1
00:00:00,050 --> 00:00:01,730
Niloufar Ramji: Houston, we have a podcast.

2
00:00:02,090 --> 00:00:06,590
Niloufar Ramji: Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 440,

3
00:00:06,830 --> 00:00:08,210
Niloufar Ramji: To the Moon and Back Again.

4
00:00:08,390 --> 00:00:10,450
Niloufar Ramji: I'm Niloufar Ramji, and I'll be your host today.

5
00:00:10,610 --> 00:00:15,090
Niloufar Ramji: On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts,

6
00:00:15,150 --> 00:00:18,950
Niloufar Ramji: all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight and more.

7
00:00:19,310 --> 00:00:24,570
Niloufar Ramji: On April 1st, 2026, Artemis II launched on a nearly 10-day voyage around the moon,

8
00:00:24,750 --> 00:00:27,630
Niloufar Ramji: marking the first crewed flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft.

9
00:00:28,190 --> 00:00:31,670
Niloufar Ramji: NASA astronauts Reed Weissman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch,

10
00:00:31,930 --> 00:00:34,790
Niloufar Ramji: along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen,

11
00:00:35,150 --> 00:00:38,970
Niloufar Ramji: splashed down on April 10th in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.

12
00:00:39,550 --> 00:00:44,430
Niloufar Ramji: At their farthest point, the crew traveled 252 ,756 miles from Earth,

13
00:00:44,610 --> 00:00:49,670
Niloufar Ramji: setting a record for the greatest distance humans have traveled in space and observing

14
00:00:49,670 --> 00:00:51,670
Niloufar Ramji: the lunar surface like never before.

15
00:00:52,230 --> 00:00:55,350
Niloufar Ramji: Since they've been back, the crew have been on a whirlwind tour,

16
00:00:55,530 --> 00:00:57,410
Niloufar Ramji: sharing their experiences with the world.

17
00:00:57,710 --> 00:01:01,090
Niloufar Ramji: And of course, we had to have them back on Houston We Have a Podcast.

18
00:01:01,510 --> 00:01:05,670
Niloufar Ramji: We heard from the crew when they were selected for Artemis II on episode 283,

19
00:01:05,750 --> 00:01:08,450
Niloufar Ramji: and then right before they flew on episode 417.

20
00:01:08,590 --> 00:01:12,110
Niloufar Ramji: And we've had a chance to get to know them right here on the podcast.

21
00:01:12,410 --> 00:01:13,790
Niloufar Ramji: Coming back from their journey,

22
00:01:14,050 --> 00:01:17,770
Niloufar Ramji: we sat down with each of the crew individually to hear their reflections,

23
00:01:18,170 --> 00:01:21,270
Niloufar Ramji: and we laughed, we cried, and everything in between.

24
00:01:21,570 --> 00:01:24,970
Niloufar Ramji: I hope you enjoy these conversations after their historical mission.

25
00:01:25,450 --> 00:01:26,810
Niloufar Ramji: Let's go for our crew.

26
00:01:27,100 --> 00:01:29,520
Niloufar Ramji: our teammates, and all humanity.

27
00:01:51,550 --> 00:01:52,710
Niloufar Ramji: Reid, welcome back.

28
00:01:53,130 --> 00:01:56,430
Niloufar Ramji: It's been a little over three months since the Artemis II mission,

29
00:01:56,430 --> 00:01:58,930
Niloufar Ramji: and that mission took you around the moon.

30
00:01:59,130 --> 00:02:01,070
Niloufar Ramji: So first off, tell us what that was like.

31
00:02:01,710 --> 00:02:05,410
Reid Wiseman: It was the greatest adventure that four humans can ever go on.

32
00:02:05,690 --> 00:02:07,690
Reid Wiseman: I mean, we know the crew well.

33
00:02:08,090 --> 00:02:10,970
Reid Wiseman: I was with Victor, Christina, and Jeremy this morning.

34
00:02:10,970 --> 00:02:16,970
Reid Wiseman: We're still bonded just like we were during the mission and getting to see some of the

35
00:02:16,970 --> 00:02:17,150
Reid Wiseman: sights.

36
00:02:17,230 --> 00:02:17,810
Reid Wiseman: I guess...

37
00:02:18,470 --> 00:02:22,450
Reid Wiseman: The biggest surprise to me being a space station flyer on this,

38
00:02:23,070 --> 00:02:24,750
Reid Wiseman: I knew the crew was going to be good.

39
00:02:24,850 --> 00:02:26,270
Reid Wiseman: I knew mission control was going to be good.

40
00:02:26,450 --> 00:02:28,270
Reid Wiseman: I was pretty sure the vehicle was going to be good.

41
00:02:28,690 --> 00:02:31,210
Reid Wiseman: The thing that blew my mind was how quickly we left Earth.

42
00:02:31,770 --> 00:02:35,690
Reid Wiseman: I mean, it was just gone, especially on the second, third day.

43
00:02:35,870 --> 00:02:35,870
Niloufar Ramji: It

44
00:02:35,870 --> 00:02:37,870
Reid Wiseman: just was so small and getting smaller.

45
00:02:38,050 --> 00:02:38,050
Niloufar Ramji: It

46
00:02:38,050 --> 00:02:39,310
Reid Wiseman: was this little crescent out the window.

47
00:02:39,510 --> 00:02:39,510
Niloufar Ramji: And

48
00:02:39,510 --> 00:02:42,910
Reid Wiseman: from my time in the space station, it was just shocking to me.

49
00:02:43,090 --> 00:02:44,310
Reid Wiseman: I didn't expect that.

50
00:02:44,390 --> 00:02:47,450
Reid Wiseman: I didn't expect us to just be gone so quickly.

51
00:02:48,070 --> 00:02:50,130
Niloufar Ramji: It just disappears in the background.

52
00:02:50,410 --> 00:02:52,810
Niloufar Ramji: And, you know, everyone will ask you about launch,

53
00:02:52,810 --> 00:02:56,810
Niloufar Ramji: but was there a quiet moment maybe days later,

54
00:02:57,030 --> 00:03:01,470
Niloufar Ramji: the next day when you suddenly thought, I'm actually on my way to the moon?

55
00:03:02,110 --> 00:03:06,770
Reid Wiseman: I think we've started to talk about this a little bit as a crew.

56
00:03:06,990 --> 00:03:11,310
Reid Wiseman: And for me, I don't know if it was a protectionary element in my brain,

57
00:03:11,450 --> 00:03:16,190
Reid Wiseman: but I kind of thought at all times before every one of these major burns that.

58
00:03:16,740 --> 00:03:18,940
Reid Wiseman: that if something didn't go right, we were going to go home.

59
00:03:19,440 --> 00:03:23,560
Reid Wiseman: So we launch off of the Cape, off of Pad 39B at the Cape,

60
00:03:23,700 --> 00:03:27,500
Reid Wiseman: and we go out to our first Apogee where we need to raise our perigee or we're going to

61
00:03:27,500 --> 00:03:28,060
Reid Wiseman: come straight home.

62
00:03:28,140 --> 00:03:30,040
Reid Wiseman: In my mind, it was like, well, if this doesn't go great,

63
00:03:30,140 --> 00:03:31,400
Reid Wiseman: we're going to be home in 45 minutes.

64
00:03:32,890 --> 00:03:34,190
Reid Wiseman: And then it went great.

65
00:03:34,250 --> 00:03:39,470
Reid Wiseman: And then we did our giant Apogee raise burn, and we're going out to 38 ,000 miles,

66
00:03:39,590 --> 00:03:40,330
Reid Wiseman: 24-hour orbit.

67
00:03:40,430 --> 00:03:43,210
Reid Wiseman: And I thought at the peak of that orbit, I was like, all right, well,

68
00:03:43,390 --> 00:03:45,150
Reid Wiseman: if it's not going great, we're just going to go home.

69
00:03:45,610 --> 00:03:48,290
Reid Wiseman: And then we did our perigee raised burn and it went great.

70
00:03:48,290 --> 00:03:49,270
Reid Wiseman: And we weren't going home.

71
00:03:49,370 --> 00:03:51,210
Reid Wiseman: And then our next step is translunar injection.

72
00:03:51,670 --> 00:03:57,300
Reid Wiseman: And heading into that burn, Jeremy and Christina were at controls of the vehicle.

73
00:03:58,380 --> 00:03:59,640
Reid Wiseman: Victor and I were supporting.

74
00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:04,620
Reid Wiseman: And we had a few things go a little bit wrong as we're cruising through the Van Allen

75
00:04:04,620 --> 00:04:05,100
Reid Wiseman: belts.

76
00:04:05,400 --> 00:04:07,160
Reid Wiseman: Christina lost her computer.

77
00:04:08,160 --> 00:04:10,020
Reid Wiseman: And so she had to go to backup procedures.

78
00:04:10,020 --> 00:04:13,400
Reid Wiseman: And then we had a cabin leak suspected.

79
00:04:14,170 --> 00:04:16,650
Reid Wiseman: warning come up and that got us our adrenaline going.

80
00:04:16,650 --> 00:04:19,870
Reid Wiseman: So we're like 20 minutes from translunar injection and we have a cabin leak suspected.

81
00:04:20,090 --> 00:04:21,770
Reid Wiseman: And I'm just kind of sitting there like,

82
00:04:22,070 --> 00:04:25,510
Reid Wiseman: maybe we are actually going to go home on this one, but everything was looking good.

83
00:04:25,670 --> 00:04:28,730
Reid Wiseman: And mission control did a superb job of cleaning that up.

84
00:04:28,810 --> 00:04:30,570
Reid Wiseman: And then we did translunar injection.

85
00:04:30,570 --> 00:04:36,230
Reid Wiseman: And then it was kind of then that all of those thoughts of, we're just going to go home.

86
00:04:37,120 --> 00:04:40,280
Reid Wiseman: They went into the background and now we're not going home.

87
00:04:40,660 --> 00:04:41,940
Reid Wiseman: We're going to the moon.

88
00:04:42,570 --> 00:04:44,230
Reid Wiseman: And from that point on,

89
00:04:44,470 --> 00:04:48,550
Reid Wiseman: I never thought about anything else other than we're going to the moon.

90
00:04:50,310 --> 00:04:53,790
Niloufar Ramji: See, you and the crew, I keep going back to Christina's words,

91
00:04:53,950 --> 00:04:54,550
Niloufar Ramji: planet Earth,

92
00:04:54,730 --> 00:04:55,490
Niloufar Ramji: you are our crew.

93
00:04:55,770 --> 00:04:58,790
Niloufar Ramji: That's one of my favorite lines post-flight, among many others.

94
00:04:59,010 --> 00:05:05,110
Niloufar Ramji: But your crew aboard Orion really stood out to the world for its camaraderie.

95
00:05:05,210 --> 00:05:08,330
Niloufar Ramji: Is trust like that something you can deliberately build as a crew?

96
00:05:08,490 --> 00:05:11,790
Niloufar Ramji: Or is it something that you discover when things get hard?

97
00:05:13,790 --> 00:05:14,850
Reid Wiseman: That is a great question.

98
00:05:15,870 --> 00:05:20,730
Reid Wiseman: As you were using the word trust, I was thinking in the back of my head, the word earned.

99
00:05:22,870 --> 00:05:26,390
Reid Wiseman: I think you can set out with intentionality to build trust.

100
00:05:26,570 --> 00:05:27,170
Reid Wiseman: That's a great thing.

101
00:05:27,290 --> 00:05:28,090
Reid Wiseman: It's a noble cause.

102
00:05:28,650 --> 00:05:31,130
Reid Wiseman: But I think at the end of the day, trust has to be earned.

103
00:05:32,400 --> 00:05:34,940
Reid Wiseman: And I'm going to take a little bit of risk here with this conversation,

104
00:05:34,940 --> 00:05:39,750
Reid Wiseman: but this crew put in a tremendous amount of work leading up to this flight.

105
00:05:40,520 --> 00:05:43,400
Reid Wiseman: And for those who are close to us, they know we weren't always friends.

106
00:05:44,100 --> 00:05:45,800
Reid Wiseman: We weren't always aligned.

107
00:05:46,220 --> 00:05:48,340
Reid Wiseman: We definitely were not always in agreement.

108
00:05:48,500 --> 00:05:50,140
Reid Wiseman: That made us stronger in the end, actually.

109
00:05:50,720 --> 00:05:57,340
Reid Wiseman: But I never really knew how this crew was going to show up when the rocket lit,

110
00:05:57,440 --> 00:05:59,040
Reid Wiseman: when we were weightless, when we were on our way to the middle,

111
00:05:59,120 --> 00:06:03,720
Reid Wiseman: when we were doing real life or death high-risk elements.

112
00:06:04,040 --> 00:06:09,720
Reid Wiseman: And honestly, the first window I got into that was...

113
00:06:10,580 --> 00:06:13,460
Reid Wiseman: I had opened up an oatmeal and I hadn't hydrated it enough.

114
00:06:13,800 --> 00:06:17,420
Reid Wiseman: And so there was so much oatmeal floating out of this bag,

115
00:06:17,560 --> 00:06:19,760
Reid Wiseman: like 10 ,000 pieces of oatmeal is an underestimate.

116
00:06:19,960 --> 00:06:21,560
Reid Wiseman: It's a cloud of oatmeal floating away from me.

117
00:06:22,400 --> 00:06:24,040
Reid Wiseman: And I was just looking at it and I'm like,

118
00:06:24,120 --> 00:06:26,280
Reid Wiseman: I've spent six months at the International Space Station.

119
00:06:26,380 --> 00:06:29,140
Reid Wiseman: I should not be this bad at astronauting.

120
00:06:30,180 --> 00:06:30,540
Reid Wiseman: Astronauting.

121
00:06:30,620 --> 00:06:31,160
Niloufar Ramji: New verb.

122
00:06:31,400 --> 00:06:35,000
Reid Wiseman: And I'm looking at this cloud and my first instinct was I got to clean this up.

123
00:06:35,080 --> 00:06:36,360
Reid Wiseman: And then it was just so much.

124
00:06:36,480 --> 00:06:37,180
Reid Wiseman: I was like, all right.

125
00:06:38,150 --> 00:06:40,870
Reid Wiseman: Just let it float because there's just no solving this.

126
00:06:41,150 --> 00:06:44,410
Reid Wiseman: And Victor turns around and he's just like, no problem.

127
00:06:44,550 --> 00:06:47,750
Reid Wiseman: And he just starts kind of gathering it up and eating some of it and pushing some of

128
00:06:47,750 --> 00:06:51,690
Reid Wiseman: it over towards the HEPA filter and letting it get stuck to the filtration system,

129
00:06:51,690 --> 00:06:53,850
Reid Wiseman: which is totally safe and completely reasonable.

130
00:06:54,090 --> 00:06:56,170
Reid Wiseman: But I think for me personally,

131
00:06:56,170 --> 00:07:03,030
Reid Wiseman: that was a moment for me when I knew we had that trust and that went across the whole

132
00:07:03,030 --> 00:07:03,270
Reid Wiseman: crew.

133
00:07:03,430 --> 00:07:07,860
Reid Wiseman: And that sort of grace towards each other on this mission.

134
00:07:08,310 --> 00:07:12,290
Reid Wiseman: in the end resulted in the ultimate trust between the four of us.

135
00:07:13,050 --> 00:07:13,970
Niloufar Ramji: What a great answer.

136
00:07:14,210 --> 00:07:15,530
Niloufar Ramji: You may have done this a time or two.

137
00:07:18,880 --> 00:07:21,040
Reid Wiseman: You could tell I turned my paper upside down.

138
00:07:21,100 --> 00:07:22,200
Reid Wiseman: I don't even want to know the questions.

139
00:07:22,340 --> 00:07:23,300
Reid Wiseman: I just want to have a conversation.

140
00:07:23,720 --> 00:07:24,640
Niloufar Ramji: I love that.

141
00:07:24,640 --> 00:07:27,140
Niloufar Ramji: And I'm using the questions as a guiding parameter.

142
00:07:27,340 --> 00:07:29,720
Niloufar Ramji: But more than anything, I want to talk a little bit now.

143
00:07:30,170 --> 00:07:31,770
Niloufar Ramji: about your role as commander.

144
00:07:32,050 --> 00:07:35,190
Niloufar Ramji: So as leaders in any kind of organization,

145
00:07:35,190 --> 00:07:40,850
Niloufar Ramji: we're always looking to lead in certain areas and then have our team complete tasks in

146
00:07:40,850 --> 00:07:41,630
Niloufar Ramji: other areas, right?

147
00:07:42,150 --> 00:07:45,970
Niloufar Ramji: So during a mission, when there are thousands of decisions to be made,

148
00:07:46,130 --> 00:07:48,390
Niloufar Ramji: different procedures, you're timelined out for the day,

149
00:07:48,550 --> 00:07:55,010
Niloufar Ramji: how do you know which of those decisions deserves your attention and which ones do you

150
00:07:55,010 --> 00:07:56,530
Niloufar Ramji: intentionally leave to your team?

151
00:07:58,350 --> 00:08:00,350
Reid Wiseman: What an unbelievably difficult question to answer.

152
00:08:00,810 --> 00:08:02,710
Reid Wiseman: Maybe I shouldn't have flipped my piece of paper over.

153
00:08:05,260 --> 00:08:06,840
Reid Wiseman: It's a great question.

154
00:08:07,140 --> 00:08:13,000
Reid Wiseman: And first, I think I would just love to talk about followership and teamwork.

155
00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:16,180
Reid Wiseman: And you said as the commander of the mission,

156
00:08:16,180 --> 00:08:20,180
Reid Wiseman: that almost made me a little bit embarrassed because I really was just a member of this

157
00:08:20,180 --> 00:08:21,120
Reid Wiseman: unbelievable crew.

158
00:08:21,340 --> 00:08:22,880
Reid Wiseman: And at any time during this mission,

159
00:08:23,510 --> 00:08:24,710
Reid Wiseman: Every ship needs a captain.

160
00:08:24,910 --> 00:08:25,530
Reid Wiseman: I get that.

161
00:08:25,690 --> 00:08:28,790
Reid Wiseman: But I think if we were sitting here with Victor, Christina, and Jeremy,

162
00:08:29,130 --> 00:08:32,990
Reid Wiseman: I would hope they would say, like, we all were leading in that mission.

163
00:08:32,990 --> 00:08:36,950
Reid Wiseman: And we all had a lot of responsibility at a lot of different times.

164
00:08:37,130 --> 00:08:39,790
Reid Wiseman: And if you actually dissected the work in the mission,

165
00:08:40,050 --> 00:08:43,710
Reid Wiseman: my hope would be that I was almost the fourth crew member.

166
00:08:44,210 --> 00:08:47,730
Reid Wiseman: And Christina and Jeremy were running almost everything on orbit.

167
00:08:47,850 --> 00:08:50,410
Reid Wiseman: Victor was running just about everything on ascent and entry.

168
00:08:50,750 --> 00:08:53,130
Reid Wiseman: We worked really deliberately to...

169
00:08:53,060 --> 00:08:58,620
Reid Wiseman: build out this team and give everybody real meaningful work and meaningful responsibility.

170
00:08:59,760 --> 00:09:01,960
Reid Wiseman: But back to your question about like, how do you know?

171
00:09:02,120 --> 00:09:02,960
Reid Wiseman: You don't know.

172
00:09:03,360 --> 00:09:06,020
Reid Wiseman: I've spent a lot of my time in the cockpit of aircraft.

173
00:09:06,020 --> 00:09:07,420
Reid Wiseman: I went through test pilot school.

174
00:09:07,660 --> 00:09:12,360
Reid Wiseman: I think Navy test pilot school is probably the time when I started to most understand

175
00:09:12,360 --> 00:09:15,720
Reid Wiseman: if you got a thousand things thrown at you at once,

176
00:09:16,060 --> 00:09:20,720
Reid Wiseman: try to find the one thing that is life or death, focus on that first.

177
00:09:20,800 --> 00:09:22,160
Reid Wiseman: And then maybe the next like,

178
00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:27,580
Reid Wiseman: 10 things that you got to get done soon.

179
00:09:28,160 --> 00:09:34,140
Reid Wiseman: And then everything else can become, I wish Matt Dominick was here.

180
00:09:34,280 --> 00:09:36,220
Reid Wiseman: It could become a future Reed Wiseman problem.

181
00:09:36,380 --> 00:09:38,240
Reid Wiseman: He always says that, like, this is a future Matt Dominick problem.

182
00:09:38,360 --> 00:09:39,540
Reid Wiseman: Like, I'll worry about that one tomorrow.

183
00:09:40,700 --> 00:09:44,820
Reid Wiseman: But we developed a little saying in the crew.

184
00:09:44,940 --> 00:09:49,920
Reid Wiseman: Victor brought it up the first time when we were trying to figure out we're the first

185
00:09:49,920 --> 00:09:54,000
Reid Wiseman: humans to fly the spacecraft and our first action can be right and it can save our lives.

186
00:09:54,320 --> 00:09:56,880
Reid Wiseman: Or it could be really wrong and that could really hurt us.

187
00:09:57,180 --> 00:09:59,660
Reid Wiseman: So we developed like no fast hands in the cockpit.

188
00:10:00,980 --> 00:10:03,420
Reid Wiseman: Let's be cerebral and methodical about our decisions.

189
00:10:03,540 --> 00:10:07,020
Reid Wiseman: But at the end of the day, if there is an emergency that needs an immediate action,

190
00:10:07,300 --> 00:10:09,100
Reid Wiseman: something that must happen right now,

191
00:10:09,260 --> 00:10:13,780
Reid Wiseman: we developed the mantra of what is the first right thing you need to do.

192
00:10:14,320 --> 00:10:16,920
Reid Wiseman: And if you do that first right thing,

193
00:10:17,200 --> 00:10:21,980
Reid Wiseman: you generally can get yourself out of most of those main.

194
00:10:22,420 --> 00:10:22,760
Reid Wiseman: issues.

195
00:10:22,980 --> 00:10:26,080
Reid Wiseman: And so that was really what we went through every time we were faced with a challenge.

196
00:10:26,180 --> 00:10:26,960
Reid Wiseman: What's the first right thing?

197
00:10:27,360 --> 00:10:28,600
Reid Wiseman: Let's go slow and methodical.

198
00:10:28,720 --> 00:10:30,660
Reid Wiseman: Let's try to figure out what's going on with the vehicle,

199
00:10:30,760 --> 00:10:32,600
Reid Wiseman: what's going on in Houston, and let's talk through this.

200
00:10:32,680 --> 00:10:36,000
Reid Wiseman: And we didn't have a whole lot of major emergencies on this mission.

201
00:10:36,040 --> 00:10:38,460
Reid Wiseman: And everything that we did have pretty much turned out to be a false alarm.

202
00:10:38,620 --> 00:10:41,040
Reid Wiseman: So maybe we weren't challenged sufficiently.

203
00:10:41,560 --> 00:10:43,280
Reid Wiseman: That's a long answer to a short question.

204
00:10:43,440 --> 00:10:47,420
Niloufar Ramji: I think that you were challenged more than enough and you executed well as a team.

205
00:10:47,540 --> 00:10:52,380
Niloufar Ramji: And one of the best parts about being a captain on a ship is actually having your shipmates

206
00:10:52,380 --> 00:10:53,420
Niloufar Ramji: work with you.

207
00:10:53,540 --> 00:10:54,580
Niloufar Ramji: And that's the collaboration.

208
00:10:54,580 --> 00:10:54,580
Reid Wiseman: I love my

209
00:10:54,580 --> 00:10:54,840
Niloufar Ramji: shipmates.

210
00:10:55,060 --> 00:10:55,900
Niloufar Ramji: I love them.

211
00:10:56,080 --> 00:10:56,640
Niloufar Ramji: That's wonderful.

212
00:10:57,380 --> 00:11:04,120
Niloufar Ramji: So now everyone has talked about how successful the Artemis II mission was,

213
00:11:04,120 --> 00:11:09,040
Niloufar Ramji: how much we accomplished, how much we learned, how much we may have increased efficiencies.

214
00:11:09,730 --> 00:11:14,550
Niloufar Ramji: So tell us something about the Artemis II mission that the public may not know happened.

215
00:11:14,830 --> 00:11:16,410
Reid Wiseman: Oh, it was so hard to get to our food.

216
00:11:16,730 --> 00:11:18,650
Reid Wiseman: We had this amazing food.

217
00:11:18,830 --> 00:11:23,830
Reid Wiseman: We had like the best space food that any astronauts have ever eaten in space from our

218
00:11:23,830 --> 00:11:25,230
Reid Wiseman: food lab here at Johnson Space Center.

219
00:11:26,370 --> 00:11:30,490
Reid Wiseman: But it was just, it was very hard for us to get.

220
00:11:30,940 --> 00:11:33,100
Reid Wiseman: to the food in the way you would want to eat.

221
00:11:33,220 --> 00:11:36,840
Reid Wiseman: They're just in these large bags and breakfast is mashed in with lunch,

222
00:11:36,940 --> 00:11:38,000
Reid Wiseman: which is mashed in with dinner.

223
00:11:38,180 --> 00:11:41,100
Reid Wiseman: And so we had these great menus, but in the end of the day,

224
00:11:41,300 --> 00:11:44,720
Reid Wiseman: you're floating and we had no way to store all this food that was coming out of this

225
00:11:44,720 --> 00:11:45,040
Reid Wiseman: bag.

226
00:11:45,220 --> 00:11:47,580
Reid Wiseman: There's like, like think if you,

227
00:11:47,600 --> 00:11:52,580
Reid Wiseman: if you pack for a long trip and maybe you use one of those compression pockets where

228
00:11:52,580 --> 00:11:53,820
Reid Wiseman: they take all the air out.

229
00:11:53,980 --> 00:11:57,680
Reid Wiseman: So three days worth of clothes fits into like a baseball glove, you know, backpack.

230
00:11:58,320 --> 00:11:59,280
Reid Wiseman: So think about that.

231
00:11:59,480 --> 00:12:02,980
Reid Wiseman: And now think about removing gravity in your weightless and you take scissors and you

232
00:12:02,980 --> 00:12:06,740
Reid Wiseman: cut open that backpack and now all that force is there and everything that's in that

233
00:12:06,740 --> 00:12:07,900
Reid Wiseman: backpack now is expanding.

234
00:12:08,080 --> 00:12:11,520
Reid Wiseman: Well, think if it's 10 days worth of food or in our case, three days worth of food,

235
00:12:11,680 --> 00:12:12,640
Reid Wiseman: that's a-

236
00:12:12,630 --> 00:12:16,950
Reid Wiseman: tremendous amount of packaging and food products that we just didn't have anywhere to

237
00:12:16,950 --> 00:12:17,250
Reid Wiseman: store.

238
00:12:17,390 --> 00:12:18,470
Reid Wiseman: We didn't have little Ziplocs.

239
00:12:18,490 --> 00:12:19,570
Reid Wiseman: We didn't have ways to organize.

240
00:12:19,770 --> 00:12:21,950
Reid Wiseman: We didn't have ways to dig in and find all this food.

241
00:12:22,090 --> 00:12:26,250
Reid Wiseman: So we were really behind timeline the first few days as these four humans are in this

242
00:12:26,250 --> 00:12:27,490
Reid Wiseman: small vehicle living.

243
00:12:27,630 --> 00:12:28,830
Reid Wiseman: It's a magnificent vehicle.

244
00:12:28,990 --> 00:12:31,390
Reid Wiseman: And once we hit our stride towards the end of the mission,

245
00:12:31,570 --> 00:12:34,750
Reid Wiseman: it was very easy to work and live in there and very comfortable.

246
00:12:35,030 --> 00:12:36,270
Reid Wiseman: But those first few days,

247
00:12:36,490 --> 00:12:39,550
Reid Wiseman: I think the thing that was just getting to me the most was food.

248
00:12:39,830 --> 00:12:41,010
Reid Wiseman: And then maybe

249
00:12:41,570 --> 00:12:45,730
Reid Wiseman: a little bit of Outlook inefficiencies based on how we're using the Deep Space Network

250
00:12:45,730 --> 00:12:46,630
Reid Wiseman: with Outlook.

251
00:12:47,010 --> 00:12:48,710
Reid Wiseman: I joke that with my kids,

252
00:12:48,930 --> 00:12:54,950
Reid Wiseman: they would get my response to two days ago's email today because we would only get a

253
00:12:54,950 --> 00:12:56,430
Reid Wiseman: sync twice a day.

254
00:12:56,530 --> 00:12:57,670
Reid Wiseman: So they would email me.

255
00:12:58,050 --> 00:12:59,830
Reid Wiseman: I wouldn't, I would get that on the next sync.

256
00:12:59,990 --> 00:13:02,970
Reid Wiseman: I would reply on the next sync and then they would get it on the next sync.

257
00:13:03,070 --> 00:13:06,210
Reid Wiseman: So that's like 48 hours from the time they emailed me until they get anything back.

258
00:13:06,350 --> 00:13:08,570
Reid Wiseman: And so think about how out of sorts we were.

259
00:13:08,710 --> 00:13:11,450
Reid Wiseman: Like I'm trying to answer questions for Monday, but it's Wednesday.

260
00:13:11,710 --> 00:13:15,010
Reid Wiseman: And then on Friday, they're reading my answers on Wednesday to their Monday email.

261
00:13:15,130 --> 00:13:15,650
Reid Wiseman: That's like

262
00:13:15,650 --> 00:13:17,970
Niloufar Ramji: longer than a comm delay from here to Mars.

263
00:13:18,190 --> 00:13:19,210
Reid Wiseman: By far.

264
00:13:19,530 --> 00:13:23,350
Reid Wiseman: So anyway, that, I mean, that led to some humor, but it's all,

265
00:13:23,410 --> 00:13:24,770
Reid Wiseman: it was just an honor that we even had.

266
00:13:25,240 --> 00:13:27,100
Reid Wiseman: outlook and that we could get email from our families.

267
00:13:27,300 --> 00:13:27,520
Reid Wiseman: That's awesome.

268
00:13:27,520 --> 00:13:28,100
Reid Wiseman: That's cool.

269
00:13:28,740 --> 00:13:34,200
Niloufar Ramji: I keep thinking about the first couple of days of the mission when a hazelnut spread

270
00:13:34,200 --> 00:13:35,720
Niloufar Ramji: floated across.

271
00:13:36,140 --> 00:13:37,580
Reid Wiseman: Are we not allowed to say Nutella?

272
00:13:40,420 --> 00:13:41,480
Reid Wiseman: Yep, we took that.

273
00:13:41,660 --> 00:13:42,280
Reid Wiseman: You know, NASA,

274
00:13:42,280 --> 00:13:45,780
Reid Wiseman: I love them because they'll take the labels off of water bottles and press conferences,

275
00:13:45,780 --> 00:13:48,020
Reid Wiseman: but somehow no one took the label off that.

276
00:13:48,180 --> 00:13:49,320
Reid Wiseman: that bottle of Nutella.

277
00:13:49,700 --> 00:13:49,800
Reid Wiseman: I keep thinking

278
00:13:49,800 --> 00:13:51,000
Niloufar Ramji: about your food going everywhere.

279
00:13:51,140 --> 00:13:53,300
Niloufar Ramji: And that was one of the items of food that went somewhere.

280
00:13:53,580 --> 00:13:53,580
Niloufar Ramji: That

281
00:13:53,580 --> 00:13:54,880
Reid Wiseman: was one of the first things we unpacked.

282
00:13:54,960 --> 00:13:54,960
Niloufar Ramji: It

283
00:13:54,960 --> 00:13:56,560
Reid Wiseman: was in our flight day zero food kit.

284
00:13:56,720 --> 00:13:58,800
Reid Wiseman: And I do love a good dessert.

285
00:14:00,030 --> 00:14:01,810
Niloufar Ramji: I think we all have a sweet tooth.

286
00:14:02,030 --> 00:14:07,330
Niloufar Ramji: So tell us one thing that you may have worried about that the rest of the team,

287
00:14:07,350 --> 00:14:09,850
Niloufar Ramji: it may not have been in the back of their minds.

288
00:14:10,170 --> 00:14:15,230
Niloufar Ramji: Was there some particular thing that you may be as commander or as the fourth crew member?

289
00:14:16,360 --> 00:14:17,660
Reid Wiseman: I love the way you just said that.

290
00:14:19,680 --> 00:14:23,150
Reid Wiseman: I think people have asked me if I was scared on this mission.

291
00:14:23,330 --> 00:14:25,750
Reid Wiseman: And the short answer is yes, absolutely.

292
00:14:26,710 --> 00:14:28,990
Reid Wiseman: You're 250 ,000 miles away from home.

293
00:14:29,550 --> 00:14:32,390
Reid Wiseman: If you don't have a little bit of fear underneath the surface,

294
00:14:32,530 --> 00:14:33,730
Reid Wiseman: I think something's wrong with you.

295
00:14:33,810 --> 00:14:34,830
Reid Wiseman: And I definitely felt that.

296
00:14:35,090 --> 00:14:36,790
Reid Wiseman: I felt my heart rate go up a few times.

297
00:14:37,070 --> 00:14:39,930
Reid Wiseman: I could tell I was anxious isn't the right word.

298
00:14:40,110 --> 00:14:43,310
Reid Wiseman: I was comfortable, but I could tell it's just the position that you're in.

299
00:14:44,230 --> 00:14:46,670
Reid Wiseman: It is one that is fear invoking.

300
00:14:47,370 --> 00:14:48,610
Reid Wiseman: But I think the thing.

301
00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:55,440
Reid Wiseman: that maybe i was most worried about was and it's a false worry in hindsight but just

302
00:14:55,440 --> 00:15:01,780
Reid Wiseman: crew cohesion on this and the stress of the situation and i was not i i was not adding

303
00:15:01,780 --> 00:15:05,700
Reid Wiseman: to the crew cohesion i mean i'm a i got all all the same faults that everybody else does

304
00:15:05,700 --> 00:15:10,960
Reid Wiseman: but i think that was the one thing like i just want the four of us to stay on the rails

305
00:15:10,960 --> 00:15:17,700
Reid Wiseman: and keep this thing going through the mission and i mean goodness we did like oh i mean

306
00:15:18,360 --> 00:15:19,400
Reid Wiseman: Just couldn't believe it.

307
00:15:19,520 --> 00:15:21,880
Reid Wiseman: Even when we splashed down to the Pacific Ocean,

308
00:15:22,020 --> 00:15:24,200
Reid Wiseman: the first thing that Victor said to me was, now I'm excited.

309
00:15:24,400 --> 00:15:25,960
Reid Wiseman: Because he had said the whole time, like,

310
00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:27,520
Reid Wiseman: I'm not going to be excited until we splashed down.

311
00:15:27,640 --> 00:15:29,620
Reid Wiseman: And just the fact that we splashed down,

312
00:15:29,720 --> 00:15:31,500
Reid Wiseman: we'd just gone from 39 times the speed of sound,

313
00:15:31,620 --> 00:15:35,260
Reid Wiseman: we splashed down to the Pacific Ocean, and he looks over at me and goes, now I'm excited.

314
00:15:35,440 --> 00:15:38,160
Reid Wiseman: I mean, all that stuff was just, it was just gems.

315
00:15:38,300 --> 00:15:40,500
Reid Wiseman: And Christina was doing it, and Jeremy was doing it, I was doing it.

316
00:15:40,560 --> 00:15:41,940
Reid Wiseman: Like, we just all had these gems.

317
00:15:42,060 --> 00:15:43,300
Reid Wiseman: A minute and a half into flight.

318
00:15:44,680 --> 00:15:46,840
Reid Wiseman: Jeremy, we're still on powered flight.

319
00:15:46,980 --> 00:15:48,780
Reid Wiseman: Jeremy just goes, this is so cool.

320
00:15:49,080 --> 00:15:49,380
Reid Wiseman: It is.

321
00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:49,600
Niloufar Ramji: And

322
00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:50,820
Reid Wiseman: when we lifted off off the pad,

323
00:15:51,100 --> 00:15:53,060
Reid Wiseman: the first thing that Christina said was payekali,

324
00:15:53,180 --> 00:15:55,520
Reid Wiseman: which is what we say in Russia when we launch on a Soyuz.

325
00:15:55,660 --> 00:15:56,860
Reid Wiseman: It's like a long tradition.

326
00:15:57,040 --> 00:15:59,120
Reid Wiseman: We are going kind of thing.

327
00:15:59,320 --> 00:16:03,780
Reid Wiseman: The fact that the crew is on this elevated level of situational awareness and comradeship

328
00:16:03,780 --> 00:16:08,380
Reid Wiseman: the whole time, it was just, it was just, it was truly surreal.

329
00:16:08,680 --> 00:16:10,700
Reid Wiseman: I just can't believe how that all played out.

330
00:16:10,880 --> 00:16:12,700
Niloufar Ramji: There's so much job love that you're.

331
00:16:13,790 --> 00:16:16,110
Niloufar Ramji: Moon joy, job love, all of it.

332
00:16:17,310 --> 00:16:18,810
Niloufar Ramji: Okay, so let's go back in time.

333
00:16:19,090 --> 00:16:20,750
Niloufar Ramji: Let's go back to 2009.

334
00:16:21,390 --> 00:16:26,930
Niloufar Ramji: And if today's read could spend five minutes with a read who had just been selected as

335
00:16:26,930 --> 00:16:30,850
Niloufar Ramji: an astronaut, is there a particular piece of advice you would give him?

336
00:16:32,970 --> 00:16:37,990
Reid Wiseman: Well, when we take this question all the way back to like teenage years and youth,

337
00:16:38,170 --> 00:16:39,690
Reid Wiseman: I always say, dude, chill out.

338
00:16:39,890 --> 00:16:40,830
Reid Wiseman: That's what I would tell me.

339
00:16:42,430 --> 00:16:43,790
Reid Wiseman: I think...

340
00:16:43,940 --> 00:16:48,800
Reid Wiseman: And this might be an odd answer, but especially coming from the military,

341
00:16:48,980 --> 00:16:49,740
Reid Wiseman: you move around a lot.

342
00:16:49,860 --> 00:16:51,260
Reid Wiseman: You know, you're always moving jobs.

343
00:16:51,620 --> 00:16:53,080
Reid Wiseman: There's people are always coming and going.

344
00:16:53,620 --> 00:16:57,960
Reid Wiseman: And you get super attached in the military because you're just in this highly operational

345
00:16:57,960 --> 00:16:58,340
Reid Wiseman: environment.

346
00:16:58,340 --> 00:16:59,620
Reid Wiseman: You have to be attached to everybody.

347
00:16:59,620 --> 00:17:02,300
Reid Wiseman: But those people that you go to attached to, they leave quick.

348
00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:09,540
Reid Wiseman: In the astronaut office in 2009, I didn't realize at that time, I should have,

349
00:17:09,640 --> 00:17:11,980
Reid Wiseman: but I didn't realize that I would grow old.

350
00:17:12,600 --> 00:17:14,180
Reid Wiseman: with my peers now.

351
00:17:14,320 --> 00:17:16,160
Reid Wiseman: I would grow old with my fellow astronauts.

352
00:17:16,180 --> 00:17:20,060
Reid Wiseman: I just went to the wedding of a daughter of a fellow astronaut.

353
00:17:20,460 --> 00:17:22,540
Reid Wiseman: I mean, our kids are getting married.

354
00:17:22,540 --> 00:17:28,780
Reid Wiseman: I've watched us all get wrinkles and gray hair, and we just press through life together.

355
00:17:29,140 --> 00:17:33,820
Reid Wiseman: And I think if I could go back in 2009, I would just tell myself,

356
00:17:33,980 --> 00:17:40,140
Reid Wiseman: it's more important to know the names of the kids of your classmates than it is to ace

357
00:17:40,140 --> 00:17:40,580
Reid Wiseman: a test.

358
00:17:41,050 --> 00:17:42,830
Reid Wiseman: I think that's the advice I would give myself.

359
00:17:43,350 --> 00:17:44,770
Niloufar Ramji: That's really good advice.

360
00:17:45,010 --> 00:17:45,590
Niloufar Ramji: I like that.

361
00:17:45,690 --> 00:17:46,230
Niloufar Ramji: It's very humble.

362
00:17:46,770 --> 00:17:47,370
Niloufar Ramji: Thank you.

363
00:17:47,510 --> 00:17:50,350
Niloufar Ramji: So you talked about switching many jobs.

364
00:17:50,650 --> 00:17:51,870
Niloufar Ramji: You've had a couple of lives.

365
00:17:51,870 --> 00:17:56,170
Niloufar Ramji: You were a fighter pilot, a test pilot, an astronaut, chief astronaut, named commander.

366
00:17:56,750 --> 00:18:02,580
Niloufar Ramji: So which of these roles, these titles, changed you the most as a person?

367
00:18:03,700 --> 00:18:08,990
Reid Wiseman: Oh, I was going to totally bridge that question into my daughter selling Katie,

368
00:18:09,050 --> 00:18:10,330
Reid Wiseman: but I will honor your question.

369
00:18:11,360 --> 00:18:13,940
Reid Wiseman: For sure, being the chief astronaut changed me the most.

370
00:18:14,460 --> 00:18:18,490
Reid Wiseman: That was where Brene Brown came and talked to us.

371
00:18:18,970 --> 00:18:22,650
Reid Wiseman: She's, I don't know what you would call her, like a mentor, a self-help philosopher.

372
00:18:23,470 --> 00:18:27,250
Reid Wiseman: And I've heard this phrase before, but it really hit home with her,

373
00:18:27,310 --> 00:18:29,090
Reid Wiseman: which is you got to be in the arena.

374
00:18:29,230 --> 00:18:32,070
Reid Wiseman: I was at a softball game for my kid when they were really little.

375
00:18:32,270 --> 00:18:34,530
Reid Wiseman: And there was a big metal sign on the backstop.

376
00:18:34,690 --> 00:18:37,010
Reid Wiseman: And it said, have a complaint, question mark.

377
00:18:37,290 --> 00:18:39,030
Reid Wiseman: Have you volunteered, question mark.

378
00:18:40,100 --> 00:18:45,260
Reid Wiseman: And that's kind of the same thing to me with being in the arena is the chief astronaut.

379
00:18:45,260 --> 00:18:48,780
Reid Wiseman: I have never served in a position that is more thankless than that job.

380
00:18:49,300 --> 00:18:54,040
Reid Wiseman: Every decision you make, you're leading 50 peers, accomplished humans.

381
00:18:54,300 --> 00:18:55,900
Reid Wiseman: Many of them were older than me.

382
00:18:56,040 --> 00:18:57,200
Reid Wiseman: They were more experienced than me.

383
00:18:57,280 --> 00:18:58,660
Reid Wiseman: They were far smarter than me.

384
00:18:58,800 --> 00:19:00,840
Reid Wiseman: And I'm just trying to do my best every day,

385
00:19:00,980 --> 00:19:05,220
Reid Wiseman: just peddling as hard as I can to make the right decision for the program and for the

386
00:19:05,220 --> 00:19:05,980
Reid Wiseman: astronaut office.

387
00:19:06,340 --> 00:19:07,600
Reid Wiseman: But even more importantly.

388
00:19:07,990 --> 00:19:08,690
Reid Wiseman: for the astronaut.

389
00:19:09,010 --> 00:19:13,870
Reid Wiseman: And sometimes the right decision for the astronaut from their eyes is definitely wrong.

390
00:19:15,570 --> 00:19:17,530
Reid Wiseman: But as the chief, you're trying to look and go,

391
00:19:17,630 --> 00:19:24,270
Reid Wiseman: I know this is wrong for you from your eyes, but this is right for you from the umbrella.

392
00:19:24,470 --> 00:19:26,870
Reid Wiseman: And that's a horrible thing to have to try to navigate,

393
00:19:27,030 --> 00:19:29,330
Reid Wiseman: but that is how I tried to navigate that stuff.

394
00:19:29,450 --> 00:19:34,250
Reid Wiseman: So I developed more when I was the chief in that two years than in any other job.

395
00:19:34,410 --> 00:19:37,410
Reid Wiseman: It is just a very challenging job.

396
00:19:37,720 --> 00:19:41,200
Niloufar Ramji: Sounds like it stretched you in ways that you didn't think you could be stretched.

397
00:19:41,660 --> 00:19:44,240
Niloufar Ramji: And I did, just going back to my last question,

398
00:19:44,560 --> 00:19:50,120
Niloufar Ramji: as I said the question to you or asked it to you, I thought, husband, father,

399
00:19:50,560 --> 00:19:51,600
Niloufar Ramji: so many titles.

400
00:19:52,140 --> 00:19:55,000
Niloufar Ramji: So I want to take a moment to...

401
00:19:57,500 --> 00:19:58,140
Niloufar Ramji: to this mission,

402
00:19:58,300 --> 00:20:05,680
Niloufar Ramji: your family did a lot to support you and be your champion to give you to

403
00:20:05,680 --> 00:20:07,780
Niloufar Ramji: us to be able to make this happen.

404
00:20:08,040 --> 00:20:09,500
Reid Wiseman: I want to tell one story on that.

405
00:20:09,700 --> 00:20:10,340
Reid Wiseman: So thank you for that.

406
00:20:10,460 --> 00:20:17,680
Reid Wiseman: I mean, my two daughters, they definitely showed up for this mission, which was surprising.

407
00:20:17,580 --> 00:20:19,140
Reid Wiseman: almost, I would say surprising,

408
00:20:19,280 --> 00:20:23,420
Reid Wiseman: but the one story I wanted to tell you is we were on the seventh day of the mission and

409
00:20:23,420 --> 00:20:28,710
Reid Wiseman: I was doing a video chat with them and my older daughter really didn't want me to fly

410
00:20:28,710 --> 00:20:29,190
Reid Wiseman: this mission.

411
00:20:29,390 --> 00:20:33,970
Reid Wiseman: My younger daughter did well, but it was intense for her while we were up there.

412
00:20:34,070 --> 00:20:37,910
Reid Wiseman: I mean, watching your dad launch on an 8 .8 million pound rocket, I don't know.

413
00:20:38,310 --> 00:20:41,250
Reid Wiseman: I think it's pretty much the hardest thing she'll do in her whole life.

414
00:20:41,370 --> 00:20:45,190
Reid Wiseman: But on the seventh day of the mission, my younger daughter said, dad,

415
00:20:45,390 --> 00:20:47,150
Reid Wiseman: now I understand why you wanted to go.

416
00:20:47,790 --> 00:20:48,730
Reid Wiseman: on this mission.

417
00:20:48,970 --> 00:20:53,950
Reid Wiseman: And when I realized that she had processed all of this and that was the conclusion she

418
00:20:53,950 --> 00:20:57,350
Reid Wiseman: came to, honestly, victory for life.

419
00:20:57,530 --> 00:20:58,670
Reid Wiseman: Like I'm good with everything.

420
00:20:58,870 --> 00:20:58,870
Reid Wiseman: You're

421
00:20:58,870 --> 00:21:00,370
Niloufar Ramji: making me so emotional right now as a parent.

422
00:21:01,920 --> 00:21:03,420
Reid Wiseman: It's a powerful moment.

423
00:21:03,560 --> 00:21:03,680
Reid Wiseman: It

424
00:21:03,680 --> 00:21:04,300
Niloufar Ramji: really is.

425
00:21:04,500 --> 00:21:04,640
Niloufar Ramji: Wow.

426
00:21:05,720 --> 00:21:06,200
Niloufar Ramji: Okay.

427
00:21:06,580 --> 00:21:08,580
Niloufar Ramji: So just take my breath for a moment.

428
00:21:08,580 --> 00:21:08,600
Niloufar Ramji: I know I'm

429
00:21:08,600 --> 00:21:08,980
Reid Wiseman: exhausted.

430
00:21:09,120 --> 00:21:09,620
Reid Wiseman: It's exhausting.

431
00:21:12,230 --> 00:21:13,930
Niloufar Ramji: You've come up with the best soundbites.

432
00:21:14,110 --> 00:21:14,350
Niloufar Ramji: Wow.

433
00:21:14,950 --> 00:21:16,150
Niloufar Ramji: I'll do some good editing over

434
00:21:16,150 --> 00:21:17,010
Reid Wiseman: there on the soundboard.

435
00:21:17,170 --> 00:21:17,570
Niloufar Ramji: Amazing.

436
00:21:19,290 --> 00:21:23,970
Niloufar Ramji: So tell me, what responsibility surprised you most as commander of

437
00:21:23,970 --> 00:21:24,470
Niloufar Ramji: this mission?

438
00:21:24,980 --> 00:21:26,040
Niloufar Ramji: Fourth crew member.

439
00:21:26,380 --> 00:21:27,020
Niloufar Ramji: I'm going

440
00:21:27,020 --> 00:21:29,040
Niloufar Ramji: to keep going back to both of those titles.

441
00:21:29,220 --> 00:21:29,360
Niloufar Ramji: Yeah,

442
00:21:29,360 --> 00:21:30,160
Reid Wiseman: I really like it.

443
00:21:33,440 --> 00:21:41,990
Reid Wiseman: I guess it's hard to

444
00:21:41,990 --> 00:21:47,070
Reid Wiseman: go from being the chief astronaut where you've got your fingers plugged in all across

445
00:21:47,070 --> 00:21:47,730
Reid Wiseman: the agency.

446
00:21:48,010 --> 00:21:51,470
Reid Wiseman: And I've got every agency leader is on my cell phone.

447
00:21:51,630 --> 00:21:52,650
Reid Wiseman: I have their...

448
00:21:53,110 --> 00:21:54,130
Reid Wiseman: They're cell numbers.

449
00:21:54,330 --> 00:21:56,130
Reid Wiseman: They were so approachable.

450
00:21:57,130 --> 00:21:59,370
Reid Wiseman: And that was how I solved problems.

451
00:21:59,530 --> 00:22:02,550
Reid Wiseman: And then I become the commander of Artemis II.

452
00:22:02,770 --> 00:22:03,550
Reid Wiseman: And initially,

453
00:22:03,550 --> 00:22:09,810
Reid Wiseman: my feeling was that I was there primarily because I did have all those connections.

454
00:22:09,810 --> 00:22:15,480
Reid Wiseman: And I did just go through a couple years of building all of these contacts.

455
00:22:15,660 --> 00:22:17,940
Reid Wiseman: And now we're going to go do something for the first time.

456
00:22:17,980 --> 00:22:19,760
Reid Wiseman: And I can really get a lot done from this.

457
00:22:20,010 --> 00:22:20,610
Reid Wiseman: vantage point.

458
00:22:20,750 --> 00:22:22,430
Reid Wiseman: But what I learned very,

459
00:22:22,570 --> 00:22:27,470
Reid Wiseman: very quickly is that that cuts the astronaut office out of the loop.

460
00:22:27,590 --> 00:22:29,030
Reid Wiseman: It cuts flight operations out of the loop.

461
00:22:29,090 --> 00:22:30,750
Reid Wiseman: And those are two really important elements.

462
00:22:31,630 --> 00:22:35,990
Reid Wiseman: But the thing that caught me off guard was I was cutting my crew out of the loop.

463
00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:39,280
Reid Wiseman: I still do it too much to this day.

464
00:22:39,420 --> 00:22:42,480
Reid Wiseman: Sometimes I'll just fire off a text or an email to somebody because something's on my

465
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:46,020
Reid Wiseman: mind, and now I forget the platform from which we speak,

466
00:22:46,040 --> 00:22:48,000
Reid Wiseman: and you can create a lot of drama doing that.

467
00:22:49,120 --> 00:22:56,080
Reid Wiseman: But there was one moment in particular where I was in Building 5,

468
00:22:56,180 --> 00:22:58,260
Reid Wiseman: and we were getting ready to launch Starliner Crew.

469
00:22:59,830 --> 00:23:02,550
Reid Wiseman: In the Boeing Starliner simulator is in building five.

470
00:23:02,710 --> 00:23:04,010
Reid Wiseman: It's right next to our Orion simulator.

471
00:23:04,410 --> 00:23:09,840
Reid Wiseman: And the Starliner crew, when they would walk to their simulator, there's a huge banner.

472
00:23:10,040 --> 00:23:13,800
Reid Wiseman: And I mean like NASA huge of the Artemis 2 crew.

473
00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:16,100
Reid Wiseman: And you could count the pores in our faces.

474
00:23:16,260 --> 00:23:17,960
Reid Wiseman: This thing was like 30 feet tall.

475
00:23:18,280 --> 00:23:18,960
Reid Wiseman: Yes, I've seen it.

476
00:23:19,040 --> 00:23:21,980
Reid Wiseman: And so when the Starliner crew would walk out to their simulator,

477
00:23:22,260 --> 00:23:24,180
Reid Wiseman: all they would see is us.

478
00:23:25,550 --> 00:23:27,170
Reid Wiseman: And I didn't like that.

479
00:23:27,330 --> 00:23:29,090
Reid Wiseman: And they didn't like that either.

480
00:23:29,540 --> 00:23:31,900
Reid Wiseman: But that was not what we stand for.

481
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:34,360
Reid Wiseman: Myself, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy,

482
00:23:34,660 --> 00:23:38,240
Reid Wiseman: we are astronauts with our brothers and sisters in the astronaut office.

483
00:23:38,420 --> 00:23:39,980
Reid Wiseman: We work in mission control.

484
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:43,480
Reid Wiseman: We want to help families on launch and landing.

485
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:44,960
Reid Wiseman: That's our core values.

486
00:23:45,360 --> 00:23:48,300
Reid Wiseman: This giant banner was not in our core values.

487
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:53,880
Reid Wiseman: And so I shot a text message off to the Orion program, and I'm like,

488
00:23:53,940 --> 00:23:54,920
Reid Wiseman: I want that banner down tonight.

489
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:55,800
Reid Wiseman: I want it gone.

490
00:23:55,820 --> 00:23:56,560
Reid Wiseman: I don't like it.

491
00:23:56,640 --> 00:23:57,220
Reid Wiseman: I want it removed.

492
00:23:57,520 --> 00:23:57,740
Reid Wiseman: Well,

493
00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:02,440
Reid Wiseman: that created a lot of drama in a lot of different avenues because it did get the banner

494
00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:04,820
Reid Wiseman: down, but it was just not the right way to go out about the business.

495
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:08,780
Reid Wiseman: But then I was sitting with my crew and I told them what I had done.

496
00:24:09,120 --> 00:24:10,240
Reid Wiseman: I think it was Christina.

497
00:24:10,420 --> 00:24:14,530
Reid Wiseman: And she's like, hey, next time, no problem if you do that,

498
00:24:14,610 --> 00:24:18,450
Reid Wiseman: but just tell us because we can help you and we can advocate for you and we can bring

499
00:24:18,450 --> 00:24:20,430
Reid Wiseman: about a different way to maybe go about that.

500
00:24:20,550 --> 00:24:23,830
Reid Wiseman: Like it doesn't have to just be you throwing down this gauntlet.

501
00:24:23,970 --> 00:24:25,790
Reid Wiseman: Like we're all in this together, man.

502
00:24:26,190 --> 00:24:27,710
Reid Wiseman: Huge learning moment for me.

503
00:24:27,990 --> 00:24:28,510
Reid Wiseman: Huge.

504
00:24:28,750 --> 00:24:34,750
Niloufar Ramji: There's lots of lessons in leadership that you're imparting on us today as we hear from

505
00:24:34,750 --> 00:24:34,890
Niloufar Ramji: you.

506
00:24:34,990 --> 00:24:39,090
Niloufar Ramji: So not only are we learning about what it was like firsthand during the mission,

507
00:24:39,090 --> 00:24:41,910
Niloufar Ramji: we're also getting some really cool tidbits here.

508
00:24:41,970 --> 00:24:42,730
Niloufar Ramji: So appreciate that.

509
00:24:42,910 --> 00:24:43,370
Niloufar Ramji: You're welcome.

510
00:24:44,250 --> 00:24:44,650
Niloufar Ramji: Okay.

511
00:24:44,790 --> 00:24:48,970
Niloufar Ramji: So you've been on the podcast in the context of Artemis II a couple of times.

512
00:24:48,970 --> 00:24:52,710
Niloufar Ramji: You were on when you were first announced as a crew with your crewmates.

513
00:24:52,710 --> 00:24:54,870
Niloufar Ramji: You were on again just before flight.

514
00:24:55,600 --> 00:24:58,300
Niloufar Ramji: And when we've talked to you previously about Artemis II,

515
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:03,640
Niloufar Ramji: you've said that you'd like Artemis II to be seen as a stepping stone of exploration

516
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:04,980
Niloufar Ramji: rather than its own milestone.

517
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:09,240
Niloufar Ramji: Imagine someone is writing the history of Artemis 50 years from now.

518
00:25:09,260 --> 00:25:12,000
Niloufar Ramji: We just passed the 57th anniversary of our moon landing,

519
00:25:12,180 --> 00:25:13,860
Niloufar Ramji: so just thinking about that a little bit.

520
00:25:14,180 --> 00:25:18,840
Niloufar Ramji: What do you hope that they will say that your crew proved?

521
00:25:22,250 --> 00:25:23,710
Reid Wiseman: There's a lot of answers to that.

522
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:25,920
Reid Wiseman: First and foremost,

523
00:25:27,990 --> 00:25:33,130
Reid Wiseman: NASA Artemis international collaboration proved that the world is hungry for big,

524
00:25:33,310 --> 00:25:34,410
Reid Wiseman: grand, bold things.

525
00:25:34,430 --> 00:25:36,690
Reid Wiseman: There is still tremendous hunger out there.

526
00:25:37,330 --> 00:25:43,300
Reid Wiseman: There's a deep sense of need of cooperation.

527
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:48,170
Reid Wiseman: I don't think we need alignment.

528
00:25:48,370 --> 00:25:49,510
Reid Wiseman: Like differences are powerful.

529
00:25:49,710 --> 00:25:51,010
Reid Wiseman: It's not a problem to have differences.

530
00:25:51,590 --> 00:25:55,950
Reid Wiseman: It's a problem when we have differences and we cannot talk to one another and pull each

531
00:25:55,950 --> 00:25:56,370
Reid Wiseman: other up.

532
00:25:56,570 --> 00:25:57,890
Reid Wiseman: Like I am.

533
00:25:58,550 --> 00:26:04,510
Reid Wiseman: vastly better three years later because Victor, Christina, and Jeremy didn't stay silent.

534
00:26:04,670 --> 00:26:10,470
Reid Wiseman: They spoke up and we pulled ourselves together to a higher place and we still have fundamental

535
00:26:10,470 --> 00:26:14,110
Reid Wiseman: differences, but we talk about them and we honor each other where we are.

536
00:26:14,230 --> 00:26:15,530
Reid Wiseman: So that to me, that's number one.

537
00:26:16,050 --> 00:26:16,570
Reid Wiseman: Um,

538
00:26:16,950 --> 00:26:23,290
Reid Wiseman: what I would hope they would say about Artemis two is just potentially first step in

539
00:26:23,290 --> 00:26:24,350
Reid Wiseman: the Artemis generation.

540
00:26:24,550 --> 00:26:25,910
Reid Wiseman: Like we saw.

541
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:30,800
Reid Wiseman: a crew who looked different, came from different backgrounds,

542
00:26:31,300 --> 00:26:34,720
Reid Wiseman: do something together and do it well with a giant team on the ground.

543
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:40,680
Reid Wiseman: And that team looked different and they were together all doing this thing together.

544
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:44,060
Reid Wiseman: And everyone was bringing, if you've got a strength,

545
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:47,530
Reid Wiseman: if you have a gift to bring it to this team, we will use it period.

546
00:26:47,550 --> 00:26:52,850
Reid Wiseman: And I, I hope that that is what this foundation of Artemis two just did.

547
00:26:52,850 --> 00:26:56,430
Reid Wiseman: We actually let the world see that this team is.

548
00:26:56,790 --> 00:26:57,850
Reid Wiseman: Together, success.

549
00:26:58,010 --> 00:26:58,730
Reid Wiseman: And I don't mean the crew.

550
00:26:59,190 --> 00:27:00,210
Reid Wiseman: I mean the team.

551
00:27:00,390 --> 00:27:00,990
Reid Wiseman: We are together.

552
00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:03,540
Reid Wiseman: We're exceptional at what we do.

553
00:27:04,340 --> 00:27:07,500
Reid Wiseman: And if you have a gift and a talent, bring it because this team needs it.

554
00:27:08,500 --> 00:27:09,080
Niloufar Ramji: I love that.

555
00:27:10,330 --> 00:27:10,630
Niloufar Ramji: Okay.

556
00:27:10,870 --> 00:27:14,490
Niloufar Ramji: Now let's come back to the present and let's talk a little bit about your family.

557
00:27:14,690 --> 00:27:17,750
Reid Wiseman: I can't wait to answer a question and you're like, nope, that wasn't a good one.

558
00:27:18,970 --> 00:27:19,690
Niloufar Ramji: Not yet.

559
00:27:20,030 --> 00:27:20,630
Niloufar Ramji: Not yet.

560
00:27:20,950 --> 00:27:22,570
Niloufar Ramji: And I only have a few more questions for you.

561
00:27:23,690 --> 00:27:27,150
Niloufar Ramji: Has anyone in your family described your

562
00:27:27,150 --> 00:27:29,410
Niloufar Ramji: career in a way that may have surprised you?

563
00:27:35,140 --> 00:27:35,620
Reid Wiseman: Wow.

564
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:38,300
Reid Wiseman: I think you have found me speechless.

565
00:27:39,500 --> 00:27:40,740
Niloufar Ramji: School accomplished.

566
00:27:41,260 --> 00:27:42,300
Niloufar Ramji: It is a very

567
00:27:42,300 --> 00:27:45,280
Reid Wiseman: awkward thing to sit there before you're getting ready to like stand up

568
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:52,520
Reid Wiseman: and give a talk and to hear your biography being read because I just try

569
00:27:52,520 --> 00:27:55,000
Reid Wiseman: to be a good person, try to have a good impact.

570
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,360
Reid Wiseman: And you hear all these accolades being thrown out.

571
00:27:57,520 --> 00:27:58,120
Reid Wiseman: It's like, goodness.

572
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:00,940
Reid Wiseman: Like from the outside, that's pretty impressive.

573
00:28:01,120 --> 00:28:03,200
Reid Wiseman: But from me on the inside, having lived it,

574
00:28:03,380 --> 00:28:05,920
Reid Wiseman: I just woke up every day and tried really hard.

575
00:28:06,220 --> 00:28:07,900
Reid Wiseman: And where I had faults,

576
00:28:07,980 --> 00:28:14,540
Reid Wiseman: I tried to find somebody or something that would help me fill in these problems.

577
00:28:14,540 --> 00:28:16,300
Reid Wiseman: And I'm not good at everything.

578
00:28:16,300 --> 00:28:20,280
Reid Wiseman: So I need people around me that are good at other things that make us all better.

579
00:28:22,920 --> 00:28:27,460
Reid Wiseman: Maybe just a little bit of humor was when I first got assigned to this back in April

580
00:28:27,460 --> 00:28:31,380
Reid Wiseman: 3rd, 2023, my younger daughter was looking on famous birthdays.

581
00:28:31,620 --> 00:28:34,760
Reid Wiseman: And as long as my birthday was getting more famous, she was happy with the mission.

582
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:37,380
Reid Wiseman: But if I stagnated, she'd be like, Dad, you got to get out there.

583
00:28:37,540 --> 00:28:40,940
Reid Wiseman: You got to go give a talk or something because you're slipping and we need you up there.

584
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:42,100
Reid Wiseman: I love that.

585
00:28:42,220 --> 00:28:44,820
Reid Wiseman: So getting to do this with my kids.

586
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:47,260
Reid Wiseman: It was fun because they keep you humble.

587
00:28:47,620 --> 00:28:48,680
Reid Wiseman: They bring some humor.

588
00:28:48,980 --> 00:28:48,980
Niloufar Ramji: And

589
00:28:48,980 --> 00:28:50,720
Reid Wiseman: there's a lot of fear, too.

590
00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:53,240
Reid Wiseman: And you step back every now and then.

591
00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:56,520
Reid Wiseman: I watched Interstellar about a year and a half ago.

592
00:28:56,700 --> 00:28:59,100
Reid Wiseman: And I get to the end of Interstellar, and I almost called Joe Acaba,

593
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:01,760
Reid Wiseman: who is the chief astronaut, and said, I'm off the mission.

594
00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:03,800
Reid Wiseman: It was so emotional.

595
00:29:03,980 --> 00:29:05,160
Reid Wiseman: I was like, oh, my gosh.

596
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:06,380
Reid Wiseman: I can't put my kids through that.

597
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:07,580
Reid Wiseman: Just get me out of this thing.

598
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:08,460
Reid Wiseman: I don't want to go do this.

599
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:10,540
Reid Wiseman: So there's a lot.

600
00:29:10,660 --> 00:29:13,040
Reid Wiseman: This journey has been awesome.

601
00:29:13,260 --> 00:29:14,700
Reid Wiseman: But it's been intense, too.

602
00:29:16,350 --> 00:29:16,830
Reid Wiseman: Good,

603
00:29:17,010 --> 00:29:18,290
Niloufar Ramji: good way to describe that.

604
00:29:18,510 --> 00:29:20,170
Niloufar Ramji: I can't believe I left you speechless.

605
00:29:20,330 --> 00:29:20,330
Reid Wiseman: Yeah,

606
00:29:20,370 --> 00:29:20,650
Niloufar Ramji: that was good.

607
00:29:21,290 --> 00:29:22,430
Niloufar Ramji: I'll never forget that.

608
00:29:22,550 --> 00:29:22,870
Niloufar Ramji: Yes.

609
00:29:23,690 --> 00:29:23,990
Niloufar Ramji: Okay,

610
00:29:24,510 --> 00:29:25,410
Niloufar Ramji: fun question.

611
00:29:25,710 --> 00:29:30,090
Niloufar Ramji: When you walk into Orion today, where is the first place your eyes go?

612
00:29:30,490 --> 00:29:35,110
Reid Wiseman: Oh, first place my eyes go is over to the port side.

613
00:29:35,690 --> 00:29:39,490
Reid Wiseman: There's like a little medical kit area, but that's where our food warmer is.

614
00:29:39,630 --> 00:29:42,030
Reid Wiseman: But when you're entering the vehicle, if you look across,

615
00:29:42,170 --> 00:29:43,230
Reid Wiseman: that's kind of where you first go.

616
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:45,620
Reid Wiseman: We were just at Kennedy Space Center,

617
00:29:45,620 --> 00:29:49,520
Reid Wiseman: and we got to see our spacecraft sitting in this building called the MPPF.

618
00:29:51,740 --> 00:29:52,360
Reid Wiseman: And we'd been in there.

619
00:29:52,500 --> 00:29:56,000
Reid Wiseman: That was the first place we ever got inside of our spacecraft when it was on its way

620
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,360
Reid Wiseman: to the launch pad to do some testing on our environmental control and life support system.

621
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:02,680
Reid Wiseman: And now we saw it in the corner and it's being dismantled.

622
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:05,440
Reid Wiseman: All of the exterior is removed.

623
00:30:05,980 --> 00:30:07,420
Reid Wiseman: They let us go look inside.

624
00:30:07,740 --> 00:30:08,840
Reid Wiseman: I'm going to get emotional here.

625
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:11,280
Reid Wiseman: They let us go look inside.

626
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:13,520
Reid Wiseman: I was the first one up, and I just peered in the hatch.

627
00:30:13,580 --> 00:30:14,380
Reid Wiseman: We couldn't get in.

628
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:17,940
Reid Wiseman: And my first thought was, it's gutted.

629
00:30:18,420 --> 00:30:20,920
Reid Wiseman: Like, there's just all the panels removed.

630
00:30:21,020 --> 00:30:22,020
Reid Wiseman: The seats are gone.

631
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:23,660
Reid Wiseman: The displays have been pulled out.

632
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:26,060
Reid Wiseman: All the fabric that protected all the wiring is gone.

633
00:30:26,060 --> 00:30:27,560
Reid Wiseman: You can see its innards exposed.

634
00:30:29,270 --> 00:30:32,910
Reid Wiseman: But then I look to the left kind of by the windows,

635
00:30:32,930 --> 00:30:37,170
Reid Wiseman: and there's this 3D-printed tan covering over some wiring,

636
00:30:37,170 --> 00:30:39,190
Reid Wiseman: and there is still Velcro there.

637
00:30:39,810 --> 00:30:40,910
Reid Wiseman: And I looked over at that,

638
00:30:40,930 --> 00:30:44,590
Reid Wiseman: and I could think about where we were putting our computers on lunar flyby day.

639
00:30:45,190 --> 00:30:49,230
Reid Wiseman: And just all the words that were coming from the crew and all the sights that we saw,

640
00:30:49,430 --> 00:30:50,490
Reid Wiseman: that was emotional.

641
00:30:51,190 --> 00:30:55,430
Reid Wiseman: And then the thing that made me back away, I couldn't look at it anymore.

642
00:30:57,300 --> 00:30:59,120
Reid Wiseman: This is amazingly emotional.

643
00:31:00,530 --> 00:31:02,410
Reid Wiseman: I looked up right at the hatchway.

644
00:31:02,510 --> 00:31:06,730
Reid Wiseman: I looked up and there is a ventilation system with two little vents that come out.

645
00:31:06,930 --> 00:31:11,210
Reid Wiseman: And they have these little 3D printed baffles on them so you can reorient the airflow.

646
00:31:11,950 --> 00:31:14,590
Reid Wiseman: And I looked at those and I started crying.

647
00:31:14,710 --> 00:31:17,850
Reid Wiseman: I had to back away from the vehicle from one memory only.

648
00:31:18,430 --> 00:31:22,430
Reid Wiseman: And that was where we all would line up when we were doing our public affairs events.

649
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:25,960
Reid Wiseman: And those vents would blow Christina's hair up into my face.

650
00:31:26,020 --> 00:31:27,760
Reid Wiseman: And I would have to sit there and move it out of the way.

651
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:28,900
Reid Wiseman: And I just thought about that.

652
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:32,600
Reid Wiseman: I thought about those vents and the four of us and what we went through on that 9 .2

653
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:33,100
Reid Wiseman: -day journey.

654
00:31:33,500 --> 00:31:35,700
Reid Wiseman: And it's simple human emotions,

655
00:31:35,700 --> 00:31:40,220
Reid Wiseman: the simplest things of memories and recall and love and joy.

656
00:31:40,500 --> 00:31:42,500
Reid Wiseman: And they were hitting me overwhelmingly.

657
00:31:42,500 --> 00:31:43,340
Reid Wiseman: They're hitting me now.

658
00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:46,040
Reid Wiseman: And I didn't want to look at it anymore.

659
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:49,720
Reid Wiseman: What that vehicle gave to us was.

660
00:31:50,530 --> 00:31:51,390
Reid Wiseman: really special.

661
00:31:51,530 --> 00:31:53,910
Reid Wiseman: What this team let us go do was incredible.

662
00:31:54,410 --> 00:32:00,180
Niloufar Ramji: I think that you made it special for all of us on the ground here too.

663
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:03,500
Niloufar Ramji: So we are extremely thankful for you as a crew.

664
00:32:03,780 --> 00:32:07,360
Niloufar Ramji: What you did for this mission, for the agency,

665
00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:10,760
Niloufar Ramji: for the world was you knocked it out of the park.

666
00:32:10,900 --> 00:32:12,100
Reid Wiseman: We were honored to get the chance.

667
00:32:12,300 --> 00:32:12,740
Reid Wiseman: That

668
00:32:12,740 --> 00:32:13,620
Niloufar Ramji: was fabulous.

669
00:32:14,500 --> 00:32:16,620
Niloufar Ramji: So now on the record.

670
00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:22,940
Niloufar Ramji: What's something the public consistently misunderstands about astronauts that you've

671
00:32:22,940 --> 00:32:24,720
Niloufar Ramji: never really had a chance to correct?

672
00:32:25,020 --> 00:32:26,520
Reid Wiseman: Oh, I try to correct it all the time.

673
00:32:26,660 --> 00:32:27,320
Reid Wiseman: We're normal people.

674
00:32:28,300 --> 00:32:33,000
Reid Wiseman: We are normal people that through a few fortunate strokes of luck,

675
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:35,120
Reid Wiseman: we got into this very unique position.

676
00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:39,780
Reid Wiseman: And we get to go do something that, as you can tell, it is very special.

677
00:32:42,490 --> 00:32:47,330
Reid Wiseman: The thing I most see is people expect to introduce themselves to me.

678
00:32:47,570 --> 00:32:50,530
Reid Wiseman: introduce themselves to me once and I'll remember them forever because I'm an astronaut.

679
00:32:50,530 --> 00:32:51,090
Reid Wiseman: I'm perfect.

680
00:32:51,330 --> 00:32:51,730
Reid Wiseman: I mean,

681
00:32:51,930 --> 00:32:56,280
Reid Wiseman: I struggle to remember what I ate for breakfast in the afternoon of the morning of the

682
00:32:56,280 --> 00:32:56,800
Reid Wiseman: day it happened.

683
00:32:57,400 --> 00:32:58,380
Reid Wiseman: You know, I just,

684
00:32:58,810 --> 00:33:04,650
Reid Wiseman: we are all very different people in the astronaut office and it is a very rich tapestry

685
00:33:04,650 --> 00:33:10,110
Reid Wiseman: of human lives and of way we approach problems.

686
00:33:10,590 --> 00:33:15,320
Reid Wiseman: But when you put us together, we are a very cool group of people.

687
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:19,940
Reid Wiseman: We have a very special way of thinking about problems and solving them because we're

688
00:33:19,940 --> 00:33:21,840
Reid Wiseman: put in these really unique positions.

689
00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:27,180
Reid Wiseman: And I think sometimes you got to go do these really unique,

690
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:29,740
Reid Wiseman: crazy things to get to the place that we get to.

691
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:35,280
Reid Wiseman: It's not because we get asked to talk a lot.

692
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:37,400
Reid Wiseman: And I think we have a great message to share.

693
00:33:37,910 --> 00:33:41,310
Reid Wiseman: The reason we have a great message to share is because we just did something that was

694
00:33:41,310 --> 00:33:48,110
Reid Wiseman: so unique that we have a slightly novel way of thinking about situations and problems

695
00:33:48,110 --> 00:33:52,310
Reid Wiseman: and way of solving them and how to treat people and how to look at machinery and hardware

696
00:33:52,310 --> 00:33:55,210
Reid Wiseman: and large teams because we just were immersed in that.

697
00:33:55,310 --> 00:33:57,050
Reid Wiseman: And you see it in a bunch of other places too.

698
00:33:58,540 --> 00:34:01,040
Reid Wiseman: And championship athletics, you see that all the time.

699
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:02,260
Reid Wiseman: They've been there.

700
00:34:02,340 --> 00:34:02,780
Reid Wiseman: They've done it.

701
00:34:02,820 --> 00:34:04,480
Reid Wiseman: They've been in the arena to bring that one back in.

702
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:05,800
Reid Wiseman: They've just gone and done these things.

703
00:34:05,900 --> 00:34:07,680
Reid Wiseman: And so they do have something really cool to tell.

704
00:34:08,160 --> 00:34:08,980
Reid Wiseman: Sully Sullenberger,

705
00:34:09,020 --> 00:34:12,860
Reid Wiseman: who landed a commercial airliner in the Hudson and saved all those lives.

706
00:34:14,300 --> 00:34:16,800
Reid Wiseman: I've heard his exact same talk three times.

707
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:20,440
Reid Wiseman: I could go hear it 300 more times because I pulled different things out.

708
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:23,740
Reid Wiseman: But that was a guy who was there, did it, and he's got a story to tell.

709
00:34:23,860 --> 00:34:25,460
Reid Wiseman: And so I just think people.

710
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:28,060
Reid Wiseman: put us on this pedestal that is unrealistic.

711
00:34:28,060 --> 00:34:32,020
Reid Wiseman: The pedestal to put us on is we got lucky and we went and did something very special

712
00:34:32,020 --> 00:34:36,600
Reid Wiseman: and now we should share that and people should listen if they care to try to learn from

713
00:34:36,600 --> 00:34:36,800
Reid Wiseman: us.

714
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:41,320
Niloufar Ramji: You also worked incredibly hard to train for this mission and to demonstrate the capabilities

715
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:42,040
Niloufar Ramji: of the vehicle.

716
00:34:42,300 --> 00:34:45,240
Niloufar Ramji: You human-rated the vehicle thanks to all the contributions you've made.

717
00:34:45,420 --> 00:34:49,300
Niloufar Ramji: So really appreciate everything and thank you so much for being on the podcast today,

718
00:34:49,300 --> 00:34:49,460
Niloufar Ramji: Reid.

719
00:34:50,250 --> 00:34:50,730
Reid Wiseman: Love it.

720
00:34:50,870 --> 00:34:51,590
Reid Wiseman: These are always fun.

721
00:34:51,730 --> 00:34:51,970
Reid Wiseman: Thank you.

722
00:34:53,620 --> 00:34:54,860
Niloufar Ramji: Christina, welcome back.

723
00:34:55,020 --> 00:34:56,740
Niloufar Ramji: It's always a pleasure to have you here,

724
00:34:56,760 --> 00:35:00,260
Niloufar Ramji: but it's been four months since your historic mission,

725
00:35:00,260 --> 00:35:03,340
Niloufar Ramji: and we have a bunch of questions we want to ask you.

726
00:35:03,460 --> 00:35:05,920
Niloufar Ramji: So tell us first off what it was like.

727
00:35:06,300 --> 00:35:06,520
Christina Koch: Wow.

728
00:35:06,900 --> 00:35:09,700
Christina Koch: Well, I'll first start by saying it's great to be back with you,

729
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:13,020
Christina Koch: and it's just a pleasure to always chat and share the mission,

730
00:35:13,180 --> 00:35:18,060
Christina Koch: especially in a Johnson Space Center podcast about everything we do here.

731
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:19,940
Christina Koch: It was exquisite.

732
00:35:20,860 --> 00:35:22,660
Christina Koch: Honestly, I said...

733
00:35:22,620 --> 00:35:28,140
Christina Koch: a long time during our training that the mission had already started because working

734
00:35:28,140 --> 00:35:34,060
Christina Koch: with the teams through the really tough problems and trying to figure out how to solve

735
00:35:34,060 --> 00:35:36,920
Christina Koch: them together was an amazing experience.

736
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:38,760
Christina Koch: And for me, that was the start of the mission.

737
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:42,920
Christina Koch: But even though that was the time of my life,

738
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:48,040
Christina Koch: the mission itself was even more exquisite and just so much better than any of us could

739
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:49,900
Christina Koch: have imagined on every single front.

740
00:35:50,060 --> 00:35:51,440
Christina Koch: The things that we saw.

741
00:35:51,730 --> 00:35:54,710
Christina Koch: The teamwork that we got to have with the ground teams,

742
00:35:54,710 --> 00:36:02,250
Christina Koch: with everyone on planet Earth and between ourselves and our crew was just phenomenal.

743
00:36:02,570 --> 00:36:06,430
Christina Koch: The absolute honor and privilege of a lifetime.

744
00:36:07,010 --> 00:36:12,490
Christina Koch: And hopefully the rest of my life will be spent trying to bring back what we saw and

745
00:36:12,490 --> 00:36:12,730
Christina Koch: felt.

746
00:36:13,460 --> 00:36:15,720
Niloufar Ramji: That is incredibly inspiring.

747
00:36:15,720 --> 00:36:20,260
Niloufar Ramji: And you said that, you know, the mission started when you began training here on Earth.

748
00:36:20,460 --> 00:36:23,960
Niloufar Ramji: But was there a particular moment that you felt like, okay,

749
00:36:24,100 --> 00:36:27,200
Niloufar Ramji: this is real or it feels even more real now?

750
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,280
Christina Koch: Well, I'm guessing my crewmates would also say this.

751
00:36:30,380 --> 00:36:32,340
Christina Koch: It was when the solid rocket motors...

752
00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:38,640
Christina Koch: And we started moving because no one could have thought that on our very first time climbing

753
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:43,020
Christina Koch: into the rocket to attempt a launch that we would launch about 10 minutes into the window.

754
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:48,320
Christina Koch: What an amazing testament to the teams and how much we had learned in our previous wet

755
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:51,120
Christina Koch: dress rehearsals and all of the training that we had done.

756
00:36:51,620 --> 00:36:56,100
Christina Koch: But as I mentioned, I really would try to impress upon my crewmates,

757
00:36:56,260 --> 00:37:00,120
Christina Koch: myself and the trainers that we had that the mission had already started because.

758
00:37:00,950 --> 00:37:04,570
Christina Koch: When you are doing something for the first time that's never been done before and you're

759
00:37:04,570 --> 00:37:07,790
Christina Koch: figuring the things out that there's no answer key for,

760
00:37:08,190 --> 00:37:13,350
Christina Koch: there's never going to be a moment that you feel like, oh, we're 100 % right.

761
00:37:13,550 --> 00:37:16,510
Christina Koch: We've definitely done enough and not too much.

762
00:37:16,690 --> 00:37:18,150
Christina Koch: We were just writing that as we went.

763
00:37:18,250 --> 00:37:23,030
Christina Koch: And that privilege of the uncertainty that we had to work through was just,

764
00:37:23,210 --> 00:37:24,290
Christina Koch: that was the mission.

765
00:37:24,550 --> 00:37:30,070
Christina Koch: And especially because it was only nine days in space.

766
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:36,560
Christina Koch: it makes it all the more meaningful that for two years prior to those nine days,

767
00:37:36,820 --> 00:37:43,900
Christina Koch: we got to figure it out with the most dedicated and talented and excellent team on

768
00:37:43,900 --> 00:37:44,360
Christina Koch: planet Earth.

769
00:37:44,850 --> 00:37:47,910
Niloufar Ramji: You had a wonderful team on the ground.

770
00:37:48,170 --> 00:37:49,050
Niloufar Ramji: Nine days, yes.

771
00:37:49,570 --> 00:37:52,950
Niloufar Ramji: Teeth clenching nine days for a lot of us on the ground, sitting on console,

772
00:37:53,030 --> 00:37:53,850
Niloufar Ramji: being like, are they okay?

773
00:37:53,850 --> 00:37:55,610
Niloufar Ramji: Is everything going to go good this day?

774
00:37:55,750 --> 00:37:58,170
Niloufar Ramji: I think I was personally most nervous on splashdown day.

775
00:37:58,330 --> 00:38:00,650
Niloufar Ramji: So that was just really,

776
00:38:00,770 --> 00:38:04,910
Niloufar Ramji: really proud of you guys and all of the teamwork you exhibited over the course of the

777
00:38:04,910 --> 00:38:05,170
Niloufar Ramji: mission.

778
00:38:05,170 --> 00:38:11,130
Niloufar Ramji: But then you're so humble in how you recognize the broader team that took you to where

779
00:38:11,130 --> 00:38:11,510
Niloufar Ramji: you went.

780
00:38:12,470 --> 00:38:14,110
Niloufar Ramji: You have many titles.

781
00:38:14,630 --> 00:38:16,410
Niloufar Ramji: astronaut, engineer.

782
00:38:17,950 --> 00:38:20,390
Niloufar Ramji: Human that's traveled furthest away from Earth.

783
00:38:20,610 --> 00:38:20,870
Niloufar Ramji: I don't know.

784
00:38:20,970 --> 00:38:23,930
Niloufar Ramji: Record breaker, historic mission, astronaut.

785
00:38:24,230 --> 00:38:26,310
Niloufar Ramji: There are so many different titles that you have.

786
00:38:26,470 --> 00:38:30,390
Niloufar Ramji: Wife, you have aunt, you have friend, colleague.

787
00:38:30,670 --> 00:38:32,990
Niloufar Ramji: So with all of these titles that you have,

788
00:38:33,150 --> 00:38:36,450
Niloufar Ramji: I want to talk a little bit about your engineering title.

789
00:38:36,790 --> 00:38:39,910
Niloufar Ramji: So when you're learning a new spacecraft like Orion,

790
00:38:40,230 --> 00:38:43,950
Niloufar Ramji: what's the first thing that you get curious about from an engineering perspective?

791
00:38:44,230 --> 00:38:46,390
Niloufar Ramji: Not as an astronaut, but particularly as an engineer.

792
00:38:47,050 --> 00:38:52,510
Christina Koch: I actually was curious as an engineer from the time of Artemis I.

793
00:38:52,750 --> 00:38:54,710
Christina Koch: I loved learning about Orion.

794
00:38:54,710 --> 00:39:00,730
Christina Koch: I had a little familiarization session about the displays and how we interacted with

795
00:39:00,730 --> 00:39:03,930
Christina Koch: the telemetry and the controls way in the Artemis I days.

796
00:39:04,070 --> 00:39:05,510
Christina Koch: So I was interested then.

797
00:39:05,890 --> 00:39:10,710
Christina Koch: The coolest thing about spaceflight is how many different problems you have to solve

798
00:39:10,710 --> 00:39:12,630
Christina Koch: that feel so new to...

799
00:39:13,270 --> 00:39:19,290
Christina Koch: Earth-bound species that's used to problem solving on planet Earth in 1G with the,

800
00:39:19,290 --> 00:39:19,630
Christina Koch: you know,

801
00:39:19,950 --> 00:39:24,650
Christina Koch: radiation environment that we have here with not having to have everything be very weight

802
00:39:24,650 --> 00:39:27,490
Christina Koch: -limited and to take all of those normal...

803
00:39:27,770 --> 00:39:32,650
Christina Koch: problems about how to stay alive and translate them into the microgravity and vacuum

804
00:39:32,650 --> 00:39:34,950
Christina Koch: of space environment is just so fascinating.

805
00:39:35,370 --> 00:39:41,250
Christina Koch: How do we solve hitting the atmosphere at Mach 39 and making it down to the ground?

806
00:39:41,390 --> 00:39:45,250
Christina Koch: How do we solve not only providing us breathing air, but getting rid of...

807
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:49,740
Christina Koch: And how much of that, you know, as an electrical engineer, we have control systems,

808
00:39:49,740 --> 00:39:52,940
Christina Koch: we talk about closed loop control, and just, you know,

809
00:39:53,160 --> 00:39:56,840
Christina Koch: whether systems are passively controlled or actively controlled,

810
00:39:56,840 --> 00:40:00,180
Christina Koch: and how do we implement redundancy and flight software,

811
00:40:00,340 --> 00:40:02,360
Christina Koch: those kinds of things were so fascinating to me.

812
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:03,360
Christina Koch: One of them,

813
00:40:03,580 --> 00:40:09,240
Christina Koch: another one that came out during our training was controlling our entry interface point.

814
00:40:09,230 --> 00:40:13,470
Christina Koch: Even though we have things like the spacecraft is venting our CO2,

815
00:40:13,690 --> 00:40:15,070
Christina Koch: it's venting our other waste,

816
00:40:15,270 --> 00:40:20,190
Christina Koch: it's changing its trajectory for all these different reasons because of the gravity of

817
00:40:20,190 --> 00:40:21,290
Christina Koch: the moon isn't perfect.

818
00:40:21,730 --> 00:40:26,950
Christina Koch: And how do we correct for that and still enter the atmosphere at exactly the right point,

819
00:40:27,110 --> 00:40:30,550
Christina Koch: exactly the right angle so that our heat shield can work perfectly?

820
00:40:32,070 --> 00:40:35,450
Christina Koch: There's really just not something, there's nothing I wasn't fascinated with.

821
00:40:35,590 --> 00:40:40,350
Christina Koch: I had to actually hold back my questions in all of our classes because I wanted to deep

822
00:40:40,350 --> 00:40:41,230
Christina Koch: dive everything.

823
00:40:41,870 --> 00:40:45,590
Christina Koch: And luckily, my crewmates were very patient with me.

824
00:40:45,650 --> 00:40:47,230
Christina Koch: And when I wanted to deep dive,

825
00:40:47,370 --> 00:40:50,630
Christina Koch: sometimes we had to just zoom out a little bit to the operationally relevant.

826
00:40:50,870 --> 00:40:53,470
Christina Koch: But yeah, it was just, it was.

827
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:56,200
Christina Koch: the time of my life for an electrical engineer.

828
00:40:56,660 --> 00:40:58,520
Niloufar Ramji: Teamwork, the engineering pieces.

829
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:02,020
Niloufar Ramji: There's another title that you've given yourself infamously as well,

830
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:05,340
Niloufar Ramji: which is the space plumber title.

831
00:41:05,580 --> 00:41:06,020
Niloufar Ramji: Yes.

832
00:41:06,340 --> 00:41:09,520
Niloufar Ramji: So there were some issues with the toilet in the first days of the flight,

833
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:11,540
Niloufar Ramji: and you famously became...

834
00:41:11,550 --> 00:41:13,770
Niloufar Ramji: the cruise plumber over the course of the mission.

835
00:41:14,030 --> 00:41:18,050
Niloufar Ramji: So we all know a working toilet is incredibly important,

836
00:41:18,210 --> 00:41:19,810
Niloufar Ramji: especially when you're flying for multiple days.

837
00:41:20,370 --> 00:41:23,590
Niloufar Ramji: So was there a lot of pressure in getting the system working again?

838
00:41:23,590 --> 00:41:26,270
Niloufar Ramji: Or was this just part of the journey for you?

839
00:41:26,490 --> 00:41:27,990
Christina Koch: Well, it was a little bit of both.

840
00:41:28,090 --> 00:41:29,610
Christina Koch: I think when you're an astronaut,

841
00:41:29,850 --> 00:41:34,590
Christina Koch: there's always a sense of pressure on you because you never know when you're going to

842
00:41:34,590 --> 00:41:37,850
Christina Koch: be called upon to perform in the highest stakes situations.

843
00:41:37,950 --> 00:41:40,410
Christina Koch: So that thought is always in the back of your mind.

844
00:41:40,550 --> 00:41:45,250
Christina Koch: But then there's also the planned times when you have to perform and knowing that literally

845
00:41:45,250 --> 00:41:47,270
Christina Koch: seconds after main engine cutoff,

846
00:41:47,390 --> 00:41:52,230
Christina Koch: I was going to get out of my seat and go activate the toilet system was definitely something

847
00:41:52,230 --> 00:41:53,550
Christina Koch: I paid a lot of attention to.

848
00:41:53,750 --> 00:41:55,230
Christina Koch: I did a lot of deep dives on.

849
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:56,620
Christina Koch: what I was supposed to do.

850
00:41:56,720 --> 00:41:58,380
Christina Koch: I had the procedure practically memorized.

851
00:41:59,150 --> 00:42:00,670
Christina Koch: And I had gone through,

852
00:42:00,830 --> 00:42:05,070
Christina Koch: it was kind of one of the very last things that I did that I requested extra training

853
00:42:05,070 --> 00:42:10,350
Christina Koch: to do the toilet activation procedure in my suit, which I, in our mock-ups.

854
00:42:10,810 --> 00:42:15,510
Christina Koch: And all that was just to become accustomed to every single thing in a flight-like way.

855
00:42:15,670 --> 00:42:19,530
Christina Koch: So actually setting it up was the part I knew to be nervous about.

856
00:42:19,850 --> 00:42:22,430
Christina Koch: Having to fix it was the part I didn't know I should be nervous about.

857
00:42:22,870 --> 00:42:26,230
Christina Koch: Obviously when it, you know, when it didn't start up initially.

858
00:42:27,050 --> 00:42:28,790
Christina Koch: We let the ground teams know.

859
00:42:29,090 --> 00:42:33,850
Christina Koch: And truth be told, though, I didn't do a lot of actual mechanical fixing.

860
00:42:34,010 --> 00:42:35,150
Christina Koch: There were no wrenches involved.

861
00:42:35,390 --> 00:42:38,850
Christina Koch: All I did was really, yeah, all I did, exactly.

862
00:42:39,130 --> 00:42:39,850
Christina Koch: I love tinkering.

863
00:42:40,010 --> 00:42:41,430
Christina Koch: I tried to get more tools on Orion.

864
00:42:41,770 --> 00:42:42,730
Christina Koch: But in the end,

865
00:42:42,850 --> 00:42:46,130
Christina Koch: I just did what the ground teams told me to do and started it up in a little more gentle

866
00:42:46,130 --> 00:42:46,490
Christina Koch: way.

867
00:42:46,610 --> 00:42:47,410
Christina Koch: And it worked great.

868
00:42:47,790 --> 00:42:49,790
Christina Koch: So though I would have loved to, you know,

869
00:42:49,970 --> 00:42:53,330
Christina Koch: go elbow deep with some wrenches in there, it was, I have to give.

870
00:42:53,530 --> 00:42:55,550
Christina Koch: all credit to the ground teams for sure.

871
00:42:55,690 --> 00:43:00,150
Christina Koch: But I did want to own the fact that I was toilet girl as soon as main engine cutoff happened

872
00:43:00,150 --> 00:43:03,490
Christina Koch: because, you know, you got to be proud of the roles that you're given.

873
00:43:04,110 --> 00:43:07,550
Niloufar Ramji: When you're describing the ground team troubleshooting with you,

874
00:43:07,730 --> 00:43:11,550
Niloufar Ramji: I'm just thinking of an IT support desk saying, is it plugged in?

875
00:43:11,850 --> 00:43:14,750
Niloufar Ramji: Try plugging it, like unplugging it and plugging it back in.

876
00:43:14,890 --> 00:43:17,550
Niloufar Ramji: We often do start there when we call the ground.

877
00:43:17,670 --> 00:43:18,610
Niloufar Ramji: That is 100 % true.

878
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:22,620
Niloufar Ramji: So people often describe exploration as exciting.

879
00:43:22,720 --> 00:43:23,260
Niloufar Ramji: It is exciting.

880
00:43:23,620 --> 00:43:27,600
Niloufar Ramji: Were there moments during the mission that felt surprisingly ordinary to you?

881
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:28,740
Niloufar Ramji: All of them.

882
00:43:28,900 --> 00:43:29,320
Niloufar Ramji: All of them.

883
00:43:29,420 --> 00:43:29,680
Niloufar Ramji: Okay,

884
00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:29,920
Christina Koch: good.

885
00:43:30,360 --> 00:43:36,220
Christina Koch: You know, human spaceflight is just the most fascinating mix of the mundane.

886
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:40,660
Christina Koch: And the majestic, the sublime with the everyday.

887
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:46,120
Christina Koch: And I think that's why it's so important that we have humans in spaceflight,

888
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:51,320
Christina Koch: because we bring that humanness to these magical places that we can't imagine.

889
00:43:51,980 --> 00:43:52,980
Christina Koch: are even out there.

890
00:43:53,140 --> 00:43:56,200
Christina Koch: So yes, what did we do on the far side of the moon first?

891
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:57,400
Christina Koch: We had a cookie.

892
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:03,820
Christina Koch: And because that's what you do when you're trying to commemorate a special moment.

893
00:44:03,940 --> 00:44:05,440
Christina Koch: Yes, it felt right to us.

894
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:10,960
Christina Koch: And you know, all the funny moments, I joke that the most common phrase