phd if you're the world's expert in you know

00:06:31.720 genetic microbiology whatever there may be one experiment in that that that'll be great for you

00:06:37.200 but the other 249 you're not a phd in and so my point is astronauts have to be very broad based

00:06:44.200 like you have to be able to be reasonably good at everything you don't have to be the world's expert

00:06:48.880 really in anything but it is definitely a different skill set than than many normal jobs i think so you

00:06:54.820 said you joined nasa in 2000 how long did it take you before you went on your your first mission

00:06:59.400 great question forever so there were several things that built that first of all nasa just hired way

00:07:06.040 too many people between 95 and 2000 they hired 125 astronauts because we're building the space

00:07:11.680 station and the space shuttle is flying seven people at a time and all this stuff was going on

00:07:15.900 well they had some mechanical problems that really slowed down the shuttle flight rate and then the

00:07:21.700 columbia accident happened the tragedy and that slowed things down by a couple years and then nasa

00:07:27.020 management decided that space station flights were so complicated that only experienced astronauts could

00:07:32.360 fly on them so the rookies just ground to a halt so for folks in my class in the class before me

00:07:38.320 i think everybody waited somewhere between eight and 12 years to fly so it was a long wait but it was

00:07:44.620 worth it i mean it was the most amazing experience you can imagine but it was definitely a long wait

00:07:49.060 and you know you just you had to keep your head up and of all the things that people suffer in the

00:07:55.760 world you know working at nasa as an astronaut waiting to fly is not the worst and so um you know all of us

00:08:02.160 ended up surviving that and and the wait was worth it and i mean what did you do during that time so

00:08:07.080 what kind of training do you do when you're training for a mission that you don't know if it's even

00:08:11.140 going to happen right well there's some specific things like rendezvous training that was something

00:08:15.980 that we had to go through as a shuttle pilot i had to learn that spacewalk training as a pilot

00:08:20.960 the shuttle pilots didn't do spacewalks but that i really wanted to do the training and so they let

00:08:25.620 they let me do it there were several others one of the biggest was a capcom training and so i would

00:08:32.280 go to mission control and work is what you call capcom that's the person in mission control that

00:08:38.000 talks to the crew so there's the flight control team the flight director is the boss he's in charge

00:08:42.160 of everybody all the different flight controllers or the engineers that track each specific system

00:08:47.440 and then the capcom is a separate person that does the talking and so the flight control team kind

00:08:52.860 of figures out what's going on and then the capcom is the is the translator between mission control and

00:08:58.960 the crew so i did that for years i had several other jobs i was in charge of our t-38 program the the

00:09:04.760 jets that we fly i worked as a support astronaut for some guys that were going into space and so there's

00:09:10.320 a variety of jobs you do but the i mean the best job to have is to be training for an actual spaceflight

00:09:15.500 well let's talk about the t-38s i didn't really know much about this these are the jets that you guys the

00:09:19.940 pilots used to train for spaceflight but like what's the correlation there because flying on earth

00:09:25.560 right is completely different from flying in space yeah so it's the most important training we do and

00:09:30.980 you're exactly right like landing a t-38 the stick and rudder skills that you need has nothing to do

00:09:36.800 with spaceflight but what does have to do with spaceflight is something called situational awareness which

00:09:41.860 is just kind of maintaining sa on what's happening now on what's going to be happening in the future

00:09:48.520 we call it staying ahead of the jet so if your airplane's flying along at 300 knots or 500 knots

00:09:54.120 your brain has to be in front of that you know thinking about where are we going to be how much

00:09:58.580 gas are we going to have what's the weather going to be is the runway okay to land it is shut down for

00:10:03.840 some reason and so this mental process of staying ahead of the jet just thinking in the future is

00:10:10.920 really important while your pink butt is on the line so in a simulator if you crash the shuttle

00:10:15.940 you hit the pause button you crawl out and you go to lunch in a t-38 you can't do that like if unless

00:10:21.740 you land safely you don't land safely and so that that training is all about the mental aspect of

00:10:28.700 flying we call it head work or just keeping sa like i talked about and that's the best flying jets

00:10:34.820 and airplanes in general is the best spaceflight readiness training i think well you mentioned flight

00:10:40.580 simulators and like if people seen apollo 13 they remember that that famous scene where they just kept

00:10:45.140 doing the simulations over and over again where they just tried different things different

00:10:48.180 malfunctions and they do that i mean so like how long do you like when you're preparing for a mission

00:10:54.140 like how much of your time was spent in the simulator all of it not all of it but a lot of it and it's the

00:11:01.440 long wait that i had before my first shuttle flight it was actually pretty good because as a pilot i got

00:11:06.420 very comfortable with lots and lots of different malfunctions and the space shuttle was incredibly

00:11:12.020 complicated it's it's the most amazing flying machine most complicated flying machine man has

00:11:16.680 ever built for sure and just being able to get comfortable with all the different computer

00:11:22.800 malfunctions and electrical malfunctions and engine problems and all the stuff that our simulator

00:11:27.980 supervisors i think i wrote a chapter about that they would dream up and throw throw the kitchen sink

00:11:33.100 at us and so having that time and spending hours in the sim was really good the most important part

00:11:38.680 about it wasn't actually doing it it was actually debriefing it and that's the lesson i do a lot

00:11:43.500 of corporate speaking and that's one of the most important lessons to learn is that you really need

00:11:47.640 to debrief whatever you're doing if you're running a bank or you're making investment decisions or

00:11:52.580 you're building you know construction homes or whatever when you're done with something you can't

00:11:57.640 just go well that was that was great move on the next thing you really should take some time to

00:12:01.020 debrief it honestly because that's the only way you get better as a fighter pilot that's you know part of the

00:12:06.080 culture ingrained from day one the gloves come off there's no rank in the debrief you you know

00:12:12.140 debrief should be brutal and honest and not just to tear someone down but to get better and not make

00:12:17.880 the same mistakes again right after action reports i've heard them called after action reports in the

00:12:22.600 military we called that's what they were called after action reports yeah very very important and and

00:12:27.240 again don't do it just to kill people and fire people but do it to you know get better and and learn

00:12:32.660 from mistakes right because you have to do that because the risk is really high with space flight

00:12:37.380 with space flight it is and you know one of the lessons that i that i really teach when i do this

00:12:42.480 consulting is that just because something worked doesn't mean you made the right decision you know i'm a

00:12:48.540 baseball guy right just because you bunted with the bases loaded and your slugger up to bat

00:12:52.720 and he got a hit doesn't mean that was the right decision right he probably should have swung away

00:12:56.320 just because you flew the space shuttle for 20 years with foam falling off and it never killed

00:13:00.720 anybody doesn't mean it was the right decision it was the wrong decision and eventually did kill the

00:13:05.140 columbia crew for challenger just because you've been launching and there was gas leaking from the

00:13:10.200 solid rocket booster and it never killed anybody it was the wrong decision because it killed the

00:13:14.740 challenger crew and so nasa's made some really spectacular mistakes that killed crews and that lesson

00:13:21.080 of uh so you really have to debrief it for did we make the right decision not was it the right outcome

00:13:26.000 a lot of businesses will compensate executives based on stock performance right if your stock

00:13:31.280 goes up you get a bonus well your stock might have gone up because it's 2018 or your stock might have

00:13:38.020 gone down because it's 2009 or 2020 that doesn't mean you're a good manager or bad manager it just

00:13:43.660 means that the calendar is what it is and so you have to look deeper like were you making the right

00:13:48.940 decisions not what was the ultimate outcome because sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you get

00:13:55.680 unlucky i'm a baseball fan the astros have been getting extremely unlucky against the tampa bay

00:14:01.040 rays and they just need to keep doing what they're doing because they're doing the right thing

00:14:04.400 so that concept of debriefing things and not doing it based on the outcome but based on were you making

00:14:11.360 the right decisions is really really important for fighter pilots and for astronauts and for anybody in

00:14:16.240 business one of the interesting chapters that i i mean it was pretty substantial too is about survival

00:14:21.120 training for astronauts and i was thinking why why would you like go to alaska to learn like how to

00:14:25.180 survive in the wilds but it makes sense uh like so what contingency are you planning for there as an

00:14:30.060 astronaut and besides this like physical survival what did the the survival training what other skills

00:14:34.840 did impart to you right so that's a great point well first of all that chapter is half what it was

00:14:40.400 originally i wrote a really long chapter i had to cut it in half and there's there's two parts of the

00:14:45.180 survival training that i had to do in my career one was survival training i mean like as an air force

00:14:50.400 pilot if you eject over enemy lines you had to survive and you had to evade and then if you got

00:14:56.900 captured you had to resist and so the the training is called siri survival of asian resistance and escape

00:15:02.960 and and i did that with the air force and then i did it again with the french air force because i was

00:15:07.620 on exchange with them and then i did part of it with the u.s navy because nasa sent us to do the same

00:15:12.980 thing when we showed up to be astronauts but then and then with the russian military i also did winter

00:15:18.480 survival and water survival in case the soyuz landed in the snow or in the ocean so i did all these

00:15:25.160 different survival training but then nasa sent us on a program called knolls national outdoor leadership

00:15:30.560 school and that was not necessarily this for survival skills it was more for the emotional mental

00:15:36.200 aspect of being in a remote situation having to take care of yourself leadership and group dynamics

00:15:43.240 and debriefing and giving each other feedback and their real goal of knolls was just to make us as

00:15:48.600 miserable as possible so that we would kind of learn the you know you get to know each other on the

00:15:55.360 second time i did this trip it rained every day for almost two weeks and so and by every day i mean like

00:16:01.500 all day every day 24 7 so you kind of get to know each other pretty well when you're suffering like

00:16:07.740 that and so there's really two different reasons a to survive and b to have this emotional group

00:16:14.520 dynamics you know how do you get along when when life is tough and they were all really good and the

00:16:20.420 experiences in the mountains in the alaska prince william sound kayaking is beautiful i mean unless you

00:16:27.200 sometimes you just need to get away from suburbia where i'm guessing most of your podcast

00:16:31.220 listeners are that's where i am right and uh just get out and turn your phone off and and look at

00:16:36.520 nature so did you do this this knolls thing with the people you would go up on your mission with

00:16:40.980 well yes with the it was supposed to be with more of them and then they ended up

00:16:46.860 the crew changed but i did there were one or two folks i think there were two other folks that

00:16:52.620 i went with and the other six or seven ended up not being together but and that was the original plan

00:16:59.500 we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show so another

00:17:06.600 part of this preparation when you get ready for a mission you go into detail about in the book

00:17:10.600 is getting physically fit for it you might be thinking well you're in zero g there's no like

00:17:16.060 stress on your body but like you talk about space like zero g actually puts a lot of stress

00:17:21.020 on your body um so like what's the physical fitness programming looking like what are you training

00:17:25.800 for exactly when you train for going into outer space right that so ironically you're right the

00:17:32.040 pull-ups are easier in space but everything else is harder so you want to be just generally fit you

00:17:39.360 know good cardiovascular you want to have muscles a lot of weight lifting and running anything where

00:17:46.400 you're pounding your body is good for your bones because when bones get compression and when they get

00:17:51.540 pounded they grow when they are complacent and laying around and floating in zero g they deteriorate

00:17:58.560 they shrink you know the you have bone loss so just basic fitness is one of the things a specific

00:18:05.300 reason to do the physical fitness training is for spacewalking and especially hand strength and

00:18:09.520 forearm strength because you're you move with your hands and you do all your tasks with your hands

00:18:14.320 and you're in this big giant bulky couple hundred pound pressurized spacesuit that feels like metal

00:18:20.500 and it's really hard to move and so it's like having those balls that you can squeeze for stress

00:18:26.620 relief or whatever for exercise at your desk for eight hours while you're in the suit and so you're

00:18:31.740 especially your hands and fingers can get worn out so the most important part of physical fitness was

00:18:36.820 just to keep your body healthy and to prevent bone and muscle loss and we do a lot of exercise in

00:18:41.860 space we in in space there's a two and a half hour allotment every day of time for you to exercise

00:18:47.840 and so i was really diligent about that before they measured my bone density before the mission

00:18:53.460 with this big x-ray machine called a dexa scan and then after my mission 200 days in space

00:18:58.820 and i had lost 0.0 percent of my overall bone density which was amazing to me and the doctors were

00:19:06.180 really surprised but basically by doing diligent exercise every day and i took a vitamin d pill every

00:19:14.340 day those two things kept my bones in good shape my muscles were in good shape there was a little

00:19:19.520 bit of muscle loss but i did 20 pull-ups the week i got back you know i i came back in really good

00:19:25.440 physical shape so bones and muscles that those problems have been solved in my opinion by the

00:19:31.060 space station by the protocols we've learned on the iss so like resistance training how do you do this

00:19:35.680 like just like is it like a bow flex type thing like you use resistance bands okay yeah okay uh in the

00:19:40.820 the imax movie i made a beautiful planet there's a there's a scene of samantha my crewmate samantha

00:19:46.140 christopher reddy exercising so it's like a bow flex except for the bow flex uses just springs basically

00:19:52.660 you know you bend metal and that creates force in space they have these cylinders so it's a it's like

00:19:59.260 a vacuum tube and you you're pulling against the vacuum and you can make a lot of force i mean

00:20:04.420 for uh deadlifts and squats i think you could go up to 600 pounds i never did but i mean that's

00:20:11.560 dangerous i mean you could like crush yourself under that thing so you have right you really have to be

00:20:16.420 careful uh in in the you could do bench press and squats and deadlifts and crunches and curls and

00:20:23.180 all the the basic stuff you do in high school football you know you can do in space and it works

00:20:28.060 like i said i came back and and it's kind of like going to a spa i mean if you eat healthy there's

00:20:34.980 no mcdonald's right so it it's reasonably healthy food and you do two and a half hours of exercise

00:20:40.220 every day for half of the year i came back in in great shape i mean no fat you know i was muscular

00:20:46.300 it was it was pretty good i mean so you came out in good shape but did you have any health issues

00:20:51.800 while in space yeah the the biggest thing for me was cancer i got skin cancer after my shuttle flight

00:20:58.380 and then again after my space station flight and i've still in fact i just had to set up my

00:21:02.340 dermatology appointment because i got some some coming back so uh i think that's just a life

00:21:07.520 after my space flights that's something i'm just gonna have to deal with for the rest of my life

00:21:10.940 because of radiation you know in space even though that you're still protected by the magnetic field

00:21:16.220 for the most part you're not protected by the atmosphere and you get this stuff called

00:21:21.500 galactic cosmic radiation that are really super high energy particles that they can mess with

00:21:27.680 dna and your cells and nasa really doesn't know how it affects us at all they they don't do like a

00:21:33.520 before and after check of our dna that really kind of blew me away i thought that there'd be a lot of

00:21:38.900 research in that because it's it's really the one and only problem it's it's the 700 pound gorilla

00:21:45.040 as far as longer duration human flights into the deep solar system is cancer and nasa's not

00:21:51.100 studying it at all they do measure how much radiation we get but they don't measure the

00:21:55.340 effects of that radiation on our dna so i think that's of all the questions that still need to be

00:22:00.360 answered how does radiation affect us and trying to test out different ways to block it is probably

00:22:05.680 the top question that needs to be answered well okay skin cancer you're dealing with that's a big

00:22:09.960 one but i didn't know this about space travel but like other astronauts get like just like rashes

00:22:15.180 and just other stuff just happens their skin that's like it's it's kind of it looks kind of

00:22:19.700 gross it's uncomfortable i mean it doesn't like it's not affecting their health right it sounds

00:22:23.440 like it's uncomfortable and the rashes are interesting just about everybody i know has

00:22:27.600 some kind of skin problem and it's interesting and i was doing another interview with a med school this

00:22:33.760 morning and they asked me that same question i don't know why there is a different kind of biome

00:22:39.220 on the space station so there's different kind of funguses and stuff floating around up there

00:22:42.920 your body is just behaving differently you know different hormones and organs are acting differently

00:22:49.300 so maybe that is part of it contributing i don't know i think and i'm just a fighter pilot i'm no

00:22:54.340 doctor but i think the lack of soap is a problem nasa did give me some soap but not very much you get

00:23:01.040 like a bag of soap once every two weeks like i think capri sun you know the little juice boxes or

00:23:07.480 something imagine having a juice box full of soap that you could squirt into a towel and wipe yourself

00:23:12.160 down well they were only giving it to us every two weeks so that's not a lot of soap and we had

00:23:17.060 some like camping towels these little small towels that they had some soap in them so there was some

00:23:22.740 soap i just think if you had a better cleanliness that might help and i was the crew medical officer

00:23:27.940 so i was handing out you know supplies drugs and stuff when when they were needed but we really

00:23:33.000 didn't have any good like skin cream and stuff so if somebody had a problem the nasa docs would go to

00:23:38.320 the pharmacy pick something out and put it on the next cargo ship so a few months later you'd get a

00:23:42.620 tube of cream for whatever yeah that that was a weird one i didn't really expect it but the skin

00:23:48.220 rashes like you said that's not you know life-threatening and you get back to earth and that ends but that

00:23:52.940 was that was kind of an annoyance of space flight well you brought this point of hygiene and how there

00:23:58.100 might be a different biome up there because i think people typically think when they think of like okay

00:24:01.980 space station they think of like stanley kubrick or like an like it's like super clean and sleek

00:24:06.940 and it's like an apple device but the way you describe it a space station smells like a locker

00:24:11.820 room basically well the in a lot of places the when you work out it does for the most part of that

00:24:19.320 for the most part the station is you know metal and plastic and that kind of stuff but your the gym

00:24:26.140 clothes like your under armor t-shirts and stuff those things get pretty stinky after about a day or two

00:24:30.140 although i did this one experiment for this wool infused fabric just think of an under armor t-shirt

00:24:37.420 only with wool and less polyester and i was worried that it would just itch and i would hate it but oh

00:24:43.580 my god that shirt was amazing i worked out every day drenching wet like just imagine going for a 30

00:24:49.000 minute run in the houston humidity how sweaty you'd be that's the way i got every single day

00:24:53.980 in this shirt for every day for a month and it didn't stank at all it was amazing like i couldn't

00:24:59.120 believe this technology but the station itself it's not 2001 stanley kubrick it's um it is like you

00:25:07.660 said it is plastic and sterile materials but there's so many wires and cables and laptops and boxes and

00:25:15.960 cameras and there's just so much stuff there the clutter factor is pretty high if you're like a

00:25:22.480 ocd neat freak it's gonna make your head explode because there's a lot of stuff just everywhere

00:25:28.800 well let's talk about a typical day you mentioned you had two and a half hours a day allotted for

00:25:34.100 exercise like how so what did your typical day look like when did it start and like how do you manage

00:25:39.600 like time in space when right you know you might experience multiple sunrises and sunsets

00:25:44.840 so the 16 of them a day you go around the earth 16 times every 24 hour period so lots of sunrises

00:25:53.440 and sunsets but basically we had an omega x33 watch and it had like every feature you could imagine it's

00:26:01.540 the most it's the coolest watch and so we set that to gmt so basically you know london time and the day

00:26:09.460 would start about 7 30 in the morning we'd have a conference call with houston and moscow and japan

00:26:15.320 and europe and huntsville alabama which is where the the payloads the nasa science has done out of

00:26:20.700 huntsville we call everybody they you know give us the debriefing and then we'd go work and you work

00:26:27.120 all day long a couple hours of exercise they normally give you an hour break at some point to

00:26:32.600 check your email and eat lunch and whatever by the end of the day you're done around seven o'clock at

00:26:38.040 night and you have another conference call everybody houston moscow talk to everybody on earth

00:26:42.380 and then you're done and then you could make dinner for me by the end of the day i'd usually have three

00:26:47.600 or four or five or ten little compact flash cards for my camera so i would eat my dinner and then get

00:26:53.980 to work downloading all those images that i'd taken maybe go take a few more images we had picasa was our

00:27:00.700 software that they had for us and so you know i'd look over the images see what was good if i found a good

00:27:06.220 one i i emailed i had a guy at nasa that did my twitter for me so i would send him images and tell

00:27:12.140 him what to tweet and and he would do you know he would log on and actually tweet it so i would send

00:27:16.960 him the tweets and he would mechanically tweet it and then i was always up super late samantha and i

00:27:21.720 were both late night people that our crewmates were all early morning kind of guys which actually

00:27:27.640 worked out well because they would a lot of times wake up early and get their exercise done early

00:27:32.220 and that freed up the exercise equipment for us is because we were night owls and so and then do it

00:27:37.280 again the next day usually got about six or seven hours of sleep a night so by the weekend i was

00:27:42.240 exhausted and sundays i just didn't set an alarm and i'd sleep until 11 o'clock or noon or something

00:27:48.200 like that and catch up on my sleep and then get back to work on monday okay so you mentioned a lot

00:27:53.020 of things that i think it'd be fun to talk about because this is like the stuff that people want about

00:27:56.300 living in outer space so you mentioned food you had dinner i think when people think space food they

00:28:01.300 think of like for me i go back to elementary school and like the tubes of like spaghetti and a toothpaste

00:28:07.400 tube or astronaut ice cream i'd buy right has that has it improved since the 80s so astronaut ice cream

00:28:16.000 for me was ben and jerry's so they have these freezers for biology experiments so as blood and urine and

00:28:22.780 saliva and and rodents and plants and worms and all the different biology experiments we do we freeze them

00:28:29.580 send them back to earth so when they launched the the freezers they were empty and so they would

00:28:35.940 fill them up with ice on one of the missions they put some ice cream in there which was super cool

00:28:39.580 so i got a picture of chunky monkey floating in the middle of the lab it's a great picture

00:28:44.040 so that i the astronaut ice cream you get at the science center is not we don't have that for real

00:28:49.420 most of the food if you were ever in the military or you see those little green bags of food they're

00:28:55.380 called mres we have the same thing so basically mres you rip it open and eat it you can warm it up if

00:29:01.540 you want you don't have to and it's meat potatoes and soup and vegetables and desserts just ready to

00:29:08.100 go the other type of food we have is dehydrated so then there's a food lab here in houston and the

00:29:14.020 ladies that work there will they cook all different kinds of meat and potatoes and vegetables and fruits

00:29:19.340 and dehydrate them we stick it into a machine in space fill it back up with water and wait about 10

00:29:25.660 minutes and it turns into food and so those are kind of the two main types of food there's also some

00:29:31.380 just straight from the grocery store so they would send us some bonus stuff like little bags of olives

00:29:37.420 or tuna fish or candy i like chocolate so beth turner was her name the support lady i had would send me

00:29:45.200 lots of chocolate so that's kind of the food and at nighttime i would whenever i could i would take

00:29:50.460 my dinner warm it up put it in a big ziploc and float down to the russian segment where those guys

00:29:55.440 were and have dinner with them because it's very easy for them to work on their modules we work on

00:30:00.900 our modules and we never see each other and i really wanted to have one crew so i made it a point to go

00:30:06.680 down and spend as much time as i could with with my russian colleagues and that was the highlight of my

00:30:10.400 time in space was hanging out with those guys we had we had a lot of fun for sure it sounds like

00:30:14.540 there was some bartering too of food between the two countries it was yeah well it it worked out

00:30:19.700 really well because i started this bag i wrote down like uneaten food so stuff that we didn't like

00:30:25.940 and on the american side and by american it means not russian uh japanese and europeans whatever so

00:30:34.480 whatever we didn't like like the curry vegetables i just couldn't take we had 500 000 things of coffee

00:30:40.600 it was too much there there was just a few foods that we didn't like and every week or two weeks

00:30:47.860 those guys would the russians would come down and raid that bag and they basically ate everything that

00:30:52.360 we didn't like they liked it and we would go down there and we would get fish from them like we didn't

00:30:56.840 have any fish on our side it was weird they had so many like cans of fish and meat and they got tired

00:31:03.280 of eating cans canned meat for three meals a day but we loved it so it was actually a really good

00:31:09.080 system it gave they got some variety we got some variety and as far as i know for 200 days no one

00:31:14.820 ever threw any food away we just ate the other guy's food and it worked out really well so you

00:31:20.200 mentioned sleep was sleeping a problem like did you like have problems staying asleep on the space station

00:31:25.380 i was worried about that and i didn't my sleep in space was so good i mean i just was out and slept

00:31:33.840 perfectly in fact i did an experiment on the shuttle and uh it was before there was apple watches and

00:31:39.220 fitbits they had this uh they call it an acti watch and my sleep on earth was kind of you know up and

00:31:45.660 down and up and down and a little fitful in space it was just flat line you know i was out so sleeping in

00:31:51.340 space is awesome there's something that's so cool about floating we each had our crew quarters which

00:31:56.100 was super important psychologically so i would just zip myself up in my sleeping bag and float i wasn't

00:32:01.120 attached to anything i was literally just floating in this little phone booth size thing and it was so

00:32:06.020 awesome it was really cool did you have like space lag when you first got up there on my shuttle flight we

00:32:13.480 had sleep shifted so we spent about a week or two transitioning our our wake-up time it was like a 12

00:32:20.480 hour sleep shift it was painful so we were i was kind of already adjusted to the new schedule

00:32:25.780 and the way the russians do it you don't sleep shift you just pull an all-nighter and you slam

00:32:31.400 shift once you get there so but it didn't it wasn't a problem i just felt falling asleep was was easy now

00:32:37.080 i felt dizzy i felt terrible so on my first flight on my second flight when i went back my brain was

00:32:42.660 used to it it knew what space was but on my first flight it took me about two days to get adjusted to

00:32:47.560 the dizziness let's talk about going to the bathroom because the thing i remember going to

00:32:51.880 bathroom space i think it's from space camp for that 1980 i just remember like the vacuum cleaner

00:32:56.660 and i'm like i don't know that i don't know about that is that what it's still like

00:33:00.960 it's all about airflow yeah it is i mean you know if there's not airflow there's no gravity to keep

00:33:09.000 everything going in the right direction so airflow is the is the secret sauce that makes sure

00:33:13.440 everything moves in the right direction so yeah that's that's what does it there's a hose for

00:33:17.960 number one and a can for number two but the key parts of both of those are airflow so there's like

00:33:23.040 an emergency procedure if the fan stops when you're in the middle of it you gotta you know shut the

00:33:28.300 hatch immediately and do a couple things that's a that's an emergency procedure you want to have

00:33:33.500 memorized you don't want to have to get the checklist out in case the fan died in the middle of your

00:33:37.980 operation and like what happens to the like the waste like particularly the number two is there

00:33:42.640 like like latrine duty like in boy scouts where you had to clean things up the the basic handshake

00:33:49.120 was when the can's full you empty it so it's just like for food when the food bags empty you trash it

00:33:56.980 and get it go get a new one out and that takes it's a pain you got to go dig around it's a 10 or 15

00:34:01.200 minute thing but the the toilet can was so the urine the hose goes into a recycling system and

00:34:09.480 the american segment has this amazing water reclamation system so which is amazing it saves

00:34:17.340 a lot of money because it's probably 40 or 50 thousand dollars per liter of water so it's very

00:34:23.480 expensive to launch it so the recycling is super important but number two just goes in a can

00:34:29.040 it's a russian kteo can and you seal it torque it down with a torque wrench and put it in this big

00:34:36.240 giant bag like it's bigger than a washing machine full of these poop cans and then every few months

00:34:43.360 a progress which is a russian cargo ship would go you know deliver us supplies we'd fill it up with

00:34:49.660 trash and it would go back to earth and so and burn up in the atmosphere so if you ever see one of

00:34:55.080 these vehicles burning up and there's there's you know streaks of fire across the sky you'll know

00:35:01.760 you'll know what that what that fire is made there is poop there yes that is poop i'm going to tell my

00:35:07.700 son that he'll get a kick out of that so i mean i imagine like yeah people who become astronauts they're

00:35:12.480 very intelligent they're skilled they're masters of what they do when they're crafting they're trained

00:35:17.320 there's like one component that it's hard to train for maybe it's like the psychological component

00:35:23.020 like what psychological toll does can space travel have on people this is actually becoming more of a

00:35:29.040 concern as we're thinking about going to mars or whatever right i think it's the biggest issue and

00:35:34.580 and that's why nasa sent us on those nulls experiences i i think it's a very big deal part of it is just

00:35:42.080 your personality you know some people are laid back some people can roll with punches some people are

00:35:46.000 uptight and in in the movies you always have the screaming astronauts and do this and get over here now

00:35:51.420 blah blah blah that's not the guy that you want to fly into space with you'd rather have the calm

00:35:56.180 you know not get flustered kind of personality but you need to learn how to have feedback with each

00:36:02.280 other that's not terrible you know like hey can you stop doing this it's really bugging me

00:36:07.760 because otherwise they'll keep doing it it'll really bug you and it could turn into an explosion

00:36:12.120 and you don't want that so i actually did a program at harvard business school years and years ago

00:36:17.200 and that was the best space station commander training i ever had that semester i spent at

00:36:22.400 harvard because they spent a lot of time on that fuzzy soft skills that you know especially as guys

00:36:27.100 is i was a fighter pilot i'm like just put me in charge everything will be good that's all we need

00:36:31.320 to worry about before i did the program at harvard and then afterwards i realized hey you know what if

00:36:36.240 you have a group if you have a team there's you could probably make have make better decisions if you

00:36:41.200 use your team properly and feedback was a big part of that so that was definitely a learning and

00:36:46.540 maturing experience for me but i was lucky the crew i had when i was commander on expedition 43

00:36:51.580 the crew was really good and we got along well and there was problems of course and but nothing big and

00:36:58.140 the as a as a group we're still good friends to this day which is pretty awesome so you got to do

00:37:03.840 a spacewalk which isn't you said it's not very common for pilots to do yeah what was that like

00:37:09.100 experience i mean was did you have that sort of like you know a spiritual existential on spine

00:37:14.040 experience i had this one moment 99 of it was work i never felt so on the clock i mean it's worse

00:37:21.480 than nfl draft because it's dangerous like you want to get back in as soon as you can and i just didn't

00:37:29.060 have any time at all and so there was this one moment i i'd finished we were plugging in cables and i was

00:37:35.700 done with mine i was waiting on my partner and i stopped and i i just turned around and i had had

00:37:41.740 a face full of metal for hours i mean even though you're in space you're looking at the station you're

00:37:46.940 plugging in equipment that's what you're focused on so i turned around and the sun was rising and it was

00:37:52.180 this from one side of my peripheral vision to the other was the earth limb with the thin atmosphere

00:37:58.360 and it was going from blue and then it turns this orange red pink you know rainbow of colors it was

00:38:06.180 so gorgeous it was like i could hear god and i was seeing something that humans weren't meant to see

00:38:13.080 and then i had to get back to work because i had to plug in my next cable so it was like

00:38:17.320 the most extreme sublime to mundane swing you can imagine and that's the way space travel was from my

00:38:25.520 first minutes on my first shuttle flight all the way through seven months in space i would have these

00:38:29.920 99 working on boring metal equipment boxes to i'm seeing god here you know it was it was really quite

00:38:39.640 an emotional swing but it was pretty awesome and seeing that outside while i'm actually out in space

00:38:45.040 was amazing well it's kind of comforting because i think uh because that's like life on earth like

00:38:49.980 you'll have moments where it's just like oh this is amazing right you see you're a child born or

00:38:54.020 something and then it's just the next the next thing the next minute you're picking a social

00:38:57.540 security number for your kid and whatever it's that's that's what space is like so that's what

00:39:03.720 life's like okay it is oh i mean and like when you got back from space for you're there for 200 days

00:39:09.760 it sounds like you didn't like physical like adaptation getting back wasn't too bad nothing not too much

00:39:15.200 muscle deterioration no bone deterioration did you have any problems adjusting back to gravity

00:39:21.420 the biggest thing for me i felt heavy you know i felt really heavy and i was super super super dizzy

00:39:27.940 i was able to walk around i was able to move around i you know i didn't get sick or anything

00:39:32.300 but i felt like it if i would have just shook my head i would have barfed for sure and i always

00:39:37.420 wanted either a handrail or somebody next to me i never fell but it sure did feel like i was going to

00:39:43.160 the first day back was like a couple bottles of wine the second day back was like a bottle of wine

00:39:48.520 i mean i was pretty busy the third day back was like a couple glasses of wine i landed in kazakhstan

00:39:55.260 24 hours later in three flights on a business jet i was back in houston i went right to the gym to do

00:40:01.940 my rehab and then my son had gotten his driver's license while i was in space and so he he said hey

00:40:08.040 dad let's go car shopping so we he drove he took me to the ford dealer and we looked at pickup trucks

00:40:13.540 and i remember thinking i'm back on earth and it's great like i was worried that i'd be depressed and

00:40:18.400 i'd miss it and i didn't at all it was just great to be back on earth so i thought it was going to be

00:40:25.800 a psychological problem it wasn't and the the dizziness only took a few days do you do you still

00:40:31.260 have like a i mean you didn't have any problems adjusting you didn't have that let down but do you

00:40:34.640 still like yearn to get back up there you know not really i spent seven months there it was great but

00:40:41.840 life on earth's great too you know there's things on earth that i didn't get in space and so

00:40:46.140 it was you know if i could go make a movie actually i would do that but i'm happy to be on earth there's

00:40:51.660 a lot of things i want to do there's a lot of projects i have going on and i i think it's important

00:40:56.680 to have something to look forward to i that's not a lot of my colleagues suffer from they they need to

00:41:02.960 go back they need to go back they want to do it again it's a powerful drug space is a powerful

00:41:07.600 drug and for me luckily i have a i have the mindset that you know that was cool i'm glad i did it now

00:41:13.860 i want to do other things i after my first flight i want i wanted to fly again i wasn't sure what i

00:41:19.060 was gonna do when i grew up i actually went to harvard for a semester and and when i went there i

00:41:23.720 realized hey there's some pretty cool things that to be done on earth but i'm but i want to fly again

00:41:28.620 so i went and i flew again and at that point i was in my 40s i was still energetic and i had

00:41:35.860 ambition and i wanted to do this and that and you know there's some business projects i want to do

00:41:41.140 there's i'm writing this book and i have some film and tv that i want to do so i said it's time to leave

00:41:46.940 and i've done everything there is to do i was a station commander i did spacewalks i was a shuttle

00:41:51.120 pilot i mean i've done everything there is um there are the new cap the boeing and the spacex capsules

00:41:56.760 are coming out but they're not really that interesting because you you literally don't

00:42:01.380 do anything you just sit there and ride and they're 100 automated so as a test pilot that wasn't really

00:42:07.060 that exciting to me so i just decided it was time and i'd been there for 16 years it was you know i

00:42:12.920 had a long career at nasa so you don't you definitely don't want to leave that too soon but in my mind i

00:42:18.700 didn't want to leave too late either you know i didn't want to be 60 years old hanging on for another

00:42:23.320 flight it was it was the right time for me and what do you think of the future of man face space

00:42:29.420 flight i mean there's all this talk about going back to the moon mars is that going to happen do

00:42:33.980 you think it should happen i mean it's i mean of course these are these are political debates too

00:42:37.540 policy debates but i mean as someone who's been to space what's your take yeah i spoke at the white

00:42:43.060 house two years ago to the vice president of the national space council and my message for him was

00:42:47.640 it's not about the rocket science it's about the political science um that's what that's what

00:42:52.220 really drives these programs so i i think mars should be our long-term goal and i think the moon

00:42:57.940 is a is a great testing ground and stepping stone to get to mars i think you need to build up approach

00:43:03.340 but i also think that the nation is really badly in debt right now and and we were badly in debt a

00:43:10.520 year ago and now after coronavirus it's um you know it's it's a problem it's it's a problem it's

00:43:17.660 probably the the number one global security problem is the american debt because if america's

00:43:23.600 hampered because and we can't act because of our debt then that allows other nations that don't

00:43:29.400 share our democratic values to to take over and so we need to get our debt under control so i don't

00:43:35.800 think there's going to be a lot of additional discretionary spending on nasa in the coming decade

00:43:41.340 or two the good news is we have a private sector and they're very innovative and they can do things

00:43:46.140 much quicker and much faster than the government i think that if we can figure out how to do public

00:43:50.520 private partnerships right i think the future of space travel can be really exciting i know jim

00:43:55.560 bridenstein he's the current nasa administrator and i know he is really focused on this so i think

00:44:01.340 that's a good positive thing but i don't think the nasa budget is going to be exploding anytime soon

00:44:06.500 well terry this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book and i also

00:44:10.900 know in addition the imax film you made a beautiful planet you also recently made a film about setting

00:44:16.320 the world record for the fastest pole to pole circumnavigation of the earth via jets so where

00:44:21.360 can people go to learn all about that so how to astronaut i always encourage folks to go to their

00:44:26.240 local bookstore it's any any bookstore in america and many around the english-speaking world will have

00:44:32.420 it you can always get it on amazon or or barnes and noble etc how to astronaut it's a lot of fun you

00:44:38.560 know i wrote this book to make people laugh and say wow 51 short chapters it should be easy to read

00:44:44.800 it's not a technical book it's a great christmas gift father's day gift mother's day gift so how to

00:44:49.840 astronauts out there and then one more orbit the movie that we made i is really cool i think it's

00:44:55.420 the movie that we need in 2020 it's about this exploration this drama of setting the world record

00:45:00.960 but it's really about how these eight people from eight different countries came together during apollo

00:45:06.820 that brought the world together we took off and landed from the kennedy space center on the

00:45:10.700 anniversary of apollo 11 so it's about how exploration brings us together so it's like a fun

00:45:15.800 little bit of drama positive movie i think it's great for kids and adults so one more orbit is out there

00:45:23.380 on itunes and amazon and i think 20 different you know pay-per-view channels fantastic well terry

00:45:30.700 verts thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thanks for having me my guest today was terry

00:45:35.340 verts he's the author of the book how to astronaut you can find it on amazon.com and bookstores

00:45:38.820 everywhere you also find out more information about his work at his website terry verts.com also

00:45:43.040 check out our show notes at aom.is astronaut where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper

00:45:47.380 into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

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00:46:27.840 reminding you on the listen they win podcast put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#654： How to Astronaut

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