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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds out I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
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B
I think after a couple years, you would be a jellyfish. Like you wouldn't be able to come back to Earth. The gravity would kill you.
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A
I think right after this ad.
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B
You'Re.
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A
Listening to Giraffe Kings. How do you describe your old job to people? Like if you're at a cocktail party or something, what do you tell people that you used to do?
- [00:40]
B
So generally I try to avoid it. I was a coach when my kids are growing up. I coached, you know, my son and my daughters, all their different sports. I'm a baseball guy, so I coached baseball for years. And like, kind of like at the end of Little League, one of the dads came up to me and said, you're an astronaut. And I was like, yeah. He's like, I've been on your team for years. No one ever said anything. I'm like, I know. I was worried about, you know, teaching him how to turn a double play and, you know, how to hit the cutoff man. I wasn't worried about being an astronaut, so I normally don't say anything unless somebody asks.
- [01:12]
A
Okay, so this is astronaut Terry Virts, our special guest for today's show. And the reason I decided to start asking Terry Virts some questions is space. Questions in particular is because this happened. Three, two, one, ignition. And liftoff of Starliner and Atlas V carrying two American heroes. It was supposed to be an eight day mission, but problems with the Boeing Starliner means two of NASA's astronauts will now spend around eight months in orbit Starliner, where there was a little bit of action the other day. Pilot Sunita Suni Williams and Commander Barry.
- [01:56]
B
Butch Bulmore were the first to man Boeing's new spacecraft.
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A
Blasting off on 5 June.
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B
But issues with the Starliner's propulsion system kept delaying their return home. They've now been stranded in space for.
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A
More than two months with NASA saying.
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B
The planned return on the Starliner would be too dangerous.
- [02:19]
A
All which is to say that these, these two astronauts, Commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams are stuck, as you may have heard, in space. They've been stranded there, thanks to a series of Boeing technical disasters at a place known as the International Space Station, where their eight day test mission is now going to stretch into an eight month ordeal, ending, according to NASA, in February 2025. And so what I wanted to do is find out what being stuck in space actually entails these days. Which brings us back to the former Little league coach in question.
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B
Hello, I'm Terry Virts, NASA astronaut and commander of the International Space Station, the world's outpost in low Earth orbit. Living and working in this magnificent laboratory with my Russian and European crewmates would not.
- [03:17]
A
As this 2015 video from Space confirms, Terry Virts had what I believe to be the most sci fi job title in American history. The dude was the commander of the International Space Station, which is also known as the largest space station ever built and now the place that those two astronauts have been stranded. And so, as much as Terry had been reluctant to tell his fellow dads any of this stuff back home in Houston, he agreed to make an exception on account of his newest job title, which he accepted at age 56. PTFO's first ever outer space correspondent.
- [04:03]
B
Sometimes I'll talk about space because it's very cool. Most people don't know most people haven't been there. And I get it.
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A
Hold on.
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B
Pretty cool.
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A
Hold on, Terry. Ver the statement most people haven't been there when there is space feels like a bit of an understatement as we get going into this conversation.
- [04:20]
B
Yeah. When I was on the station one night we were having dinner. There's six of us on the space station at the time. And the Russian segment has this really cool window. So like why I would always try and eat dinner with the Russians. And we were looking out the window and I said, look at that guys, look out there. And everybody looked out and I said there's over six billion people down there and there's only six of us. We're like, we're literally one in a billion. So you know, there's a sense of duty, like you have to do something.
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A
Yes.
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B
We've been given a pretty cool gift.
- [04:51]
A
Yeah. Which is to say that if you're telling my kid, you gotta, you know, slide into home, I want to know that the former commander of the International Space Station is the person telling him to get down.
- [05:01]
B
It's kind of like being an airline pilot. You are the captain of the airplane, but air traffic control is going to tell you where to go. You know, turn to heading two seven zero, descend at 10,000ft. So you do what you're told most of the time, but when the engine catches on fire, then all of a sudden you, hey, there were an emergency. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. So your job really has two phases. And thankfully 99% of the time is not emergency. 99% of the time is, you know, Norma.
- [05:48]
A
Alright, so there is another important detail that you need to understand here about Commander Terry Virts. And it relates to those emergency scenarios that he very knowingly alluded to just a minute ago. What you need to know is that I wanted to talk to Terry because in 2015 he also got stranded at the International Space Station. Not unlike America's two currently stuck astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose malfunctioning Boeing Starliner recently reminded NASA of previous shuttle tragedies still haunted by the Challenger and Columbia disasters that killed 14 astronauts Mission managers to last month. They will not risk putting Williams and Wilmore on a Starliner with engine thrusters that could potentially malfunction on re entry. Butch and SUNY recently held a joint press conference, notably from the iss, in which they got asked by reporters what Boeing could have done differently with the development of the Starliner. And Commander Wilmore attempted to strike a pretty diplomatic note. I'll say this, there is not enough time right now to go into all the details to make any answer. I think that I could, I could give make complete sense. I could say a few things and it would be taken the wrong way a way that I didn't mean it to be so for questions. All of which just made me want to ask Terry Virts what had happened to his ride back home in 2015.
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B
The last flight I was on was supposed to be 169 days and this American Cygnus cargo ship blew up right before we launched. And then a Russian Progress cargo ship blew up while I was there.
- [07:39]
A
And there is the view that we saw about 30 minutes or so ago. A clear rotational spin on the Progress 59 cargo craft. It was reported by our visiting vehicle officer here in Mission Control to Flight Director.
- [07:53]
B
And then a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship blew up at the end of our mission. So when the Russian one blew up, it's the same rocket and capsule that humans launch on. Thankfully this was an unmanned vehicle but you know, humans fly on it too. So they didn't want to launch our replacement crew until they did the investigation to see what was wrong. And they didn't want to send us back to Earth until the replacement crew was ready to replace us. So they basically said hey, you're stuck in space, we don't know for how long. And oh by the way, you're low on supplies because we've had two of your cargo ships blow up. So we were low on underwear, we were low on food. So it ended up being a month. So the 169 day turned into 200 days.
- [08:33]
A
But the idea of you're going to be stuck in space. It doesn't sound like your immediate reaction was, oh my God, this is a nightmare.
- [08:44]
B
The first question we needed answered was, did this Russian rocket blowing up have the same problem that might affect our capsule? So we wanted to make sure that that same thing wasn't going to happen to us. And it turned out it wasn't. And then the next question was, when are we coming back? This has happened several times. There's been astronauts that got stuck, got delayed or whatever. Never as dramatically as the two Boeing astronauts. And usually it's like they're not happy. There's some sad astronauts up there. They're like, ah, but for our guys, there was three of us and I think we all said, you know what? This is my time in space. We're just going to enjoy it. I got the rest of my life on Earth, let's just enjoy it. We had that attitude and that helped a lot. But the people that really suffer are the families, you know, like my family on Earth. I was supposed to be home for the summer if there's kids, you know, and dad's late from work, Mom's getting mad, you know, Well, I was like a month late from work.
- [09:39]
A
So just, just to get a big picture view though, of your brain as you're processing these headlines and you're seeing what the Boeing Starliner is and is doing. And you're thinking of these two astronauts who are where you were right? The, the a person in butch who followed you in this lineage of commanders of the iss, your reaction is what, Emotionally, as you imagine it, when it.
- [10:01]
B
Was going to be a month or two, I remember thinking, this is great. These guys are happy now. They probably didn't have enough T shirts and underwear and you know, they didn't have special food that they order. So there were some inconveniences. But, you know, this is bonus time and space. They're Both probably roughly 60 years old. You know, they're not the youngest astronauts. So I don't know if they're going to fly again or not, but they might not. So, you know, this is just bonus time and space. But when it went to like an extra six months or I think eight months total, whatever it is, it's a lot. And that's like, that's a lot. That's a long extension. This guy Polyakov was this Russian cosmonaut. I think he launched as a Soviet and landed as a Russian, or it was back in the early 90s or no, it must have been Russia, but they basically were broke and so they didn't have a ride for him home. So he was literally stuck in space for over 400 days.
- [10:51]
A
You know, one of the stupid questions that I have that I immediately feel obliged to ask you is when you're stuck in space for however many extra weeks, do you get paid more like, is there. Like, how about that? Yeah. How does this work financially for you if you're stuck in space?
- [11:11]
B
So. So people always. And they're like, well, how's your NASA pension or whatever? You know, like, I don't get one. And I just did back surgery that was. I have insurance, but it's not from NASA. It's. It's military. I was in the military. So all those co pays are coming out of my own pocket. So, yeah, when you're at NASA as an astronaut, you get. Every time you have a mission, you get two lands and polo shirts. And that's pretty much it. Like, and we usually one the guys order a lands End three in one jacket because it's like more expensive than a cotton polo shirt. So it's kind of funny, but sort of not. But it's. It's funny and I'm not complaining at all. I had the most amazing experience of all time.
- [11:53]
A
But I want to know this stuff. I want to know what it's really like.
- [11:56]
B
Buzz Aldrin has tweeted this out. It's pretty funny. I talked to Buzz yesterday. So when you're in space, it used to be 350, now it's $5. So I got $5 a day per diem. If I'm at NASA and I have to go to some conference in Colorado Springs, you know, they'll buy you a coach airline ticket. You stay at the hotel that's under the government rate, the Holiday Inn Express, and you get, you know, $69 a day for meals and expenses. But when you're in space, you don't have any expenses, but there's still, quote, unquote, incidental expenses. So NASA pays you $5 a day, and it's tax deductible. So I was in space for 200 days. I literally got a check for 1000.$00. And that was my thing, but my European colleague would never say how much she was getting. But I think it was a couple hundred bucks a day. It was kind of secret. They weren't saying it, but I think the Europeans, look, they felt bad for you. It sounds like the Astronaut Center's in Germany. So if you're Italian Or French or Norwegian or whatever. You get like tax free and like 50 bonus. So you get all kinds of benefits for being an astronaut just because. For having to rough it in the terrible location of Germany. So they, she made a couple hundred. But my Russian, and by the way, the Russians do capitalism much better than we do. He was getting a thousand bucks a day. So it's an interesting, interesting difference. And it's funny, when I talk to kids, you get the same questions all the time. And one of the questions that high schoolers will ask you is how much do you get paid? People are interested.
- [13:22]
A
I believe you just said that. I have the journalistic curiosity of a high schooler, which is pretty good. Foreign. I do want to explain the iss, the International Space Station, because I did not fully appreciate what this was until I started reading your book and doing all this research and just like examining it more closely in photos. Because this thing was launched in 1998. And I think this superlative is worthwhile in terms of a thing people on Earth should be aware of. This is the longest continuous human presence in space.
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B
Since November of 2000, we've had humans in space, right?
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A
And so this being a partnership between the United States and Russia specifically, I think is something that we need to be aware of too. Although Russia's economic problems have put the project a whole year behind schedule, the fact that the first Russian component was.
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B
Successfully launched will have brought huge size.
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A
Of relief from here in the Kremlin.
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B
So in the early 90s, the Soviet Union collapsed. George H.W. bush was president, and it was a miracle. I mean, it was truly miraculous. This evil empire with 5,000 nuclear weapons or tens of thousands, it, it collapsed peacefully without a shot being fired, which was a miracle. And Dan Quail was the vice president, and the Vice president was in charge of space policy. That's usually the case. So Ronald Reagan had wanted to do space station Freedom and American space station. And then when this happened, the big concern was all these Russian scientists are now out of work. The Russian economy was a disaster. They said, well, why don't we bring them in? So there was the International Space Station. So Europe and Japan and Canada and at the time Brazil, they eventually dropped out. All these nations got together and the real goal was to give the Russians something to do. And there was money being transferred. And we kept their space program alive for decades. They also returned the favor when we had our space shuttle accident. And when we shut down the shuttle program, we didn't have a way to get there. And we, I launched on A Russian Soyuz. So it was, you know, it's been a mutually beneficial partnership.
- [15:41]
A
And just to clarify what Terry is saying there, America does not have a space shuttle program anymore. You may have missed this, but the US government officially shut it down in 2011 on account of cost, and even more infamously, on account of safety. The aforementioned space shuttle Columbia accident, where the entire spacecraft disintegrated as it re entered the atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board, had taken place in 2003. And so this is why Terry Virts, who is also, by the way, a veteran fighter pilot and colonel in the Air Force, wound up riding a Russian spacecraft to the ISS in 2015. And it's also why these private companies like Boeing and SpaceX are racing to fill the void by developing new commercial spacecraft that can also maybe end our reliance in this way on the Russian government. All of which has led to a new set of mechanical problems, of course, the kind that leaves Terry Virts and Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams stuck aboard the iss. And the ISS somehow still persists literally above the geopolitical fray as a pretty remarkable diplomatic experiment.
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B
Yes, it is.
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A
I mean, this is a solar powered diplomatic instrument that is in space and it has these two wings, apparently. So there is the US orbital segment and the Russian orbital segment. And in my mind I'm immediately like, oh, is this like dorms at a college? Like, how do you explain the men's diplomacy?
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B
The women's dorm?
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A
Yeah, exactly. And, and all of the parietals and all of these rules therein? Maybe, but what, how is it actually.
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B
When you're up there, the astronauts operated as one spaceship? I, I made a really strong effort because I was there during Crimea. The Russians annexed Crimea. They started the war in Donbass. I actually watch bombs going off in Donbass. One night in January 2015, Sasha Samokutya, my Russian crewmate, and I, we were looking out that same window and saw little red flashes.
- [17:56]
A
Just to clarify, you saw bombs from space?
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B
We saw the bombs going off from space, man.
- [18:04]
A
What is that experience like? Just the, the. Because I. It's surreal what you're describing, right?
- [18:10]
B
I remember thinking, I can hear God speaking. Like, I'm seeing creation from God's point of view. Humans are not meant to see. It's so beautiful. Like, it's so beautiful. I remember my fifth night in space on my, my first flight was on a space shuttle and we flew over the Mediterranean and you could see like Israel and Egypt and Lebanon and Jordan. They're all right. They're like that they're right next to each other. And I remember thinking what's the problem guys? You all live right next to each other, like what's the big deal? And that's obviously a naive, you know, way to look at the world. But that's what I, that's what I felt when I looked at it.
- [18:45]
A
You know, just as I continue to sort of like map the ISS for, for my audience and in my own brain. By the way, this is not the USS Enterprise, right? This is not, this is not a thing with a big bridge. How would you describe the actual structure of it?
- [19:02]
B
The issuance is modules. And so like you said, there's a Russian segment, American segment and they're very different. The Russians. It looks like it's the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The American segment is really America plus Japan plus Europe plus Canada. Canada built a robotic arms but we all use to the same voltage, we use the same data and you know, in the same module it just looks the same. Whereas theirs looks very different. The modules are about the size of a school bus. So I don't know how long they are. Maybe 30ft long, maybe 40ft long. I think they're 15ft in diameter because that was the size of the space shuttle. But there's a bunch of equipment. So it's probably, it's a human wingspan. I could not put myself where I couldn't touch something. So just imagine that like if you're an average sized man and stick out your hands, if you were in the middle of the space station, you'd be able to touch something and that's about how big it is, right?
- [19:59]
A
And I should note also that you personally, you did like help finish the assembly of the iss. The cupola is a term I also want people to be aware of because if I were to want to go to space it would be. Because I'd want to be inside of this part of the ISS.
- [20:17]
B
You are 100, right? That's what 99 of people would love. My logo, I have like my, you know, my logo that's a, that's the cupola. That's kind of the view of Earth out of the cupola. Cupola is kind of a common word in Europe. There's cupoles everywhere. It's like the dome on top of a building or on top of a church. So it has six windows around you and then one big huge one above you. So it's kind of like a bay window in your kitchen. Back in the 80s they used to make these little bay Windows that stuck out. So just think of it like a bay window. And the real reason for it is to do robotics. So there's a robotic control station. You go in there and you can move the robotic arm and you can actually look at it. You don't need to have windows. You can just use video monitors. But it's cooler to look out. But it's really cool to see the Earth. So I helped make a IMAX movie called A Beautiful Planet.
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A
Terry. I should say I watched A Beautiful Planet.
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B
Oh, wow.
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A
In imax, very high.
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B
On Earth, we have everything we need to survive. Air to breathe and food and water to sustain life. It's incredible, the effort that was needed to design this life support system, flying around the planet aboard the International Space Station, approve astronauts from around the globe.
- [21:36]
A
And it was one of the greatest cinematic experiences of my life to be. To be stoned watching giant Terry Verts, I would later discover.
- [21:44]
B
You saw my nude scene.
- [21:46]
A
I did, I did. It was. It was sensuous, you lathering yourself up.
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B
I got paid twice as much as my crewmates did for that. Doing that scene. 2 times 0. How do you shower in space? That's a common question. So I'm in there, like, basically with a wet towel and soap.
- [22:05]
A
Yes. Just squirting bits of. Bits of liquid onto your head. Yeah.
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B
And if you see it in the theater, it's 3D, so there's like water, you know, it was.
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A
It was. It was a lot for me to process.
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B
If you're stoned, it's probably even better.
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A
Precisely.
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B
So so is the best.
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A
Yes.
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B
But it's the coolest place on Earth or off Earth.
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A
Right, right. So I'm imagining one of the silver linings to being stuck up in space for nine months or whatever it is. They get to look out at this thing. And I'm curious, what are. What are the things on Earth, the parts of Earth that would most cause you to gather together and be like, we gotta watch this. You don't want to miss this part of our planet.
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B
The aurora, the aurora are just amazing. It doesn't happen often. You only see the northern lights in June, July, and you only see the southern lights in January, December. And the sun's not always active, but when it's active and when it launches these giant explosions towards Earth about a day later, all the particles get here and the magnetic field captures them there. There's nothing like it. I saw 23 different tropical storms, and my sac is by far the biggest, most impressive. And there's a video of Us flying over this thing in the IMAX movie. The thing about that, the eye was so huge. It was the biggest ever Pacific super typhoon. It was huge. It was scary. Like you look at Earth and there's this giant eye there. It was really kind of scary.
- [23:45]
A
What were the parts of Earth in terms of like the cities that stick in your brain still? When you remember what the cupola was.
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B
Revealing to you, you know what city really sticks out to me? And this is weird. Buenos Aires on the east coast of South America. There's this triangular water. I don't know what it is. The Bay of something. And Montevideos on the north side is small. Buenos Aires is huge. And it's on the south side. And it's the only city I really noticed during the day. If you're looking at London, if you're looking at New York, you'll. You can see them. They're concrete. But unless you're looking for them, you won't notice them during the daytime. If you were an alien and you flew by Earth, you wouldn't notice people. But at nighttime you see city lights and at nighttime, that's when you see people. And as I thought about it and I was looking at Earth at night, it hit me that at nighttime what you're seeing is not population, what you're seeing is wealth. And especially flying over Africa, there's just no lights on. There's a. The Nile, Johannesburg, Nigeria, there's a few places, but most of Africa is, is dark. And that's because of politics and corruption. And like you're, you're watching the bad side of human nature from space. That was something I never thought I would see. Or the good side, like Western Europe, tons of lights. America, tons of lights. South Korea, huge amounts of light. South Korea is an amazingly successful economically country. And North Korea is just a black hole. It's a complete disaster.
- [25:38]
A
Let's just stay on this track of just like stuff I've always wondered. Right. That I want to find out about.
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B
Yeah.
- [25:42]
A
The sensation. Right. I. I watch movies, I see the videos. And you guys are floating. But is that the word again? I want to get the vocabulary right here. Are you floating? What does it feel like?
- [25:54]
B
Yeah, no, it is the word and what it feels like. It's not zero G. It's not like there's no gravity. Of course, everywhere in the universe there's gravity. And we're only a few hundred miles away from Earth, so there's a lot of gravity from Earth, thank God, or we wouldn't orbit. We would just Fly off. But it feels like you're falling because you're falling. So I do this demo here. I got my Diet Coke. So if I drop this on Earth, a second later, it would hit the ground, right? In space, on the space station, if I let go of my Diet Coke, it would fall almost the same distance towards the center of the Earth, but in that one second, we would have moved forward five miles. So it's this combination of falling and moving and falling and moving, and it makes.
- [26:36]
A
What you're telling me is that the feeling of being in space is that of being perpetually falling?
- [26:41]
B
Yes, that's exactly what it feels like. So especially for like rookies or not professional kind of people who've thought about it and trained, this is the reaction. That's what.
- [26:51]
A
Yeah, you're flapping your arms, right?
- [26:53]
B
I don't know why God made us do that or evolution made us do that, but this is what people do. It feels like when you jump off of. I always tell this joke. We used to have diving boards before we had lawyers, right? So you can jump and you can feel what it's like in space for one second before you hit the water. If you're in an airplane going really fast, the pilot can push over and the airplane does what's called a parabola. And you can, you can feel weightlessness for 10 or 20 or 30 seconds, depending on how fast you're going. Or you could do it for 40 seconds and hit the ground, right? So but in space, because you're going so fast, you're just perpetually falling. And that's what it feel, that's what your brain thinks is happening.
- [27:33]
A
This is where I, I demand that you give me your take on extraterrestrial life. Obviously, it's my contract as a podcaster that I must ask the astronaut, the commander of the iss, it's required about it.
- [27:46]
B
So here's my take. First of all, I haven't seen anything. There are billions of planets out there. You'd think there's life, right? But even so, at the bottom line, whatever side of that argument you fall on, those planets are far, far, far, far away. A light year is a long distance, and the nearest stars are like dozens or hundreds of light years away. The farther stars are hundreds of thousands of light years away, or the galaxies are millions and billions of light years away. So it's going to be a long time before we get any kind of spaceships that can travel that far. So I don't know. We'll see. That's all I'M allowed to say in public.
- [28:30]
A
I was going to say this got real suspicious towards the end there. I was like, we'll see. What are we?
- [28:37]
B
But the other thing is, it was like, okay, if you have the capability to put yourself in a spaceship and fly across the galaxy, why would you go to Roswell, New Mexico? Like, I go to New York, get some sushi. I go to the Bahamas on the beach. I go to Mount Everest and see the big mountain. I wouldn't go to Roswell. Like, what the. And if I could fly across the galaxy, I'd probably be able to land. They all, they all crash when they get here. They all crash, right.
- [29:04]
A
So you know, what you're telling me is that alien expedia.com is just horrible. It's just like the ratings are all off.
- [29:14]
B
I need to, I need to check on that.
- [29:17]
A
Something about your position as commander of the iss, I am curious. What are the perks if you're the commander? What, what, what powers do you have that you got to exercise that others couldn't?
- [29:30]
B
You get the, probably the most important power you get to set the temperature. So if you want the temp, it's like in a marriage, you know, you're, you're the one who controls the thermometer.
- [29:42]
A
What was Terry Verd setting the temperature at?
- [29:44]
B
I. It was like 73 or something. The same as I have my house here in Houston. It was just normal. I mean, you wear your Lands End polo shirt and they're like biker policeman shorts. They give us, you know, tactical shorts with Velcro all over them so that if you have, you know, whatever your mouse with some Velcro, you just stick it to your shorts and it stays there.
- [30:06]
A
Velcro, I'm getting the sense, was a very important technological innovation for you guys.
- [30:11]
B
Dude, Velcro, without Velcro, you couldn't fly in space. I kept a Sharpie in my biker policeman shorts, but they always had a little Velcro thing so you could just stick it there and then you go write it on whatever and put it back and you're good to go.
- [30:27]
A
There is a poetry, though, to the idea of here you are at the height of technological innovation as a species, as humanity has achieved it. And Velcro and the drinks.
- [30:40]
B
So we have these, they're like Capri Sun. They're silver drink bags. You put a straw in that clamps off so it doesn't leak and you can have coffee, tea, milk, smoothies. The fruit drinks was everybody's favorite actually. And it's Tang we actually drink Tang, man. The Tang company makes NASA's powder for our astronaut drinks. Or they did anyway, 10 years ago when I was flying.
- [31:04]
A
Wait, so just food wise, astronaut ice cream, a real thing? A real thing that you enjoyed or just a thing at museums that they sell to kids?
- [31:13]
B
It's a thing at museums. I never had that in space. I, I don't know anybody who's ever had that in space. But it's good. It's kind of cool. But the ice cream I had was Ben and Jerry's. So we have freezers for biology samples. So I did a lot of rodent research, a lot of human blood and urine and swab your mouth out and whatever. Just. We had fish, whatever Biology decays. So we put it in a freezer and then a couple months later the scientists on Earth can study it. But going up, they're not sending up our samples right. So it's empty. So one time they put, they filled up a freezer full of ice cream. So we had Klein bike bars, we had Chunky Monkey.
- [31:55]
A
What was the food like in terms of the Russian wing segment versus the American segment?
- [32:01]
B
So you have, they call them bobs. It was just an acronym for bag of food. And you'd have like your meat bob and your veggies and your desserts and drinks and whatever there were and snacks. So they, and each one was like eight days worth of food for a crew of three or whatever. So you'd open it up and like the shrimp cocktail would go first, the Mexican scrambled eggs would go for. There was a few things that everybody loved. And then by the end of it, you're down to like the stuff that nobody liked. But then you could order your own food. And I think I got two or three, I forgot how many. I got a, I got a few of these bobs with food I wanted so I could order beef jerky or whatever, but I ordered Russian food. So I, I, as part of my crew. Preference, like my desired food was Russian food. I, I love borscht. I got Russian borscht. They do the best. Mashed potatoes, kartoffel puree was great. Fish. We don't, NASA doesn't do fish. I don't know why. The only fish we have is like a bag of Starkist tuna. So the Russians have lots of fish. So I ordered some of that. And they're, it's like cat food. They come in these little cat food tin cans and you peel it. So it's not the most appealing thing, but it tastes really good.
- [33:11]
A
Wait so when you imagine what's going on up there right now in terms of what's being run out, of what they're using to sustain themselves, how do you explain what that, what that scene is like at the moment?
- [33:24]
B
So it's funny, I just, I'm working on a project with a, the former head of food for NASA. And I was just talking to her a few weeks ago, and they have these charts, there's a whole office at NASA, people that track, we call them consumables, how much oxygen, how much water, clothes, propellant, you know, all the stuff you burn through that, you got to resupply. And as you can imagine, you got to keep track of that. You don't want to suddenly run out. I used to think there was like a year or two years worth of stuff. And she said, no, we had six months worth of reserve food. And now they're taking it down to four months just to save space. Because the, the station is full. It's like there's no extra room. So when they, all of a sudden there's two extra crewmates for a few months, there's enough margin there, but they, you know, as long as the cargo ships keep on going, if they have a few different cargo ships blow up, it could become a problem. But the big thing for them, I think, is tennis shoes. Because you got to exercise. Exercise is super important. If you're there for a week or two, it doesn't matter. But if you're going to be there for six months, exercise is important and you have to have tennis shoes. The three big American exercise machines require shoes. So I don't know if they launch with them or not. For an eight day mission, you don't need shoes, Right?
- [34:34]
A
And the exercise dynamic, that is physiologically necessary because why?
- [34:40]
B
So you basically lose bone and muscle mass and it never ends. Like, what we've measured is like a, it's a linear straight line. It doesn't like level out. I think after a couple years, you would be a jellyfish. Like, you wouldn't be able to come back to Earth. The gravity would kill you, I think. But we've never, thankfully, we've never gotten that point. So they have exercise machines. When I was there, I took vitamin D. You get vitamin D by going outside, and your body makes vitamin D when it gets sunlight for whatever reason, right? And you need that for bones. So I took a vitamin D tablet every day because there's no sun. You're in a metal can, there's lots of sun, but you're in A can. So you don't get it. And I exercise for two and a half hours a day, and most astronauts lose some bone and muscle. But after seven months, over 200 days, whatever, is a long time. I lost 0.0% of my bone density because I had done. I was religious about the exercise. I did it every day.
- [35:38]
A
All of it raises the question that, of course, the high schooler in me is demanding. I ask, which is. Okay, so the bathroom situation on the ISS is what. How do. What does that look like?
- [35:50]
B
The basic thing. Here's the thing about going to the bathroom in space. On Earth, we have gravity, thank God, and that pushes everything in the right direction, so that keeps everything where it should be. In space, you don't have that, so you have airflow. So there's fans that basically the air blows and the air makes sure everything goes in the right direction. So there's a hose for number one and a can for number two. And so it's kind of a serial operation. Not parallel. Right. Like you can do both at the same time, but generally it's better to do one and then the other. And also the hose, as you can imagine, if there's a lot of sucking going on there and you act and you get too close. Yeah. So you. You got to be careful about that. That's not a pretty day. Because if you turn the fan off now, everything's floating.
- [36:40]
A
Yeah, right, right, right, right. Accuracy. Accuracy and pace seem important in this physics.
- [36:48]
B
You don't want to miss your target.
- [36:55]
A
So this is when I feel like I should jump in here to point out that I feel like you might be wondering if I ever asked Terry Virts, astronaut, about sex at the International Space Station. And the answer, obviously is yes. Although all Terry would tell me on the record is this.
- [37:14]
B
It was a long 200 days for me. I don't know about anybody else, but I know it was the long 200 days.
- [37:21]
A
But that same sentiment about the long 200 days, it brought me back to imagining the larger sensory experience of our two stranded astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, even beyond the trying to guide Koop through the air part, or even the sampling of the borscht of a nation whose bombs you may simultaneously be watching from the cupola up above the atmosphere. Because while it is true that in the vacuum of space nobody can hear you scream, the stuff you can hear inside the ISS itself is a very different auditory experience. It turns out, as Terry himself says he discovered one day in the midst of his own stranding, when he Noticed for the first time the sound of birds.
- [38:16]
B
So one day I was floating through that middle module, Node one, we call it, where the food was, and I heard birds. And I stopped and I looked down at the exercise machine that I was talking about in node 3 that I had installed, and I. And the Russian guy was down there working out. I was like, hey, Misho. We had this conversation at Russian. I said, where's the bird? And he laughed. The Russians had sent up sounds from Earth. So we had a jungle sound, we had rain. We had a busy cafe with. They understand psychology really well. And so they. We loved it. Everybody fell in love with this. So I would go in bed, put my headsets on and listen to rain. It was amazing when I did that, the month I was doing that, I was actually started to dream of Earth. Normally I just dreamt of the blackness of space and no dreams, but. But that month I was dreaming about Earth, it was. It was pretty cool.
- [39:15]
A
Wait, I was going to ask about what it's like to dream in space. And what you're saying is that absent some musical auditory stimulus reminder of our planet, you would just be in the blackness of infinity. You would be that way too.
- [39:34]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's how my brain processed it. Like when I was sleeping, that all I remember is just black. Like the Empire Strikes Back. Remember when those asteroids were flying around and there was the big worm and anyway, that was kind of the dreams I would have. Just the blackness of space and asteroids and no color. But the month I listened to rain sounds from Earth, my brain started dreaming about green fields and blue skies. And I also listened to Hans Zimmer's Interstellar soundtrack, which I think is the best soundtrack of all time. That movie came out right before I launched. In fact, I saw it in Russia in a Russian movie theater before I launched. And so I kind of didn't really know what it had. I mean, I speak Russian, but pretty. Not that great. And then I watched it in space. They sent up an American version and I was like, oh, that's. Oh, that's what was happening there, you know. But the soundtrack is amazing. The Hanzheimer interstellar soundtrack is incredible.
- [40:34]
A
How connected were you to the events happening on Earth when you were up there? Computer wise, cell phone wise. To what extent were you plugged in?
- [40:44]
B
Yeah, so we now they have WhatsApp. I'm actually WhatsApping with an astronaut on the space station today that we didn't have texting, but we did have email. And it used to be 20 years ago, the email would sync once a day. And then 10 years ago, it was sinking three times a day. And then it's pretty much always syncing now. So email is pretty good. If a way to communicate. There's a phone system that's like FaceTime audio. As long as you have the Internet connection, as long as you, your space station is talking to a satellite, you can call, call somebody. And it's the world's best phone. You can call anywhere on earth for free. And then as you go around the Earth, you lose the satellite and it just cuts you off. The call is done. And so you never have to have a long goodbye with mom. You know, it's like click. All right, Then you go on with your life. There's no goodbyes and they can't call you. So it's the, it's literally the perfect phone system. Except for when I was there, they didn't have contacts, so you literally had to type in the phone number, which is like, who knows phone number. So I had this sheet of paper with all these phone numbers written out.
- [41:47]
A
Suddenly it was the 90s again.
- [41:48]
B
Yeah, it was my time to get away from Internet. You could actually log on to the Internet. And one of the crewmates did that, but I was like, I never did. I didn't want the Internet. It was like my six months away from the Internet.
- [41:59]
A
Right. Wait, you were, you were raw dogging space. You were. You nothing, didn't need anything, just you and the infinite blackness of the universe.
- [42:09]
B
Exactly.
- [42:23]
A
I've managed to, to laugh at the vast majority of what we've talked about today, but I also want to just remind people the degree to which every decision you made in space was also on some level, a life or death impacting kind of choice. Right. Like, can you explain just the stakes of everything, of just like the how, how that sort of factored into how you lived and operated?
- [42:47]
B
You know that you really have to have a personality that doesn't obsess about that because you couldn't survive for six months. You know, you can go over on a roller coaster for a minute and a half, but. And on my first flight, we're all crammed in the shuttle together. And then when we got to the station, you spread out. It's like a 747. So I slept in the European module called Columbus on the ceiling. And it was kind of new at the time. And anyway, all day and night, whenever I was sleeping, it would go like a submarine noise, like pinging on metal. And I think it was the sun Heating and you know, expanding and contracting the aluminum structure. But like, you just have to be okay with this. The space station that you're in is making banging noises and you don't know why. It's something that. There's always danger there and your mentality has to be. And you're just not going to think about it. You're in the Air Force, they used to tell us. We actually had a psychologist come to our fighter squadron and talk to us. And of course all the fighter pilots are like not paying attention. But she was, she was 100. Right. In that you guys compartmentalize. You put everything in your brain over here.
- [43:57]
A
Yes.
- [43:57]
B
And like that's, that's, you have to, that's great for being a fighter pilot, it's not great for being a husband. So you have to figure out like how to do your job and then how to have normal human relationships, which is not. We don't always succeed at everything.
- [44:11]
A
So the self selection of wanting to go to space, then the passing of all of the tests. I'm getting the sense that your advice for the people who are stuck there right now may not be the obvious stuff that I've even been belaboring here. It sounds like there's a psychological component that you're actually maybe even more acutely attuned to here.
- [44:33]
B
Well, look, during the selection process, I think the psychological aspect is the most important thing, especially at the NASA level. There's a lot of great test pilots and fighter pilots. There was a hundred other guys and gals that could have done exactly or better than what, what I was. But the psychological aspect I think is what really sets you apart. And that's kind of what's most important. Who do you want to spend months in space with? And if it was funny when I did my interview, they don't tell you anything. But the psychologist afterwards was like, Terry, you were really great. You were like. Your psychological profile was really good. So they're not supposed to tell you that, but he did tell me that. So the psychology, the psychological aspect is probably the most important.
- [45:15]
A
Yeah, I mean, look, you had alluded to some family dynamics that can become complicated when you are a compartmentalized former fighter pilot slash commander of the International Space Station. How is that going for you back on Earth? How is that acclimation process towards civilian life?
- [45:34]
B
That's funny. I was worried about it. A lot of astronauts struggle and they like every astronaut's favorite mission is his next mission. And I was worried if. Am I going to want to, you know, so I, I gave myself a year. I said, don't. When you land, don't leave for years. Some people leave immediately, some whatever. And I, I got to the point where I'm like, there's stuff I want to do. I'm still in my 40s. I like, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I want to do things that I want to do. I'd been in the government for 30 years where you're told what to do. So I, I just said it's time to, for me to go do other things. And when I landed in Russia, it's a 24 hour flight back to Houston. And then I went to the gym to work out because I was a fanatic about doing my rehabilitation. And then my son was there and he, he had just turned 16, he had just gotten his driver's license while I was in space. Another thing that I missed. And he was like, dad, let's go car shopping. So I said, all right. So he drove me to the Ford dealer and we looked at F150s and I was fine. I remember, I distinctly remember that drive. I remember seeing I45, the highway, NASA Road 1. And I remember thinking, I'm on Earth. It, I'm back to normal. Like the, the light switch had, had switched. So for me personally, it's compartmentalized. I had space in my space compartment and Earth in my Earth compartment. I just kind of had felt like, all right, I've seven months, I've did an IMAX movie. I was commander. I did spacewalks. I kind of checked all the boxes and that's how I looked at it.
- [47:09]
A
But I'm curious if any part of you, however small, heard the story of these two stranded astronauts and was in any way jealous of what they got to now go and still continue to do. Do you miss space? I guess is the question.
- [47:27]
B
Not really. You know what, you know what I would love to do would be to film a movie if I could go back there. Because, like, filmmaking is kind of what I want to do when I grow up. So if I had the opportunity to actually film a movie, I helped make a Beautiful Planet. I've done a few documentary and scripted films here on Earth. Going to film something for a couple weeks starting tomorrow. So if I could do that, I think I would like to go back. But otherwise there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot to do down here on Earth.
- [48:01]
A
There's a whole lot to do down here on Earth.
- [48:05]
B
And the food, the food is okay in space, but it's you know, it's better down here.
- [48:09]
A
Terry Verts, the former commander of the International Space Station. Thank you for joining. Pablo Torre finds out. I appreciate it.
- [48:17]
B
Thanks for having me on. Pablo, this is amazing podcast. I love your background too. That's a very cool, very cool.
- [48:21]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is sort of like what it felt like inside of my brain when I was watching you super stoned in imax.
- [48:29]
B
Excellent.
- [48:38]
A
This has been Pablo Torre finds Out a Meadowlark Media for production and I'll talk to you next time.