The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1577 - Terry Virts

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00:00:14.000 Terry.

00:00:15.000 Joe.

00:00:16.000 Thanks for doing this, man.

00:00:17.000 This is awesome.

00:00:17.000 Hey, thanks for having me on.

00:00:18.000 You spent 200 days in space.

00:00:23.000 In a row.

00:00:25.000 I did.

00:00:26.000 My first flight was two weeks.

00:00:27.000 My second flight was 200 days.

00:00:29.000 That's insane.

00:00:30.000 What does that feel like?

00:00:30.000 Yeah.

00:00:33.000 The two weeks was not enough.

00:00:34.000 I got back to Earth, and I was like, man, that was awesome.

00:00:37.000 I need to go do this again.

00:00:39.000 And after 200 days, it was awesome, but it was like, all right, I checked the box, and I've done everything.

00:00:46.000 I was a shuttle pilot, station commander.

00:00:49.000 I did spacewalks.

00:00:50.000 So I feel like I had a chance to do everything.

00:00:52.000 I made an IMAX movie while I was up there.

00:00:54.000 I feel like I had a chance to do everything I wanted to do.

00:00:57.000 When you did two weeks, is there a recovery period when you return after two weeks?

00:01:02.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:01:03.000 But it's pretty quick.

00:01:04.000 Like, when you land, I was super dizzy.

00:01:06.000 And I felt like everything was heavy.

00:01:08.000 I was the last guy out of the shuttle because I was a pilot.

00:01:10.000 And they came in, all right, time to get out, Virch.

00:01:14.000 And I grabbed my helmet and I was like, be careful, this thing weighs 500 pounds.

00:01:18.000 And that night I was just like, I wanted someone next to me.

00:01:21.000 I didn't fall over, but I felt like I was going to.

00:01:24.000 But after a day or two, I was fine.

00:01:26.000 But after the long duration flight, it was like, that first day sucked.

00:01:31.000 I could do everything.

00:01:31.000 I could walk around and they make you do this torture where you have to get on your stomach and do – it was like burpees, you know, get up as fast as you can.

00:01:38.000 They were trying to make you pass out from orthostatic intolerance.

00:01:41.000 So I could do all that stuff.

00:01:43.000 I just hated it.

00:01:44.000 And then the second day was a little bit better.

00:01:46.000 First day was like a couple bottles of wine.

00:01:48.000 The second day was like a bottle of wine.

00:01:50.000 The third day was like a glass or two.

00:01:53.000 And by a week later, they make you do this balance test where they put you in this big box.

00:01:58.000 You can't see anything.

00:02:00.000 And then they move the box.

00:02:01.000 And you're like, whoa.

00:02:02.000 And they have force sensors on your feet where if your feet are doing this, you have bad balance.

00:02:07.000 And if your feet go and recover, you're good.

00:02:10.000 So I did my balance test before flight and after flight.

00:02:14.000 And after 200 days in space, a week later, my balance score was better than it was before I launched, which I couldn't believe.

00:02:21.000 But I tell you that story just to say that, you know, the human body is amazing.

00:02:25.000 It can adapt pretty quickly.

00:02:27.000 That's great.

00:02:28.000 So what is the, like, from the time you land after 200 days, and then when you're 100%, how much time is that?

00:02:39.000 So, there's some rule about driving cars.

00:02:41.000 Like, they don't want you driving cars for a couple weeks, and the doctor's got to sign off before you drive.

00:02:45.000 Oh, wow.

00:02:46.000 But like I said, after a week, I had a better balance score.

00:02:49.000 And after a week, I did 20 pull-ups at the gym.

00:02:52.000 Really?

00:02:53.000 I was not 100%, but I was like 90%.

00:02:55.000 Now, is this because of exercises that they prescribe while you're in space?

00:03:00.000 What kind of stuff do you have to do up there?

00:03:00.000 Absolutely, yeah.

00:03:02.000 So, they give you two and a half hours a day.

00:03:05.000 The Russians learned on Mir that your bone density, it's like a linear progression down.

00:03:10.000 You know, about one and a half percent a month, you lose bone density.

00:03:14.000 One and a half percent a month?

00:03:15.000 And it's a straight line.

00:03:16.000 It doesn't, like, bottom out.

00:03:18.000 And they had a guy up there for 440 days.

00:03:20.000 He's the most ever time and space in one mission.

00:03:23.000 So to combat that, we exercise.

00:03:26.000 And they found that pounding, resistive exercise is what helps your bones and your muscles.

00:03:32.000 So we have a weightlifting machine.

00:03:34.000 It's kind of like a Bowflex and a treadmill and a bike.

00:03:38.000 And I was religious about those things.

00:03:40.000 I did them every day except for my three spacewalk days.

00:03:43.000 And we had this really big emergency where other than those four days, I exercised every day.

00:03:48.000 And are you sweating up there?

00:03:50.000 You sweat a lot when you exercise.

00:03:52.000 Just doing this, you don't sweat at all.

00:03:54.000 You could wear the same underwear and shirt for weeks and you don't even notice.

00:03:58.000 But if you have your exercise shirt after a day, it's like drenched and stinky, like a stinky Under Armour shirt.

00:04:04.000 Because there's no circulation of air.

00:04:07.000 There's not as much.

00:04:08.000 Well, just like if you go to the gym and you get after it for an hour, you're going to be sweating.

00:04:12.000 So it's the same thing in space.

00:04:13.000 But even if you just walk around throughout the day, you know, you can tell you got to wash your clothes.

00:04:20.000 But in space, you don't.

00:04:21.000 Like for some reason, you just don't stink on normal.

00:04:24.000 Are they giving you like merino wool clothes to wear or something?

00:04:27.000 So, we had Under Armour shirts.

00:04:29.000 Okay.

00:04:30.000 And after a day or two, it's like, they stink, and you only got one shirt every two weeks.

00:04:34.000 Oh, boy.

00:04:35.000 So those things, they were ripe after a couple days.

00:04:38.000 So I did this experiment with wool clothes.

00:04:41.000 Like you said, it was like a New Zealand company.

00:04:42.000 I forgot the name of it.

00:04:44.000 And I was kind of worried, because I didn't want to, I thought it'd itch, you know, wool stuff.

00:04:49.000 Yeah.

00:04:49.000 So I wore this thing every day for a month.

00:04:51.000 Got completely drenched, sweaty every day for a month in it.

00:04:54.000 And it did not stink at all.

00:04:56.000 Merino wool is amazing.

00:04:58.000 It blew me away.

00:04:58.000 It's amazing.

00:04:59.000 There's a company called First Light.

00:05:01.000 My friend Steve Rinell is one of the owners of it.

00:05:03.000 It's a hunting company.

00:05:05.000 And most of their clothing, particularly all their base layers and stuff, is all made out of merino wool.

00:05:11.000 And the first time I'd ever worn it was on a hunting trip.

00:05:14.000 You realize when you go hunting, one of the big problems is it's freezing cold out, but you're hiking with a lot of gear, so you sweat.

00:05:23.000 And then you have to sit down, and you freeze your ass off.

00:05:26.000 But you don't with merino wool.

00:05:28.000 When merino wool is wet, it still keeps you warm.

00:05:30.000 And so these guys started making hunting gear out of it.

00:05:33.000 And it's incredible stuff, because it really doesn't smell.

00:05:37.000 It's so bizarre.

00:05:38.000 I sweated, drenching sweat every day for a month, and I did that twice, and it didn't smell at all.

00:05:43.000 It's weird, yeah.

00:05:43.000 It blew me away.

00:05:44.000 I guess it's organic.

00:05:46.000 The fibers from the wool, and just for whatever reason, it just shakes.

00:05:50.000 I don't know what scientific analysis they've ever done on it, but they can't really seem to do that with synthetics.

00:05:55.000 They try it with synthetics, but they can't quite get there.

00:05:59.000 Yeah, you need a washing machine. 1.00

00:06:00.000 So were you the one who figured that out?

00:06:02.000 You brought that stuff with you?

00:06:03.000 Well, I mean, it was like a formal experiment.

00:06:05.000 You know, NASA said that I was working on mice and doing astronomy and testing out new wool fabric.

00:06:12.000 It was just one of the 250 experiments I did.

00:06:15.000 But it was a good one to do because I didn't stink for a couple months, which was nice.

00:06:19.000 That's crazy that even in space, merino wool is the way to go.

00:06:23.000 That's nuts.

00:06:24.000 I was really worried.

00:06:24.000 Yeah.

00:06:25.000 I was afraid it was going to be, you know, itchy.

00:06:28.000 But I got...

00:06:30.000 Like XXL. I wanted it loose.

00:06:32.000 I didn't want like wool rubbing on me, but it worked.

00:06:34.000 It was good.

00:06:35.000 You think of it as like being like that coarse wool that like your grandfather wore that makes you scratchy.

00:06:35.000 It doesn't itch.

00:06:41.000 Right.

00:06:42.000 But no, they get it down to where it feels like cotton.

00:06:44.000 It's very soft.

00:06:45.000 They got it figured out, man.

00:06:46.000 That stuff was awesome.

00:06:47.000 So when you're using these machines, they're all resistance band machines?

00:06:51.000 Is that what it is?

00:06:52.000 Yeah.

00:06:53.000 So in my book, I make fun of the acronyms.

00:06:57.000 It's ARED, which is the NASA acronym for Workout Machine.

00:07:00.000 So it uses vacuum.

00:07:02.000 There's like tubes, like a cylinder.

00:07:05.000 So instead of compressing the air for your force, you're pulling against a vacuum.

00:07:11.000 The A-RED machine is 600 pounds.

00:07:14.000 I can't bench or squat 600 pounds, but you can put it on there.

00:07:18.000 So you could hurt yourself.

00:07:20.000 And the really interesting thing about these machines is they're not attached to the wall of the station.

00:07:25.000 They're on springs and moving devices.

00:07:28.000 They're called vibration isolation system. 0.55

00:07:31.000 Because...

00:07:32.000 If it was attached...

00:07:33.000 Think about running on a treadmill.

00:07:35.000 That's a lot of pounding.

00:07:36.000 200 pounds pounding.

00:07:38.000 And the Earth doesn't really move that much when you do it on Earth.

00:07:41.000 But in space, there's nothing supporting the space station.

00:07:44.000 So even though it's a million pounds, the vibration from exercise would actually start to...

00:07:49.000 You're knocking out of orbit?

00:07:50.000 Not out of orbit.

00:07:51.000 You break it apart, actually.

00:07:52.000 What?

00:07:53.000 Really?

00:07:53.000 They told us a couple minutes of that will snap it in half.

00:07:56.000 Yeah, because...

00:07:57.000 The whole thing starts to bend and flex, and if you're doing it in resonance, it's really dangerous.

00:08:02.000 They've got videos of the solar rays, and these things are big.

00:08:05.000 They don't fit in the football field.

00:08:06.000 They're hundreds of feet, and they start moving.

00:08:08.000 If the astronaut forgets to use the vibration system correctly, the station starts flexing.

00:08:17.000 In Houston, there's some guy that monitors, and the alarm goes off, and they call you up, stop doing what you're doing.

00:08:22.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:08:23.000 It kind of blew me away at it.

00:08:24.000 It's a million pound massive spaceship, but still there's nothing stopping it.

00:08:30.000 There's nothing like supporting it.

00:08:31.000 There's no like frame.

00:08:33.000 No, it's just floating.

00:08:35.000 So even the exercise of you running on a treadmill or you doing squats, there's a lot of, if you're pushing 400 pounds this way, something's pushing 400 pounds that way, right?

00:08:45.000 And if you're going up and down in the right frequency, it'll snap the station in half.

00:08:53.000 So in this IMAX movie I made A Beautiful Planet, you can see there's a scene of me running on the treadmill and my crewmate Samantha doing weightlifting.

00:09:01.000 And the machines are just going up and down.

00:09:03.000 I mean, they're moving a lot.

00:09:04.000 When you're running on a treadmill, how are you locked into place?

00:09:07.000 Do you have a belt?

00:09:09.000 No, it's a shoulder pad thing.

00:09:10.000 So you wear shoulder pads and there are these bungee cords that hold you down.

00:09:15.000 Because otherwise you'd take one step and you'd go shooting off.

00:09:18.000 There it is.

00:09:19.000 And is it one of those self-propelling treadmills?

00:09:19.000 Yeah, there you go.

00:09:23.000 Like an air runner?

00:09:25.000 Yeah, there's two ways.

00:09:27.000 So you can do the electric version, which is what we normally do.

00:09:32.000 And on Sundays, I would do this four-minute sprint crazy workout where you have to push it yourself. 0.99

00:09:39.000 And that thing just kicks your ass. 0.99

00:09:41.000 I mean, it's so hard to push on the treadmill and... 0.99

00:09:44.000 It was supposed to be 20 seconds of sprint, 10 second rest, 20 seconds, but I was usually like 10 seconds of sprint, 20 seconds of rest because four minutes of that, I would put one song on and by the end of the song I was wiped out.

00:09:54.000 But it's a good, it gets your Achilles and your calf, your lower muscles to work out there.

00:10:00.000 And it works just like on Earth?

00:10:03.000 Because you're getting pushed down?

00:10:05.000 So instead of gravity, the bungee cord pulls you down into the machine?

00:10:09.000 They do.

00:10:10.000 So when you first start off, all this equipment's hard to use and it takes some coordination.

00:10:15.000 So you start off with probably 100 pounds of weight or something.

00:10:19.000 And I worked my way up to, I think it was like 130, 140 pounds.

00:10:22.000 So it's not 100% of your weight, but it's, you know, 60 or 70%.

00:10:27.000 And you have to, like, get used to it because there's all this force up here, so you're unstable.

00:10:34.000 So if you lean back a little bit, it'll snap you, you know, pull you off the treadmill.

00:10:40.000 So there's a whole skill with getting used to doing it.

00:10:43.000 How long does it take you to get used to just sleeping in space?

00:10:47.000 Yeah, sleeping was something that...

00:10:49.000 There you go.

00:10:49.000 Yeah, there you go.

00:10:50.000 That's the...

00:10:51.000 See how it's moving and bouncing up and down?

00:10:53.000 You can see those bungee cords.

00:10:55.000 That is an old...

00:10:56.000 That's an old video, but you get the idea.

00:10:59.000 And the moving and bouncing is all just to prevent it from fucking up the space station.

00:11:03.000 Yeah, so it's on these spring devices.

00:11:06.000 If that was attached to the station, the station would be doing that.

00:11:09.000 You can imagine the hatches, right?

00:11:11.000 They're attached.

00:11:11.000 And if they're doing this, there's constant force on them.

00:11:16.000 It's 20 years old now.

00:11:17.000 Hopefully it'll last another 20 or who knows how long, but you don't want that metal fatigue to happen.

00:11:24.000 So, you're living up there for 200 days.

00:11:29.000 The first night you fall asleep, like sleeping in space, are you just floating above the bed?

00:11:36.000 Are you like, do you strap yourself down?

00:11:38.000 So, I was worried about this, because like...

00:11:41.000 I've never slept in space before on my first mission.

00:11:44.000 You didn't sleep at all?

00:11:45.000 No, no, no.

00:11:46.000 You were here for two weeks?

00:11:46.000 No, I slept like a baby.

00:11:48.000 I was worried that I wouldn't.

00:11:49.000 I didn't know.

00:11:49.000 Oh, so this is the first time.

00:11:50.000 My first mission.

00:11:52.000 On the shuttle, there's six of us in the mid-deck, which is like...

00:11:57.000 A third of the size of this room.

00:11:59.000 Or, yeah, it's less than half of this room.

00:12:01.000 And there's six people.

00:12:02.000 There's six of us.

00:12:03.000 So, like, I'll take the wall and you get the ceiling and everybody grabs their own thing.

00:12:08.000 You got a sleeping bag that you clip to the wall.

00:12:11.000 I slept on the wall.

00:12:12.000 I slept on the starboard wall.

00:12:13.000 That was my place.

00:12:15.000 And you go in, you put your blinders on, because if somebody opens a window or something, you don't want to get woken up.

00:12:22.000 And as soon as you put your blinders on, you don't know up or down.

00:12:25.000 It's completely gone.

00:12:25.000 And you're just floating.

00:12:26.000 And I was out in like 10 seconds.

00:12:32.000 So the sleeping was not a problem at all.

00:12:38.000 Before there was Fitbits and Apple Watches, we had this NASA thing that would measure your motion.

00:12:44.000 And on Earth, before we launched, we had to wear it for...

00:12:48.000 A month or something.

00:12:50.000 And they measured your sleep patterns.

00:12:51.000 And then in space, they measured your sleep patterns.

00:12:53.000 So on Earth, I would be like, you know, roll around and fit.

00:12:59.000 It fits here and there.

00:13:00.000 In space, I was just flatline.

00:13:02.000 Why do you think that is?

00:13:04.000 Probably because I was so exhausted.

00:13:05.000 Because on the shuttle flights especially, man, it was work, work, work, work, work.

00:13:09.000 From the minute you wake up, you're just running.

00:13:12.000 Not literally running, but you're busy.

00:13:14.000 Doing things, yeah.

00:13:15.000 Yeah.

00:13:15.000 Like, what is a typical day?

00:13:18.000 So on the space station flight, so my 200-day long duration flight, the day starts about 7.30 in the morning, which is GMT, so London time.

00:13:28.000 And we would start off with like a conference call.

00:13:30.000 So everybody would get around a microphone and we'd call Houston and Moscow and Huntsville, Alabama, which they do the payloads, Europe and Japan.

00:13:40.000 So we kind of go through all the different communication centers around the world, mission control centers.

00:13:46.000 Hey, today you're doing this experiment.

00:13:48.000 Grab this piece of equipment or this thing got canceled.

00:13:51.000 We're going to do something else.

00:13:52.000 Whatever.

00:13:52.000 They'd have the daily thing.

00:13:54.000 And then you get going and you got experiments.

00:13:57.000 You got two and a half hours of exercise. 1.00

00:13:59.000 You got to fix broken shit. 0.99

00:14:03.000 There might be a SpaceX cargo ship coming up with stuff. 0.99

00:14:06.000 You may be getting ready for a spacewalk.

00:14:08.000 Every day was different, which I loved.

00:14:10.000 And then at the end of the day, you had another call about 7 o'clock at night, and it was the same thing.

00:14:15.000 You'd go around, hey, when I use this piece of equipment, it was serial number 1002, and tomorrow be ready for this.

00:14:21.000 And every day it was the same thing.

00:14:23.000 It was Groundhog Day.

00:14:24.000 Wow.

00:14:25.000 Yeah.

00:14:26.000 When you know you have to be committed to something for like 200 days, does it start to feel prison-like, where you're kind of counting down the days you can get back to early?

00:14:35.000 Or are you still enjoying it?

00:14:35.000 Yeah.

00:14:36.000 I enjoyed it the whole time.

00:14:38.000 It was supposed to be 169 days.

00:14:40.000 And then we had...

00:14:42.000 There was three rockets that blew up back to back to back.

00:14:45.000 An American one, the Russian one, and then another American one. 0.82

00:14:48.000 When the Russian one blew up, it was in the middle of my mission.

00:14:51.000 And the Progress cargo ship uses the same rocket as the people, as the Soyuz rocket. 0.80

00:14:57.000 It's the same rocket.

00:14:58.000 So the Russians said, hey, we don't want to launch your replacement crew until we know what the problem was.

00:15:04.000 And so since you don't have a replacement crew, you guys are going to stay longer.

00:15:07.000 So we got kind of stuck in space, you know, and we didn't know how long we were going to be there.

00:15:12.000 And we were kind of getting low on supplies since that was the second cargo ship that had blown up.

00:15:16.000 Jesus.

00:15:16.000 So, you know, and it was all about attitude.

00:15:19.000 It was just like COVID. It was like all of a sudden you're stuck and you're low on supplies.

00:15:23.000 It was a similar, like when COVID happened, I'm like, this is like when I was in space and we got stuck there.

00:15:27.000 Do they have an emergency supply of food for you guys up there?

00:15:30.000 No.

00:15:31.000 There was enough food that we were good.

00:15:35.000 The NASA guy, there's a ground team that manages, you know, they want to have margin on oxygen and water and food and everything.

00:15:42.000 And they handled three failures back to back to back.

00:15:47.000 And used up all the margin, and they kept the full crew there.

00:15:51.000 But there was no more margin.

00:15:52.000 It was time for something to work, and it did, thankfully.

00:15:56.000 Oh, God, imagine if it didn't, if three more back-to-back-to-back?

00:15:59.000 Yeah, if four would have happened, we would have probably had to start bringing guys back and just leave a skeleton crew up there.

00:16:04.000 But thankfully that didn't happen, and thanks to the guys in Houston and Moscow and everywhere, they had managed the backup food that was...

00:16:12.000 What are you eating up there?

00:16:15.000 It wasn't bad.

00:16:16.000 I actually liked it.

00:16:17.000 It's better than what I cooked for myself as a bachelor.

00:16:20.000 Really?

00:16:21.000 I mean, it was pretty good.

00:16:21.000 Yeah.

00:16:23.000 It's like MREs that the military guys eat, the green bags of food.

00:16:27.000 The NASA food is basically MREs.

00:16:29.000 So you just rip it open and stick a spoon in and eat it.

00:16:33.000 You can warm it up if you want or just eat it straight.

00:16:36.000 We're good to go.

00:16:59.000 It's different, which is important.

00:17:01.000 Over 200 days, you don't want to eat the same thing every day.

00:17:03.000 The Russians have great borscht. 1.00

00:17:05.000 Their soup is awesome.

00:17:07.000 Mashed potatoes were great.

00:17:08.000 And the fish was really good.

00:17:10.000 We didn't have any fish.

00:17:11.000 So they had these little cat food cans of fish.

00:17:14.000 And the cosmonauts were sick of them, like another day of cat food.

00:17:17.000 But I loved them because I was never getting fish.

00:17:20.000 Yeah.

00:17:20.000 And there was a few things that we didn't like that they loved.

00:17:23.000 So I started this bag of like uneaten food.

00:17:26.000 So whatever we didn't like, we put in there.

00:17:28.000 And about once a week, those guys, the Russians would come down and radar.

00:17:31.000 They would eat everything that we didn't like.

00:17:33.000 And we would go down there and eat.

00:17:34.000 They'd have like boxes of these cans of fish. 0.89

00:17:37.000 And we loved them.

00:17:38.000 Do you speak Russian?

00:17:39.000 Da.

00:17:40.000 Yeah, really?

00:17:41.000 How, like, completely fluent?

00:17:45.000 Yeah.

00:17:48.000 Yeah.

00:17:53.000 Yeah.

00:18:03.000 It's that complicated that you have to be born and raised there.

00:18:06.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:18:08.000 They have these things called cases.

00:18:12.000 It's just the way the grammar works that we don't have.

00:18:17.000 The letters you can figure out.

00:18:19.000 Everybody's like, oh, they're different letters.

00:18:22.000 Lesson one was a couple hours, and then I had the letters figured out.

00:18:25.000 That's not hard.

00:18:26.000 It's like the way of saying things and the accent.

00:18:29.000 It's impossible to be perfectly fluent.

00:18:33.000 You can't tell the difference.

00:18:34.000 Can you read it and write it though?

00:18:36.000 So you could read like War and Peace in Russian?

00:18:36.000 Yeah.

00:18:40.000 I could read the words out loud.

00:18:43.000 I'd only know what half of them mean.

00:18:45.000 I wouldn't know what I was reading.

00:18:47.000 But yeah, I could.

00:18:48.000 We used to watch, in class we'd watch Russian TV programs.

00:18:52.000 So in like an hour class, I'd get through five minutes of the show.

00:18:55.000 Because it'd be like, all right, stop.

00:18:56.000 What did he say?

00:18:57.000 And so that's how I try to learn colloquial, modern Russian.

00:18:57.000 Okay, that's it.

00:19:02.000 But I love languages.

00:19:04.000 It's funny, when you get to NASA... You think you're good at something, right?

00:19:08.000 The astronauts are usually pretty good at something before you get there.

00:19:12.000 So I thought I was pretty good at languages. 0.99

00:19:13.000 I lived in Finland and I did an exchange in France and Russian just kicked my ass. 1.00

00:19:19.000 And it was like years of just torture. 1.00

00:19:22.000 And I felt like my brain was Teflon.

00:19:24.000 Like I'd have to say, I go to class for an hour and I'd learn one word.

00:19:28.000 You know, it was just really painful.

00:19:30.000 That's interesting because it's an advantage for them because they can learn English pretty well.

00:19:35.000 If you can learn Russian, that's why they're so smart.

00:19:38.000 Russians are so smart and educated.

00:19:39.000 They have to speak Russian.

00:19:40.000 I think it is an advantage for them.

00:19:43.000 But it was like years, and I finally got over this hill.

00:19:46.000 So it went from being really tough to like, I loved it, and I needed it, and I wanted more, and I put my phone on Russian, and I was always trying to just speak Russian.

00:19:56.000 So it was this weird, like it went from...

00:19:59.000 Probably like exercising. 0.98

00:20:00.000 When you first start running, it sucks.

00:20:02.000 And then after a while, it's like you get the endorphins and you want to run some more.

00:20:05.000 For me, Russian was the same thing.

00:20:07.000 Now, you obviously, flying into space wasn't your first flights, right?

00:20:13.000 You flew jets.

00:20:15.000 You were a test pilot as well, right?

00:20:18.000 Right.

00:20:19.000 That's got to be nerve-wracking.

00:20:20.000 Yeah.

00:20:22.000 Yeah, it's, you know, and by the way, you know, shout out to Chuck Yeager, you know, my hero and just passed away.

00:20:30.000 The Right Stuff was, it's what motivated me to be an astronaut.

00:20:33.000 I read that book in high school and it kind of, I didn't know anything.

00:20:38.000 No one in my family had ever been an astronaut or a pilot.

00:20:41.000 And so that Right Stuff book showed me how to be an astronaut.

00:20:44.000 And it was a lot about Chuck Yeager.

00:20:46.000 Those guys were gangsters.

00:20:48.000 They were...

00:20:49.000 And, you know, one of my goals in life was to not have a street or an elementary school on an Air Force Base named after me.

00:20:58.000 And, you know, when I was at Edwards, it was just...

00:21:00.000 When you watch the right stuff, it's this old 1950s...

00:21:03.000 When you die, is that when they named it after you?

00:21:04.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:21:05.000 They call it buying the farm, yeah.

00:21:07.000 So, yeah, so that was one of my goals.

00:21:10.000 And thankfully, you know, that didn't happen.

00:21:12.000 But...

00:21:13.000 But when he was doing it back then...

00:21:16.000 It was every week, yeah.

00:21:18.000 Those guys were so savage to be able to do that and to know that there's a high percentage of these things that you're testing that are likely to fail and you're breaking the speed of sound.

00:21:30.000 Yeah, it's crazy.

00:21:32.000 By the way, on my first flight, my commander, George Zamka and I, we watched the right stuff the night before launch.

00:21:32.000 And the right stuff...

00:21:38.000 We went in the room and we sat down and put in the DVD. And I flew the DVD... And I wanted to give it to Tom Wolfe, and unfortunately, he passed away, too.

00:21:46.000 But, yeah, the odds in the 60s and 70s and 40s and 50s were not good.

00:21:53.000 And there's a scene in The Right Stuff.

00:21:55.000 I don't know if you remember, like, Jaeger's out riding his horse, and he falls off of it and breaks his arm.

00:21:59.000 So his engineer, like, does this thing, puts a broom handle, and just to let...

00:22:03.000 He couldn't close the cockpit.

00:22:05.000 So...

00:22:07.000 You know, he was flying with only one arm, that X1 on that first flight that went supersonic, which is...

00:22:13.000 Jesus Christ.

00:22:14.000 Yeah, a big pair for sure.

00:22:17.000 Too big for this room.

00:22:18.000 Big brass ones, yeah.

00:22:19.000 Yeah, that's so crazy.

00:22:21.000 And what kind of stuff did you test fly?

00:22:24.000 So I was in the F-16 test squadron, so all different versions of the F-16.

00:22:29.000 But during test pilot school, it was really cool.

00:22:32.000 We got to fly all different types of airplanes.

00:22:33.000 So I flew a MiG-15 or old Russian Korean War MiG and like a F-80 T-33.

00:22:42.000 So the two planes that were fighting each other in Korean War, I got to fly both of them, which was cool.

00:22:46.000 I flew some World War II propeller airplanes.

00:22:49.000 I got checked out in the Eagle to do this high-G test in the F-15.

00:22:54.000 Can someone buy an old fighter jet that doesn't have weapons on it?

00:22:58.000 Absolutely.

00:22:58.000 Like a person who's a pilot can go and buy one, fly around in it.

00:23:01.000 Absolutely.

00:23:02.000 There's a whole market for this stuff.

00:23:04.000 Really?

00:23:05.000 Some of the jets we flew, the Air Force didn't own them.

00:23:08.000 It's these rich doctors and stuff.

00:23:09.000 There was an F-104 that Chuck Yeager flew in the movie.

00:23:13.000 This guy would bring the F-104 out and A couple of test pilot students would get to fly one D flight once, and then we would give him a ride in one of our F-16s or T-38s as payment.

00:23:25.000 How long could those things go without running out of gas?

00:23:28.000 Not long.

00:23:29.000 F-104s, yeah.

00:23:29.000 Half hour?

00:23:31.000 I directed a film last year where we set a record flying around the planet, and we used an F-104 as our chase plane because we were going really fast and we needed something fast to film us.

00:23:42.000 But they could only pick us up about 15 minutes out because they were out of gas.

00:23:46.000 Wow.

00:23:46.000 So it wasn't like they could fly for hours filming us.

00:23:49.000 We only got filming on the last 15 minutes of the flight.

00:23:51.000 The wildest thing to me is refueling in air.

00:23:55.000 Did you do that?

00:23:56.000 Oh, yeah, for years in the F-16.

00:23:59.000 That seems so nuts.

00:24:01.000 Yeah.

00:24:01.000 It's not easy because...

00:24:04.000 The plane's real sensitive and you don't want to get too crazy because you'll break the boom and get a nickname out of that.

00:24:15.000 Get a nickname out of that?

00:24:17.000 You'll get a call sign. 1.00

00:24:18.000 If you go up and you break the tanker, your buddies will give you a call sign afterwards for doing something stupid. 0.99

00:24:26.000 By breaking the boom, you mean breaking the arm? 0.98

00:24:29.000 Yeah, there's this long metal gas tube. 1.00

00:24:34.000 You're talking to morons. 1.00

00:24:36.000 Help me out. 1.00

00:24:37.000 It's a tanker, right?

00:24:38.000 It's a KC-135 or a Boeing.

00:24:41.000 You pull up underneath of it.

00:24:43.000 And there's a guy in the Boeing that's flying this boom.

00:24:47.000 It's this long metal tube, but it's got little wings on it.

00:24:49.000 So he flies it up, down, left, and right.

00:24:51.000 And you're supposed to be just rock steady.

00:24:53.000 And he inserts it into your plane?

00:24:55.000 He'll put it in.

00:24:56.000 Yep.

00:24:58.000 Whereas the Navy system, it's probe and drogue.

00:25:01.000 So there's this big basket.

00:25:02.000 And they fly up and they...

00:25:05.000 Put it in the basket.

00:25:07.000 But you don't get as much gas with the big tube system that the Air Force has.

00:25:12.000 You can pump the gas a lot quicker, so you can get more airplanes on and off the tanker.

00:25:15.000 There it is.

00:25:16.000 That's an F-4.

00:25:18.000 1959, you can buy it for $3 million.

00:25:21.000 That's a bargain.

00:25:22.000 You probably negotiate it down a little bit.

00:25:24.000 This is the more expensive one.

00:25:26.000 There's a couple for under 500 grand on here.

00:25:28.000 I would think that those things have a lot.

00:25:28.000 Yeah.

00:25:30.000 Oh, look at that, 255 grand?

00:25:32.000 Yeah.

00:25:33.000 Wow.

00:25:33.000 That's a gnat.

00:25:34.000 The L-39. 0.54

00:25:35.000 I flew one of those at Tesspot School.

00:25:35.000 There's a T-30.

00:25:37.000 210 grand?

00:25:38.000 Yeah.

00:25:39.000 Really?

00:25:40.000 Well, the problem is not the purchase price.

00:25:42.000 The problem is the maintenance.

00:25:44.000 And the L-39 is the most popular one.

00:25:47.000 Dying in it.

00:25:48.000 Yeah, there's that.

00:25:50.000 You can buy a Harrier.

00:25:51.000 Wow, there's an L-39.

00:25:52.000 How much has the technology changed in something from 1992 versus 2020?

00:25:57.000 So the technology is all in the avionics.

00:26:01.000 I mean, jets, the compressor, the combustion, and the turbine has been the same since the 1940s, jet engines.

00:26:12.000 Suck, bang, blow, I think is how we learned it at test pilot school.

00:26:16.000 It's the same technology. 0.89

00:26:17.000 But the avionics and the stealth are what's the new thing.

00:26:21.000 This is inside the 92, one we were just looking at.

00:26:24.000 Oh, so it looks like they upgraded the system.

00:26:27.000 Yeah.

00:26:28.000 Yeah, I mean, that's obviously an aftermarket system.

00:26:31.000 So the F-35 is the new fighter that we have.

00:26:31.000 Yeah.

00:26:34.000 So that's like a fighter plane rest...

00:26:36.000 There's an iPad.

00:26:36.000 I didn't realize it.

00:26:38.000 It's a resto mod.

00:26:39.000 It's like what they do with old muscle cars.

00:26:41.000 Exactly.

00:26:42.000 Wow.

00:26:43.000 So, what I was going to get at was that you'd obviously been high above the earth and flying in fighter jets.

00:26:50.000 How much of a difference in perspective is it being a fighter jet pilot to being in actual space?

00:27:00.000 There's a lot of really important similarities.

00:27:02.000 In fact, I think the best training that we do as astronauts is in jets.

00:27:06.000 NASA has T-38s, which you could probably buy some of those on the civilian market.

00:27:11.000 It's a supersonic trainer.

00:27:13.000 And the stick-and-rutter skills of how to land a T-38 don't matter.

00:27:17.000 You're not doing that in space.

00:27:19.000 But the mental skill of having situational awareness and being able to stay ahead of the jet, you're flying at 300 knots or 500 knots, so things are happening fast.

00:27:28.000 And you're out of gas as soon as you take off and there's bad, there's Texas thunderstorms and so that being able to think under pressure.

00:27:36.000 And it's not a simulator.

00:27:37.000 If you're in a simulator and you crash the shuttle, you hit pause and then you go to lunch.

00:27:42.000 But in T38 there's no pause button.

00:27:45.000 It really helps astronauts, especially those who were not fighter pilots in their previous life, just get used to working.

00:27:51.000 T-38 is, what is it?

00:27:53.000 It's not a simulator.

00:27:54.000 It's a jet.

00:27:55.000 It's just a jet.

00:27:56.000 They have them here in San Antonio.

00:27:57.000 There it is.

00:27:58.000 So what you're saying is that flying this jet prepares you for space travel just because of the fact that it's difficult to do and because the principles apply?

00:28:07.000 Yeah, there's NASA T-38.

00:28:10.000 That's Dennis.

00:28:10.000 That's right there.

00:28:11.000 That's in Mississippi.

00:28:12.000 That's the rocket test stand.

00:28:14.000 What a sweet-looking piece of equipment.

00:28:16.000 It's amazing.

00:28:17.000 It's really cool.

00:28:19.000 And so, when you're flying a jet, it's just like flying in a spaceship.

00:28:24.000 Like...

00:28:24.000 Things are happening fast.

00:28:26.000 You have to anticipate a couple moves in front of the jet.

00:28:29.000 You have to stay calm when something bad happens.

00:28:34.000 I flew at the Blue Angels once.

00:28:36.000 Oh, wow.

00:28:36.000 In the FA-18.

00:28:37.000 Yeah.

00:28:38.000 That's awesome.

00:28:39.000 It's wild.

00:28:39.000 Yeah.

00:28:40.000 That's awesome.

00:28:41.000 The feeling of G-force.

00:28:43.000 You need to experience that just to understand what it's like to get smashed down.

00:28:50.000 Just get smushed and see your consciousness closing.

00:28:53.000 It's pretty wild.

00:28:53.000 Yeah.

00:28:54.000 They taught you the G maneuver where you squeeze your legs and your stomach.

00:28:57.000 Hook! 0.99

00:28:58.000 All that kind of shit. 1.00

00:28:59.000 Exactly. 1.00

00:28:59.000 Yeah, it's pretty wild. 1.00

00:29:00.000 Yeah, that's awesome.

00:29:01.000 But how much difference is it perspective-wise when you're in space and you're looking down on the earth? 0.98

00:29:08.000 Like, that has got to be the ultimate mindfuck. 0.97

00:29:11.000 It's amazing. 0.98

00:29:12.000 So this is what I'm trying to do in life.

00:29:15.000 A couple books I've written, some films I've done.

00:29:19.000 Seeing the Earth, I remember early in my first flight, it was like, okay, I'm in outer space, and there's my planet over there.

00:29:26.000 It was this profound thought that, wow, I'm not on the planet anymore.

00:29:31.000 And over seven months in space, it never got old.

00:29:36.000 It was always like, man, Earth is beautiful.

00:29:39.000 It is this incredible planet.

00:29:42.000 We could talk for hours about this, but I think for me the biggest perspective change was I'm less of a black and white person now.

00:29:51.000 Before I went into space, I knew right and wrong.

00:29:54.000 When you're young, you're black and white.

00:29:57.000 As you get older, you get wiser.

00:29:59.000 Seeing the planet, it's like, yeah, this thing's been around for a long time and it's going to be around for a long time, so you probably don't need to get as uptight about the day-to-day stress of life.

00:30:13.000 It just kind of put things in perspective, like don't get too excited about the Kardashians or whatever the latest political tweet was or whatever.

00:30:22.000 Things are going to go on for a long time.

00:30:25.000 So it helps put that in perspective in a big way.

00:30:27.000 It's interesting that an actual physical perspective changed.

00:30:31.000 Just being in a different place where you're looking down on it from a different vantage point.

00:30:37.000 All the astronauts seem to say that.

00:30:39.000 It has this profound shift in how you think of Earth and how you think of humanity in general.

00:30:45.000 You know, one of the interesting things...

00:30:46.000 I've been traveling since I was a kid.

00:30:48.000 I did some exchange programs in Finland and France and in the Air Force.

00:30:53.000 I lived all around the world.

00:30:54.000 And whenever I would go to France or Korea or wherever, it was like, all right, I'm in Korea.

00:31:00.000 And then I get back to the States.

00:31:01.000 I'm like, all right, I'm back home in America or whatever.

00:31:04.000 And now when I travel, and I've been traveling a lot the last couple of years, I don't ever...

00:31:08.000 I always feel like I'm home.

00:31:10.000 Like, it was weird.

00:31:12.000 One time I landed in the Middle East and I remember thinking...

00:31:15.000 I didn't think anything, and that really struck me because it used to always be such a big deal wherever I landed.

00:31:20.000 I kind of feel like I'm home no matter where I'm at, which is interesting.

00:31:24.000 And that's from the space travel?

00:31:26.000 It is, yeah.

00:31:27.000 Wow.

00:31:29.000 It wasn't conscious.

00:31:31.000 I didn't expect it or whatever.

00:31:33.000 I just realized that, hey, I don't ever feel like I'm not at home.

00:31:37.000 And my crewmate Samantha said something really profound.

00:31:39.000 She said, like, you see Earth and you can tell it's going around the sun.

00:31:45.000 Like, you can actually see the motion sometimes if you're watching stars and stuff.

00:31:48.000 And it's like we're on this spaceship together, so we ought to be crewmates and not just passengers.

00:31:53.000 Yeah.

00:31:54.000 Like, we all had to kind of take care of the planet and our cell, each other and stuff.

00:31:59.000 Do you find that most of the, or many of the astronauts share this similar perspective shift?

00:32:05.000 That once you go up, you do realize how weird it is that there are these tribal differences between us?

00:32:13.000 Yeah, you're like, what the hell are we doing?

00:32:15.000 I got a story about that.

00:32:16.000 But to be honest, we're probably not the best communicators of emotion.

00:32:22.000 We're not necessarily all touchy-feely people, but some of my close friends that we talk about this, there's a very similar perspective of we're all here on the planet together.

00:32:32.000 I was on my first flight on the shuttle, and it was the fifth, I remember it was the fifth night there.

00:32:37.000 And when I looked out, we were going over the Mediterranean at night, and you could see there's this U-shape where there's Egypt and the Nile, there's Israel and Syria and Lebanon are right there, and there's Turkey and Greece.

00:32:48.000 And it's this little area.

00:32:50.000 And Israel is this little thing that's surrounded by Jordan and Lebanon. 0.76

00:32:55.000 They're all right there.

00:32:56.000 And I remember thinking, like, guys, what's the problem, man?

00:32:59.000 You're literally living together on a postage stamp on this big planet.

00:33:04.000 And it wasn't anything about Israel or the Middle East specifically.

00:33:06.000 It was more like, why can we not get along?

00:33:09.000 And the crazy thing is, if you ask most people, their position is they'll never be peace in the Middle East.

00:33:19.000 Which is crazy.

00:33:19.000 So...

00:33:20.000 One of the things, after my flight, so they'd sent us to Congress and we talked to congressmen and senators, and I got to talk at the White House a couple years ago at the National Space Council.

00:33:29.000 And my message to them is always the same.

00:33:31.000 It's always, you know, for a space program, it's not about the rocket science.

00:33:35.000 It's about the political science.

00:33:36.000 Like, we've got to figure out politics to get things working well.

00:33:40.000 And whenever I go to the American Congress...

00:33:42.000 They're always like, you're right.

00:33:43.000 It's exactly right. 0.99

00:33:44.000 If it wasn't for those other fuckers on the other side, we could get this right. 0.99

00:33:47.000 Republicans and Democrats all said that they all totally agreed with me and it was always the other guy's fault. 0.98

00:33:52.000 There's definitely a problem that is going to be tough to overcome.

00:33:56.000 How much benefit would there be in getting those people in space?

00:34:00.000 Yeah, you know, people talk about that.

00:34:02.000 If only that leaders could go into space, and I think for some of them it would make an impact, and some of them, they wouldn't care.

00:34:07.000 I mean, there's this— Well, the goal of politics and power is just to keep yourself in power and get more stuff for yourself and, you know, throughout human history.

00:34:17.000 It's not normally, you know, altruistic democracies, the way we run ourselves.

00:34:22.000 So, which we need to move in that direction.

00:34:25.000 Because that's the way life gets better.

00:34:26.000 But I think some of it would benefit and some of it wouldn't.

00:34:30.000 The thing is, no one really wants the job that is balanced and healthy and intelligent and has a good perspective for humanity.

00:34:40.000 The people that want the job, they want to be the King Poobah.

00:34:43.000 They want to be the big dog.

00:34:44.000 It's just a weird kind of person that wants that job in the first place.

00:34:49.000 People are like, why don't you run for office and...

00:34:52.000 And I always say, well, give me a fork.

00:34:54.000 Do you have a fork?

00:34:54.000 Because I want to stick that in my eye.

00:34:55.000 Because that would be more fun than, you know, you try and do something nice and you're just getting nonstop hate mail.

00:35:01.000 Yeah.

00:35:02.000 It's rough.

00:35:03.000 Girlfriends from high school.

00:35:05.000 Testifying before Congress.

00:35:06.000 This thing that happened 30 years ago.

00:35:08.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:35:09.000 It's fascinating to me how many of the astronauts do have this incredibly profound experience.

00:35:18.000 Again, just from the physical act of being above Earth and looking down on it, where this perspective shift just kind of changes your overall thoughts about being in space.

00:35:31.000 Yeah.

00:35:34.000 Humanity on this organic spaceship in the universe, rather than being locked down in Chicago, clouds above you, so you don't even think about space, stuck in traffic, on your way to work every day, same grind.

00:35:49.000 You get stuck in this narrow-minded perspective.

00:35:52.000 Almost every astronaut who discusses this says that it was a profound, life-changing moment to look at Earth from above.

00:36:00.000 Yeah, it was.

00:36:02.000 If I'm in one of those shitty situations, you just close your eyes and it's like, right now the sun is rising somewhere.

00:36:09.000 That's the most beautiful thing.

00:36:10.000 You can't imagine it.

00:36:12.000 I took a lot of pictures.

00:36:13.000 I did movies.

00:36:14.000 But unless you see it with your eyes, you can't imagine how awesome it is.

00:36:18.000 So that takes the edge off the traffic you're having to wait on.

00:36:21.000 It does help.

00:36:22.000 But the thing is taking that experience and sharing it with as many people as possible.

00:36:27.000 Yeah.

00:36:28.000 When do you think that's going to be commercially available?

00:36:31.000 Where people are going to be able to go up there, like regular folks?

00:36:36.000 So people always are like, when can regular folks go in a space?

00:36:39.000 And I always say, well, clearly regular people haven't been in a space.

00:36:43.000 I mean, well, I don't know who am I. Like some middle class guy from Maryland.

00:36:47.000 Yeah, but you're an astronaut.

00:36:49.000 I wasn't born an astronaut.

00:36:51.000 I understand, but you worked really hard to get to the position where they decided to put you in space.

00:36:55.000 What I want to talk about is like Mike, the UPS driver.

00:36:58.000 When can he go in a space?

00:36:58.000 Right.

00:36:59.000 Yeah, like his wife buys him a ticket. 1.00

00:37:01.000 Oh shit, I'm going to space. 0.99

00:37:02.000 Well, if he can save up a couple hundred thousand dollars, I think next year. 0.99

00:37:06.000 That's a little problematic.

00:37:08.000 When is it going to be like two grand?

00:37:10.000 Yeah.

00:37:12.000 That may never happen.

00:37:13.000 It's a question of energy, right?

00:37:15.000 It's one half MV squared.

00:37:17.000 And if you want to go 500 miles an hour, you can spend $49 on Southwest Airlines and go from Austin to Phoenix, right?

00:37:24.000 Right.

00:37:25.000 But you got to go 5,000 miles an hour to do a nice suborbital flight.

00:37:30.000 And you got to go 17,000 miles an hour to go in orbit around the Earth.

00:37:35.000 And it's MV squared, so the velocity is squared.

00:37:38.000 So if you're going to double your speed, it's four times the energy, which is also roughly cost.

00:37:45.000 It's not exactly cost, but...

00:37:46.000 And if you're going to go, so from 500 to 17,000 is 30 times, 25 times, 30 times faster or more.

00:37:54.000 So that's like, well, that's a lot more expensive to get into space.

00:38:00.000 Right now, the way they've been doing it, I mean, they're getting better at it, but it's really burning fuel.

00:38:05.000 Burning fuel with a propulsion engine that shoots you into space.

00:38:09.000 When there's something that's better than that, that's when things can change pretty dramatically. 0.91

00:38:15.000 Gravity sucks, man. 0.99

00:38:17.000 When you get back from space, you're like, shit, man, this is heavy. 1.00

00:38:21.000 Gravity sucks. 0.99

00:38:22.000 You know, it's funny. 0.93

00:38:24.000 If Earth were just a little bit bigger, we could never leave it.

00:38:27.000 Like, physics would not allow you to leave it because of the rocket equation.

00:38:31.000 This Russian guy, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 100 years ago figured out that how fast you can go in a rocket is directly related to how fast your propellant goes out the back.

00:38:42.000 So the faster you shoot your propellant out the back...

00:38:45.000 The faster you can go forward, which makes sense.

00:38:48.000 And when you burn a fuel and an oxidizer, so chemical propulsion, you can only get it going so fast.

00:38:57.000 You can't shoot stuff out the speed of light.

00:38:59.000 You can't burn diesel.

00:39:01.000 There's a limit to how fast you can go.

00:39:04.000 So if Earth were just a little bit bigger and gravity were just a little bit heavier, no one would ever be able to leave the planet unless they figured out some other transportation system that physics says is probably not going to happen anytime soon for sure.

00:39:17.000 Yeah.

00:39:19.000 So is there any other propulsion methods that are on the table that they're trying to figure out?

00:39:26.000 What are they?

00:39:27.000 So I've got a chapter in the book about how to get to Mars.

00:39:31.000 So you can use normal chemical rocket, and it's a three-year trip to Mars.

00:39:35.000 It's six to nine months to get there.

00:39:37.000 By that time, Earth and Mars have gone around the sun, so you've got to wait a year and a half and then six to nine months to come back.

00:39:44.000 So it's a three-year round trip.

00:39:46.000 So it is possible to come back.

00:39:48.000 Yeah, on a three-year round trip, which is a lot of food and underwear and spare parts to bring with you.

00:39:55.000 If you use electric propulsion, which a lot of satellites use electric propulsion, so instead of burning something and shooting it out the back, you take an ionized gas like xenon or helium or hydrogen or something, you make an electric charge, you have an electric plate,

00:40:10.000 and positive and positive, it repels itself.

00:40:15.000 So you shoot ionized gas out backwards.

00:40:17.000 It goes a lot faster.

00:40:20.000 It's a lower thrust level, so it's not as much force pushing you.

00:40:23.000 But because the propellant goes faster, and you're just using a little bit of repellent, you can burn it continuously for six months.

00:40:32.000 Let me ask you this.

00:40:33.000 The people that go to Mars that can come back in a year and a half, is that because they never land on Mars?

00:40:40.000 That would have something to do with it. 0.99

00:40:42.000 If you land on Mars, you're fucked, right? 0.99

00:40:45.000 If you landed and then took right off, that would help you save time. 0.99

00:40:51.000 Because what I've been reading about Mars and the idea of terraforming and colonizing is that the people that go there are there forever.

00:40:59.000 Like Buzz Aldrin and other people.

00:41:01.000 Like Elon, I think, wants to go live on Mars.

00:41:05.000 He belongs there.

00:41:06.000 My favorite part of...

00:41:10.000 He'll make it awesome.

00:41:11.000 Yeah.

00:41:11.000 No smoking dope today, by the way, please.

00:41:15.000 My favorite part of John Kennedy's speech, we commit to achieving the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.

00:41:22.000 So that was my favorite part of his speech, was coming back to Earth.

00:41:25.000 Yeah, not just let him die up there.

00:41:27.000 I mean, I would love to go to Mars, but I'd also love to come back.

00:41:30.000 No.

00:41:30.000 Yeah.

00:41:31.000 Stay here, bro.

00:41:32.000 Yeah.

00:41:32.000 I know.

00:41:32.000 Right.

00:41:33.000 The Earth is good.

00:41:33.000 There's a lot of good things here in Earth.

00:41:34.000 I just don't see how much different it's going to be.

00:41:36.000 I mean, you've already been to space.

00:41:38.000 I mean, it'll probably be pretty fascinating for a little while.

00:41:38.000 Yeah.

00:41:40.000 And then you're like, well, I guess I just live on Mars now.

00:41:43.000 Yeah, I know.

00:41:43.000 Three years.

00:41:44.000 And there's nothing, you know, it's kind of dry and desert.

00:41:47.000 Yeah.

00:41:48.000 Well, I think space travel is in our future in terms of going to other planets.

00:41:56.000 I just wonder how long it'll take before that's a thing where we really do colonize other planets.

00:42:02.000 I mean, do you think that's a thousand years from now?

00:42:04.000 Is it 500 years from now?

00:42:05.000 The problem with colonizing planets, and you mentioned terraforming.

00:42:09.000 So if you've got a small telescope, you can see the polar ice caps on Mars.

00:42:13.000 You can see water on Mars from your backyard in Texas.

00:42:17.000 The problem is, let's say you went up there and you melted all that water and you made an atmosphere.

00:42:21.000 It would blow away really quickly because there's no magnetic field.

00:42:25.000 See, the reason we have an atmosphere on Earth is because we have this magnetic field that protects us from the solar wind and from radiation.

00:42:31.000 That's why we're alive today is because we have this magnetic field.

00:42:34.000 Mars doesn't have that, so you can never terraform Mars.

00:42:37.000 Even though there's books written about it, people talk about it.

00:42:39.000 Really?

00:42:40.000 The reality is the lack of that magnetic field Means that no atmosphere...

00:42:44.000 That's why there's no...

00:42:45.000 Mars used to have an atmosphere and it's gone.

00:42:47.000 What happened to Mars?

00:42:48.000 They think it got hit, right?

00:42:50.000 That's a good question.

00:42:51.000 That's why we're sending probes and stuff there.

00:42:53.000 It had ultimate climate change.

00:42:55.000 I mean, it used to have wet oceans and now it's the driest desert on Earth.

00:42:59.000 It's not as dry as Mars is.

00:43:02.000 And what are the competing theories?

00:43:05.000 They think one of them is an impact, right?

00:43:07.000 Something hit it.

00:43:09.000 Yeah, I think, honestly, I don't think they know yet.

00:43:13.000 You know, there's asteroids and stuff hit it.

00:43:17.000 The lack of a magnetic field means that for sure the atmosphere is going to get blown away.

00:43:22.000 Did they believe at one point in time it had a magnetic field?

00:43:26.000 I don't think...

00:43:28.000 I don't know.

00:43:29.000 I don't think so, but...

00:43:31.000 So it never had an atmosphere?

00:43:32.000 It could have cooled, you know, as the planet cooled down, maybe the...

00:43:35.000 You have to have iron spinning in the planet.

00:43:37.000 The reason we have it is because the iron in the middle of Earth spins, and that's what creates the magnetic field.

00:43:42.000 So as the planet cools, maybe the iron stops, but...

00:43:45.000 Man, I'm just a fighter pilot.

00:43:46.000 I don't know.

00:43:47.000 You gotta bring in some scientists.

00:43:51.000 What are your thoughts on extraterrestrial life?

00:43:55.000 So that's a good question.

00:43:56.000 I wrote a chapter about that too.

00:43:58.000 So here's what I think.

00:44:00.000 There's so many planets out there.

00:44:02.000 When you turn the lights off in the cupola on the space station and you let your eyes adjust, just like the stars are bright, you know, deep at night and deep in the heart of Texas.

00:44:12.000 Yeah.

00:44:30.000 But the other thing, Joe, I got to do a lot of experiments on my body.

00:44:34.000 I did like ultrasound on my brain and my eye and my heart and stuff on mice and plants.

00:44:41.000 And I just don't think life just happens on its own.

00:44:44.000 It's so complicated.

00:44:45.000 Like if you got this bottle of water here, if you had a pile of plastic for a billion years, it would never make a bottle of water.

00:44:54.000 Like somebody had to make the water, right?

00:44:56.000 Yeah.

00:44:58.000 And life is infinitely more complicated than a bottle of water.

00:45:02.000 So I came out of my spaceflight thinking, not religiously, but from a scientific point of view, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

00:45:11.000 The physics behind the weak electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force and the How our bodies are made.

00:45:21.000 It just points to design.

00:45:23.000 So you'd think there would be aliens, but I think if there are, somebody had to have something to do with somehow getting them started.

00:45:29.000 Does it point to design in the idea of intelligent design, or does it point to...

00:45:37.000 A way that the universe is structured that encourages complexity and constant change.

00:45:44.000 Right.

00:45:45.000 And that these things adapt and change and shift and you have all these biological forces that are competing.

00:45:51.000 Like if you think about life on Earth.

00:45:54.000 You have all these various biological forces that are competing for dominance, right?

00:46:00.000 There's animals that are eating animals, animals that are taking over resources, and then you've got this one animal that figures out how to manipulate matter, and how to manipulate environments, and how to use its opposing thumbs, and use its brain, and the brain grows larger, and you see this process.

00:46:16.000 But this process all has to do with trying to adapt, trying to innovate, and competing with all these other forces.

00:46:24.000 It seems like problems and difficulties present themselves, and these organisms either make their way through these problems and come out on the other end adapted to them and better, or they don't.

00:46:38.000 Yeah.

00:46:39.000 This is the weirdness of life, right?

00:46:41.000 And this is why 90% of all species that have ever existed are gone.

00:46:46.000 I think it's more than 90. Yeah.

00:46:48.000 They couldn't adapt.

00:46:50.000 But in our minds, we instantly like to go to the simplest possible explanation.

00:46:56.000 The simplest possible explanation being that there's some sort of a creator.

00:46:59.000 Right.

00:47:00.000 Yeah.

00:47:01.000 Well, I don't think so.

00:47:02.000 I'm just – I want to talk science, not religion.

00:47:05.000 I'm a Christian, but I don't want to talk religion.

00:47:07.000 But just – I don't know how it happened.

00:47:09.000 It's not a simplistic – somebody just went poof and everything happened.

00:47:13.000 Obviously, there's – things evolve and there's science behind it, which is the fun part of – Living is learning how stuff works and learning the science behind it.

00:47:24.000 But just at the end of the day, I think somebody had to set things in motion with a point of view.

00:47:30.000 Here's the question.

00:47:31.000 Who set them in motion?

00:47:34.000 Right.

00:47:34.000 Ultimately, there had to have been somebody that, before the Big Bang, right?

00:47:38.000 I wrote a, I did a short film this year called Cosmic Perspective.

00:47:41.000 I want to turn it into a series.

00:47:43.000 And I talk about how in the beginning of time, there were perfect imperfections.

00:47:48.000 So when the Big Bang happened, if it was like perfectly uniform, the universe would just be this giant balloon, right?

00:47:54.000 But the way, it wasn't mass at the time, it was just energy.

00:47:58.000 The way it was like started was a little bit imperfect.

00:48:02.000 And that's why you have stars and galaxies and galaxy clusters and everything.

00:48:07.000 And if it was a little bit off, the whole universe wouldn't exist, right?

00:48:10.000 So just things point to that.

00:48:13.000 What is your perspective on the Big Bang?

00:48:16.000 A lot of people's views vary depending upon what the most recent theories are.

00:48:24.000 Some people believe that the universe started with the Big Bang, and some people believe that it's always existed, and it's a continuing cycle of Big Bang's endless expansion, and then ultimately contraction, and then it starts all over again.

00:48:40.000 And that there's infinite numbers of Big Bangs that are occurring through multiverses and various universes all over the world or all over the cosmos.

00:48:49.000 Right.

00:48:49.000 So I'm reading this book right now called The End of Everything by a friend of mine.

00:48:53.000 Katie Mack wrote it.

00:48:54.000 It's about the end of the universe.

00:48:55.000 And it's really cool.

00:48:56.000 It talks about exactly what you're saying.

00:48:57.000 So there was a big bang.

00:48:59.000 You can see it, actually, in the cosmic background radiation.

00:49:02.000 There's this microwave anisotropy.

00:49:05.000 It's like everything's not uniform, and you can see that.

00:49:08.000 It's like two or three degrees Kelvin.

00:49:10.000 It's really cold.

00:49:11.000 So the question is, does it explode, and then does the big crunch, you know, does it come back?

00:49:17.000 Mm-hmm.

00:49:18.000 They think there's a stuff called dark energy, so does it continue expanding?

00:49:22.000 And she calls it heat decay, or this other one's the big rip where it just keeps on expanding, accelerating, and like even electrons can't, everything just disintegrates into nothing.

00:49:34.000 And no one knows what's going to happen.

00:49:35.000 But the really cool thing, I was just reading the chapter about...

00:49:38.000 As it expands super fast, I forgot the name of it, Boltzmann's brain or something, there's some weird thing where, because of quantum physics, which is completely not understandable, if you say you understand quantum mechanics, you don't.

00:49:53.000 Things can just randomly appear.

00:49:55.000 So if the universe is going to be around for trillions of years, like in theory, At some point, two trillion years from now, Joe Rogan could just suddenly create itself out of nothing in the universe, and you'd look around and go, wow, what's going on?

00:50:10.000 And then you'd disappear instantly because of quantum mechanics.

00:50:12.000 Wait, what?

00:50:15.000 Explain that again?

00:50:16.000 The theory is you could have an entire universe just because of quantum mechanics.

00:50:22.000 Mechanics, which is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, right?

00:50:26.000 You can't know position and velocity.

00:50:28.000 You can only know one or the other.

00:50:30.000 And an extension of that, again, man, I'm just a fighter pilot.

00:50:34.000 I'm not a physicist.

00:50:34.000 But things can just suddenly appear somewhere.

00:50:38.000 And so given enough time, even though it's highly unlikely, this water bottle could create itself out of nothing just because of physics, quantum mechanics.

00:50:48.000 I remember my teacher at the Air Force Academy used the example of all of the electrons and protons and stuff could suddenly move themselves and you could just fall through the floor.

00:50:59.000 Now, the odds of that happening, it ain't going to happen for a trillion years, but these weird things can happen.

00:51:05.000 And so she uses this kind of cheeky, funny example of, you know, your brain could just suddenly create itself out of nothing and given enough time, the probability would...

00:51:14.000 So some people say the whole universe is just this temporary thing that created itself, but I don't know.

00:51:20.000 It's very disconcerting when you hear them talk about quantum mechanics.

00:51:24.000 You know what?

00:51:25.000 I figured relativity out.

00:51:27.000 You start going, wait, two things can exist simultaneously in different places, and one of them could be in motion, the other one could be still, and they're the same thing, and they appear and disappear, and what?

00:51:40.000 And now there's quantum computers.

00:51:42.000 Yeah, that's weird.

00:51:43.000 Yeah.

00:51:43.000 Do you understand that?

00:51:44.000 No.

00:51:45.000 I don't think...

00:51:46.000 No.

00:51:46.000 I spoke at a conference, and I followed the quantum computing guy, so it's cool stuff.

00:51:54.000 I've had guys like Sean Carroll try to explain it to me on the podcast, and it just goes in one of my chimp ears and out the other. 0.62

00:52:01.000 You and me both, man.

00:52:03.000 Like I said, I love it.

00:52:04.000 It's cool to learn about it.

00:52:06.000 It does make things seem a lot more mystical than just the standard...

00:52:15.000 Sort of Newtonian physics perspective of life and gravity and matter and carbon-based life forms.

00:52:24.000 When you start getting into just listening to what they're talking about when they're talking about quantum weirdness and entanglements and things in superposition, you're like, wait, what is the world made of?

00:52:34.000 When you get down to the smallest possible measurement of life, the smallest things that you can measure, the world becomes magic.

00:52:45.000 Yeah.

00:52:45.000 On the smallest scale and also on the biggest scale.

00:52:48.000 Right.

00:52:49.000 Well, that's the weirdest part about the universe, is that...

00:52:54.000 I'm inclined, especially as I get older and I think about things more, to think that everything is kind of fractal.

00:53:01.000 And what the universe is probably, it's probably a part of some other organism.

00:53:08.000 Some immense organism that's in a universe that's impossible for us to comprehend the vastness of it.

00:53:16.000 There was a thing they just did recently where they mapped out the human...

00:53:20.000 They were talking about human brain cells and the universe.

00:53:24.000 And they were talking about the way the universe functions and the universe functions the way it looks.

00:53:30.000 Like if you do a scan of the universe.

00:53:32.000 Like it looks far too similar to a human brain cell.

00:53:36.000 This is a talk I want to do, Joe.

00:53:38.000 So I saw these patterns from space.

00:53:41.000 There's this one picture of a river in Indonesia I took.

00:53:44.000 It looks like arteries, like all these blood vessels coming out.

00:53:46.000 And I remember thinking, there's all these patterns that repeat.

00:53:50.000 The seashells, there's these spiral elliptical seashells.

00:53:53.000 And then there's hurricanes.

00:53:56.000 And then there's galaxies.

00:53:57.000 And these patterns repeat from the microscopic to the macroscopic.

00:54:02.000 It's really cool.

00:54:02.000 It's amazing.

00:54:03.000 And I don't understand them all, but in images, they're really cool.

00:54:07.000 Have you ever seen videos on fractals where they show you things like the Mandelbrot set and how the closer you get to these fractals, the same sort of pattern repeats itself over and over and over again?

00:54:23.000 It's one thing to comprehend it if someone's explaining it to you in a lecture, but it's another thing now with the advent of CGI technology, you can see these fractals be repeated over and over and over again.

00:54:35.000 And the Mandelbrot set is a particularly interesting one because it's so beautiful and weird.

00:54:39.000 And each part of that as they go deeper...

00:54:43.000 See if you can find a video on it because it's pretty badass.

00:54:46.000 Mandelbrot set, fractal, demonstration.

00:54:50.000 I know it's on YouTube.

00:54:52.000 But that these patterns, if the universe really is a part of an atom that's in a being, or a part of a cell that's in a being that exists in, you know, the idea of infinity, too.

00:55:06.000 We think of the universe as being massive.

00:55:08.000 It's 14 billion light.

00:55:09.000 That's not infinite.

00:55:10.000 Right.

00:55:11.000 It's not even close.

00:55:12.000 14 billion years is like nothing.

00:55:12.000 Right.

00:55:14.000 No, it's not infinite.

00:55:15.000 No.

00:55:16.000 At all.

00:55:16.000 So this is the Mandelbrot set, right?

00:55:18.000 Oh, cool.

00:55:18.000 And so what these artists have done is as they zoom in, the Mandelbrot set repeats itself over and over and over and over again.

00:55:25.000 And it becomes the same exact thing at the lowest possible levels of comprehension or of illustration.

00:55:36.000 They keep getting closer and closer to it.

00:55:39.000 That's amazing.

00:55:40.000 That's cool.

00:55:41.000 I was a math major in college, and I learned about fractals, but they didn't have videos back then.

00:55:46.000 I needed this video to see it.

00:55:48.000 Well, this would blow you away, right?

00:55:49.000 Because it shows it to you in a way that appeals to the brain.

00:55:53.000 Right.

00:55:54.000 And it's so hard for us to comprehend or to try to illustrate it ourself. 1.00

00:56:00.000 This is the kind of shit that you see when you're on psychedelic drugs, too. 0.99

00:56:03.000 This is another reason why it makes me weirded out. 0.99

00:56:05.000 This is a mushroom, yeah. 0.99

00:56:06.000 Yeah, like if you go on a super trip, like a real trip where you can't come back for four or five hours, this is the kind of shit that you'll see. 0.98

00:56:15.000 And it makes you wonder, like, are you looking at the very fabric of the cosmos itself?

00:56:23.000 So I think there's a theory, string theory is kind of popular for small stuff, what electrons are made out of in the smallest subatomic level.

00:56:33.000 And if I remember right, 10 to the minus 33rd meters, which is pretty small, but I think that's as small as you can get.

00:56:40.000 Like there is a smallest particle.

00:56:42.000 You can't just keep on going infinitely smaller.

00:56:45.000 Just like you can't go infinitely bigger because the universe is only so big.

00:56:49.000 So it is bounded.

00:56:50.000 That can't happen forever.

00:56:53.000 Allegedly.

00:56:54.000 Allegedly.

00:56:55.000 But 10 years from now, everything we think we know is going to be disproven probably.

00:56:59.000 Were you a Christian before you were an astronaut and a fighter pilot?

00:57:03.000 I was, yeah.

00:57:04.000 When I was a kid, I kind of made that decision on my own.

00:57:09.000 So yeah.

00:57:10.000 Is there pushback against that at all in science and in dealing with these experiments that you're dealing with and being someone who's in space?

00:57:23.000 Right.

00:57:23.000 So I think some people take religion and try and torture science to fit their view of religion.

00:57:30.000 In the 1600s, the Catholic Church used to kill people if they said the Earth wasn't the center of the universe.

00:57:36.000 And that's not at all what Christianity or the Bible says.

00:57:40.000 It says very little about it.

00:57:42.000 There's like a page or two in Genesis that basically says there was a beginning.

00:57:46.000 First there was light.

00:57:48.000 Right.

00:57:56.000 Right.

00:58:08.000 Didn't believe that at all.

00:58:09.000 He believed that the universe, the steady state universe, and he eventually said it was the worst mistake of his life, but he didn't think there was a Big Bang.

00:58:15.000 He thought everything just was forever.

00:58:19.000 So in some ways, ironically, it kind of says what it is, but from my perspective, I just want to learn the science behind stuff, and I don't get, I don't think it conflicts with religion at all.

00:58:31.000 I mean, I think just learning about stuff points to somebody really smart who's had something to do with making it all.

00:58:37.000 The interesting thing about these people that lived 5,000 years ago that had this perception of things beginning and then the universe existing.

00:58:49.000 They talk about God making the universe in six days.

00:58:52.000 I think when we're talking about things like that and you're getting translations that are thousands and thousands of years old...

00:58:59.000 And no one even speaks those languages anymore.

00:59:02.000 You know, like ancient Hebrew, which is the original language that the Bible was written in.

00:59:08.000 Good luck reading that.

00:59:09.000 I know.

00:59:10.000 How many people can even read that?

00:59:12.000 Right.

00:59:12.000 And here's the thing.

00:59:14.000 Six days and what inertial reference frame?

00:59:16.000 Because six days for you was different than six days for me on the space station.

00:59:21.000 Because that was a chapter in my book about relativity.

00:59:23.000 I actually aged less than you did.

00:59:25.000 What is six days?

00:59:26.000 Does it really mean six days?

00:59:27.000 Right.

00:59:28.000 Or is it a metaphor?

00:59:29.000 Yeah, there's expressions.

00:59:30.000 You know the expression when suicide bombers would believe they're going to get 72 virgins in heaven?

00:59:37.000 That's not really what it means.

00:59:37.000 Right.

00:59:39.000 72 is just like a million.

00:59:42.000 Like if a kid says, how many pieces of candy are you going to get?

00:59:44.000 I'm going to get a million.

00:59:45.000 They don't really mean a million.

00:59:48.000 It's a metaphor for, it's a phrase for an enormous number.

00:59:53.000 And it lets you know that It just lets you know that the universe was created in some orderly fashion.

00:59:53.000 Right.

00:59:59.000 First there was light.

00:59:59.000 Yeah.

01:00:01.000 God said, let there be light.

01:00:01.000 Yeah.

01:00:02.000 And the Big Bang was light.

01:00:04.000 I mean, it was actually what physicists, it took them thousands of years to figure out that that's what happened first.

01:00:09.000 It would be so fascinating to sit down.

01:00:12.000 If there was a way where you could do like Google Translate on people who lived 5,000 years ago, you had a time machine, sit down with the very people who were Trying to figure out how to write this stuff down, and that this is important information to pass on to other people.

01:00:25.000 Like, how do you know this?

01:00:27.000 Where are you getting this from?

01:00:28.000 Like, too much of it is applicable.

01:00:31.000 Like, they knew too much about human... 1.00

01:00:33.000 Obviously, there's a lot of shit in there that's clearly been put in there by men. 1.00

01:00:38.000 Condoning slavery, treating women like second-class citizens, but there's so much... 1.00

01:00:45.000 There's so much knowledge in there.

01:00:47.000 They had so much of an understanding of human nature and how to get along peacefully with each other.

01:00:55.000 What are the principles of harmony?

01:00:57.000 What are the rules that you can have to have a society function in a beautiful way?

01:01:05.000 Well, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

01:01:08.000 That's pretty good wisdom.

01:01:10.000 For people that were literally tooth and claw 5,000 years ago.

01:01:10.000 Right.

01:01:13.000 That summarizes life.

01:01:17.000 Know that piece of wisdom and live your life that way.

01:01:20.000 You're going to be in pretty good shape.

01:01:21.000 Everybody would be in pretty good shape if everybody lived by that.

01:01:25.000 Do you feel, without defining it as God or whatever, you feel like there's some sort of a creator that's responsible for all of this?

01:01:34.000 Or a creation force or something?

01:01:37.000 And there's a religious aspect, but I'm just going back to the scientific aspect, like an eyeball.

01:01:37.000 I do.

01:01:43.000 Mm-hmm.

01:01:44.000 Yeah.

01:01:59.000 Otherwise, all the intermediate steps are just you're in your worst shape than your buddy until the eyeball is working and can detect things.

01:02:06.000 Blood clotting.

01:02:08.000 You can't gradually get blood clotting.

01:02:09.000 Let's just start with the eyeball. 0.79

01:02:11.000 You know there's parallel versions of the eyeball, though, that evolved in very different ways.

01:02:18.000 In similar functions that you can see things using light, but like the octopus, the octopus and human beings.

01:02:26.000 If you follow evolution and you go back to when a human being and an octopus had a common ancestor, how many millions of years is that?

01:02:39.000 That would have been a long time ago.

01:02:41.000 But learning that stuff, I think, is cool.

01:02:41.000 Long-ass time ago.

01:02:43.000 It doesn't threaten...

01:02:44.000 For me, as a Christian, that doesn't threaten me.

01:02:47.000 I just want to learn about it.

01:02:48.000 But I think that people want to simplify things and look at it in terms of that there's a creator, that that's the reason why these eyeballs work the way they work.

01:02:48.000 I understand.

01:02:57.000 And I think part of our problem is an inability to not just...

01:03:04.000 To be able to comprehend it, but a complete inability to recognize the scale of time.

01:03:11.000 You can say it.

01:03:12.000 You can say, four and a half billion years ago, the Earth was created.

01:03:17.000 But that doesn't mean anything.

01:03:18.000 It goes in there and it barely...

01:03:21.000 You know the number.

01:03:22.000 I know the right zeros to write down on a piece of paper.

01:03:24.000 I can say the name, four billion or eight billion or whatever...

01:03:30.000 Enormous number you want to talk about.

01:03:32.000 I don't think our brains can comprehend it.

01:03:33.000 So when you're talking about millions and millions of years of evolution until an eyeball pops up, I think it's just such an incredible span of time and these changes that take place.

01:03:49.000 There's shifts in natural selection and random mutations and adaptations and all these things.

01:03:55.000 It's just so complex and it takes so long.

01:03:58.000 It's like we're, you know, the ant on the table can't understand the ceiling.

01:04:03.000 Yeah.

01:04:03.000 Like we're ants on a two-dimensional planet.

01:04:05.000 I think there's so much more.

01:04:06.000 I don't want to pretend like I know anything because there's probably so much stuff that I haven't even scratched the surface of understanding.

01:04:14.000 Yeah.

01:04:14.000 Which is pretty cool, but it's fun to try and learn as much as we can about how stuff works.

01:04:19.000 It is.

01:04:20.000 I worry when people want to simplify it in terms of thinking of there's a person or there's a thing who created it.

01:04:26.000 Because my take is always like, okay, who created the person?

01:04:29.000 Who created the thing?

01:04:30.000 Was God always just hanging around?

01:04:32.000 He was bored?

01:04:33.000 And then one day he decided, you know what?

01:04:35.000 I'm tired of being bored.

01:04:36.000 I'm going to make the whole universe.

01:04:38.000 Or has there always been something?

01:04:41.000 Has there always been something forever?

01:04:43.000 Even before the Big Bang, was there what you talked about before, where there's this insane expansion of things to the point where everything dissolves and disappears, and then somehow or another on the other side, it contracts?

01:04:55.000 Or are there infinite universes and each one of them has a lifespan?

01:05:00.000 And then there's just a constant cycle of new universes being birthed out of Big Bangs.

01:05:06.000 Right.

01:05:07.000 Like the thing we were talking about before, the Boltzmann brain.

01:05:11.000 Besides the Joe Rogan getting reincarnated, the whole universe could get reincarnated.

01:05:17.000 Whenever you mention simplify, I think man and religion tries to simplify things and then it turns into ideology.

01:05:27.000 Ideology is like the root of all evil.

01:05:29.000 I think we need science.

01:05:30.000 We need to have an open mind and learn how stuff happen because Once humans get involved, they use it as a way to control people.

01:05:39.000 And that's not good.

01:06:07.000 And so you have to have an open mind as a scientist.

01:06:07.000 Right.

01:06:10.000 But that also comes back to a bigger problem, not just science, but certain groups preach tolerance.

01:06:16.000 We have to be tolerant of each other as long as you believe and as long as you're ideologically pure from their view of things.

01:06:22.000 So there's very little tolerance for open discussion of anything today, right?

01:06:26.000 Cancel culture, whatever you want to call it. 0.99

01:06:28.000 Well, it's also, they're cowards. 0.97

01:06:31.000 There's some religions that are horribly repressive, and they'll never criticize them at all. 0.95

01:06:36.000 Because they're scared of being labeled Islamophobic, or labeled, you know...

01:06:41.000 Whatever.

01:06:42.000 Figure out whatever religion it is that you're discussing.

01:06:46.000 People are worried about that, but they're never worried about criticizing Christianity.

01:06:51.000 Criticizing Christianity is like a free token.

01:06:54.000 It's encouraged.

01:06:55.000 Yeah, it's encouraged.

01:06:56.000 But criticizing other religions, then you're racist.

01:07:01.000 It's very strange.

01:07:03.000 It really is.

01:07:04.000 It's an odd thing, because I think there's genuine beauty in most religions.

01:07:11.000 You can learn a lot about human beings and the way they use ethics and morals in their life and what they've learned from their religion.

01:07:23.000 When you watch the Muslims gather around Mecca and go around that circle, you don't think there's something kind of beautiful about that, amazing about that?

01:07:34.000 Peacefully get there.

01:07:35.000 They all dress the same and they all like move around this thing and show respect.

01:07:39.000 Obviously, it's doing something for them.

01:07:41.000 It has this profound effect on them.

01:07:44.000 I've got a lot of friends who are Arabs.

01:07:44.000 Yeah.

01:07:46.000 I spent a lot of time in the Middle East.

01:07:48.000 I love them.

01:07:49.000 They're awesome.

01:07:50.000 There are some factions that say we got to go blow ourselves up and that's obviously wrong.

01:07:55.000 There are some factions of Christianity that are like that too, right?

01:07:59.000 100%, absolutely, in America, right?

01:08:01.000 And I guarantee you, if we were being invaded and attacked by Muslims all the time, there'd probably be some radical fundamentalist Christians that would want to do the same thing that some Muslim sects have done. 0.99

01:08:14.000 Yeah, so getting into the...

01:08:17.000 There's good and bad that come from religion.

01:08:19.000 When it's used by people to keep themselves in power and repress other people, that's really bad.

01:08:24.000 And when it's used to do unto others as you would have them do under you, that's really good.

01:08:30.000 Don't lie, cheat, or...

01:08:31.000 Don't kill other people.

01:08:33.000 Those are good ways to run society.

01:08:33.000 Don't steal.

01:08:36.000 I think some of the problems are the same problems that we were talking about earlier when we were talking about politicians.

01:08:40.000 The problem is a person then takes control of the reins, and then their ego gets involved, and then they want to impose their rules and their structure on other people, and then you get crazy fundamentalist pastors or radical imams and all these different people that...

01:08:59.000 Or in control of the texts, or in control of the leadership.

01:09:03.000 When you see someone, whether it's Joel Osteen, on stage in front of thousands and thousands of people, leading them in this...

01:09:11.000 Is that really Christianity anymore, or is that a cult of personality? 0.96

01:09:15.000 That's like a guy.

01:09:16.000 It's a cult of personality.

01:09:17.000 There's a song called That's Not Jesus, and it talks about that.

01:09:20.000 And whenever it comes down to...

01:09:23.000 God says you should do this or else.

01:09:25.000 Right. 1.00

01:09:26.000 Then you end up with the Crusades, then you end up with the crazy shit. 1.00

01:09:31.000 And that's... 1.00

01:09:31.000 Inquisition, yeah. 1.00

01:09:32.000 You just described why we need term limits.

01:09:36.000 You know, religion starts out as a good thing, and then it turned over time.

01:09:40.000 You know, guys go to Washington, they're going to make the world better. 0.98

01:09:43.000 And after 30 years there, they're corrupt.

01:09:46.000 And so...

01:09:46.000 It's fun.

01:09:47.000 I just thought of that.

01:09:48.000 You know, the same problem with religion happens in politics.

01:09:48.000 But it's true.

01:09:51.000 Well, the real shift of religion would take place if we were in contact with extraterrestrials. 0.99

01:09:57.000 That would be a crazy shit to see how people react. 0.99

01:10:02.000 Right. 0.99

01:10:02.000 And what would be the adjustment? 0.99

01:10:05.000 Like, how would they treat...

01:10:06.000 If there was undeniable proof of extraterrestrial life that's visiting Earth, and then everyone knows it, it's real, it's as real as the NFL. It's real.

01:10:18.000 The NFL's not real.

01:10:19.000 I heard it's real.

01:10:20.000 Jamie's been to a game.

01:10:21.000 It's all filmed in a studio in New Mexico.

01:10:25.000 But if there was something along those lines, that would be interesting to see how people adjust to the idea that not only is there life out there besides us, that our origin story is not unique, and there's origin stories of countless planets all throughout space,

01:10:44.000 and they're ahead of us.

01:10:46.000 They're not just where we are right now in 2020. They're where we're going to be in 30-20.

01:10:51.000 Or even...

01:10:51.000 Right.

01:10:52.000 30,000.

01:10:53.000 Yeah.

01:10:53.000 Who knows?

01:10:53.000 Yeah.

01:10:54.000 Whatever it is.

01:10:54.000 Right.

01:10:55.000 30 million.

01:10:56.000 So what you're describing is like super hard to take what you thought you believed and change your beliefs, right?

01:11:05.000 It's really hard to go.

01:11:07.000 You think everything's one way.

01:11:08.000 You have a certain ideology, your certain worldview, and then to go, you know what?

01:11:13.000 That was not right. 0.99

01:11:14.000 That was fucked up. 0.99

01:11:15.000 I got to switch. 1.00

01:11:16.000 Yeah.

01:11:17.000 That's hard.

01:11:18.000 That's really hard for people to...

01:11:21.000 Everything's been happening politically.

01:11:22.000 Some people are going, I used to think this way, but maybe that was wrong.

01:11:25.000 I try to encourage switching your mind as much as possible.

01:11:29.000 It's hard to do, man.

01:11:30.000 People have a hard time.

01:11:30.000 It is.

01:11:31.000 You can do it by, like, it has to be a principle.

01:11:34.000 And the principle is just don't be married to your opinions.

01:11:37.000 Right.

01:11:38.000 And don't defend them if they're wrong.

01:11:40.000 Because you are you.

01:11:40.000 Right.

01:11:41.000 You are not your opinions.

01:11:42.000 And if you attach yourself to your opinions and you're married to those opinions, and you have to defend them if you know they're not correct, you lose respect for yourself.

01:11:51.000 And it becomes very bad.

01:11:53.000 You put on blinders, you get locked in, and next thing you know, you're Joel Osteen on stage in front of 20...

01:11:59.000 Or Lindsey Graham or other people that they used to say one thing. 0.98

01:12:06.000 There's a book called Factfulness.

01:12:08.000 Have you ever read that?

01:12:09.000 No.

01:12:09.000 By Hans Rosling.

01:12:10.000 Highly, highly, highly...

01:12:11.000 You need to read it.

01:12:12.000 Bill Gates recommended it.

01:12:14.000 About a year ago, and it's amazing.

01:12:16.000 It's ten reasons why the world is better than what you think it is.

01:12:21.000 But the point of the book is don't hold onto an opinion because you believe it.

01:12:26.000 Have opinions that are grounded in facts.

01:12:29.000 And the point of the book is most people think the world's going down the tubes, everything is getting worse, there's war and famine.

01:12:34.000 And the reality is most of human life has gotten much better over the last 50 or 100 years.

01:12:38.000 Yeah, we tend to concentrate on things that are dangerous.

01:12:41.000 We tend to concentrate on the problems we have, whether it's crime or violence or whatever it is.

01:12:46.000 We think, this is what we need to think about.

01:12:50.000 This is the only thing there is.

01:12:51.000 But there's so much that's good in the world that wasn't good before.

01:12:57.000 Extreme poverty.

01:12:58.000 It used to be the West and the rest, right? 0.83

01:13:02.000 America and Europe was developed and everybody else was developing.

01:13:05.000 Now it's not like that.

01:13:07.000 I travel around the world.

01:13:08.000 There's KFC everywhere.

01:13:10.000 The buildings in Dubai.

01:13:12.000 Probably not.

01:13:13.000 I don't think that's good.

01:13:14.000 We're spreading our disease to everybody.

01:13:16.000 But the point is, the world has developed.

01:13:18.000 And the people living in extreme poverty, that percentage has really shrunk.

01:13:23.000 Because of free market economies and liberal democracies in the last 50 years plus, these things have really transformed the world.

01:13:31.000 And even Africa is the most behind of all the continents, but all the trends are moving in the right direction there. 0.99

01:13:39.000 Like the birth rate's coming down, literacy rate's going up, women... 1.00

01:13:43.000 A lot of it comes down to how women are treated and places where women are treated better, all the metrics are better, the whole economy gets a lot better.

01:13:50.000 So anyway, a lot of things in the world have gotten better.

01:13:54.000 Hopefully we can continue that trend and hopefully this current, this is kind of my mission, this current divisive universe we live in, hopefully that doesn't reverse it because if it does, it'll suck for life on earth and we need to keep things moving in the right direction.

01:14:08.000 Yeah, I'm hoping that we come out of this, that this is a bad wave that we're on and we're going to come out the other end and recognize that there's real value in community and in getting along with each other and coming to agreements and real danger and divisiveness and being completely locked into these tribal beliefs like red versus blue.

01:14:31.000 But how do we come out of it?

01:14:34.000 Young people.

01:14:35.000 Young people growing up with a better perspective, listening to people that have gone through more in life and kind of understanding where the pitfalls lie, understanding the mental pitfalls that exist, just the natural inclination that human beings have to be tribal.

01:14:49.000 And that these, when you're blaming everything on the Republicans or blaming everything on the Democrats or blaming everything on, you know, whoever it is that's in power.

01:14:59.000 There's a lot to be said about being a human being in 2020 where it's pretty fucking amazing. 0.63

01:15:05.000 Even during the pandemic. 0.92

01:15:07.000 It's pretty amazing.

01:15:08.000 And we need to accentuate the good stuff and concentrate on the good stuff.

01:15:13.000 The things that we have in common are far more than the things that we have dispute over.

01:15:18.000 See that from space.

01:15:19.000 But I have a lot of hope in young...

01:15:21.000 In America, young people are not nearly as tribal as we were.

01:15:25.000 By race, by religion, by country, whatever it is.

01:15:30.000 Old people tend to be very tribal, and young people, they're happy to have someone from a different race, friends, and they don't care what your religion is. 1.00

01:15:38.000 High schoolers and college kids that I know have, I think, a pretty good attitude.

01:15:43.000 We just need to make sure, you know, between the media, the things that they see, you know, AI, and I don't know where that's going, but that is a force that does not necessarily unite us.

01:15:55.000 The incentives are to divide us and make you angry and that's where they get monetized.

01:16:11.000 I worry about it a lot.

01:16:12.000 So Jim Cameron made these amazing films, Terminator, right?

01:16:16.000 Where AI, whatever, the robots come to life and they fight us like a World War II scene.

01:16:23.000 Like in Star Wars, it's just World War II battles.

01:16:25.000 Big armies shooting each other.

01:16:26.000 That's not the problem.

01:16:29.000 The problem is they take over our lives.

01:16:33.000 You've talked about this before.

01:16:35.000 Those algorithms are not there to make sure that we all live in harmony and improve our lives.

01:16:40.000 They're there to make sure they get more eyeballs and more revenue for advertisers and that kind of stuff.

01:16:45.000 And the way to do that is by encouraging hate and anger and, oh my god, I can't believe they did that, and you click on the next one.

01:16:51.000 Look at this. 1.00

01:16:52.000 This guy's such a moron. 1.00

01:16:53.000 And that's the kind of thing that generates a quick buck. 1.00

01:16:56.000 It's not what improves our political system and our society.

01:17:01.000 Yeah, it's really just that's what people gravitate towards, unfortunately.

01:17:05.000 Those things are smart, right?

01:17:06.000 They've figured out how humans work.

01:17:08.000 But they're not trying to divide us.

01:17:10.000 The misconception is that they're devising these algorithms to make sure that people fight.

01:17:15.000 No, people like to fight.

01:17:17.000 They like to argue with each other about stuff.

01:17:19.000 My friend Ari, I've talked about this too many times.

01:17:23.000 I apologize to people who have already heard it.

01:17:24.000 My friend Ari did an experiment where he only looked up puppies on YouTube.

01:17:29.000 And then all YouTube wanted to recommend to him was puppies.

01:17:33.000 Just constant puppy videos.

01:17:35.000 So it's not necessarily that YouTube's trying to divide you by showing you all these...

01:17:41.000 You know, discussions on abortion or free will or philosophy or Antifa.

01:17:48.000 Immigration.

01:17:48.000 Right.

01:17:49.000 Those are just the things that you're gravitating towards.

01:17:51.000 Right.

01:17:51.000 And it recognizes you're gravitating towards.

01:17:54.000 If you shifted that and only started looking up self-improvement.

01:17:58.000 Right.

01:17:58.000 And exercise and diet, nutrition.

01:18:00.000 Right.

01:18:00.000 That's all they would recommend to you then.

01:18:02.000 Right.

01:18:03.000 And it's artificial intelligence, right?

01:18:05.000 So it learns.

01:18:06.000 And it learns what works for you.

01:18:09.000 And its goal is not to be evil.

01:18:10.000 Its goal is just to make money because that's who programmed it.

01:18:13.000 And unfortunately, the way people work is if we get this emotional response, then we'll do more and more of it.

01:18:20.000 And it figures that out.

01:18:21.000 So the algorithms are like...

01:18:23.000 Well, they talk about the echo chamber.

01:18:25.000 It's a self-reinforcing, self-licking ice cream cone where it just...

01:18:30.000 Unfortunately, it's taking us in a really bad direction, right?

01:18:32.000 Well, that's why people like Trump supporters are absolutely 100% convinced that he won this election and there's been a massive fraud.

01:18:40.000 And Democrats are 100% convinced that he's delusional and there's no evidence whatsoever of voter fraud.

01:18:48.000 And if you look at a person who is a Democrat who goes on YouTube all the time, you look at their YouTube feed, It's everything reinforcing those ideas.

01:18:56.000 CNN and MSNBC. And if you go to someone who's a hardcore Trumper, everything is Newsbacks, Sky News Australia, Breitbart shit. 0.97

01:19:05.000 It's all stuff that's reinforcing the idea there's massive voter fraud. 0.78

01:19:10.000 And you have like two different worlds that are existing.

01:19:13.000 It's weird.

01:19:14.000 And I'm, you know, I'm a radical...

01:19:17.000 I think we have to have a third party.

01:19:17.000 Moderate.

01:19:20.000 I think that we have three decades of data points that show that the two-party system doesn't work.

01:19:25.000 I mean, they can't even pass a budget, right?

01:19:28.000 And I was a math major.

01:19:29.000 So there's this thing called a bell curve, right?

01:19:33.000 Most everything in life is in the middle of the fat part of the curve.

01:19:36.000 There's some extreme on the right, some extreme on the left.

01:19:38.000 If you look at the batting average of catchers or how many people are in a Whole Foods or the average temperature in July, everything's a bell curve, right?

01:19:48.000 And I think politics, most people are not radical, right?

01:19:51.000 Most people are not radical left.

01:19:52.000 A few people are.

01:19:53.000 And we should have a party for them.

01:19:55.000 But most people want to have a job.

01:19:57.000 They know we need some taxes.

01:19:59.000 They don't want too much taxes.

01:20:00.000 Yeah.

01:20:00.000 We've got to have police quit shooting people.

01:20:03.000 They believe in reasonably moderate stuff.

01:20:07.000 And the political system, you talk about the algorithms in social media, the political system has the same thing.

01:20:13.000 The primary system, the way you do gerrymandering, all of this is a self-reinforcing mechanism that promotes extreme right-wing candidates that are batshit crazy. 0.72

01:20:25.000 Yeah.

01:20:26.000 AOC, right?

01:20:27.000 Yeah.

01:20:49.000 Then other people start thinking, well, that's what the right is, or that's what the left is, and then they become more polarized.

01:20:57.000 When the people in their own party don't call out the ridiculous people on the fringes, then those people define you.

01:21:04.000 The most radical people in your party define your party. 0.83

01:21:08.000 Exactly.

01:21:09.000 That's because that's what the Republicans are saying. 0.99

01:21:11.000 Oh, my God, Joe Biden's crazy socialist. 0.97

01:21:13.000 We're going to be the Soviet Union. 0.99

01:21:14.000 No, he's not.

01:21:15.000 He's the most normal guy in America.

01:21:18.000 He's a wolf in sheep's clothing.

01:21:19.000 This is what he's going to do.

01:21:20.000 He's going to bring in a bunch of hardcore bankers and hedge fund people, and they're all going to run economic policy.

01:21:28.000 They're all going to run.

01:21:29.000 They're going to be dealing with all the special interest groups. 0.99

01:21:32.000 And then they're going to have all these other people that are on that are talking all this left-wing woke shit. 0.99

01:21:32.000 Right. 0.99

01:21:37.000 And everyone's going to go, see, this is the most progressive Democratic candidate ever.

01:21:42.000 The best president ever.

01:21:44.000 But it's going to be two different things going on simultaneously.

01:21:47.000 And they're not going to call it out.

01:21:48.000 All the same things they called out about the Trump administration.

01:21:51.000 There's going to be a few people, like the really radical guys like Jimmy Dore, that's got balls, is going to talk against it.

01:21:57.000 But there's going to be a tremendous amount of people that just go along with it because they don't want to be called out for not supporting the party.

01:22:05.000 Well, they'll get a primary, right?

01:22:06.000 The worst thing for an incumbent is to get primaried as a verb because of the system we have that's so perverted.

01:22:13.000 Like, you have to be as right as possible to win your primary.

01:22:17.000 Or you have to be socialist in San Francisco, right? 0.54

01:22:20.000 God, it's bonkers.

01:22:22.000 You're 100% right.

01:22:23.000 We do need a third party.

01:22:24.000 And not just like...

01:22:27.000 Not Ross Perot.

01:22:28.000 We need a real one.

01:22:30.000 One that everybody gets behind and goes, hey, this makes sense.

01:22:33.000 A radical centrist.

01:22:35.000 That's me.

01:22:37.000 That's most people, I think.

01:22:38.000 I think that's most people.

01:22:39.000 And if you had that, then the best thing would be if they got 40% of the vote.

01:22:44.000 So then some things they'd have to partner with the Republicans to get this through.

01:22:47.000 Or some things they'd have to partner with the Democrats to get that thing through. 0.72

01:22:50.000 And then they'd actually have to make a deal to get stuff done.

01:22:53.000 Whereas now, you know, Supreme Court justices used to be approved 90 to zero.

01:22:58.000 Not too long ago.

01:22:59.000 And now, you know, you can't pass the Pledge of Allegiance and it's 51 to 49. You know, the partisanship.

01:23:08.000 And it's so insane.

01:23:09.000 And like Putin doesn't have to do that much.

01:23:12.000 He just has to watch us destroy from within.

01:23:15.000 You know, his goal is to...

01:23:17.000 Of course he wants America weakened.

01:23:19.000 China wants America weakened. 0.76

01:23:20.000 They're not trying to strengthen us.

01:23:22.000 And they kind of just need to let us go do our own thing because we're doing it to ourselves.

01:23:26.000 Well, you know, in their defense, we want China weakened and we want Russia weakened too. 0.99

01:23:30.000 It's a fucked up world. 0.99

01:23:32.000 And everybody needs to go to the goddamn space station and look down from the sky and have a perspective that's different. 1.00

01:23:38.000 Yeah. 0.98

01:23:39.000 Just look at it that way.

01:23:40.000 How many world leaders have ever gone into space like that?

01:23:43.000 None of them?

01:23:44.000 Well, we just had Mark Kelly was my colleague, astronaut.

01:23:48.000 He got elected into the Senate, so he's not a president, but he's a senator.

01:23:52.000 You know, there's a few former astronauts.

01:23:55.000 John Glenn ran for president, but he didn't make it.

01:23:57.000 It's pretty rare.

01:23:59.000 Most politicians are politicians.

01:24:01.000 They're not...

01:24:02.000 They didn't have a useful career before.

01:24:04.000 They were lawyers and they just kind of came up through the political ranks.

01:24:08.000 But something like that.

01:24:10.000 Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer.

01:24:13.000 He was a Naval Academy grad.

01:24:15.000 So he was like, he wasn't an astronaut, but he was at least technically trained.

01:24:19.000 He understood basic stuff.

01:24:20.000 He also saw a UFO. He tried to put us on the metric system and lost elections.

01:24:25.000 I remember that.

01:24:25.000 I was in grammar school, or whatever school I was in, and they tried to force soccer on us and the metric system.

01:24:36.000 You got to fight the battles that are worth fighting.

01:24:38.000 Those things will get you not elected.

01:24:39.000 Well, the metric system was interesting, because I was like, wow, this makes so much more sense than inches.

01:24:44.000 Everything's in denominations of 10. The whole world uses it.

01:24:46.000 It's way better in every way.

01:24:48.000 It's just Americans don't like it, so...

01:24:50.000 Well, we could have learned that. 0.98

01:24:52.000 That's not that goddamn hard. 0.82

01:24:55.000 I'm writing a kid's book right now, and I think I'm going to do it all in metrics. 0.90

01:24:58.000 Really?

01:24:59.000 Just to get them used to kilometers and meters and kilograms, yeah.

01:25:03.000 Well, muscle cars you have to keep in miles per hour. 0.99

01:25:05.000 I don't give a fuck what anybody says. 0.95

01:25:07.000 And airplanes you need in knots. 0.99

01:25:08.000 Oh, okay.

01:25:09.000 Nautical miles per hour.

01:25:10.000 So the whole world, everybody uses metric, but airplanes are always in feet, like your altitude is feet.

01:25:18.000 Because otherwise you've got to do it by 300 meters, which is weird in knots.

01:25:23.000 Yeah.

01:25:23.000 Yeah, meters versus yards.

01:25:26.000 In the military, when they're ranging targets and they're assessing distance, do they use meters?

01:25:33.000 I think they do, because most soldiers talk in meters when you talk to them about stuff.

01:25:37.000 So for a fighter pilot, the runway visibility range was in meters or statute miles, which it depended on the thing you were reading.

01:25:48.000 What's a statute mile?

01:25:49.000 A mile.

01:25:50.000 Well, that's what you see on Interstate 10 is statute miles as opposed to a nautical mile.

01:25:54.000 Oh, what's the difference?

01:25:56.000 15%.

01:25:57.000 Why?

01:25:58.000 Because one degree of latitude is 60 nautical miles.

01:26:02.000 So every minute is a nautical mile.

01:26:04.000 So if you're looking at a map, you can just go, there's five minutes, there's five miles.

01:26:08.000 It's a really convenient way to measure distance.

01:26:11.000 That does make sense.

01:26:12.000 It's just different than statute.

01:26:13.000 The Brits, man.

01:26:14.000 My buddy, British guy, was trying to explain money.

01:26:17.000 And they've got like farthings and shillings and pence and it's one twelfth of this and it's one eighth of...

01:26:24.000 I don't know how...

01:26:27.000 That's an old system, man.

01:26:28.000 I know. 1.00

01:26:29.000 Well, they also have fucking stone. 0.99

01:26:31.000 And they drive on the left side of the road. 0.99

01:26:33.000 He's ten stone.

01:26:34.000 I know.

01:26:35.000 Ten stone?

01:26:36.000 Like, what is that?

01:26:37.000 I'll be back in a fortnight.

01:26:38.000 Yeah, oh, that's rough.

01:26:40.000 But they do measure themselves in stones.

01:26:41.000 Yeah.

01:26:42.000 Oh, when I used to do the UFC commentary in England, I would do the weigh-in, because I do the commentary for the weigh-in.

01:26:48.000 Right.

01:26:48.000 And so they would give me, you know, 155 pounds, and then I'll say, you know, like, 11 stone!

01:26:54.000 Like, whatever, I don't know.

01:26:56.000 Was a stone 13 pounds?

01:26:58.000 I don't know.

01:26:59.000 I don't know.

01:26:59.000 14?

01:27:00.000 14. 14 pounds.

01:27:01.000 So if someone was fighting at 145 pounds, it'd be like, 10 stone 5 pounds!

01:27:08.000 And 4 pence.

01:27:10.000 Yeah.

01:27:11.000 And they put stuff in the boot and the bonnet, you know, when you're driving.

01:27:14.000 That's interesting, too.

01:27:15.000 Yeah, the boot and the bonnet instead of the trunk and the hood.

01:27:18.000 Yeah.

01:27:19.000 I love them.

01:27:20.000 Yeah.

01:27:21.000 Oh, I love them over there.

01:27:22.000 Yeah.

01:27:22.000 But it is interesting that their country and their system is so old.

01:27:28.000 They still have the goddamn king and queen, but they don't mean anything anymore. 0.99

01:27:32.000 They have the prince, and they have the queen, and they treat them like royalty. 0.99

01:27:36.000 Like when Meghan and Prince, whatever his name is, Harry, is that what it is?

01:27:40.000 They get kicked out of the royal family.

01:27:42.000 Everyone's like, aghast.

01:27:44.000 Kicked out of the royal family.

01:27:46.000 Getting more hits than Justin Bieber, probably on Twitter.

01:27:49.000 Yeah, but it's just like royals.

01:27:51.000 Right.

01:27:52.000 You guys have...

01:27:53.000 You still have the ancestors of the people who suppressed your ancestors you hold at high value. 0.87

01:27:59.000 Like, that's so bizarre.

01:28:00.000 I know.

01:28:01.000 It's a very uniquely modern, but yet bizarrely antiquated...

01:28:08.000 Culture.

01:28:08.000 They love it.

01:28:09.000 Yeah.

01:28:10.000 They love the Royals.

01:28:11.000 Yeah.

01:28:11.000 Well, they love British culture.

01:28:13.000 British people love British culture.

01:28:15.000 Yeah, they do.

01:28:15.000 It's really fascinating.

01:28:16.000 I love it, too.

01:28:17.000 That's pretty fun.

01:28:18.000 I'm still pissed about the burning the White House thing.

01:28:21.000 Burning the White House thing?

01:28:22.000 In 1812, you know, Dolly Madison had to, like, roll up the picture of George Washington.

01:28:27.000 Yeah, when the Brits came here, they burned down their White House. 0.98

01:28:29.000 You're still upset about that?

01:28:30.000 Yeah, I don't know.

01:28:32.000 I'm holding the grudge.

01:28:33.000 Gotta let that go, bro.

01:28:34.000 Those guys aren't even alive anymore.

01:28:35.000 I mean, talk to my therapist.

01:28:39.000 Get back to Aliens.

01:28:40.000 Yeah.

01:28:41.000 Everybody's favorite.

01:28:42.000 Do you know anybody who's seen anything?

01:28:44.000 You know, I have not talked to people directly.

01:28:47.000 The weirdest thing, honestly, are those Navy videos that came out a few years ago.

01:28:52.000 Yeah.

01:28:55.000 Those things are just bizarre.

01:28:56.000 I talked to him.

01:28:57.000 Yeah.

01:28:58.000 Okay.

01:28:58.000 Was he on the show?

01:28:59.000 Yeah.

01:29:01.000 He's a very believable guy in the way he describes it.

01:29:05.000 Yeah.

01:29:06.000 He's not crazy Area 51 guy.

01:29:09.000 He's a fighter pilot.

01:29:10.000 And he's had one experience.

01:29:12.000 Right.

01:29:12.000 That's it.

01:29:13.000 Yeah.

01:29:14.000 But in talking to the other people that he worked with, those things would appear every couple of weeks.

01:29:19.000 Yeah.

01:29:20.000 They would find them and see them.

01:29:21.000 They'd see them on radar.

01:29:22.000 They'd track them.

01:29:23.000 Yeah.

01:29:24.000 So I was, by that point, I was not, I was at NASA, I wasn't flying F-16, so I never heard about it.

01:29:30.000 But other guys had heard stories about it.

01:29:32.000 And, you know, there's, you can look at the radar tapes, and you can look at the HUD, the infrared HUD heads-up display, you know, the view out the front of the airplane.

01:29:41.000 Mm-hmm.

01:29:41.000 So you can see them, and they're going up and down pretty fast.

01:29:44.000 So I don't know what it was.

01:29:47.000 I don't know why an alien would fly to Earth and then hide in the ocean and tease an F-18 and then never be seen again.

01:29:54.000 That's kind of weird, but something weird was happening.

01:29:57.000 It wasn't lightning.

01:29:58.000 It wasn't a cloud.

01:29:59.000 It wasn't a special...

01:30:01.000 I don't know what it was, but it's definitely bizarre.

01:30:04.000 But you never got a chance to see anything when you were up there?

01:30:06.000 Now, there's a YouTube video of me hiding in a UFO, because this UFO came.

01:30:11.000 I'm doing my spacewalk, and there's a flash of light or something, and then I just move my hand in front of it.

01:30:15.000 And there's a guy, 10-minute commentary about, and there, Terry Virch just is blocking it.

01:30:19.000 There's a UFO out there, and he's- Oh, no!

01:30:22.000 Because the camera, because clearly the other 10 cameras won't see it.

01:30:25.000 The only camera that sees it is right here, and I just happened to- So it's a conspiracy theory guy?

01:30:28.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:30:29.000 It's total conspiracy theory.

01:30:30.000 Oh, that's hilarious.

01:30:31.000 Yeah.

01:30:31.000 Well, I've seen ones where they're talking about people in the space station, where they say that the space station is all green screen, and you can see there's a glitch in the video quality.

01:30:41.000 So they say, here you see, there's an error, and he's not even holding the hammer anymore.

01:30:47.000 Have you seen any of those videos?

01:30:49.000 I have heard those.

01:30:49.000 I haven't watched them, but I've heard about them.

01:30:51.000 We're on wires like Sandra Bullock and Gravity.

01:30:53.000 Yes.

01:30:54.000 Yeah.

01:30:55.000 Yeah.

01:30:55.000 You know, here's the thing.

01:30:57.000 People say, excuse me, we didn't land on the moon.

01:31:01.000 You know, you can't see any stars.

01:31:03.000 Well, so Bill Clinton couldn't cover up Monica Lewinsky.

01:31:08.000 So how is NASA covering up 300,000 people?

01:31:12.000 They convinced them all to never say a word for 50 years, you know?

01:31:16.000 Like, of course you can't cover anything up today because somebody's going to get a video of it.

01:31:21.000 I think you can cover things up in the 60s a lot easier than you can cover things up today.

01:31:25.000 Yeah, but we got satellites that are taking pictures of the Apollo 11 lander, and you can see the boot prints where they walked around and, you know.

01:31:34.000 So, you can see...

01:31:36.000 In fact, we just found one of the old boosters was up in space and it kind of came back to Earth.

01:31:40.000 And the astronomers just found it.

01:31:43.000 Yeah, the space junk.

01:31:44.000 They just found old space stuff from rocket launches that they were trying to figure out what this object was that was hurling around Earth.

01:31:54.000 And they realized that it was...

01:31:56.000 One of those old boosters.

01:31:57.000 Yeah.

01:31:58.000 Which is pretty wild.

01:31:59.000 They were like throwing...

01:32:00.000 Giant metal tubes off into space, letting them float around out there.

01:32:05.000 Deep space is fine, but I think one of the biggest problems humanity has is debris in low Earth orbit.

01:32:12.000 Well, have you ever seen a map of all the debris?

01:32:15.000 Oh, yeah.

01:32:15.000 It's just a...

01:32:16.000 It's horrifying. 1.00

01:32:17.000 There's so many pieces of shit up there. 1.00

01:32:19.000 Yeah, it's just a big fat crayon of stuff. 1.00

01:32:21.000 There's tens of...

01:32:22.000 The Air Force...

01:32:22.000 Well, the Space Force tracks tens of thousands of these things.

01:32:26.000 Space Force.

01:32:27.000 That's a new thing.

01:32:29.000 Patrick Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station just got renamed yesterday, I think.

01:32:35.000 They're Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

01:32:39.000 Now, when they say Space Force, what structure is there?

01:32:43.000 Are there generals in the Space Force?

01:32:46.000 Yeah.

01:32:47.000 Is there fighter jets that can go into space?

01:32:49.000 No, no, no.

01:32:50.000 I was going to say that are in development, like something that we could actually use to wage war in space?

01:32:58.000 So we've had a Space Force for 50 years.

01:33:01.000 I mean, the budget the military has is much bigger than NASA's budget, right?

01:33:07.000 So we've been flying satellites in space.

01:33:10.000 GPS is an Air Force program.

01:33:13.000 There's spy satellites.

01:33:14.000 There's communication satellites.

01:33:16.000 There's weather.

01:33:17.000 There's offensive capabilities and defensive capabilities.

01:33:19.000 We've had that for years.

01:33:20.000 The problem was it was organized in the Air Force working for a pilot who never did anything space in his whole career.

01:33:27.000 Or in the Navy.

01:33:28.000 The Navy has its own little space command.

01:33:30.000 Or the Army has its own space command.

01:33:32.000 So it kind of didn't make sense to have all these space guys that are launching rockets and not flying satellites working for the infantrymen, right, or a boat driver.

01:33:43.000 So they kind of just organized it all together.

01:33:45.000 So they didn't, like, create stormtroopers or X-Wing fighters.

01:33:50.000 It was more of a reorganization thing.

01:33:53.000 Personally, I think we need a cyber force also because...

01:33:56.000 Those guys are super important.

01:33:58.000 You don't need a million of them, but you need tens of thousands of computer nerds that know how to do computer stuff, because it's really important.

01:34:07.000 Today, they're working for an infantryman and a boat driver and a pilot, and I think they need their own organization, too.

01:34:13.000 Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense.

01:34:15.000 But this Space Force thing, how do they plan on expanding this?

01:34:20.000 Like, it just was named Space Force for the last couple years, right?

01:34:23.000 Right.

01:34:24.000 And the idea is that we need to concentrate on the possibility that there will be military action that takes place in space.

01:34:34.000 So when I was commander of the station, I had to maneuver the space station to avoid debris that the Chinese created back in 2007. Really? 1.00

01:34:42.000 So the Chinese military launched an AI satellite weapon.

01:34:46.000 They just wanted to show us that, hey, America, we can do this.

01:34:49.000 They blew up a satellite a couple hundred miles up.

01:34:52.000 And this debris is still there today.

01:34:54.000 They're still maneuvering the station a couple times a year to avoid it.

01:34:57.000 And so there is military action already in space.

01:34:59.000 When did they do this?

01:34:59.000 2007. Did anybody tell them, hey, assholes, if you do this...

01:35:03.000 Well, no, they didn't ask. 0.99

01:35:05.000 And to be honest, I think the general that did it probably got a life sentence or something.

01:35:11.000 I think the Chinese were embarrassed about it because they realized what a disaster it was. 1.00

01:35:16.000 Because all these satellites are now having to maneuver, the space station is having to maneuver to avoid the debris.

01:35:21.000 Unfortunately, our Indian friends did the same exact thing last year.

01:35:25.000 They're beating their chest, look what we can do, and they blew up a satellite in low Earth orbit and created debris. 0.99

01:35:30.000 So countries need to not do that shit, because this debris doesn't go away. 0.99

01:35:36.000 Is there a way to catch it? 1.00

01:35:37.000 No.

01:35:38.000 Well, yeah, there is.

01:35:39.000 It's going...

01:35:40.000 Eight kilometers a second.

01:35:41.000 It's going five miles a second.

01:35:43.000 So you could launch a rocket, go up, and pick up this piece of metal that got blown up, and you could grab it with a robotic arm and bring it back to Earth.

01:35:51.000 There's 10,000 other pieces that are going eight kilometers a second in other directions.

01:35:56.000 So then you need to launch another rocket to go pick up the other one.

01:35:59.000 What about like a net?

01:36:01.000 Like a big net that you scoop it all up with?

01:36:04.000 It's going 8 kilometers a second, so it's got to be a strong net.

01:36:09.000 And they don't stay within a couple feet of each other, right?

01:36:13.000 They're going to diverge.

01:36:15.000 So there are people trying to think of it.

01:36:17.000 There's really smart Silicon Valley tech.

01:36:19.000 If you could figure it out, you could make a lot of money.

01:36:21.000 Does anybody have any sort of viable plan?

01:36:25.000 I've heard about some gel concepts where you just kind of move the thing and it gets stuck in it like a fly, not a fly net, but sort of like flypaper.

01:36:33.000 Something like that, yeah.

01:36:34.000 That's how NASA did a mission years ago, Stardust, where they flew this gel through a comet's tail and all the particles got stuck in the gel.

01:36:42.000 It's going really fast, but it got stuck.

01:36:46.000 And then it came back to Earth and they dug through the gel and picked out these little dust particles.

01:36:50.000 Wow.

01:36:51.000 So there's things you can do, but the best thing to do is just don't create the mess.

01:36:55.000 Yeah, but we already have so much mess up there, right?

01:36:57.000 And then there's also satellites that are eventually going to go dark.

01:37:01.000 So the Russians had a satellite that died maybe 10 years ago, and it...

01:37:08.000 Ran into an Iridium satellite, which is a satellite telephone satellite.

01:37:12.000 So when you do sat phones, it goes through Iridium, one of the systems.

01:37:16.000 Anyway, it exploded, made a bunch of mess.

01:37:19.000 We got to maneuver the space station a couple times a year to avoid that debris.

01:37:22.000 So if you actually had a shooting war where some country said, you know what, America depends on, our military is dependent on satellites, and we want to blind them.

01:37:31.000 We want to poke them in the eye.

01:37:32.000 It's a lot cheaper to build an anti-satellite weapon than it is a massive space infrastructure. 0.99

01:37:37.000 So let's just shoot down their satellites.

01:37:39.000 The debris that that could cause could make access to low Earth orbit. 0.83

01:37:44.000 Not possible for centuries or thousands of years.

01:37:47.000 And these super constellations of these little satellites, SpaceX is launching one, Airbus is launching one, Starlink.

01:37:55.000 They want to launch tens of thousands of small satellites that will provide broadband, which is great for these African countries.

01:38:02.000 They don't have broadband.

01:38:03.000 It's an amazing thing if you could get it.

01:38:06.000 The problem is there's tens of thousands of satellites flying around.

01:38:09.000 And if 10% of them break, there's thousands of satellites flying around uncontrolled.

01:38:14.000 So the risk to debris is pretty profound, and there's no government organization regulating it.

01:38:21.000 There's no FAA or Coast Guard or anything like that for space that regulates it.

01:38:25.000 What's the thought process behind it that eventually we'll figure out how to get it down and fix it?

01:38:30.000 I think the thought process is let's launch them and make money from it as soon as possible.

01:38:34.000 I think that's the thought process.

01:38:39.000 I mean, I've talked to people, top levels, the U.S. government.

01:38:42.000 They think it's a huge problem.

01:38:44.000 Other, you know, PhDs, CEOs, you know, I think it's a problem that not a lot of people are talking about.

01:38:52.000 Yeah, sounds terrifying.

01:38:54.000 The movie Gravity was based on that premise, the Kessler syndrome, where one satellite makes a cloud, and that hits 10 satellites, and that makes a bigger cloud, and it's this cascading effect.

01:39:04.000 Hopefully it doesn't happen, but if it did, it would make a mess that's not clean-up-able.

01:39:09.000 If we pollute a river, you can stop polluting it, you can clean it up.

01:39:14.000 Within years or decades, it'll clean up eventually.

01:39:18.000 But when you pollute space, you may have to wait thousands of years for the stuff to decay.

01:39:23.000 We'll have to call upon the aliens.

01:39:25.000 Time lapse of space debris from 57 to 2015, it says.

01:39:29.000 Oh, yeah.

01:39:30.000 Oh, God.

01:39:31.000 I love this.

01:39:32.000 I've seen this before.

01:39:33.000 We're still in the 70s.

01:39:34.000 Look at that.

01:39:34.000 We're still in the 70s.

01:39:35.000 Oh, my God.

01:39:37.000 Yeah.

01:39:37.000 Now we're going up to geosynchronous orbit where there's all that stuff around the equator, all the communication satellites.

01:39:45.000 And that's just 2015. Yeah.

01:39:48.000 That's insane. 0.97

01:39:49.000 We're so gross. 1.00

01:39:51.000 Aliens must be like, these assholes. 1.00

01:39:53.000 That's why they're not coming. 1.00

01:39:54.000 They don't want to fly through that mess.

01:39:56.000 Right.

01:39:56.000 To get back to Earth.

01:39:57.000 Like, legitimately, right?

01:39:59.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:39:59.000 I bet it's probably really difficult to get through all that crap. 0.99

01:40:02.000 You have to. 0.97

01:40:03.000 You know, we used to have shuttle launch.

01:40:05.000 We were waiting until the last second to launch a shuttle to see if there was going to be a, we call it a conjunction, when two pieces come together in orbit.

01:40:11.000 Mm-hmm.

01:40:12.000 To make sure that wasn't going to happen.

01:40:14.000 It's a tough problem.

01:40:16.000 When I did my spacewalks on the outside of the station, you see lots of little divots like the size of this, you know, just little things where a piece of paint or a...

01:40:28.000 A nut or a bolt or something hit it going 8 kilometers a second.

01:40:32.000 A nut or a bolt?

01:40:33.000 Really?

01:40:34.000 Wouldn't that pull right through it?

01:40:36.000 Something that...

01:40:37.000 You're right.

01:40:37.000 I mean, at a certain point, it's going to just go through it.

01:40:40.000 But a chip of paint would actually leave a dent.

01:40:42.000 Yeah, right.

01:40:43.000 Do you hear things?

01:40:44.000 Like a bink? 1.00

01:40:46.000 Do you ever hear like a...

01:40:47.000 What I heard was like popping and creaking from the state...

01:40:51.000 When it gets hot and cold, it expands and shrinks and expands and shrinks and...

01:40:55.000 I remember my first flight, I went into the European module, the Columbus module, and I was sleeping there.

01:41:02.000 And all night long, it was just...

01:41:04.000 And sometimes in my sleeping quarters, I'd hear this and I'm like, there's nothing I can do about it.

01:41:12.000 There's no need to worry.

01:41:13.000 Has anybody died up there?

01:41:15.000 Not on the space station.

01:41:17.000 That's amazing.

01:41:19.000 Yeah, I wrote a chapter about what to do if, you know, what do you do with a body if your crewmate died.

01:41:23.000 But thank God that hasn't happened.

01:41:25.000 But, you know, we're humans and we don't last forever.

01:41:29.000 What is this, Jamie?

01:41:30.000 Oh, is that a glass hole?

01:41:32.000 Is it a flick of paint, it says.

01:41:34.000 It looks like it hit the window, yeah.

01:41:37.000 Wow.

01:41:38.000 A flick of paint created that smashed window.

01:41:41.000 The windows are full of little holes that you're like, uh-oh.

01:41:46.000 I remember one morning we woke up and I saw that.

01:41:49.000 And I had to take a picture and send it back home.

01:41:51.000 Look at that one!

01:41:52.000 It's like a test, I think, is what it said.

01:41:54.000 This is the damage that a half ounce of space debris can do.

01:41:58.000 Click on that so I can see the full...

01:42:00.000 Yeah, that's what the little craters look like.

01:42:03.000 There's gravity.

01:42:04.000 So this must be right after gravity.

01:42:06.000 Yeah.

01:42:06.000 Look at that.

01:42:07.000 That's what the craters look like, yeah.

01:42:09.000 They're smaller than that, I guess.

01:42:10.000 Wow.

01:42:11.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:42:12.000 Yeah, fuck that. 1.00

01:42:14.000 It's kinetic energy. 1.00

01:42:16.000 One half mv squared, right?

01:42:17.000 That's just a big V. It's an insane impact.

01:42:21.000 So if we want to have commercial travel, space travel, they're going to have to sort that out.

01:42:29.000 So the suborbital flights, it's not an issue because they go up to 100 kilometers and come right back down.

01:42:33.000 They're not morbid.

01:42:34.000 But yeah, for all space travel for the future, we need to manage debris smarter.

01:42:40.000 And it has to be in a way that it can't just be America because every country can launch stuff.

01:42:44.000 So we really need a global cooperation to let everybody agree to not ruin Earth orbit.

01:42:51.000 And if someone goes up there and gets hit with debris and then their spaceship blows up up there, then we're triple fucked, right?

01:42:59.000 The shuttle actually had these big payload bay doors, right?

01:43:03.000 The things would open up.

01:43:04.000 The radiators were there.

01:43:06.000 And you had to have the radiators where it would overheat and die.

01:43:09.000 And when it came back, it was like somebody shot a.22 through it.

01:43:12.000 There was this perfect hole that went right through the radiator.

01:43:15.000 But luckily, it didn't hit the line where the fluid would have leaked out. 0.99

01:43:19.000 But everybody went, holy shit, man. 0.99

01:43:21.000 We got lucky on that one. 0.99

01:43:23.000 Literally, it was the size of a.22, a little bullet hole.

01:43:26.000 God.

01:43:27.000 Yeah.

01:43:27.000 So you're there for 200 days going, I hope nothing hits because there's nothing you can do about it.

01:43:32.000 So I hate to keep harping on this alien thing, but that's all I'm fascinated by when it comes to space travel.

01:43:37.000 You never talked to anybody that saw anything weird?

01:43:42.000 Not that I can tell you about.

01:43:43.000 No, not that you can tell me about.

01:43:45.000 I'm joking, yeah.

01:43:45.000 I don't believe you're joking.

01:43:47.000 Yeah.

01:43:48.000 Did you ever like, I mean, you're up there, you're seeing so many stars and so many, I mean, you have this insane view of the universe as you were describing.

01:43:58.000 Right.

01:43:58.000 I think I would have just stared out the window all day.

01:44:00.000 I would love to have, you know, filmed it.

01:44:03.000 I did as much as I could.

01:44:04.000 The problem is it was all in my spare time because they give you this.

01:44:07.000 How much spare time do you get?

01:44:09.000 Not a lot.

01:44:09.000 I mean, maybe a couple hours at night, but I would have a pocket full of little CF cards for my camera.

01:44:16.000 So, once I had dinner, I would always try to...

01:44:18.000 There's you, buddy.

01:44:18.000 There I am in the cupola taking pictures.

01:44:20.000 Wow.

01:44:20.000 That was my favorite thing to do.

01:44:22.000 So, and you see those little dots on the window?

01:44:25.000 Yeah.

01:44:26.000 There's something hit the window on the outside.

01:44:29.000 That's what those are?

01:44:29.000 Yeah, it's the impact debris from a piece of paint or something.

01:44:32.000 Wow.

01:44:33.000 Yeah, on the outside.

01:44:35.000 A lot of paint flying around up there, huh?

01:44:37.000 Something small.

01:44:41.000 So at nighttime is when I would download all the images I'd taken or I'd run down and try and take another picture or something like that.

01:44:47.000 Because the day was just full of normal work.

01:44:49.000 You've got to work to earn your paycheck.

01:44:51.000 But I was taking pictures whenever I could.

01:44:55.000 Now, what has changed in terms of the materials that they use to construct these things?

01:45:03.000 Because I know you wanted to talk about graphene.

01:45:06.000 Yeah, graphene's amazing.

01:45:08.000 Yeah.

01:45:08.000 So I think it has some potential maybe radiation shielding or debris shielding.

01:45:13.000 Because graphene, I don't know if you know much about it, but...

01:45:15.000 A little bit.

01:45:16.000 I've learned in the last couple years, helping a couple startups with it.

01:45:20.000 But it's basically a single layer of carbon.

01:45:23.000 And it's in these hexagon, like six carbons bond together and another six and another six.

01:45:30.000 And so...

01:45:31.000 It's like 20 times stronger than steel, more conductive electrically than copper.

01:45:37.000 So you can make some amazing things out of graphene, nanotubes.

01:45:41.000 The potential is massive, right?

01:45:43.000 This stuff was only discovered in like 2004, I think.

01:45:46.000 Guys won the Nobel or the prize for discovering this.

01:45:51.000 But it's really hard to work with because it's so thin.

01:45:55.000 It's hard and expensive to make.

01:45:57.000 You know, it's difficult to do stuff with it.

01:45:59.000 But I think for space travel, because in space everything's about mass and weight.

01:46:04.000 It's tens of thousands of dollars a pound to launch stuff.

01:46:06.000 So you can make stuff stronger and lighter, which is pretty important for anything in life, but especially space travel.

01:46:15.000 And how long has this existed for?

01:46:18.000 They discovered it in 2004. A Russian guy and a British guy in the UK. And I think they were working with graphite.

01:46:25.000 So just pencil lead.

01:46:25.000 A piece of rock they pulled out of the ground.

01:46:27.000 And the story goes that they were trying to shine it or grind it down and they were having a hard time.

01:46:33.000 So a guy took a piece of tape and he's like, that's a really thin layer of carbon.

01:46:37.000 So just like scotch tape pulled off this single layer of carbon atom that was this amazingly strong material.

01:46:45.000 And there's a lot of promise there.

01:46:48.000 The problem is actually getting it into these products.

01:46:52.000 Interesting, you can put it in like concrete or asphalt and it's, you know, 10% stronger, cures 10% quicker, which in construction is massive.

01:47:02.000 The Rome airport just paved a taxiway with graphene-infused asphalt, which is pretty cool.

01:47:09.000 In Austin, there's not a lot of potholes, but imagine if you had roads without potholes.

01:47:15.000 How much money could the local government save and how many tires would be saved from that?

01:47:21.000 If you could 3D print materials that weren't just bendable plastic but were super steel, what applications could you do with that?

01:47:31.000 Probably a lot of different things.

01:47:32.000 And it would be incredibly light, too.

01:47:34.000 Yeah, if you could do plastic bags that were biodegradable or 50% less plastic because they were stronger.

01:47:41.000 I know someone who's working on that who's actually demonstrated it.

01:47:45.000 Whoa, whoa, whoa.

01:47:45.000 Go back up there.

01:47:46.000 Look at this.

01:47:48.000 BAC debuts first ever graphene constructed vehicle. 1.00

01:47:52.000 Look at that fucking car. 1.00

01:47:54.000 Holy shit. 1.00

01:47:55.000 You can also use it in tires. 0.99

01:47:57.000 So that's carbon fiber.

01:47:59.000 That's carbon fiber.

01:48:00.000 So is that...

01:48:01.000 What is...

01:48:02.000 Carbon fiber.

01:48:03.000 Graphene?

01:48:04.000 You can infuse graphene into the carbon fiber.

01:48:06.000 Yeah.

01:48:07.000 Wow, so strength and lightweight qualities that surpass that of carbon fiber make graphene the potential game changer in the car world.

01:48:15.000 According to a BAC press release, graphene is made of sheets of carbon that are just one atom thick and significantly lighter than standard carbon fiber.

01:48:24.000 It's also stronger than carbon fiber, meaning that it can bring weight reductions around 20% while being 200 times stronger than steel. 0.99

01:48:32.000 Holy shit. 0.99

01:48:32.000 There you go. 0.99

01:48:33.000 I missed a zero.

01:48:34.000 Wow.

01:48:34.000 And you can also...

01:48:35.000 Tires are made of something called carbon black, which is just awful.

01:48:38.000 It's just nasty.

01:48:41.000 So if you can replace that with graphene or some percentage of it...

01:48:44.000 And Goodyear's done that.

01:48:45.000 They've actually made...

01:48:46.000 I think they've got some bike tires for sale.

01:48:48.000 But don't tires need to be sticky? 0.54

01:48:50.000 So they need to be soft.

01:48:52.000 How are you going to do that with graphene?

01:48:53.000 You'd have to do it.

01:48:55.000 You need strength in a lot of it.

01:48:57.000 But where the rubber meets the road needs to be sticky.

01:49:01.000 That would have to remain rubber.

01:49:03.000 You'd have to...

01:49:04.000 They've got a lot of smart PhDs doing this stuff. 0.98

01:49:08.000 But figuring out how to...

01:49:10.000 Integrate it is not easy.

01:49:11.000 If it was, everybody would be doing it.

01:49:13.000 It's been like the promise of tomorrow for the last 15 years.

01:49:17.000 But I think some folks are actually making materials and products with it, which is pretty amazing.

01:49:23.000 It is amazing when you think of the potential for innovation, whether it's graphene or different clean energy sources.

01:49:32.000 I'm sure you've been in an electric car and you've driven one of those.

01:49:36.000 They're preposterously fast.

01:49:38.000 The acceleration is awesome, yeah.

01:49:40.000 It's so strange.

01:49:41.000 Like, they're so superior.

01:49:42.000 Right.

01:49:42.000 I was driving my buddy's Ferrari.

01:49:44.000 He's got a 488 like this. 0.52

01:49:45.000 It's awesome.

01:49:46.000 It's awesome.

01:49:47.000 I got to drive a LaFerrari once.

01:49:49.000 It was awesome.

01:49:51.000 A Tesla just buries it.

01:49:54.000 2.5, 0 to 60, or whatever it is.

01:49:56.000 Yeah, I have a Model S. It's insane.

01:49:58.000 It's insanity.

01:49:59.000 It's crazy, yeah.

01:50:01.000 It's hard to believe.

01:50:01.000 The limiting factor is the tires.

01:50:02.000 The tires can't keep up with the motor.

01:50:04.000 And he's going to come out with that Roadster that's going to be significantly faster, half a second to 60, faster than that car.

01:50:12.000 Really?

01:50:12.000 Yeah.

01:50:13.000 1.9.

01:50:14.000 1.90 to 60. Humans can't control that.

01:50:18.000 That's a dangerous...

01:50:19.000 That is a dangerous car.

01:50:20.000 Well, even a Ferrari, right? 1.00

01:50:22.000 Like, you'd think just some regular asshole like me or you could just go and buy one of those. 1.00

01:50:27.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:50:27.000 You don't have to have, like, race car skills. 1.00

01:50:30.000 Right, no.

01:50:30.000 You don't have to be Jeff Probst.

01:50:32.000 Nope.

01:50:32.000 You can just be some...

01:50:34.000 Yeah.

01:50:35.000 You can be...

01:50:35.000 Or Randy Probst, I should say.

01:50:37.000 Jeff Probst is a survivor guy, right?

01:50:38.000 Whoops.

01:50:39.000 Randy Probst, race car driver.

01:50:41.000 I had a crewmate at the Air Force.

01:50:43.000 That's the Roadster?

01:50:45.000 That's real.

01:50:45.000 Oh my god, that's insane.

01:50:47.000 60 miles an hour in 1.9 seconds.

01:50:49.000 250 miles an hour top speed.

01:50:51.000 600 miles, wow.

01:50:52.000 Yeah, it's going to be the fastest thing on the road.

01:50:54.000 I need one of those.

01:50:55.000 Oh, you definitely do.

01:50:57.000 Yeah, I definitely need one of those.

01:50:58.000 But it's vaporware right now.

01:51:00.000 Right now it's vaporware, and he's really concentrating on the truck, the Cybertruck, before he puts this thing out.

01:51:07.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:51:08.000 Which really sucks. 0.83

01:51:09.000 I think some people actually bought it in advance, too. 0.96

01:51:13.000 Right?

01:51:13.000 A couple of years ago.

01:51:14.000 Put a deposit down.

01:51:15.000 I don't think it's a deposit, son.

01:51:17.000 Right?

01:51:18.000 Right?

01:51:18.000 Reservation.

01:51:19.000 There you go.

01:51:19.000 $250.

01:51:20.000 Pre-pay. 0.99

01:51:20.000 Bro, get the fuck out of here. 0.99

01:51:22.000 I think it's supposed to be delivered already now. 0.99

01:51:24.000 Yes, it has!

01:51:26.000 Big delays.

01:51:28.000 The stock's at $600.

01:51:30.000 That's good.

01:51:31.000 It's an amazing vehicle.

01:51:32.000 That's for sure.

01:51:33.000 It's amazing.

01:51:34.000 I need one of those.

01:51:35.000 But is there ever going to be a time where something like that can be used for space travel or for rocket travel?

01:51:44.000 Like, do we need...

01:51:46.000 Obviously, with a car, you're dealing with friction and traction on the ground with the tires.

01:51:51.000 You just need something to spin the tires.

01:51:52.000 But with a jet engine or with a rocket, you need something to push out the back to make you go forward.

01:51:58.000 Right.

01:51:59.000 You're on to the right thing because it's the first minute that's the hardest part of any spaceflight.

01:52:06.000 Yeah.

01:52:06.000 There's gravity.

01:52:07.000 You're not moving.

01:52:09.000 There's air.

01:52:10.000 The air is really thick here.

01:52:11.000 You go up 100,000 feet, there's hardly any air.

01:52:13.000 So that initial part is like half of the energy required to get into space.

01:52:18.000 And so there are some air-launched options where you go up on an airplane and, you know, you drop down and then launch up into space.

01:52:25.000 Paul Allen from Microsoft had a company, unfortunately, just went out of business.

01:52:29.000 Richard Branson has Virgin Orbit.

01:52:32.000 So Virgin Galactic is the $250,000.

01:52:34.000 You launch from an airplane, go up for five minutes and come straight back down.

01:52:38.000 And it's a quarter million dollars?

01:52:40.000 It's a quarter million dollars.

01:52:40.000 They're doing that right now?

01:52:41.000 No.

01:52:42.000 They did it in 2004 for their first test flight.

01:52:46.000 And here it is, 2020. Hopefully next year they're going to do it for real.

01:52:50.000 Um, but they have origin orbit where instead of people, they put a big satellite on there and launch it into space.

01:52:56.000 And the idea is you, you know, instead of having boosters for the first stage, you have a airliner for the first stage and that gets you to 500 miles an hour and 30,000 feet, which is a lot of the requirement to get into space.

01:53:11.000 They did that with the Space Shuttle, right?

01:53:13.000 They did things where the Space Shuttle was on top of a plane.

01:53:17.000 Yeah.

01:53:17.000 That was called SALT, Shuttle Approach and Landing Testing.

01:53:20.000 That was like 1977, I think, where they put it on a 747, and then the 747 pushed and the shuttle pulled up, and then it just came into land.

01:53:28.000 But that was a glider enterprise, Space Shuttle Enterprise, the test landing.

01:53:35.000 Virgin Galactic is launching a historic human space flight this week.

01:53:39.000 I did not even know that.

01:53:41.000 Very cool.

01:53:44.000 By Friday they're going to try to get it up.

01:53:48.000 They're coming to the end of their test program and I would not be surprised if they're launching paying customers next year.

01:53:57.000 You have to be really brave.

01:54:01.000 There is risk.

01:54:03.000 There is definitely risk.

01:54:05.000 Well, didn't Elon's thing blow up yesterday?

01:54:08.000 Yeah.

01:54:10.000 Rockets blow up sometimes. 0.99

01:54:11.000 What the fuck was that? 0.99

01:54:12.000 What the fuck does that mean? 0.99

01:54:14.000 The launch was fine. 0.97

01:54:15.000 That's the landing part.

01:54:17.000 You need to have that part.

01:54:19.000 You can't just not have the landing part.

01:54:21.000 We used to say, you know, if you can walk away, that's a good landing.

01:54:26.000 If you can use the airplane again, that's a great landing, so...

01:54:29.000 Well, that's the whole process, that they want to be able to use these things over and over again.

01:54:34.000 Right, right, right.

01:54:34.000 When you were talking about the three explosions that happened in a row when they were coming to relieve you guys or bring you supplies, how often do these things blow up?

01:54:46.000 What's the average?

01:54:47.000 Not that often.

01:54:49.000 Three in a row seems like it was a bad year.

01:54:51.000 Yeah, if there was three Teslas in a row that just blew up, people would be freaking out and want them pulled off the road.

01:54:57.000 Right.

01:54:57.000 I know.

01:54:59.000 The Rockets are pretty reliable.

01:55:01.000 The Atlas, which has been around for years, the Atlas V has never had a failure, so knock on wood.

01:55:07.000 The Soyuz has been around for 50 years, and it's less than 5% failure, so they've had a lot of successes with that.

01:55:14.000 5% is a lot.

01:55:15.000 It's a few percent have failed.

01:55:16.000 1% is 100 launch.

01:55:19.000 Would you get on an airplane if 99 times out of 100 you get to land?

01:55:23.000 No.

01:55:23.000 No, of course not.

01:55:24.000 No.

01:55:25.000 5% is way more.

01:55:28.000 It's a lot more.

01:55:29.000 That's a lot.

01:55:30.000 That's every 100, five people die.

01:55:34.000 Five things blow up. 0.99

01:55:38.000 Get the fuck out of here. 0.98

01:55:39.000 That's a lot. 0.98

01:55:41.000 We lost two out of 135 shuttles.

01:55:45.000 So that's more than 1%.

01:55:46.000 98.5% or something.

01:55:49.000 How much of that could have been prevented?

01:55:51.000 100%.

01:55:51.000 Both of those were not technical problems.

01:55:54.000 You could figure out what the technical problems were, but they were management problems.

01:55:57.000 The Challenger was a management problem.

01:55:59.000 I teach this course at Harvard Business School, and we talk about Challenger and Columbia, the case studies.

01:56:05.000 It was the same mistake in both cases.

01:56:08.000 There was a problem with the shuttle that was talking to them.

01:56:11.000 It was talking to them.

01:56:12.000 They knew about it.

01:56:13.000 They knew about it.

01:56:14.000 And they...

01:56:15.000 And people below them were saying, hey, this is a problem, this is a problem.

01:56:18.000 And they just kind of barreled full speed ahead.

01:56:21.000 How do you feel about private businesses getting into space travel as opposed to NASA? I think it's great.

01:56:29.000 I think that, in general, the government is just a giant bureaucracy.

01:56:33.000 It's the self-licking ice cream cone.

01:56:35.000 You're just trying to get jobs for congressional districts.

01:56:38.000 And when you look at today's government programs, they just take decades and cost billions and often don't produce very much.

01:56:45.000 Private companies, on the other hand, can't raise taxes, so they've got to get their stuff flying as fast as they can.

01:56:51.000 So there's this incentive to, if you blow something up, fix it and launch again the next day.

01:56:57.000 So that's really good, and you can get...

01:56:59.000 You know, engineers going right out of college, and there's a lot of really great things about the private space.

01:57:06.000 Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, a guy named Tim Ellis at Relativity, who's amazing, is young, he's probably 30 years old now, has this amazing rocket company, and I think he's raised over $100 million in VC funding.

01:57:19.000 So that's the good side of it.

01:57:20.000 The bad side of it is they do blow up sometimes, and they don't necessarily have 50 years of lessons, we always say they're written in blood.

01:57:28.000 The rules are written in blood because somebody died and you had to come up with a new rule.

01:57:32.000 So you have to balance.

01:57:33.000 For satellites, it's great.

01:57:35.000 For people, you've got to have some adult supervision to keep the engineers with their hair on fire under control a little bit.

01:57:44.000 Do you think that competition within private industry, like you got Jeff Bezos company, you got Elon Musk company, Virgin Galactic, you got all these different companies that are trying to compete against each other.

01:57:54.000 Do you think that that is going to push innovation further than just relying on, like you're saying, these bureaucrats?

01:58:00.000 Yeah.

01:58:00.000 Without it, there is no innovation.

01:58:02.000 I mean, without the Yankees, the Red Sox are going to suck, right?

01:58:04.000 So you have to have, in fighting, in life in general, you got to have competition or you're not going to, you won't push yourself to that next level.

01:58:12.000 Right, and the Russians were always our competition during the initial space race, right? 0.85

01:58:16.000 So the fear of that Soviet flag on the moon...

01:58:23.000 I don't know if you know the story.

01:58:26.000 We were going to do this slow buildup project and then Apollo 1 fire happened that slowed everything down.

01:58:33.000 The Soviets had this big N1 moon rocket and NASA made the really ballsy decision to send Apollo 8 on a lap around the moon, which kind of sped up the moon landing by one or two missions.

01:58:45.000 That enabled it to land in 1969. Had they not made that kind of gutsy call, Apollo 11 probably would not have happened in 69. So sometimes you've got to take a chance.

01:58:55.000 And they're talking about putting some sort of a base on the moon.

01:58:59.000 How feasible is that?

01:59:02.000 Well, you could do anything you want with enough money, right?

01:59:06.000 With enough time and money, you could do whatever you want.

01:59:08.000 So if you had a president that was motivated and you got the Congress and the Senate and the House, you got everybody behind them.

01:59:14.000 Right.

01:59:15.000 The American public's behind them.

01:59:16.000 Right.

01:59:17.000 Spend that money.

01:59:17.000 Let's do it.

01:59:18.000 They could conceivably have a base on the moon where astronauts could go there, visit, do their stuff, and then come back the same way you do with the space station.

01:59:28.000 Right.

01:59:29.000 Yeah, you'd need a special lander, like the funny-looking moon lander.

01:59:32.000 But yeah, you could do that for sure.

01:59:34.000 We did, look, in 61, the beginning of 1961, nobody had ever flown in space.

01:59:39.000 Eight and a half years later, Buzz and Neil were on the moon.

01:59:42.000 In eight and a half years in 1960s, there was no iPhones, there was no computers.

01:59:49.000 That's how fast we did it in the 60s.

01:59:51.000 So you could definitely, if you had the money and you had the vision and you knew what you were going to do, that kind of thing definitely could happen, yeah.

01:59:59.000 That would be the ultimate tourism.

02:00:00.000 That would be pretty cool.

02:00:01.000 I probably would have stuck around at NASA. What is this, Jamie?

02:00:05.000 They just, just within the last day, released a plan for the...

02:00:09.000 Oh, there you go.

02:00:10.000 Detailed plan for 2024 moon base camp.

02:00:14.000 Wow, that sounds ambitious.

02:00:15.000 Four years from now?

02:00:17.000 Yeah.

02:00:17.000 Well, that was political.

02:00:20.000 That was for Trump's second term.

02:00:22.000 He came up with that date to... 1.00

02:00:24.000 You think he's full of shit? 1.00

02:00:25.000 We're not landing on the moon in 2024, for sure. 1.00

02:00:29.000 But the good news, the good thing about having a deadline is that it lights a fire, right?

02:00:35.000 Yeah.

02:00:36.000 At anything.

02:00:37.000 If you're going to the gym, you've got to have some...

02:00:42.000 Some goals.

02:00:43.000 Compelling reason to get it done.

02:00:44.000 If you don't, you're just going to be lazy and not get it done.

02:00:47.000 The advantage of having a deadline.

02:00:49.000 I think the reason we landed by 1969 is we didn't have quite enough time to do it.

02:00:54.000 And we were able to do it.

02:00:55.000 If you make a crazy thing, then you're never going to get there.

02:00:58.000 Like if I say I want to run a marathon in three hours, that's never going to happen.

02:01:02.000 But if I go, I want to run a marathon without running, I could probably get there.

02:01:07.000 So you have to have goals that are probably more, you know, on the edge.

02:01:11.000 You can't make some crazy goal that's never going to happen.

02:01:13.000 Being a part of this whole space program and having spent so much time in the space station, do you ever, like, just daydream and think, what is it going to be like a thousand years from now?

02:01:22.000 What is it going to be like 5,000 years from now?

02:01:25.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:01:28.000 It's pretty cool.

02:01:29.000 So I liked science fiction as a kid.

02:01:30.000 I liked Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov and stuff.

02:01:33.000 And these guys, that's what they had.

02:01:35.000 They had bases on Mercury and Venus and stuff.

02:01:39.000 So you wonder, can we get there?

02:01:41.000 And I think, again, it all comes back to politics, Joe.

02:01:45.000 If we can figure out how to be smart about how we live our lives on Earth, we can do amazingly great things.

02:01:51.000 If it's all about fighting each other and stuff, then we're going to be cavemen, you know, again.

02:01:56.000 But is this where private enterprise comes into play in terms of, like, space travel?

02:02:01.000 Because privately fund space travel is not as saddled down by politics.

02:02:06.000 100%.

02:02:06.000 That's the hope that I have for our space program is in good old-fashioned American innovation.

02:02:13.000 There's nowhere else like it.

02:02:14.000 China claims that they have a private space program, but they're just copying the SpaceX Dragon capsule and it's government funded.

02:02:23.000 So I think America, of all of our faults, our innovation is pretty damn good.

02:02:28.000 And that's where we have our competitive advantage over the rest of the world.

02:02:32.000 And we don't want to use it to beat them.

02:02:33.000 We want to use it to lead the world in the right direction.

02:02:36.000 Like, what is, amongst other astronauts, what is the feeling about the future of space travel?

02:02:42.000 Are people divided?

02:02:44.000 Are people optimistic?

02:02:45.000 Or do they have, is there sort of a universal view of what the future is going to look like?

02:02:53.000 Most astronauts are just worried about their next flight.

02:02:56.000 Like, how do they get the next space flight?

02:02:57.000 And today, that just means space station.

02:03:00.000 Right.

02:03:00.000 So that's kind of the main thing that people are focused on.

02:03:03.000 There are definitely some visionaries.

02:03:05.000 We'd fly in our T-38s to the Kennedy Space Center or whatever.

02:03:09.000 We'd have an hour to sit there and talk.

02:03:10.000 And we would always talk about, you know, should we go on to the moon or should we go to Mars or what kind of...

02:03:14.000 Should we do a gateway?

02:03:16.000 We'd always debate these policies.

02:03:18.000 And I think most astronauts would like to see some exploration.

02:03:23.000 Low Earth orbit's great, but we want to go to the Moon.

02:03:25.000 We want to go to Mars.

02:03:26.000 That's the kind of stuff that we want to do in the long term.

02:03:28.000 I'm very disappointed that you don't know more people that have seen UFOs.

02:03:33.000 That's a bummer to me.

02:03:34.000 I expect you to have like a gang of stories.

02:03:37.000 Now we've got to turn the microphone off.

02:03:39.000 Really?

02:03:39.000 No.

02:03:40.000 I'll turn it off.

02:03:41.000 I need to know.

02:03:43.000 I've become more fascinated over the last few years, like three or four years.

02:03:46.000 And then after the New York Times story three years ago, the front page of the New York Times, they're talking about the footage that these fighter jets have acquired.

02:03:55.000 New York Times, CNN had a thing.

02:03:58.000 The Washington Post had a thing.

02:03:59.000 This is not UFOs.com.

02:04:02.000 This is legitimate UFOs.

02:04:04.000 It was a legitimate thing.

02:04:05.000 I know the guy at the Pentagon that was running that office to look into it, and they're like, yeah, that was crazy.

02:04:11.000 We're not sure what it is.

02:04:13.000 Does that, when you're in space and you're looking out that window, is that ever on your mind?

02:04:20.000 That there's something out there?

02:04:23.000 Here's the problem.

02:04:24.000 So we talked earlier, are there aliens or not?

02:04:27.000 There probably are.

02:04:28.000 But the problem is those planets are far, far, far away.

02:04:33.000 So if we launch Voyager, the Voyager probes back in the 70s, the fastest thing humans have ever launched.

02:04:39.000 If we launch them towards Alpha Centauri or Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, it would take them like 60,000 years or something.

02:04:47.000 It would...

02:04:48.000 You know, they're never going to get there.

02:04:51.000 And to think about building a spaceship, and that was just a little small thing the size of this table, to build a spaceship big enough to hold hundreds and thousands of generations would be huge.

02:05:03.000 There probably isn't enough chemical propellant on Earth to launch something that fast that would take thousands of years.

02:05:11.000 So the ability to get to these other stars is, I don't think it's ever going to happen.

02:05:17.000 It's going to be thousands of years in the future.

02:05:19.000 Well, this is with our limited understanding.

02:05:21.000 With our understanding, right.

02:05:22.000 There's a novel called The Three-Body Problem.

02:05:25.000 It's a Chinese novel by Xi Xin Liu.

02:05:27.000 It's probably the most famous book on Earth because it's Chinese.

02:05:30.000 It's really a good book.

02:05:31.000 And it's about sending people to Proxima Centauri.

02:05:36.000 I think?

02:05:54.000 And the Sun is a lot louder than our transmitter here, right?

02:05:58.000 And so the signal-to-noise ratio, you would never be able to tell that there's aliens there.

02:06:02.000 In this three-body problem, they invent this thing where we send a signal to Jupiter, and Jupiter is a big amplifier, right?

02:06:09.000 It's like your electric guitar amplifier.

02:06:11.000 But the science fiction writer understood signal-to-noise ratio, and he knew that nobody would ever be able to hear our signal.

02:06:17.000 So the two problems are, how do you know that there's aliens there?

02:06:20.000 Because unless they're sending out a flashlight brighter than their star, which would destroy their planet, we're never going to hear them or know that they're there.

02:06:28.000 And then even if we knew they were there, how do you launch something that's so far away it would take a thousand generations of people to get there?

02:06:37.000 Whatever Fravor saw, there was a measurement of this object that went from 60,000 feet above sea level to one in a second.

02:06:47.000 It was better than the Tesla Roadster.

02:06:49.000 A little bit quicker.

02:06:51.000 So maybe there is technology that we don't have.

02:06:54.000 We certainly don't have it yet.

02:06:56.000 We don't have it yet.

02:06:57.000 But if they have it...

02:06:59.000 They got the advantage.

02:07:01.000 Well, that's why they're here.

02:07:02.000 Because they can do that.

02:07:04.000 You know what's funny?

02:07:04.000 Why do aliens go to Roswell?

02:07:06.000 Have you ever been to Roswell?

02:07:08.000 Well, that was also the place where they were...

02:07:10.000 That was during the...

02:07:13.000 Right after the war.

02:07:15.000 This was Roswell.

02:07:16.000 Like the 50s, yeah.

02:07:17.000 Roswell, New Mexico, that Air Force Base had...

02:07:20.000 That was a big part of our military.

02:07:24.000 Yeah.

02:07:24.000 And there was...

02:07:25.000 There was...

02:07:28.000 It was explained by James Fox and Jacques Vallée the significance of Roswell in terms of the military in 1947 when that crashed.

02:07:38.000 A lot of the nuclear programs out there in New Mexico is where we did the Trinity site, the first nuclear weapon.

02:07:43.000 Well, that's where Los Alamos Air Force Base is in New Mexico as well.

02:07:46.000 There's a lot of nuclear weapon work that's done out there. 0.98

02:07:50.000 I would imagine if they were concerned with these Silly, territorial monkeys with nuclear weapons. 1.00

02:07:56.000 That's where they would go, to where the weapons are. 0.99

02:07:59.000 To take out the nuclear weapons.

02:08:00.000 Well, the weapons were at Barksdale Air Force Base and Minot Air Force Base.

02:08:04.000 Well, they probably went to a lot of these different places.

02:08:06.000 Supposedly, there's a documentary that's out called The Phenomenon that shows all the different instances that were reported on military bases, Freedom of Information Act requests that showed things that happened in different places.

02:08:18.000 And they seem to have concentrated...

02:08:21.000 On areas where there was nuclear weapons and areas where there was testing facilities after the first atomic bombs were dropped.

02:08:30.000 So after the Trinity Project, after the Manhattan Project, when they started detonating nuclear bombs, that's when the uptick of alien activity.

02:08:40.000 Which makes sense.

02:08:41.000 If you're following chimps in the Congo, and then some chimp figures out, listen, if I take this This bamboo thing and pack it full of dynamite. 1.00

02:08:54.000 Right.

02:08:55.000 And light a fuse. 1.00

02:08:56.000 Like if some crazy chimp figures some wild shit out. 1.00

02:08:58.000 How to make guns. 1.00

02:08:59.000 They figure out how to start fire.

02:09:00.000 And they lead a bomb.

02:09:02.000 Right.

02:09:03.000 You know, they make a bomb and blow something up.

02:09:05.000 We would be fascinated.

02:09:07.000 Right.

02:09:08.000 Like we blow up bombs all the time.

02:09:09.000 It's no big deal.

02:09:10.000 But if someone else did it, like some other kind of primate, that would be one of the most important discoveries in anthropology ever.

02:09:17.000 Right.

02:09:18.000 Right?

02:09:18.000 That would generate our interest.

02:09:19.000 So I would imagine if you were an advanced being, millions of years advanced of Earth, and then all of a sudden you get this signature that purpose-built nuclear bombs are being dropped on cities.

02:09:34.000 This is not like some sort of a crazy reaction that happened naturally. 0.89

02:09:38.000 These crazy monkeys got together and they made a bomb. 0.93

02:09:42.000 And then they dropped it out of an airplane. 0.99

02:09:44.000 On each other.

02:09:45.000 Yeah.

02:09:46.000 On other chimps.

02:09:47.000 Yeah, and wiped out half a million people.

02:09:49.000 Just like that.

02:09:50.000 Yeah.

02:09:51.000 I would say they'd visit.

02:09:52.000 See, I always thought if I was going to travel across the galaxy, I would go to the Bahamas or Hawaii or Aspen or something like that.

02:10:01.000 Why?

02:10:02.000 That's a nicer place to go.

02:10:03.000 But the weapons are probably a bigger threat, I guess.

02:10:06.000 But don't you think just flying above the Earth is probably about as beautiful as anything you're ever going to see on the surface level? 0.75

02:10:13.000 Who gives a shit about Aspen when you can fly over the whole thing and look at it with the stars? 0.92

02:10:19.000 The stars have to be the most beautiful thing you can see. 0.99

02:10:25.000 I had a telescope as a kid.

02:10:27.000 I know the basic constellations.

02:10:29.000 I know my way around the sky.

02:10:31.000 I could never pick out anything in space.

02:10:33.000 There are so many stars.

02:10:34.000 There are so many billions of stars.

02:10:36.000 I couldn't pick out Orion or the Big Dipper or Sirius or any of that stuff.

02:10:39.000 You can see planets, but I could never...

02:10:42.000 You can see planets?

02:10:42.000 Yeah, the planets show up because they're so bright.

02:10:45.000 Jupiter is this giant orange.

02:10:47.000 Mars is this red thing.

02:10:49.000 You know, one of the planets that was really cool, most humans have never seen it, I don't think, is Mercury.

02:10:55.000 Because it's always right next to the sun.

02:10:57.000 So if you live somewhere where there's buildings or trees, you're not going to see Mercury.

02:11:01.000 It's only visible right at sunset or sunrise.

02:11:04.000 And in space, I saw it all the time.

02:11:05.000 It was really cool.

02:11:06.000 It's like a planet you never see from Earth, but I saw it from space a lot.

02:11:10.000 I went to, there it is. 1.00

02:11:12.000 Look at that motherfucker. 1.00

02:11:13.000 Whoa. 1.00

02:11:14.000 Yeah, that's pretty wild.

02:11:16.000 Is that what it looks like?

02:11:17.000 Well, I think that's probably the minerals.

02:11:19.000 It looks like a moon.

02:11:21.000 It looks like the moon.

02:11:22.000 Yeah, why is it depicted in that color view like that?

02:11:26.000 I'm guessing that's an infrared shot, and that's probably like cobalt and silicon.

02:11:31.000 Oh, I see.

02:11:32.000 So it's showing all the different elements.

02:11:35.000 And how do they know that?

02:11:37.000 I think they're scientists.

02:11:38.000 They're smart.

02:11:40.000 You know, the nuclear thing, I was flying at Nellis Air Force Base, which is where we do our big exercises, Red Flag and stuff.

02:11:47.000 Area 51's out there, and it's called the box.

02:11:50.000 There's this big square.

02:11:51.000 You're not allowed to fly through the box.

02:11:52.000 So we show up.

02:11:53.000 It's the first mission.

02:11:54.000 I'm the flight lead, and we're flying, and I'm watching my map, and there's bandits trying to shoot me down, and I'm trying to avoid going into the box, because that's a no-no.

02:12:04.000 You're not allowed to fly into the box.

02:12:06.000 What happens if you fly into the box?

02:12:08.000 Well, so I'm flying along, and I'm like... 0.97

02:12:10.000 Holy shit, where there's giant divots. 0.97

02:12:12.000 It's like a golf ball hit a sand trap divots everywhere except for they're miles wide. 0.99

02:12:17.000 And I'm like, I don't see that on my map.

02:12:19.000 What is this?

02:12:19.000 And then all of a sudden on the radio, spooky flight turned south immediately.

02:12:22.000 And I'm like, shit. 0.99

02:12:24.000 And I had flown into the box. 0.98

02:12:25.000 And our squadron weapons officer, who back then you had to type in the coordinates manually and they would draw lines on your display where you were navigating.

02:12:33.000 But it was some person typed the coordinate in.

02:12:36.000 He typed the wrong coordinates in my...

02:12:38.000 In my display.

02:12:39.000 So I was flying, you know, in the wrong area.

02:12:42.000 And that's where all the nuclear testing was done.

02:12:44.000 All these big divots was from where we were dropping bombs, either underground or above ground in the 50s.

02:12:50.000 Whoa.

02:12:50.000 So then I got my buddy and I, we got a free plane ticket home the next day.

02:12:55.000 They sent you home?

02:12:56.000 You get sent home if you fly in the box.

02:12:58.000 Because if you fly in the box, it's an accident once.

02:13:01.000 If you fly in the box a second time, it's not an accident.

02:13:05.000 It's a lot worse for you if you do that.

02:13:07.000 So they just take that option off the table.

02:13:09.000 They don't even let you fly there again because they don't want you to accidentally fly in it a second time.

02:13:14.000 Wow.

02:13:15.000 So it was the idea that you'd be snooping around and you would find some government secrets?

02:13:19.000 I wasn't snooping.

02:13:20.000 I was trying to avoid getting shot down by these bandits.

02:13:22.000 But yeah, they don't want you to...

02:13:24.000 They don't even mess with it.

02:13:26.000 It's like, if you do it once, you get one get-out-of-jail-free card.

02:13:31.000 So I had to fly back.

02:13:32.000 We got a picture of us.

02:13:33.000 We got a selfie in front of the base, smiling like we got sent home from Red Flag.

02:13:37.000 Yeah.

02:13:39.000 How wild is that though?

02:13:41.000 You're flying over those places where they detonated those bombs.

02:13:44.000 It was pretty cool, but I'm like, I wonder if there's any radiation here, you know, what's going on.

02:13:49.000 Is there still?

02:13:51.000 I'm sure there's some.

02:13:52.000 That stuff takes thousands of years to go away.

02:13:55.000 But I mean, is there some that's in the air as you're flying over it?

02:13:58.000 Would that be...

02:13:58.000 I don't think it's much.

02:14:00.000 I mean, if they're...

02:14:01.000 Las Vegas isn't that far away, it's only...

02:14:03.000 That might explain a lot.

02:14:05.000 Why Vegas is Vegas, that might explain a lot, yeah.

02:14:07.000 But the size of these things, if someone detonates a bomb under the ground and it leaves these divots...

02:14:14.000 Oh yeah, you can see them for sure.

02:14:17.000 How big is it?

02:14:20.000 I mean, I'm going 500 knots.

02:14:22.000 There you go.

02:14:23.000 There's images of them?

02:14:25.000 Maybe.

02:14:25.000 I don't know if that's them or not.

02:14:26.000 I was hoping you could say which ones.

02:14:29.000 This was a long time ago, but I just remember seeing these types of divots in the Nevada desert.

02:14:37.000 Nuclear test site location from Google Earth.

02:14:39.000 Look at that.

02:14:39.000 There you go.

02:14:40.000 Google Earth.

02:14:42.000 Boom.

02:14:42.000 Yeah.

02:14:43.000 So, you know, it would go, and then back down.

02:14:46.000 Yeah.

02:14:47.000 And you gotta, there you go.

02:14:48.000 Yeah, you can see, when you're flying in an F-16 a couple hundred feet above the ground, you can definitely see those things.

02:14:53.000 How many different places are you restricted from travel like that?

02:14:57.000 Like Area 51. So you can't fly around the White House.

02:15:01.000 There's this box around the White House that's bad if you fly in that.

02:15:06.000 There's Adnellis Air Force Base.

02:15:10.000 There's restricted areas in a lot of places just because they're doing military stuff, but it's not like there's restricted areas and then there's the restricted areas.

02:15:20.000 And the only ones I know of, that's the only one I know of is in Nevada.

02:15:24.000 Yeah.

02:15:24.000 The other ones are all kind of—they turn them—while you're doing military training, they're on, and then if there's nobody flying, they turn them off because the airliners want to save gas and fly through them.

02:15:33.000 So the airliners are constantly pushing the military to open up this space to let them fly through just to save gas.

02:15:40.000 So there's just a handful of them.

02:15:43.000 Yeah, there's not a lot.

02:15:44.000 There's not a lot of like super secret places.

02:15:46.000 Because Area 51 was super secret for a long time, but now everybody knows about Area 51. It's like part of pop culture.

02:15:52.000 Do you think there's some other areas that they have like Area 51?

02:15:56.000 Area 50. You can't talk about Area 50. You can't?

02:16:00.000 I don't know.

02:16:01.000 I always laughed.

02:16:02.000 I'm like, why is there?

02:16:03.000 It's like WD-40.

02:16:04.000 Like, is there a WD-41?

02:16:05.000 Like, is that even better?

02:16:07.000 That's a good question.

02:16:08.000 I don't know.

02:16:08.000 Is there that kind of questioning going on while you're in the military?

02:16:11.000 Do guys ask questions like that?

02:16:13.000 We would laugh about it.

02:16:14.000 I mean, to be honest, there's hundreds of thousands of guys in the military.

02:16:17.000 So it's not like we're all...

02:16:18.000 Let's say, hypothetically, if there's the alien that is hidden in a bunker, they're not going to tell me about it.

02:16:26.000 Like, why would they tell me about it?

02:16:28.000 That's the problem.

02:16:29.000 That would drive me nuts if I worked there. 0.58

02:16:32.000 Right.

02:16:32.000 I'd be like, I need to know.

02:16:34.000 I need to be friends with the guy who knows.

02:16:36.000 Well, that's the problem.

02:16:37.000 Right.

02:16:37.000 But that kind of stuff is kind of the crazy stuff.

02:16:39.000 But there is some need.

02:16:41.000 I understand the distrust of government.

02:16:43.000 But, like, you've got to be able to have secrets.

02:16:46.000 Well, you definitely do if there's other countries out there.

02:16:50.000 Yeah, right.

02:16:50.000 There's countries that everybody doesn't have our best interest in mind.

02:16:54.000 And, you know, I know there's conspiracy theories and the government's doing this and that.

02:17:00.000 I was in the Air Force for 30 years, and the people are good people, and they're just trying to keep us safe.

02:17:06.000 They're not like super MIT PhDs with all this crazy stuff.

02:17:11.000 They're just going to work from 9 to 5, doing their job, trying to...

02:17:14.000 And they find out some information that some country is trying to do something.

02:17:17.000 Those are secrets that we have to be able to keep.

02:17:21.000 Because when they get out, the people that learn those secrets get killed.

02:17:25.000 If you release intel...

02:17:29.000 If it's gathered from a satellite, that's bad because now they know what our satellite can do.

02:17:32.000 If it's gathered from a person, that's really bad because you're putting people at risk when you release secrets to the world.

02:17:38.000 Now, when you get out and you write a book, do you have to vet that book?

02:17:43.000 Does that book have to go through Department of Defense or someone where they have to read?

02:17:48.000 It does, yeah.

02:17:49.000 The first book I wrote for National Geographic, I sent it to the Air Force Space Command to look through.

02:17:54.000 But there's nothing secret in it.

02:17:56.000 I was pictures of Earth and stories from being an astronaut.

02:18:00.000 But other guys, like I got a Navy SEAL buddy, a guy named Clint Emerson, he's got a – it's a hassle because he's talking about stuff that does need to be vetted.

02:18:12.000 So they do have a process for making sure you're not releasing classified stuff.

02:18:16.000 Yeah, Jack Carr, the novelist, who's a friend of mine who's been on the podcast before, Navy SEAL, who's writing these books, these intense books about a Navy SEAL and all these adventures and different things.

02:18:29.000 He has to send all of his books in.

02:18:31.000 Yeah, the SEALs are especially susceptible to that because all their stuff is human, right?

02:18:35.000 Yeah.

02:18:36.000 So in his books, it'll say redacted.

02:18:39.000 He'll literally say, he'll type it out, redacted.

02:18:43.000 He doesn't just put a black line.

02:18:44.000 He ought to just put black lines.

02:18:45.000 He just says redacted.

02:18:47.000 So like all the different things where the name of the base was sensitive or the name of the mission was sensitive, it's all redacted.

02:18:56.000 Kind of makes it more legit.

02:18:58.000 Right.

02:18:59.000 Because you know, this guy's talking about actual real places and actual real missions and actual real things that have gone down.

02:19:07.000 Right.

02:19:07.000 But those are the stuff you want to know.

02:19:08.000 Yeah.

02:19:09.000 So there's definitely, for guys like that, there's a whole process that you've got to do it.

02:19:16.000 Otherwise, you don't want to put your fellow SEALs or whatever, people that, who knows who they are, put them at risk.

02:19:23.000 Right.

02:19:23.000 What was the feeling of writing a book?

02:19:26.000 What gave you the motivation to do that?

02:19:28.000 Because writing a book is a giant undertaking.

02:19:32.000 If they had the award, I would have won the least likely to write a book in high school. 0.97

02:19:36.000 Man, I sucked. 0.66

02:19:37.000 I never read any books in high school English class. 0.99

02:19:39.000 I got C's.

02:19:41.000 I was not a good English student.

02:19:44.000 And being in space, seeing these amazing things, I just wanted to share the story with people.

02:19:50.000 So I came back.

02:19:51.000 The first book, I wrote it in two weeks.

02:19:53.000 The publishers were just, they couldn't believe it.

02:19:56.000 And then my second book, I wrote pretty quickly.

02:19:57.000 I got interrupted by doing a movie.

02:19:59.000 I got a chance to film a movie in the middle of it.

02:20:02.000 But this How to Astronaut book that's out right now, I just wanted to share.

02:20:05.000 I didn't want to write another memoir because there's a million astronaut memoirs.

02:20:08.000 That story's been told.

02:20:10.000 We don't need to tell it again.

02:20:11.000 I wanted to talk about the cool aspects of spaceflight.

02:20:14.000 Some of them you've thought about.

02:20:15.000 Flying jets.

02:20:16.000 How do you do emergencies in a space shuttle?

02:20:19.000 How do you do medical training?

02:20:20.000 That stuff.

02:20:21.000 But other stuff you probably haven't thought about.

02:20:23.000 Aliens.

02:20:25.000 What do you do with a dead body? 0.89

02:20:27.000 Have astronauts had sex in space?

02:20:28.000 What do you do with a dead body?

02:20:29.000 Well, thankfully we haven't had to do it, but there's a couple things you can do.

02:20:33.000 You can bring it back to Earth.

02:20:35.000 You can put it in one of these cargo ships and just have it burn up in the atmosphere.

02:20:40.000 You can do a burial at sea where you kind of, you know, push it off and float away in space.

02:20:46.000 Won't it become space debris?

02:20:49.000 That's why you may not want to do that.

02:20:50.000 It depends on what orbit you're at.

02:20:52.000 Or you put a parachute on him so that he'll decay within a few weeks.

02:20:55.000 That would be a crazy scene in a Gravity-style movie.

02:20:58.000 That would be a great scene.

02:20:59.000 Some guy slams into the space station, some frozen dude. 0.94

02:21:03.000 Where did he come from?

02:21:05.000 The Russians ejected him in the 1980s.

02:21:09.000 That would be an amazing beginning.

02:21:12.000 That would be an amazing beginning to the moon.

02:21:15.000 That's a great idea.

02:21:16.000 Just see this frozen body coming out to like 8 kilometers a second.

02:21:20.000 Boom! 0.99

02:21:21.000 Or if you're on the moon, you'd have to make the first cemetery, right?

02:21:25.000 Yeah, first cemetery on the moon.

02:21:28.000 Or if you're on Mars.

02:21:29.000 Now there's like human biology there.

02:21:32.000 Ooh, that's a problem, right?

02:21:34.000 It might be.

02:21:35.000 I would imagine it would be a giant problem.

02:21:37.000 We do everything we can to not contaminate Mars, and it's called planetary defense.

02:21:42.000 Well, we know there's no atmosphere on the moon, and Mars is a mess too, but it is possible that there's some sort of biological life in the crudest form on Mars, right?

02:21:54.000 Yeah.

02:21:54.000 So if they contaminated that with a body...

02:21:58.000 That could be a real issue.

02:21:59.000 A thousand years from now, some astronauts go there and they would find life, but it came from this biology.

02:22:04.000 Yeah, so that's why you don't want that to happen.

02:22:06.000 I think there was one of the moon missions in the 60s, like a surveyor, where the Apollo 12 landed and they got some parts that had been there for a couple years and they brought it back and they still found bacteria, if I remember right.

02:22:21.000 But there has been cases where you found bacteria that lived a long time in space where you'd think the vacuum and the sun would have just destroyed it, but it was still viable, I guess.

02:22:30.000 Well, there's some life forms like tardigrades, right? 1.00

02:22:33.000 Those little weird...

02:22:34.000 Life is pretty tenacious.

02:22:36.000 Yeah, that's what they're called, right?

02:22:38.000 Tardigrades, those little bears? 0.96

02:22:39.000 I don't know.

02:22:40.000 You know what I'm talking about?

02:22:41.000 No.

02:22:42.000 Isn't that what they're called?

02:22:43.000 Like at the bottom of the ocean or something?

02:22:45.000 It's a very small, microscopic little animal that apparently can survive in space.

02:22:51.000 Oh, wow.

02:22:52.000 Yeah.

02:22:53.000 That's crazy.

02:22:54.000 I had not heard of that.

02:22:55.000 What's so funny?

02:22:55.000 What are you laughing at?

02:22:57.000 Huh?

02:22:58.000 Okay.

02:22:58.000 A crashed Israeli lunar lander spilled tardigrades on the moon.

02:23:03.000 So that's a tardigrade, that little thing. 1.00

02:23:06.000 That thing does not look like what you want to meet on the moon.

02:23:09.000 Yeah, and they can live up there.

02:23:11.000 Wow.

02:23:12.000 Yeah, they survive. 1.00

02:23:13.000 Those little fuckers survive everything. 1.00

02:23:15.000 That's insane. 1.00

02:23:16.000 A few thousand.

02:23:18.000 Oh my god.

02:23:19.000 They call them water bears.

02:23:21.000 That's crazy.

02:23:22.000 That's nuts.

02:23:24.000 Well, hopefully they're not there when the NASA guys go back.

02:23:28.000 Yeah, or they become something new.

02:23:30.000 See, if something like that can survive...

02:23:33.000 Yeah, that's pretty wild.

02:23:34.000 What is the...

02:23:35.000 It's the before and after of the crash.

02:23:36.000 The crash site.

02:23:36.000 Oh, wow.

02:23:38.000 I think the engines had a software problem or something, and the engines shut down.

02:23:42.000 And how do they know that it had tardigrades? 1.00

02:23:44.000 Did they bring them into space to see if they can survive?

02:23:47.000 It must have been one of their payloads.

02:23:48.000 Part of the experiment?

02:23:51.000 That's crazy.

02:23:52.000 Yeah, they're supposed to be able to survive in incredible environments.

02:23:58.000 Yeah.

02:23:59.000 It's kind of scary.

02:24:02.000 So we go through a lot of effort.

02:24:03.000 You've got to irradiate satellites and everybody's wearing their PPE just to make sure you don't get accidentally some Joe Rogan DNA going to Mars.

02:24:13.000 Yeah, well that's one of the theories about how life got here in the first place is panspermia.

02:24:18.000 Right, right.

02:24:18.000 The idea that asteroids and things carried all the building blocks of life.

02:24:23.000 Yeah.

02:24:23.000 Like Prometheus.

02:24:24.000 You remember that movie?

02:24:25.000 Yes, yes.

02:24:26.000 Where the alien like disintegrates himself into the water and that creates life.

02:24:30.000 Very underrated movie.

02:24:31.000 Prometheus?

02:24:32.000 Yeah.

02:24:32.000 I thought it was underrated.

02:24:33.000 I love the music.

02:24:35.000 The imagery was really good.

02:24:36.000 Yeah.

02:24:36.000 It was cool.

02:24:37.000 The alien dudes were very weird looking.

02:24:39.000 They were all jacked.

02:24:40.000 He was...

02:24:41.000 Like an alien race of bodybuilders.

02:24:43.000 Very strange.

02:24:43.000 The original alien.

02:24:45.000 Yeah.

02:24:45.000 How old were you when you saw that?

02:24:47.000 Well, I was 79, so I was probably 10, 12, 12-ish.

02:24:54.000 Yeah, I was the same age.

02:24:55.000 I saw that, and it blew my mind.

02:24:58.000 Oh my god, it's one of the greatest horror movies of all time.

02:25:00.000 It is.

02:25:00.000 It's so good.

02:25:02.000 There's a Russian version of that now that's out?

02:25:04.000 Not a Russian version of it, but their take on what would happen.

02:25:09.000 It's called Sputnik.

02:25:09.000 It's really good.

02:25:11.000 And it's all in subtitles.

02:25:12.000 And it's out now.

02:25:14.000 I'll watch it.

02:25:15.000 It's a wild, alien suspense movie.

02:25:18.000 And it's the same sort of deal.

02:25:19.000 Where somebody gets contaminated.

02:25:21.000 It's heavy.

02:25:22.000 It was such a cool movie, man.

02:25:24.000 This thing that was scary, you didn't see the alien.

02:25:26.000 Yeah.

02:25:27.000 You saw it at the end, but it was like this...

02:25:29.000 Things that you don't see, I think, are scarier.

02:25:31.000 Well, in that film, for sure.

02:25:33.000 But the special effects were pretty spectacular for what they had available for 1979. Yeah, they were amazing.

02:25:39.000 But the thing about it is...

02:25:41.000 You go to Aliens, which is the second one, and now they're everywhere. 1.00

02:25:45.000 You see them, and then they're also stupid. 1.00

02:25:49.000 You can just shoot them. 1.00

02:25:50.000 Whereas Alien 1, it's really smart. 0.99

02:25:53.000 It's tracking people.

02:25:55.000 It knows how to sneak up on people.

02:25:58.000 In Alien 2...

02:25:59.000 You were hunted.

02:26:00.000 Yeah.

02:26:00.000 In Alien 2, they're just shooting them.

02:26:02.000 Bang, bang, bang. 0.99

02:26:02.000 They're killing a bunch of them. 0.99

02:26:03.000 It was a World War II battle.

02:26:04.000 I didn't like Aliens.

02:26:06.000 Alien was just spectacular.

02:26:07.000 It was so scary.

02:26:09.000 It's also a movie where there's a female hero and no one feels like they tried to force it down your throat.

02:26:17.000 It wasn't political correct.

02:26:19.000 No.

02:26:20.000 She was amazing.

02:26:21.000 Sigourney Weaver was spectacular.

02:26:24.000 Ripley, I think.

02:26:25.000 Yeah, Ripley.

02:26:26.000 You bought every second of that movie.

02:26:28.000 Including the robot that sells people down the river that knew.

02:26:32.000 Ash.

02:26:33.000 Yeah.

02:26:33.000 That Ash.

02:26:34.000 And his head was like sitting there.

02:26:37.000 They blew his head off and he was still talking and green stuff. 0.71

02:26:40.000 Yeah.

02:26:40.000 It was awesome.

02:26:41.000 I was terrified.

02:26:43.000 And Yafet Kodo. 0.55

02:26:44.000 Yeah.

02:26:44.000 I just watched some old Bond movie and he was the villain in Live and Let Die, which was like the worst movie ever.

02:26:52.000 It was terrible.

02:26:52.000 Yeah, it was awful.

02:26:53.000 Is that Roger Moore?

02:26:54.000 Yeah.

02:26:54.000 Yeah, it was his first one.

02:26:57.000 When Sean Connery died, I watched some James Bond movies.

02:27:00.000 I'm like, I don't remember.

02:27:01.000 I never saw this as a kid.

02:27:02.000 The Roger Moore ones were kind of cheese.

02:27:03.000 They were cheesy, but this one was the worst.

02:27:06.000 But Yafet Koto was the bad guy, and he was, was he Parker in Alien?

02:27:11.000 There it is.

02:27:12.000 Roger Moore.

02:27:13.000 Oh yeah, there he is.

02:27:14.000 That's him on the right.

02:27:15.000 Those were cheeseball movies as opposed to the Sean Connery movies.

02:27:20.000 It was a different kind of bond.

02:27:22.000 You know, I watched Dr. No when Sean Connery died last month.

02:27:25.000 It was a really good movie.

02:27:27.000 I mean, for 1962, it was a good movie.

02:27:30.000 Sean Connery was a beast. 0.66

02:27:31.000 He was a beast. 0.71

02:27:32.000 And then he had the forgettable ones. 1.00

02:27:35.000 Like, what was the fucking guy's name? 0.99

02:27:37.000 Really handsome fella. 0.99

02:27:39.000 Timothy, no.

02:27:40.000 Timothy Dalton.

02:27:41.000 Yeah.

02:27:42.000 Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton.

02:27:43.000 Was Timothy Dalton Bond too?

02:27:45.000 He was two or three movies, yeah.

02:27:47.000 Really?

02:27:48.000 Yeah.

02:27:48.000 I blocked that out.

02:27:49.000 He was like 89 or something.

02:27:52.000 Pierce Brosnan was who I was thinking of.

02:27:54.000 The 90s.

02:27:55.000 Those were like they were made in the same factory that homogenizes milk.

02:28:00.000 They took all the spice out of it.

02:28:03.000 Daniel Craig's the best Bond.

02:28:04.000 Daniel Craig's amazing.

02:28:05.000 He's the best.

02:28:06.000 He is hands down.

02:28:07.000 People don't like to think he's the best because of Sean Connery. 1.00

02:28:09.000 Fuck off. 1.00

02:28:10.000 Daniel Craig's better. 1.00

02:28:11.000 He's the best.

02:28:12.000 I believe him.

02:28:13.000 He's totally believable.

02:28:14.000 Sean Connery's a little overacting, but he was still great.

02:28:17.000 But Daniel Craig's the best.

02:28:18.000 Different era, different time. 0.97

02:28:20.000 But in terms of looking at a guy and thinking he could be a fucking straight-up killer, it's Daniel Craig. 0.95

02:28:26.000 And he's gone from 06 to 20, so he did almost 15 years of Bond. 0.94

02:28:30.000 Yeah.

02:28:31.000 You've got to be in shape, you know.

02:28:32.000 I know, right?

02:28:33.000 He's the best.

02:28:35.000 He's the best.

02:28:35.000 Yeah, look at all these.

02:28:36.000 There's Timothy Dalton.

02:28:37.000 How dare you? 0.99

02:28:38.000 Pierce Brosnan, get the fuck out of here. 0.99

02:28:41.000 And who's that other dude? 0.97

02:28:42.000 George Lazenby.

02:28:43.000 What?

02:28:44.000 He did one. 0.99

02:28:45.000 Get the fuck out of here. 1.00

02:28:47.000 Get the fuck out of here. 0.99

02:28:48.000 And now who's going to be Bond? 0.98

02:28:51.000 I don't know.

02:28:52.000 I've heard some... 0.93

02:28:53.000 I think it's going to be a black chick. 1.00

02:28:55.000 There was a black guy. 0.84

02:28:56.000 A non-binary trans woman.

02:28:58.000 No, I don't know.

02:29:00.000 It's hard to beat Daniel Craig.

02:29:02.000 The only one I didn't like.

02:29:03.000 I just watched Quantum of Solace and I did not like that movie.

02:29:07.000 But all the other ones are spectacular.

02:29:08.000 Well, they have a new one that they've been sitting on forever.

02:29:11.000 And I just don't get it.

02:29:13.000 Let it out.

02:29:14.000 Come on, man.

02:29:14.000 Make it streaming.

02:29:15.000 They want people to go to the movie theaters.

02:29:16.000 They're not going to movie theaters anymore. 1.00

02:29:18.000 That shit's over. 1.00

02:29:19.000 You gotta let it go. 1.00

02:29:20.000 Then the theater loses hundreds of millions of dollars.

02:29:22.000 Then the theater loses hundreds of millions of dollars.

02:29:24.000 Just like all the gyms, just like all the restaurants.

02:29:27.000 Yeah.

02:29:27.000 You got hit by COVID. Yeah, I know.

02:29:29.000 Release the fucking movie. 1.00

02:29:31.000 Hey, I'm with you, but I'm not a shareholder. 1.00

02:29:35.000 Yeah, it just doesn't make any sense to me.

02:29:38.000 I mean, they have Omega has released an official 007 watch.

02:29:43.000 That's out.

02:29:45.000 The movie's done.

02:29:46.000 Come on, put it on iTunes.

02:29:49.000 Apple TV, let me buy it.

02:29:52.000 I don't know what they're going to do, but man, it sucks to be a movie executive in 2020. Oh, well, cry me a river.

02:29:59.000 Exactly.

02:30:00.000 It sucks to be a lot of people in 2020. Or a nurse or a school teacher.

02:30:05.000 That's what I'm thinking.

02:30:07.000 Waitress.

02:30:07.000 Or someone owning a restaurant or a small business that got forced to close down.

02:30:11.000 Absolutely.

02:30:12.000 Yeah, it's such a strange time.

02:30:15.000 Such a strange time for people.

02:30:17.000 Yeah, and I was looking forward to that movie.

02:30:19.000 So that may be one of...

02:30:20.000 They just need to do something.

02:30:21.000 Release it!

02:30:22.000 Take one for the team.

02:30:23.000 Release it!

02:30:24.000 Yeah.

02:30:24.000 They're talking about releasing it in April, I think.

02:30:27.000 Is that the...

02:30:28.000 Online or it'll be in theaters.

02:30:30.000 I think they're going to try to do it in theaters, but...

02:30:33.000 Well, Tenet was in theaters, and it didn't make...

02:30:35.000 The box office was terrible.

02:30:37.000 I know.

02:30:38.000 I know.

02:30:39.000 Why would you risk your life to see them?

02:30:42.000 You know, they're not doing COVID tests at the theaters.

02:30:45.000 Right.

02:30:45.000 Like, what are you doing?

02:30:45.000 And the home, you know, people got big TVs.

02:30:49.000 I don't even think you're really necessarily risking your life, but just the idea that you could be.

02:30:53.000 Yeah.

02:30:54.000 It's just, it's, I mean, how much more dangerous is it than going to a supermarket?

02:30:59.000 I don't, you know, is Walgreens or Walmart less dangerous than sitting down in a movie theater?

02:31:05.000 I don't know.

02:31:06.000 I don't know.

02:31:07.000 What has it been like for you this whole year?

02:31:09.000 It was weird.

02:31:10.000 I was speaking a lot, corporate speaking.

02:31:13.000 Still?

02:31:14.000 Until March, and then it went from 100 to zero instantly.

02:31:19.000 I've done a few things online.

02:31:21.000 I did a thing for Google this morning, actually, but for the most part, that has come to an end.

02:31:26.000 I wrote a book, directed this short film, Cosmic Perspective.

02:31:30.000 I'm trying to develop some of that.

02:31:32.000 I've done a few things with startup companies, trying to help them as a tech advisor, which has been super cool.

02:31:38.000 It's one of the things I want to do.

02:31:39.000 So ironically, my income went to zero, so that sucks.

02:31:44.000 But it has given me some time to do some other things that I've wanted to do.

02:31:49.000 Which, you know, it is what it is.

02:31:51.000 I can't control COVID, so all I can control is how I react to it.

02:31:54.000 Yeah, that's a good perspective.

02:31:57.000 And that's the perspective that I think a lot of intelligent, adaptable people have used to realize, like, hey, this is what it is.

02:32:05.000 And lucky to be healthy and alive was to adapt and move forward.

02:32:10.000 Darwin has a great quote.

02:32:12.000 It's not the strongest that survive, it's those who are most able to adapt.

02:32:16.000 And the reality is life is different now.

02:32:19.000 Like some businesses will come back, some won't.

02:32:21.000 And you got to be, you got to kind of examine yourself and be brutally honest with yourself.

02:32:26.000 Am I in something that's going to work?

02:32:28.000 Then I'll tough it out.

02:32:29.000 Or am I not?

02:32:31.000 And then I'll have to do other stuff, you know?

02:32:33.000 So it's a tough, it's a hard thing to reinvent yourself.

02:32:36.000 But I think some folks are going to have to do that if they're going to be successful in the future.

02:32:41.000 Is this...

02:32:42.000 Are you planning on once everything goes back to the way it was to continue the way you were doing things before with travel?

02:32:50.000 I hope not.

02:32:51.000 I was traveling too much.

02:32:52.000 It's just not healthy.

02:32:53.000 I was gone all the time.

02:32:57.000 There's...

02:32:59.000 I got to know my house.

02:33:00.000 I bought this new house last year, and this year I'm like, oh, this is nice being at home.

02:33:05.000 So I'm going to really try and minimize the amount of traveling I do in the future.

02:33:09.000 Sometimes it's fun to go on a trip.

02:33:11.000 I like traveling, but not as much.

02:33:15.000 It was unhealthy before.

02:33:16.000 Did you have strategies of how to minimize jet lag?

02:33:22.000 Because you had the ultimate jet lag, right?

02:33:25.000 Yeah, right.

02:33:25.000 You went to space.

02:33:26.000 Well, go into space, but the two years of training for it.

02:33:30.000 We were going to Russia and Japan and Europe constantly.

02:33:34.000 And I had to actually sleep shift because the training in Russia was 9 to 5. It wasn't...

02:33:41.000 But when I travel now, I basically don't sleep shift.

02:33:43.000 Because it's usually just for a couple days.

02:33:45.000 So I just keep...

02:33:45.000 I stay on my American schedule.

02:33:47.000 And I don't try and learn how to wake up at 8 in the morning.

02:33:51.000 I just...

02:33:52.000 Whatever.

02:33:52.000 I sleep when I'm tired.

02:33:54.000 But if you're going to go somewhere for a few weeks, then you need to adapt.

02:33:57.000 And that's...

02:33:58.000 Sleep shifting is hard.

02:34:01.000 So at NASA... Ambien was kind of the nuclear option to get you to sleep at night.

02:34:06.000 So I would always, if I would go to Russia, I would take an Ambien.

02:34:09.000 That would make sure I got at least one night of four or five or six hours of sleep.

02:34:13.000 Because otherwise you're up all night and then at eight in the morning when it's time to work, you're falling asleep and that's not good.

02:34:18.000 But before your first flight, they do this medical testing where you have to go try.

02:34:24.000 They give you a bag.

02:34:25.000 It's ibuprofen and antibiotics.

02:34:27.000 And Provigil is one of the things.

02:34:30.000 And Ambien.

02:34:31.000 So you get one of each.

02:34:32.000 And when I went in there, the lady, I'll never forget, she had a Provigil.

02:34:37.000 And I said, she was going to put it in one of those brown medicine things. 1.00

02:34:42.000 And I was like, save the plastic.

02:34:43.000 I'll just take it.

02:34:45.000 And she looked at me.

02:34:45.000 She's like, it's 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

02:34:47.000 I'm like...

02:34:48.000 Yeah.

02:34:49.000 She's like, well, this is ProVigil.

02:34:50.000 I'm like, that stuff doesn't affect me.

02:34:52.000 I take medicine at that, you know, whatever.

02:34:54.000 So I took it.

02:34:55.000 It was like two in the morning.

02:34:57.000 I was laying in bed, twirling.

02:34:58.000 I felt like wide awake.

02:34:59.000 You know, my eyes were...

02:35:00.000 In the Air Force, they had...

02:35:02.000 We called them go pills and no-go pills when you're flying across the ocean.

02:35:07.000 And I don't know what they were.

02:35:08.000 They just gave us medicine and I took them.

02:35:10.000 But I know that ProVigil, man, that stuff...

02:35:12.000 I was like wide awake for like 14 hours.

02:35:15.000 I've done new Vigil.

02:35:16.000 I have I've never done ProVigil, but yeah, it keeps you wide awake.

02:35:19.000 But it's not speedy, which is weird, right?

02:35:21.000 It's a weird kind of being awake.

02:35:23.000 Your heart's not...

02:35:23.000 My heart wasn't racing or anything.

02:35:25.000 It was just like I was wide awake.

02:35:28.000 So they, you know, on my first flight, we had to do a 12-hour sleep shift.

02:35:31.000 So...

02:35:33.000 Literally, instead of waking up at 7 in the morning, we had to wake up at 7 at night kind of thing.

02:35:37.000 And they put us in this room with like a thousand lights because lights have a lot to do with your sleep cycle.

02:35:45.000 That's why you have these night modes in your iPhones.

02:35:47.000 When you see blue light, your brain goes, oh, the sun's up.

02:35:50.000 It's time to wake up.

02:35:53.000 But I'm like, hey doc, look, I tried ProVigil.

02:35:55.000 That's the nuclear option.

02:35:56.000 Is there anything else?

02:35:57.000 And they told me five-hour energy.

02:35:59.000 I mean, not to do a product endorsement, but I use those for my spacewalks and whatever.

02:36:04.000 And it's not like some big wake-you-up thing.

02:36:06.000 They just kept me alert, not as sleepy.

02:36:10.000 And that's kind of what I used for not being sleepy.

02:36:12.000 Just a big dose of B vitamins.

02:36:14.000 It's just a million grams of vitamin B. Yeah.

02:36:18.000 Did you have strategies in terms of when you're traveling a lot, when you land, when you go to a place to try to get your body back on cycle?

02:36:27.000 So melatonin was the one thing that changes your cycle.

02:36:31.000 It doesn't help you go to sleep.

02:36:33.000 It just tells your brain that it's time to go to sleep, if that makes sense.

02:36:37.000 Ambient knocks you out.

02:36:38.000 I've never done that.

02:36:41.000 If I'm not tired, I stay awake.

02:36:43.000 Because I know too many people that have gotten addicted to sleeping pills.

02:36:46.000 Right.

02:36:47.000 You know the one, a better one than Ambien is Sonata?

02:36:50.000 In space, the only time I ever did it was the night before my spacewalks.

02:36:53.000 I wanted to get some sleep.

02:36:55.000 So I took a Sonata.

02:36:56.000 Sonata gets you to sleep, but it doesn't keep you asleep, and it's less dangerous.

02:37:01.000 So that was the thing I used on the night before spacewalks.

02:37:04.000 I didn't want to be thinking through...

02:37:07.000 The night before a fight is probably the same.

02:37:09.000 I don't know.

02:37:09.000 I just wanted to sleep.

02:37:10.000 And so I used that on those nights.

02:37:12.000 And I didn't have any problems.

02:37:14.000 And there's no side effects and stuff.

02:37:16.000 Ambien is a psychedelic drug. 0.97

02:37:20.000 Yeah, it does some weird shit to you, right? 0.98

02:37:21.000 It does, yeah. 0.93

02:37:24.000 Here's the thing you don't want to do is Ambien email.

02:37:26.000 So if you take an Ambien, the computer needs to be powered off in a different room.

02:37:33.000 Under a blanket?

02:37:35.000 I went to Israel a long time ago, and I took Ambien. 0.99

02:37:39.000 And then I woke up the next morning, and I was like, holy shit. 0.90

02:37:41.000 And I looked on my laptop, and there was all these emails in the outbox. 0.89

02:37:44.000 And I was like, oh my god, delete.

02:37:46.000 Oh my god, delete.

02:37:46.000 And...

02:37:47.000 I didn't go to sleep. 1.00

02:37:56.000 No, there's a lot of people that have done some really dumb shit on Ambien. 0.99

02:38:00.000 Whatever it does to you. 0.99

02:38:02.000 Kevin James is a friend of mine, King of Queens.

02:38:06.000 He cooked a meal.

02:38:08.000 Went to the store, bought food, cooked a meal, and then woke up in the morning and was ready to call the cops. 0.99

02:38:14.000 Like, who fucking cooked in my house? 0.99

02:38:16.000 Like, you forget everything. 0.99

02:38:18.000 Yeah.

02:38:19.000 Well, talk to flight attendants. 0.68

02:38:20.000 They've got good stories.

02:38:21.000 The worst was, I was going to Hong Kong a couple years ago, and I took my Ambien.

02:38:26.000 I'm ready to go to bed.

02:38:27.000 And then the plane broke.

02:38:29.000 Oh, no.

02:38:30.000 Yes.

02:38:30.000 Oh, no.

02:38:31.000 And then you're in the airport?

02:38:33.000 Yes, on Ambien.

02:38:35.000 So you want to wait until you're airborne at 40,000 feet before you take your Ambien.

02:38:40.000 How long does it take to kick in?

02:38:43.000 10 minutes.

02:38:44.000 You can feel it coming on.

02:38:45.000 How often do you take it?

02:38:46.000 I haven't taken it for years.

02:38:48.000 I used to take it when I traveled with NASA because it would just get me...

02:38:51.000 I knew a dude that I worked with who would take two every night.

02:38:55.000 No, no, no.

02:38:55.000 That's bad.

02:38:56.000 That's what I said.

02:38:57.000 That's bad.

02:38:58.000 I would always take it on my first night in Europe or in Russia because I was going to work the next day and I had to get a night of sleep.

02:39:07.000 I never took it in space because...

02:39:11.000 Oh my god.

02:39:25.000 You're floating, which is just amazing.

02:39:27.000 And you close your eyes and you don't know which way is up.

02:39:29.000 And I had this weird thing where I would close my eyes and I was pitching forward and I was rolling left and yawing right for months.

02:39:40.000 Whenever I closed my eyes, my brain, the neurovestibular system, that was a signal that was going to my brain that I was doing this.

02:39:47.000 And then I'd open my eyes and it would stop immediately because the brain got the visual signal.

02:39:52.000 And then after a few months, that stopped.

02:39:55.000 Do you get a feeling like you're in motion when you're looking at the Earth and it's very clear that you're orbiting the Earth?

02:40:02.000 But do you have a feeling of motion?

02:40:04.000 No.

02:40:05.000 You have a feeling of falling.

02:40:07.000 It feels like you're falling.

02:40:09.000 All the time.

02:40:10.000 Because you're falling.

02:40:11.000 That's what's happening, right?

02:40:12.000 There's still gravity.

02:40:14.000 It's 90%.

02:40:15.000 It's not as strong as here, but it's almost as strong as here.

02:40:17.000 But you're going forward five miles a second.

02:40:20.000 So as you fall towards the center of the Earth, you're also moving forward.

02:40:24.000 And that, if you're at the exact right speed, that curve is the same shape as the Earth, and that's your orbit.

02:40:31.000 If you slow down a little bit, your curve shrinks, and that's how you do your deorbit burn to come back to Earth.

02:40:36.000 You shrink your orbit a little bit at the right time.

02:40:40.000 It hits the atmosphere at the right place to slow you down to land at the right spot.

02:40:44.000 If you speed up, your orbit grows.

02:40:46.000 If you go 25,000 miles an hour, not 17,000, you go to escape velocity, and that's how you get to the moon.

02:40:53.000 So all you're doing, by changing your speed, you're shrinking or growing your orbit.

02:40:58.000 But it feels like you're falling.

02:40:59.000 That's the sensation you have.

02:41:01.000 It's like jumping off a diving board.

02:41:03.000 You can get a second of falling.

02:41:05.000 Or if you're in an airplane, if you get a Cessna, you push forward, you get a couple seconds.

02:41:08.000 But even though you're floating, you still have this feeling of falling?

02:41:14.000 Yes.

02:41:15.000 All the time.

02:41:16.000 And it never goes away until they turn gravity back on.

02:41:19.000 When you come back to Earth and you hit the atmosphere, that's the next time you feel like you're not falling.

02:41:25.000 That's so weird.

02:41:26.000 I never thought of that before.

02:41:29.000 I had to mentally kind of get in my zen mode and don't flail.

02:41:34.000 Because people flail when they fall.

02:41:36.000 I don't know why, but we do.

02:41:38.000 Yeah.

02:41:39.000 Yeah.

02:41:54.000 Yeah, the sensation is falling because that's exactly what's happening.

02:41:57.000 You are literally falling and moving forward so fast, but you don't feel that motion.

02:42:02.000 In fact, when you look at the earth, it's moving like this is what it looks like.

02:42:07.000 This is how fast it's moving, which is kind of like in an airliner.

02:42:10.000 It's moving about that speed.

02:42:11.000 So you're creeping your hands across the table for the people to just listen.

02:42:14.000 Exactly.

02:42:15.000 And that's about how fast stuff moves.

02:42:17.000 The problem is in space, that's like 100 miles, right?

02:42:21.000 In an airliner, that's like one mile.

02:42:23.000 I think people have a misconception of what's happening in orbit then, because I think people think of orbit as being there's no gravity up there.

02:42:30.000 No, there's lots of gravity.

02:42:31.000 There's gravity everywhere in the universe.

02:42:34.000 You're creating gravity right now.

02:42:35.000 Just from mass.

02:42:36.000 You're affecting Jupiter, right?

02:42:38.000 You're pulling Jupiter a little bit towards this podcast.

02:42:41.000 Not very much, but your gravity is going across the universe from your body.

02:42:47.000 It's not a lot.

02:42:48.000 Gravity is pretty weak.

02:42:49.000 But the reason why things are floating in space is the same reason why when you get on one of those gravity planes, when they plunge.

02:42:57.000 Zero-G, yeah.

02:42:58.000 And zero-G when people are floating around.

02:43:00.000 Well, yeah, it's because nothing's holding you.

02:43:02.000 You are falling.

02:43:02.000 Nothing's supporting you.

02:43:03.000 You're falling, right.

02:43:04.000 Yeah.

02:43:05.000 When you go skydiving, you don't feel like you're falling because you hit 100 miles an hour of wind and it's pushing you.

02:43:12.000 Yeah.

02:43:12.000 Like, you're supported by the wind.

02:43:15.000 If you were falling, you would accelerate.

02:43:16.000 That's why base jumping is so cool, because you actually accelerate for a couple seconds.

02:43:20.000 And then when you reach terminal velocity, you don't feel, the feeling is different.

02:43:27.000 Because the air, the force from the air counteracts your weight.

02:43:32.000 So it's like standing on the ground or something like that.

02:43:35.000 But those first couple seconds, you get the butterflies and you're falling, and then you get the air supporting you.

02:43:41.000 We do spacewalk training underwater in a pool.

02:43:44.000 And you're floating in the water, but the water is supporting you.

02:43:48.000 So your whole body is hanging in this suit, so you don't feel like you're falling because you're not falling.

02:43:53.000 So is it a pool that's specifically designed for spacewalk training?

02:43:57.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:43:57.000 What's different about the pool?

02:43:59.000 It's big.

02:44:00.000 They say it's the world's biggest, and it has a little...

02:44:02.000 The world's biggest pool.

02:44:04.000 That's what they say, yeah.

02:44:05.000 It's pretty...

02:44:05.000 Where is this pool?

02:44:06.000 Is there videos of this pool?

02:44:08.000 Oh, yeah.

02:44:08.000 Look up to NBL, Neutral Buoyancy Lab.

02:44:11.000 It's in Houston.

02:44:12.000 So there's like a half of a space station, and they used to have a space shuttle.

02:44:16.000 They build these made-for-water modules that you can go crawl around and...

02:44:21.000 It's super important.

02:44:23.000 I mean, it's great training, but you're not floating.

02:44:25.000 It's different.

02:44:26.000 So when you're preparing...

02:44:27.000 There it is.

02:44:28.000 Wow, that's wild.

02:44:29.000 It's a whole base underwater.

02:44:31.000 Yeah.

02:44:32.000 So when you're preparing for something like your mission when you stayed up there for 200 days, how much time in advance do you know about this?

02:44:41.000 And what is it like?

02:44:43.000 What's the schedule like to prepare for something like that?

02:44:47.000 So you go through ASCAN training.

02:44:50.000 NASA likes to make you feel really important.

02:44:51.000 So you're an ASCAN when you show up.

02:44:53.000 Astronaut candidate.

02:44:55.000 And then you hang around for years waiting to get assigned.

02:44:58.000 And then finally your turn comes.

02:45:00.000 You're going to space.

02:45:01.000 They assign you to a mission.

02:45:03.000 And usually the training is somewhere between two and three years.

02:45:08.000 You do spacewalk training to get ready.

02:45:11.000 You learn about all the different...

02:45:12.000 How do you handle emergencies on the American side?

02:45:14.000 How do you handle them on the Russian side?

02:45:15.000 How do you fly the robotic arm?

02:45:19.000 How do you do all the science experiments?

02:45:20.000 There's just a lot of stuff to learn.

02:45:22.000 You keep on learning Russian to get good at that.

02:45:24.000 And so the training for your mission is about two years.

02:45:27.000 And first of all, you're a backup.

02:45:29.000 So there's some guys that are going to launch in front of you.

02:45:32.000 So hopefully you don't have to fly, but if they get sick or something, you could fly.

02:45:36.000 And then you wait around six months after they launch.

02:45:39.000 Then now you're a prime crew after you're a backup crew.

02:45:43.000 And then six months later, you launch.

02:45:45.000 That's the typical thing, but sometimes it changes, but that's roughly what it is.

02:45:48.000 So when you're doing this, do they confine your movements?

02:45:52.000 Do they keep you from doing anything in specific?

02:45:54.000 Because it seems like they have a lot invested in you.

02:45:56.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:45:56.000 If you're running around Top Gun, Tom Cruise style, riding motorcycles and shit, it seems like... 0.99

02:46:01.000 So I had like a self-imposed. 0.96

02:46:03.000 I didn't go skiing.

02:46:04.000 I didn't ski for a couple years.

02:46:05.000 You know, I didn't want to break my arm or leg or anything.

02:46:08.000 They had a rule.

02:46:08.000 You weren't allowed to fly.

02:46:11.000 You weren't allowed to do like air racing.

02:46:13.000 And there was this astronaut back in the 90s who said, screw that.

02:46:16.000 And he went to the Reno Air Races.

02:46:17.000 He was flying, racing in there, which is super dangerous.

02:46:20.000 And he, I think he got knocked off his flight.

02:46:22.000 But then he came back and flew again.

02:46:24.000 And then he was chief of the office.

02:46:25.000 So it didn't hurt him too bad.

02:46:26.000 But He got his pee-pee slapped for that.

02:46:29.000 So yeah, there's certain things that you're not doing.

02:46:32.000 But to be honest, I'm a colonel in the Air Force.

02:46:35.000 I'm an adult.

02:46:36.000 I know what I should do and shouldn't do.

02:46:38.000 So I kind of just took it easy.

02:46:40.000 I didn't do any crazy stuff, especially in the year before flight.

02:46:43.000 But it was your decision to not ski.

02:46:46.000 It's not like they have a list of things.

02:46:48.000 Certain actors, when Keanu Reeves does a movie, they tell them not to ride motorcycles in their spare time.

02:46:53.000 Baseball players, you've got to sign you're not going to go skiing.

02:46:58.000 So for me, I just did it self-imposed.

02:47:00.000 There might have been a set of rules, I just don't remember it.

02:47:04.000 I'm not a big fan of rules.

02:47:06.000 But I also knew it was smart.

02:47:09.000 But don't you have to be a fan of rules to be an astronaut?

02:47:11.000 You do.

02:47:11.000 I mean, you've got to, yeah.

02:47:12.000 You've got to obey most of them.

02:47:15.000 You're a reluctant rebel you.

02:47:16.000 Exactly.

02:47:17.000 So do they put you on a physical conditioning schedule to prepare you for something like this?

02:47:22.000 Yeah.

02:47:22.000 Because I would imagine the more conditioning you have, the less you're going to lose while you're up there.

02:47:27.000 100%.

02:47:27.000 Absolutely.

02:47:28.000 Plus, spacewalking is brutal.

02:47:29.000 That's a rough sport.

02:47:31.000 I mean, that suit is pressurized.

02:47:34.000 At four pounds per square inch, which is 144 square inches per foot.

02:47:39.000 So that's like 500 pounds per square foot.

02:47:41.000 It's a lot of pressure to move that thing around.

02:47:44.000 And you're in it for eight or nine hours.

02:47:46.000 So just moving around in a spacewalk.

02:47:47.000 So you do a spacewalk for eight or nine hours?

02:47:50.000 Uh, you're supposed to be outside for six and a half, but getting in and out of the suit takes roughly two hours.

02:47:56.000 It's a lot of time you're in the space suit.

02:47:58.000 Wow.

02:47:58.000 And you move with your hands and that glove is pressurized.

02:48:01.000 So you're doing this, you know, forearm strength.

02:48:03.000 Mine is nothing now, but we used to do kettlebells.

02:48:05.000 Just, we would do the elephant while you just walk around the gym carrying 40 pounds of kettlebells.

02:48:10.000 Doing pull-ups is really good.

02:48:12.000 Anything that would get your forearm strength.

02:48:14.000 Cause that's the, that's the hardest thing to do is you're constantly squeezing and letting go.

02:48:18.000 Wow, so, but is this like a, did they have a structured protocol to get you prepared for something like this?

02:48:24.000 Yeah, they have, we call them ACERS, Astronaut Strength and Conditioning.

02:48:28.000 They're basically former like NCAA football strength and conditioning guys that would come in and, or gals, and help us You'd go to the gym, dude, tell me what to do, and they would just be like, all right, burpees, all right, go run this, we're squatting today,

02:48:44.000 whatever.

02:48:44.000 They would just come up with the program.

02:48:46.000 For me, that was good because otherwise I would just do the same thing every day and it wouldn't be that great.

02:48:52.000 So having someone to crack the whip and tell you to do stuff was really good.

02:48:55.000 So it's almost like you're training for a fight.

02:48:58.000 You're getting in condition.

02:48:59.000 You're fighting against weightlessness.

02:49:00.000 You are training for a fight, yeah.

02:49:02.000 And the weightlessness is you falling.

02:49:04.000 It feels like you're falling, yeah.

02:49:06.000 You know, one of the coolest things about that, you feel like you're falling, but you were asking about sleep, and so dreaming, when I was in space, I would dream about being in space.

02:49:19.000 Like, I remember in The Empire Strikes Back, when there's the asteroids, and there's like that scene, the worm comes out of the asteroid and stuff.

02:49:28.000 I had that dream a lot.

02:49:30.000 Like, I'm just floating in space, and there's rocks, and It was just blah.

02:49:34.000 It was completely nothing.

02:49:34.000 It was black.

02:49:36.000 And then the Russians, one day I was floating through the middle and I heard this bird chirping and I stopped and I'm like, what was that? 0.89

02:49:42.000 And I looked in note three.

02:49:43.000 On the exercise machine was Misha Kornienko, a Russian crewmate.

02:49:47.000 Amazing guy.

02:49:48.000 He was a cop in Moscow before he was a cosmonaut.

02:49:51.000 And he was listening to this.

02:49:54.000 I'm like, Misha, is there a bird in there?

02:49:55.000 And he laughed.

02:49:56.000 The Russian psychologist had sent him sounds from Earth.

02:49:59.000 So we got all these MP3 files of jungle noises and waves at the beach and rain.

02:50:07.000 It was a glass clinking at a cafe.

02:50:10.000 And so it was like amazing.

02:50:13.000 The whole crew fell in love with this stuff.

02:50:15.000 So I went to sleep for about a month.

02:50:17.000 I put my headset on, plug it in a laptop, and listen to rain.

02:50:22.000 And I would just sleep floating.

02:50:25.000 I wasn't connected to the wall because I was in my own little thing.

02:50:27.000 So I was literally floating, listening to rain.

02:50:31.000 And that month, I dreamt of Earth.

02:50:33.000 All my dreams were like running in a field or just being on Earth.

02:50:37.000 And then I stopped.

02:50:38.000 I got tired of rain after a month.

02:50:40.000 And then my dreams went back to the blackness of space.

02:50:43.000 So my brain subconsciously knew somehow it triggered something.

02:50:48.000 Wow.

02:50:49.000 Yeah.

02:50:49.000 Well, consciously you knew you were in space, so I'm assuming your subconscious got the memo too.

02:50:55.000 Right.

02:50:55.000 Yeah.

02:50:56.000 Wow.

02:50:56.000 That was pretty cool.

02:50:57.000 Dude, you've lived a cool life.

02:50:59.000 I mean, it's just the idea of doing the things you've done and to be able to come back and tell people about it, that you've lived...

02:51:08.000 In a space station for 200 days.

02:51:11.000 Yeah.

02:51:12.000 It's wild.

02:51:13.000 It was my childhood dream, too.

02:51:16.000 I mean, I was very lucky in that I got to do what I dreamt about as a kid.

02:51:19.000 Very cool.

02:51:20.000 It was pretty awesome.

02:51:22.000 Yeah.

02:51:23.000 Well...

02:51:23.000 Congratulations on everything, man.

02:51:25.000 And your book, it's called How to Astronaut.

02:51:27.000 Right.

02:51:28.000 It's available right now.

02:51:29.000 Just came out.

02:51:30.000 Super excited about it.

02:51:32.000 It's pretty cool.

02:51:32.000 I tried to make it so it's not, like, for space nerds.

02:51:36.000 It's for anybody.

02:51:37.000 I use all the NASA acronyms and make fun of them.

02:51:39.000 And I kind of try to talk in down-to-earth language.

02:51:43.000 So men, women, old, young.

02:51:45.000 I tried to bring the experience of spaceflight.

02:51:48.000 Some stuff you'd expect, some stuff you wouldn't.

02:51:50.000 Well, the thing about astronauts is, like, to be the physical person that does that, you kind of got to be a little wild.

02:51:56.000 It's a little bit different than just straight-up scientists.

02:52:00.000 Oh, yeah, for sure.

02:52:01.000 Yeah.

02:52:02.000 You know, and we hire scientists to be astronauts, but you're not just writing equations on a blackboard.

02:52:07.000 You're actually, like... 1.00

02:52:08.000 You're doing shit, and if you don't do it right, you might die. 1.00

02:52:11.000 So you have to have that operational, common sense aspect to yourself. 1.00

02:52:17.000 It's not just a hypothetical, theoretical job, for sure.

02:52:21.000 Tell people what your social media is.

02:52:23.000 What is your Instagram is?

02:52:26.000 Astro Terry.

02:52:28.000 Instagram is astro underscore Terry.

02:52:31.000 So yeah, Twitter, Instagram.

02:52:33.000 I got a LinkedIn account.

02:52:35.000 Astro Terry, how to astronaut.

02:52:37.000 Yeah.

02:52:37.000 Well, thank you very much, Terry.

02:52:38.000 Appreciate it, man.

02:52:39.000 Yeah, thanks for having me on.

02:52:40.000 It was really fun.

02:52:41.000 I enjoyed it.

02:52:41.000 Thank you.

02:52:42.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - December 11, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1577 - Terry Virts

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Transcript