[00:00:38] Mike Massimino: as far as like the UFOs go? I think a lot of 

[00:00:40] Mark Divine: it 

[00:00:41] Mike Massimino: is.

[00:00:46] Mark Divine: Mike, super stoked to have you here. Thanks for joining me today and the Mark Divine show. 

[00:00:49] Mike Massimino: Mark, thanks very much for having me. My pleasure to be here. 

[00:00:52] Mark Divine: So, so what’s the funniest thing that ever happened to you in space? I know from a Navy Seal, people say, oh yeah, you did a lot of scary shit. I’m like, yeah, but it was absolutely the most hysterical.

[00:01:01] Mark Divine: Time of my life. What’s it like in space? What’s the humor like 

[00:01:04] Mike Massimino: it’s actually I thought I think pretty good You try to keep it loose, right? Did you always have like one guy who was a funny guy on your on your there 

[00:01:11] Mark Divine: was always the one guy who was the Funniest but generally everyone, you know ended up having a really unique humor kind of contribution.

[00:01:19] Mark Divine: I would say yeah, it’s part of the team 

[00:01:20] Mike Massimino: I remember as a new astronaut There was a French astronaut named Michel Tonini who had flown in space and we were in a meeting together And he said something to me says Mike on every space crew You need to have one funny guy. You need that one funny guy to keep, and he goes, but only one, Mike, you can’t have two, if you have two, it becomes like a gang and nothing gets accomplished.

[00:01:40] Mike Massimino: You know, you just screw around the whole time, but you need that one funny guy. A lot of our fun happened in training too. And that was, it was all fun. I don’t know, the story that’s coming to mind for me is just like a stupid thing I did. I don’t know if it’s funny or not, but When we were spacewalking in the sunlight, it could get pretty bright out, and you’d have this gold visor that you put down in front of your head, in front of your face, so it’d block out the sun.

[00:02:03] Mike Massimino: But in the darkness, it’s like the darkest So in the sunlight, it’s the brightest bright I’ve ever experienced in space. It’s like a pure white light. The sun illuminates everything so brightly. And if you have it in your eyes, you’re not going to be able to get anything done. You protect your eyes so you can see and see what’s going on.

[00:02:19] Mike Massimino: Anyway, but when we go into the darkness, you’d want to raise that visor. You wouldn’t be able to see anything cause it’s really dark. And then the visor on top of it, you won’t see anything. We used to practice this even in the pool. Like we would time it, you know, every 45 minutes coming up on a sunrise, raise your visor or close your visor coming up on a sunset.

[00:02:36] Mike Massimino: But what happened is when we were out there, I was working inside of the telescope, it was my third spacewalk. And I was, you know, this is my, my first one on my second mission, but my third, so I should have known what I was doing, but I was out there and, and I was doing a lot of work in the telescope, and I never put my visor down, because the sun, I wasn’t in the direct sunlight, for whatever reason, the attitude of the spaceship, my, my, you know, my visor was, was always up, you know, I kind of got out of that, that habit.

[00:03:01] Mike Massimino: And then we went into sunlight toward the end at the very end of the spacewalk. Boom. We got about an hour left and I we hit the sun like whoa, and it was riding my so I put down my visor But again, I wasn’t in that sequence mark, you know, and it’s everything’s about sequence, right? You do something you’re not out of sequence and you get messed up So I had this visor down but I wasn’t again into this routine of up and down We go into darkness just as i’m like as my buddy’s already inside the spaceship And I’m taking care of our safety tethers, which is kind of an important thing.

[00:03:29] Mike Massimino: I did a spaceship and my visor down, but forget my visors down in the sun goes down and it gets really dark and I can’t see a thing and I’ve got my helmet lights and I’m trying to, you know, correct these things to where they’re supposed to go, but I can’t see a darn thing. It was really weird. Like I was exhausted.

[00:03:46] Mike Massimino: It was a long EBA. And I was like, geez, I don’t know what’s happening here. Maybe I’m blacking out or I’m going to die. And it was really weird. Like I didn’t want to say anything like, Hey Houston, I think I’m dying. You know, I don’t want to say things like that. It’s like, I think I can get through this, right?

[00:03:58] Mike Massimino: Yeah, it’s bad. Cause it would excite a lot of people. So I just kind of was like, Oh wow, this would be really something to, if I died out here, you know, I’m sure Bueno would get me back in. And it’s like really weird what was going through my head. And then, you know, I, we, I did what I needed to do. And I somehow get back to the airlock.

[00:04:13] Mike Massimino: And then in the airlock, there’s a lot of reflective material, or at least some, some of the metal in there. And I see my visors on, Oh my goodness. So that’s the problem, you idiot. You had your visor down, you couldn’t see a damn thing. So then I get inside the spaceship and my buddy, who was a rookie, was looking out over us.

[00:04:28] Mike Massimino: He goes, you know, you had your visor down at the end. They go, yeah, no kidding, why didn’t you say something? I could have got, you know, I could have done something dumb out there. I don’t know what was, I couldn’t see a thing. And he goes, I didn’t want to embarrass you. I go, you don’t want to embarrass me.

[00:04:40] Mike Massimino: You know what, it would be more embarrassing if I couldn’t see what I was doing and floated away or, you know, I don’t know. And then we get back for the debriefs and he says, you know what I’m going to do during our debriefs? I go, what’s that? He says, I’m going to tell everybody how I made a mistake and didn’t tell you.

[00:04:53] Mike Massimino: I go, you’re not saying a word now. The time to speak up was during the flight, you know, not during the debriefs. Like Matt was out there in the darkness with his visor down. You know, that’s not gonna be good. So I don’t know, that’s the way, like, stupid things that come up. For whatever reason, that’s the first thing that came to mind.

[00:05:07] Mike Massimino: That’s a good one, though. I 

[00:05:08] Mark Divine: like that. Probably never happened again 

[00:05:09] Mike Massimino: after that, did it? No, you learned your lesson. But that didn’t happen to other people. One of my classmates years earlier said that he was out there and he pissed himself. Didn’t understand why he couldn’t see anything, and he had his visor down during the darkness, and I remember that, and I go, that’s pretty stupid.

[00:05:23] Mark Divine: You think that they would have them now where it’s automatic, or that tech is probably coming soon? 

[00:05:28] Mike Massimino: I guess sooner or later, you know, I think there is technology that can do, you know, like when you’re, I guess for glasses, for eyeglasses, when you’re out there in the sunlight doing, you know, for military purposes, or you know, you’re flying an airplane, it would be nice if you was able to, if the visor would be able to change, but with space travel, you know, Like, doing that, it was, to make a change like that would be so expensive, and as long as it works, you know, we kind of stick with what we have.

[00:05:52] Mike Massimino: But I agree with you, I think eventually, based on the lighting conditions out there spacewalking, you probably want something to to change automatically, so you don’t have to go through that. Never mind forgetting it, but just take the time to have to change it. It’s not going to be optimal, it’s either one or the other.

[00:06:06] Mark Divine: Were you a shuttle guy? I mean, did you catch that, or did you have to take the, the Russian, 

[00:06:09] Mike Massimino: uh, No, I was a shuttle guy. I got, I, I arrived in 1996, I was, uh, picked up by NASA. And, as it turned out, Mark, I, you know, we didn’t know this at the time, that was exactly the halfway mark. Because the first shuttle flight was in 1981, so we were picked 15 years after the shuttle started.

[00:06:25] Mike Massimino: And then the final shuttle flight was in 2011, 15 years later. So the whole program ran for 30 years, and I showed up right in the middle of it, and was able to be a part of the last half of the shuttle program. I never went up on Soyuz. You had three trips? Two. I had two missions. Both of my missions were the Hubble Space Telescope.

[00:06:44] Mark Divine: How long would the training be? You know, let’s say they said, Hey, Mike, you’re tagged for this mission. Is that going to be like 18 months out or three years out? Or does it depend on the mission? 

[00:06:54] Mike Massimino: Yeah, it kind of depends on a mission, Mark. And things get delayed sometimes. You know, they have to get a crew together much more quickly for some reason.

[00:07:01] Mike Massimino: But typically the way the flow goes, and I think it’s kind of similar to this now, you get selected. When you’re first selected, you’re an astronaut candidate. What they call us ASCANs. So you’re an ASCAN. 

[00:07:11] Mark Divine: Yeah, 

[00:07:12] Mike Massimino: so just to stick it to you a little bit. So you’re an ASCAN typically for about two years. It’s like astronaut college and you learn stuff.

[00:07:18] Mike Massimino: It also gives them the right to get rid of you if they don’t like you. But typically that doesn’t happen. But by that point when you get to selection, it’s a very success oriented program. So, so it’s two years of the basic training and then you’re qualified to be assigned. And then in most cases it’s still, In my case, it was another two more years until I got assigned, and then once I got assigned to answer your question, it really depends.

[00:07:42] Mike Massimino: My first mission was, Hubble was a lot of spacewalking time, so we, to schedule us in the pool and to do that in an appropriate way that we could learn and work stuff out, it’s about an 18 month cycle. My second flight ended up being a two and a half year cycle because we got delayed for a few times, which was fine, gave us more time to get ready, but, but I think that’s about right.

[00:08:03] Mike Massimino: But I think now it’s. It’s a bit different now. They can assign people a lot more quickly to when the flight is coming up. The vehicle you’re training on is almost like an automatic vehicle. So the shuttle required so much training because it was manually intensive. That required lots and lots of training.

[00:08:18] Mike Massimino: Now you’re 

[00:08:19] Mark Divine: just a passenger, right? Pretty much. In 

[00:08:21] Mike Massimino: fact, they don’t even train. This boggled my mind because when I showed up at NASA in 1996, and I wasn’t even a pilot. Like, you know, the pilot astronauts, the test pilots who actually flew the vehicle, With the control stick, landing it and so on. Their training was so intensive.

[00:08:35] Mike Massimino: But for us as mission specialists, we still had to know how to work the vehicle and do, work the robot, robotics and stuff like that. We showed up and they handed us this gigantic manual. It was called the SCOM, Shuttle Crew Operators Manual. It’s like a giant thing with like thousands of pages. They’re here to learn this.

[00:08:51] Mike Massimino: And we had like two years of, you know, that, that two years of training. And a lot of it was learning how to, you know, working on the shuttle and the simulators and so on. But it was shuttle, it was shuttle centric. Now, they don’t even talk about the vehicle that you’re going to launch on. They worry about that after you get assigned.

[00:09:06] Mike Massimino: So you’re going to learn about the space station and doing spacewalks and things like that. And then after you’re assigned to a mission, And they know what spaceship you’re going to go on, whether it’s a Soyuz or the Dragon SpaceX vehicle. 

[00:09:18] Mark Divine: If we ever get the Star Launch Alliance back If we ever get my friend 

[00:09:20] Mike Massimino: back with the spaceship that they’re hogging up, you know, then someone else could maybe use it.

[00:09:24] Mike Massimino: And that would be the, you know, the third option right now. For how you could get there. But right now I’m not sure I 

[00:09:29] Mark Divine: I’m not sure I want to fly on that one, to tell you the truth. 

[00:09:32] Mike Massimino: I think they’re going to clear it. It’s going to be okay. They’re, they’re going to figure out what They really, they’re okay to come home in that thing now.

[00:09:37] Mark Divine: Yeah, I figured they probably are. 

[00:09:39] Mike Massimino: Yeah. We’ll see how they react to it if they decide Another test flight before they put a full crew on board or what you’re gonna do But yeah, 

[00:09:46] Mark Divine: man, that’s what happens when you put too many layers of bureaucracy between you and the final product, right? It’s 

[00:09:51] Mike Massimino: more like I think it’s like a I don’t know if a PR movie I don’t know It’s just that when you when they’ve launched these guys it was they said it was nine nine days But that was really the minimum and you never really want to stay up there for that short amount of time That would be the minimum.

[00:10:06] Mike Massimino: It could be like nine days, but I, you know, I think, I don’t know what the max was, a few months or something like that, but a lot of it’s based on traffic and logistics. But if they could keep them up there longer, they typically want to at that type of mission. Like even when the SpaceX vehicle first launched, I don’t remember the, the minimum time was, but they ended up keeping those guys up there longer than expected.

[00:10:27] Mike Massimino: And that’s usually the advantage because you spend all this effort to get up there, leave the people up there, there’s plenty of supplies there, you know, there’s room for them up there. Why go through all that expense and then bring them home right away? So, I think what happened here is that, because they had these problems with the Starliner that are currently going on right now, at the time of this recording, you know, they had some issues with some of the thrusters, which weren’t necessarily life threatening, but something they want to get right and study if they have the extra time, and they’re extending, and they might have extended anyway, but when you combine that problem with the extension, people think that, They’re extending because of the problem.

[00:11:01] Mike Massimino: And really it’s more that I think they would have wanted to extend them anyway, even if there’s, if they didn’t have that problem with the thrusters. 

[00:11:07] Mark Divine: Yeah. It’s an optics issue, I guess. Yeah, people think, oh, they’re stuck. First of all, 

[00:11:12] Mike Massimino: they’re stuck in a really nice place. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind being stuck up there as long as I could get back, yeah.

[00:11:17] Mike Massimino: People with the cash are paying, you know, tens of millions of dollars as tourists to go up there and take a look. You know, these guys are, you know, they’re both Navy officers and they both think they’re still active duty, but whatever, you know, they’re up there getting, getting their salary to do, which is not a lot, but you know, there’s their job and they’re hanging out.

[00:11:35] Mike Massimino: So I guess some of, you know, some of the news I’ve done, they say, Or is it terrible that they’re stuck up there? Go away. You know, it’s like being stuck in San Diego, Mark, you know, or, oh man, I got to stay in Hawaii an extra week. What am I going to do with myself? So they’re in a really desirable location and I’m sure they’re eating it up and having fun.

[00:11:53] Mike Massimino: That does 

[00:11:53] Mark Divine: remind me of being in the teams. Like we, we would always break down. Air quote breakdown in the most beautiful places. . Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the, the flight crews were like, well, I think, we’ll, to stay here in Hawaii a couple days. Oh yeah, yeah. The plane broke again. We’re 

[00:12:05] Mike Massimino: like, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:12:07] Mike Massimino: If you could pull that off. But the real break usually had to happen somewhere where you don’t necessarily wanna be. That’s right. Can’t get out. Be 

[00:12:13] Mark Divine: there. The 

[00:12:13] Mike Massimino: bot rain 

[00:12:14] Mark Divine: or 

[00:12:14] Mike Massimino: something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was thinking like somewhere in the United States with a broken airplane. Nevermind those places. That’s a whole different story.

[00:12:20] Mike Massimino: That’s a different story. 

[00:12:22] Mark Divine: Hi, Mark Divine here from seal fit. After two years of development, I’m super stoked to announce the launch of seal fit supplements and our first product seal fit electro greens. This is the highest quality organic greens you can find combined with electrolytes into one powerful supplement take with eight ounces of water in the morning or add to your smoothie to get your day kicked off right with a proper nutritional supplementation and.

[00:12:48] Mark Divine: Hydration support and you can also use it as a pick me up booster during the day or after a workout. It dissolves immediately and believe it or not, it tastes great. I’ve had many testimonials already saying it’s the best tasting greens that they have ever tried. So, hoo yah. SealFitSupplements. com or you can find it on Amazon by searching for SealFit Electro Greens.

[00:13:13] Mark Divine: Hoo yah. Let’s do this. Divine out.

[00:13:21] Mark Divine: That is delicious. Were you building the Hubble or maintaining it? 

[00:13:26] Mike Massimino: We were maintaining it. The Hubble was built to be serviced when they built this thing back, you know, in the seventies, really, and and into the eighties. It was initially supposed to launch in the early part of the, of the shuttle program.

[00:13:37] Mike Massimino: It ended up getting delayed after it was delayed, delayed, delayed, and was gonna launch in 1986. And then they had the challenger accident in early 1986, and that shut down everything, more or less from the, from the manifest standpoint. So the thing was designed to be serviced by astronauts. It’s this great instrument.

[00:13:55] Mike Massimino: But they also built it so that you could pull stuff off and put new stuff in. So just about everything on a telescope was designed with, you know, with connectors or latches or bolts that you could take stuff out, like the solar rays. You could take those things out, disconnect them, drive a couple of bolts and pull them out of there.

[00:14:14] Mike Massimino: So that was something you could do. All the instruments, whether it was a science instrument or computer, A gyroscope, uh, no matter what it was, whatever, whatever you had in there, pretty much was designed that you could open doors if you needed to, to get behind the door to see what was there and then remove stuff and put new stuff in.

[00:14:30] Mike Massimino: We were doing servicing, which meant some stuff was busted and we needed to, to replace it with, for that reason. And other stuff was an upgrade in the technology, right? So you think of how cameras have gotten so much better. That’s kind of what a lot of those instruments are. They’re, they’re using pixels and so on to see stuff.

[00:14:48] Mike Massimino: So as that technology got better and better, and other things like solar technology got better, and a lot of things got better, we would put the new technology in, even if the old thing was still working, we would give it upgrades. So it was upgrades and servicing what needed to be replaced. 

[00:15:02] Mark Divine: Now that we’ve got the James Webb, which can see a lot further, is the Hubble still in service, or what’s the status?

[00:15:08] Mark Divine: Yeah, 

[00:15:08] Mike Massimino: it still is, and we still use a lot of telescopes all over the planet, right? So it’s not like, oh, we’ve got this really good one up there, so, We could shut down these other things. Hubble, I, and that’s the same for Webb. I mean, Webb is up there. Webb is designed and tuned to look in a very specific area of the light spectrum.

[00:15:26] Mike Massimino: In the infrared spectrum, where there’s really like, you can’t really see infrared, right? It’s kind of like just, Picking up heat, very low light. Because the idea there was to be able to try to look at the beginning, what they think is the beginning of the universe. You know, at the time of the Big Bang, which was, they estimated at 3, they’ll probably update this, I would think, 13.

[00:15:44] Mike Massimino: 8 billion light years, a billion years ago. I think they’re going to keep looking, oh, there’s more out there. But at 13. 8 billion years is what they thought. That’s the age of the universe, we think. So Hubble could see about 13 billion light years. It didn’t have that extra billion, you know, 800 million, let’s say.

[00:16:01] Mike Massimino: Anyway, so the web is designed to look even further than Hubble. But Hubble carried all the lights, the whole, pretty much the whole spectrum of light. So it can do other things that the web theoretically can’t. Looking at the same object, if you’re able to see it with web, it’s going to be much better, like a thousand fold better with the web.

[00:16:20] Mike Massimino: But still, Hubble is quite useful, as are a lot of the ground based telescopes. 

[00:16:25] Mark Divine: What do you think is the most, from your perspective, the most interesting things that we’ve learned from Hubble? Putting those telescopes up there, either Hubble or Webb or both. 

[00:16:33] Mike Massimino: I think what we learned, Mark, is that we don’t really know what the heck is going on around here, you know?

[00:16:38] Mike Massimino: I could have told NASA that. Yeah, we have no idea, you know, people make these theories and stuff and then they find out, oops, no, you know. Like, the things that kind of blew my mind was things like, this was discovered before Hubble, but the dark matter. Like 98 

[00:16:50] Mark Divine: percent of space is dark matter or something like that?

[00:16:52] Mike Massimino: Yeah, like 90, I think it’s like 90%, which means we don’t know what, which really means we don’t know what this stuff is. The rest of the stuff we can recognize, but they can tell because light will bend due to gravity. So when you get these really fancy telescopes out there, and they, they call it gravitational lensing.

[00:17:06] Mike Massimino: So you have an object, let’s say, in the, in the sky, and up, uh, some faraway place in the universe, and there’s light bending around it, they can do a calculation of how that light would bend, how much matter should be there that would cause that amount of gravity to cause light to bend that much. And they can only recognize about 10 percent or so of that matter.

[00:17:24] Mike Massimino: So they’re like We don’t know what it is. So they’re calling that dark matter. So it’s like an anti matter thing to look for. It’s kind of, you know, like science fiction y. But they just don’t know what this stuff is. With Hubble, I thought one of the really cool things that they discovered was dark energy.

[00:17:39] Mike Massimino: So with Hubble, when it launched, there were things they were going to look for, like black holes, and they found them, and also, like, the planets and other solar systems, and they found that stuff too. But what they, what they kind of stumbled upon, there was a few of the, a few astronomers We’re trying to characterize and calculate the expansion rate of the universe, right?

[00:17:57] Mike Massimino: So, the idea was you had this big 13. 8 billion years ago, and all this stuff. You got, sorry, you know, everything, like, this big explosion. And so all that material, let’s say, all this stuff is, like, getting flung around and out through the universe. And so the idea was, is that, or the thought, the assumption was, is that as things go further out there, they start to slow down.

[00:18:18] Mike Massimino: It’s like, you know, throwing a baseball or a football. So you’re going to throw it, the faster you can throw it. The further it’s going to go, but eventually it’s going to slow down and hit the ground. It’ll slow down after it launches, let’s say, right. And they found out that it wasn’t decelerating. It was actually accelerating.

[00:18:32] Mike Massimino: So it’s like you threw your football or your baseball or whatever you throw in and it doesn’t slow down. It actually picks up speed as it gets further away from you, which is kind of nuts. There’s this energy source that they don’t know what it is. And that led to the awarding of a Nobel prize. Which is kind of a big discovery, although I was like, well, you don’t even know what it is, but you still get the Nobel Prize, so this is kind of cool.

[00:18:52] Mike Massimino: But they used some of the instruments we installed to determine that, so that was kind of fun to be a small part of that. That’s pretty cool. 

[00:18:58] Mark Divine: How did being in space, like, change your perspective on what it means to be a human and, you know, Mother Earth and all that? Because, I mean, it’s such, it’s so cool just to even, even, you know, when we saw the first pictures, right, of the Earth, like, from the moon with Neil Armstrong and those guys, it, it shifted something, right?

[00:19:16] Mark Divine: So what was the big shift for you? 

[00:19:18] Mike Massimino: I think there are, there are a couple things, Mark. One is the thought that went through my mind, it was on my second spacewalk, on my first flight, when I really had a chance to look at the planet, was I thought, oh, this is like a heavenly view, you know, up and away, and can be looking down from heaven or something like, you know, that was kind of thought that went through my head.

[00:19:34] Mike Massimino: And then I thought, after that, I thought, no, man, this is more beautiful than that. This is what heaven must look like. And I really felt like I was looking into absolute paradise. And that’s one thing, is that, you know, And I think we’re, we’re living in a paradise. And I know there’s a lot of bad stuff going on.

[00:19:51] Mike Massimino: You know, there’s bad stuff going on probably right now as we’re talking, we’re going to find out about when we get off. Well, Oh, geez, look what happened now. But the planet itself, I think, is beautiful and perfect, and we’re so lucky to be here, and it made me realize that we really need to appreciate this place.

[00:20:07] Mike Massimino: You know, you don’t have to go to space for that, it’s just in general, the people that are around us, it’s an amazing place. I’m here in New York City, and even the buildings and the flow of traffic and people and this whole rhythm of life that we have here is pretty amazing. I live close to Central Park, I can go in there and see trees, that’s kind of cool.

[00:20:24] Mike Massimino: You’re out in San Diego, you’ve got a, I would say, probably a much nicer view of nature out there looking at the ocean. It’s spectacular, you know, it’s just amazing that we get to, to live here every day. And, uh, just made me appreciate things more. Rain, you don’t get any weather in space, but you get that down here.

[00:20:41] Mike Massimino: I feel like we’re living in a paradise, and we are very lucky every moment we get to spend here. And then the other thing that hit me, it was on my, my, uh, second space flight at some point, going around the planet. And I had this, when I look at the planet, Off of my shoulder, I had the sense that that is home and it changed my thought of what home was.

[00:21:00] Mike Massimino: It’s like, that’s where I’m from. That’s where everybody that I know, everybody that lived before me and after, as far as we know, everybody’s here, right. And there’s one spot, everyone that’s ever lived, everyone that’s coming next. You know, maybe we’ll find life somewhere else eventually, but all we know about everything is there.

[00:21:16] Mike Massimino: Everything is that this is our home. And when I was a kid, I grew up in a, in a, just outside of New York city in a town called Franklin square in Long Island. Like, that was my home, right? You know, we, we never really went anywhere either. We stuck around the neighborhood mainly. That was home. And then as I got older and moved around a little bit and went to college, I think I identified more as a New Yorker as I moved around different places in the country.

[00:21:36] Mike Massimino: I’m from New York. And then, as an astronaut especially, I think I identified as an American. But that was who I was. I’m an American. I represent our country. And I’m an American. But, after going to space, it was again, sometime on my second flight, I started thinking, really what home is, is our planet. And a place that we all share, no matter where you’re from, around our country or other countries, we all share that same spot.

[00:21:56] Mike Massimino: So that’s, that’s I guess what, what has changed is that we’re living in a paradise and we all share our home is earth. And we all share. That’s right. 

[00:22:05] Mark Divine: I love that. You know, you just described the progression from egocentric to ethnocentric to cosmocentric. Well, world and then cosmocentric, which is a classic developmental model that, you know, generally most people never really go beyond the egocentric, right?

[00:22:20] Mark Divine: And you have some, you know, overlap between ego and ethics like my country, my, my, you know, American exceptionalism, Chinese exceptionalism, that kind of stuff. But to get to a truly cosmocentric or let’s just say world centric where humanity, all of humanity is included in your circle of care and concern, all sentient beings, Mother Earth included.

[00:22:40] Mark Divine: That’s profound. I can see how going to space could create that shift, like, spontaneously. Meditation, long term meditation practice does it too, so I was thinking, you know, kind of make a comment. You don’t have to go to outer space, you can go to inner space as well to achieve similar benefits, right? That sense of just awe and beauty and connection.

[00:22:58] Mark Divine: It’s within all of us, right? One of my favorite meditations, Mike, is to view Mother Earth, right? In my heart or, you know, in my body. When you meditate for a long period of time and you have this experience of allness where everything is included in your representation of what you believe to be your mind, then, you know, There’s no boundaries, right?

[00:23:20] Mark Divine: And that’s what unity consciousness is like. I went off a little little tangent there, but I like it It’s cool. Cuz I I’ve always I had a dream of going to space. I was a little late to the game So it wasn’t a realistic goal for me because I was already in my 30s. I had met by William Shepard You remember Bill Shepard?

[00:23:36] Mike Massimino: Oh, yeah ship. Sure. Yeah, 

[00:23:37] Mark Divine: he was my Navy Navy SEAL, buddy I mean, he’s a little over me, but I met him and I was a junior lieutenant and you know He was kind of you know You know, we were all kind of fascinated, because he was the first SEAL, you know, they had Cassidy come in, and then a guy named Lee, he’s a Korean guy, and there’s one more, I think, that got picked up.

[00:23:54] Mark Divine: Anyway, so, Bill was quite a character. Remember, like, he went to the space station, he was supposed to name it something different, and he came up with his own name. 

[00:24:02] Mike Massimino: I’m trying to remember, uh, what, do you remember what it was? I should know that, but it’ll come to me. Yeah, he was quite a character, he was right, he was the first commander of the space station.

[00:24:12] Mike Massimino: Yes, he was up there with two Russians, the very first expedition crew. I think 

[00:24:16] Mark Divine: they wanted the SEAL up there to make sure that we could maintain control. Having SEALs 

[00:24:20] Mike Massimino: around are a handy thing. You should always have at least one in the office. So we had Jeff, and you always could have one of them, they’re very handy folks.

[00:24:26] Mike Massimino: Something, you know, Cassidy was kept, like, we dropped something in the pool. They used to do spacewalk training in a small, they have a gigantic facility now, but we had a slightly smaller facility. And someone dropped something, I don’t know what they dropped in there, but, you know, like, who can go get it down there?

[00:24:40] Mike Massimino: You know, they call Cassidy, so he would go, you know, it’s always good, you never know, it just makes you feel better, not just about the water, but just in general, having a guy like that, yeah, Shep, Shep was great, and Cassidy is a great guy too. 

[00:24:51] Mark Divine: But you met Neil Armstrong, I see that from your bio, he was an old timer, but was he there as a mentor, or 

[00:24:56] Mike Massimino: how did that come about?

[00:24:57] Mike Massimino: I think it was just luck, on our very first week as astronauts, he was in town, getting his physical, they get like a yearly physical that you come back for. And our training coordinator, a nice lady by the name of Paige Maltzby, got wind of him being there and said, Hey, we got these new astronauts. Do you want to come speak to them?

[00:25:15] Mike Massimino: And he was like, Yeah. He said, But I only want to speak to the new class. I don’t want to be, you know, I don’t want to be in a big auditorium with a lot of people. I just want to speak to the new guys. So he came in. Yeah, he was great. And what was interesting about it, he was really shy, like almost painfully shy.

[00:25:31] Mike Massimino: And he got up there. We gave him a good round. He was like almost embarrassed. NASA It seemed like for the attention he got. And he didn’t even talk about walking on the moon. He got up there and he started talking about what it was like to fly the X 15 and being a test pilot. 

[00:25:44] /

[00:25:44] 

[00:28:34] Mike Massimino: Maybe he didn’t walk on the moon after all.

[00:28:37] Mike Massimino: No, he walked on the moon. There’s a lot of people that are asking him. We started asking him, and then he started telling us moon stories. No, he certainly did. He was a really interesting guy. No, there’s no pictures of him on the moon. They had the one camera, and he took pictures of the other guy. So those iconic pictures of man on the moon are all Buzz Aldrin.

[00:28:54] Mike Massimino: Cause, can you imagine? We take so many pictures now. Going to the moon and not getting a photo of yourself? Being the first dude on the moon and not with a photo? Can you imagine? But he didn’t care. He was all about the mission. And there was no names on the Apollo 11 patch. You know, most astronauts In fact, all of them except for that one and Apollo 13 have names on them.

[00:29:12] Mike Massimino: Mine certainly do. Every, every flight since. But he didn’t want that. You know, they decided as a crew, but I think it was mainly Neil saying No, this is a, for Apollo 11, this is a world accomplishment. You claim that you, he gave you some 

[00:29:24] Mark Divine: comically misguided advice. 

[00:29:25] Mike Massimino: Uh, when I, I first met him, I asked him, you know, what he said, cause I’m old enough to remember, I was six years old when he was on the moon.

[00:29:32] Mike Massimino: And I’m old enough to remember that and I was a little kid watching that in my pajamas and like that just blew my mind. I was like, these guys, it wasn’t only that I thought spaceflight was cool. I thought those guys were cool. This is, I want to grow up to be like Neil Armstrong. So they were really, he was my idol and I got a chance to meet him as a new astronaut for the first time.

[00:29:52] Mike Massimino: It was the first time I met him was then when he came to visit us to talk to us and I asked him, It was not in front of the whole class, but it was like the next day I saw him on the lunch line. I gotta say something to this guy and I introduced myself and asked him, well, how did he come up with the thing?

[00:30:06] Mike Massimino: He said on the moon is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Cause I remember that as a little kid and it was in all the papers and all that, you know, that was it, man. It’s just, I always thought that he was scripted and given that. So here, you say this when you, that’s what I thought, you know, I’m like, how do you come as I got older?

[00:30:21] Mike Massimino: I’m like, you know, so that’s what I asked you. How did you come up with that? Did it, you know, did you hire a publicist? Did your wife tell you to say that? Like I thought that was probably, so someone come up with that thing and he looks at me and he says, Mike, I didn’t think about what I was gonna say on the moon until after I landed on the moon.

[00:30:37] Mike Massimino: I’m like, what? Really? And he says, yeah, Mike, I finally land on the moon. There’d be no reason to say anything. He was like, he got a point. And then he went on. You know, I think he was looking, used as a teaching moment with this brand new guy who was a civilian coming into this operational world now, right?

[00:30:50] Mike Massimino: So he said, you know, Mike, you’re new to this, but this is a dangerous business. And if you get distracted by all this public relations stuff, bad stuff can happen. So, stick to your job, don’t get distracted, worry about all that stuff later. And, you know, just do your job. Concentrate on, on your job. And he’s like, you got it?

[00:31:07] Mike Massimino: And I was like, I got it. So then years later, they asked me to send this first tweet from space. Very historic, right? I wasn’t really thinking much about what I was going to say, of course, because I was taking my idol’s advice. And in your very last press conference, NASA said I was going to send this first tweet from space.

[00:31:22] Mike Massimino: So I get asked about it in our final press conference, you know, what are you going to tweet? Have you thought about it? No, and I’m channeling Neil Armstrong. Like, no, I’m not thinking about that. We’ve got to get to orbit first. If we don’t get to orbit, there’s no reason to tweet anything. You know, I’m Neil Armstrong.

[00:31:36] Mike Massimino: I’m not worrying about any of that. We got the mission to worry about. We get to space and I open up the computer and I’m looking at that thing. I’m looking just like this, like staring at the computer, kind of floating there. And I realize, I can’t think of a thing. That advice I got was the worst advice I ever got in my life.

[00:31:55] Mike Massimino: Like, why did he tell me that? I can’t think of a thing. Now the 

[00:31:58] Mark Divine: pressure’s on. Now 

[00:31:58] Mike Massimino: the pressure’s on, but then Mark, after like a minute or so, I’m like, He lied to me. There’s no way that this guy’s on the moon. I’m sitting there, you know, just floating around, even some floating around. No one even, maybe a handful of people even know I’m up there.

[00:32:10] Mike Massimino: This guy, the whole world was listening. Like everybody, friend or foe, it didn’t matter where you were around the planet. Everyone was listening to what this guy was going to say. And he’s on the moon, right? He’s on the moon for the first time ever of anybody. And he comes up with that. I go, 

[00:32:25] Mark Divine: he lied to me.

[00:32:26] Mark Divine: I think he did too. I’m a little bit of a skeptic around those things. Like. Yeah, that’s a good story that he didn’t know what he was going to say, but that’s too perfect. 

[00:32:33] Mike Massimino: I tell you what happened after is that I was watching the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. They had like a lot of things about Neil Armstrong on and they had an interview and he died back I think it was like 2012 or 2013.

[00:32:44] Mike Massimino: He passed away And so he wasn’t around of course for anything in 2019 on the 50th anniversary But they had a, like an interview with his brother, and his brother’s there was like, Oh, I was playing Monopoly with Neil right before the, right before he went to the moon. He passed me a little note and I opened it up and it said, One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

[00:33:02] Mike Massimino: And he said, what do you, what do you think of that? And I said, oh, I think it’s pretty good. You know, like I gave the, I gave Neil the thumbs up. And I’m like, oh, there it is, there’s the evidence. So I saw his sons, Mark and Rick, become friendly with his sons and they were at, We were at some event again for this 50th anniversary back, there’s a lot of stuff going on around different places.

[00:33:19] Mike Massimino: So I saw it, I go, look, let me, let me ask you guys something. I, you know, I saw this, your dad, I told him what your dad had told me. And then he said, I saw your uncle say that he, you know, that your, your dad shared what he was going to say with him. And I go, oh, I forget the guy’s name, was it Uncle Billy or whatever?

[00:33:32] Mike Massimino: And I’m like, yeah, that guy. And he goes, oh, you can’t pay attention to that guy. He was, he’s always like trying to ride on dad’s coattails and saying, making all kinds of claims. Dad didn’t tell him anything. Dad probably never even played Monopoly with him. Like don’t even, don’t pay attention. And then, one of his son, I can’t remember which one it was, but, but he turns to me and he goes, Mike, if dad told you that, that was the truth.

[00:33:51] Mike Massimino: That’s what I think is actually the truth. I think he had a poet in him. I’m not saying he didn’t think about it ahead of time to come up with that, but You know, I think he was true to his word. To me, he’s a great hero. That’s amazing. Either way, it’s pretty 

[00:34:02] Mark Divine: extraordinary. I don’t know why the uncle would make that up, though.

[00:34:05] Mark Divine: I don’t know, but it’s a good story, Mark. It’s a good story. Most of life are good stories, right? That’s right. That’s why we call it his story, right? That’s right. Not 

[00:34:14] Mike Massimino: one story is his story. I was talking to Jim Lovell, another one of my heroes, the Apollo 13 commander, and he was saying something about, like, the time they launched at 1313 or whatever it was, something like this.

[00:34:25] Mike Massimino: And I heard him say this to this crowd, and I go, Jim, you know, that time, you know, you were on the eastern time, but you were, that’s, that’s Houston time, you’re in, in the, you know, the time really was an hour later or something, whatever I said to him, and he goes, Mike, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

[00:34:39] Mike Massimino: Were you 

[00:34:39] Mark Divine: an engineer by your educational training? Is that what you were in for? I mean Yeah, 

[00:34:43] Mike Massimino: when I went to college, you know, by that point I realized I was, you know, I felt like I was never gonna be, could become an astronaut, that’s impossible. I’m not a thrill seeker, Mark. You know, I never, I didn’t like heights.

[00:34:52] Mike Massimino: I still don’t like heights. I mean, I’ve had to learn to deal with them on certain occasions. But I’m fine in an airplane or a zipline or even a rappel. As long as I’m moving, I’m okay. I don’t like looking over the side of a building or anything. I’m fine in space, all right. But really what I’m afraid of is gravity.

[00:35:07] Mike Massimino: I don’t like the idea of falling to my death. But I never saw myself as a thrill seeker and I, you know, I said I can never do this. But when I was in college, my senior year, I saw this movie, The Right Stuff. When it’s based on a book by Tom Wolfe. So I saw that movie and it was about the original seven astronauts and they kind of rekindled my interest.

[00:35:23] Mike Massimino: But up to that point, I was one with Chuck Yeager was really, yeah, Chuck Yeager was portrayed very heroically in there and, and John Glenn and Alan Shepard, all those 

[00:35:32] Mark Divine: guys. And it was 

[00:35:32] Mike Massimino: like, this is cool. You know, that got me interested again. But up until that point, I really never thought about any career in the space program.

[00:35:40] Mike Massimino: So once I saw that movie, then it kind of changed. I worked for IBM for a couple of years. I was an industrial engineer. As an undergrad because I wasn’t thinking about really, you know, what I was going to do other than getting a job and what I was interested in studying. So when I went to grad school, I worked for a couple years and I went to grad school for mechanical engineering and got into the space related research and that’s what I did.

[00:36:01] Mike Massimino: I went the academic route to get to the astronaut office, the civilian academic route. 

[00:36:06] Mark Divine: You didn’t get in the first time. I think it took you three times. So how do you stay motivated? Because it seems like, I mean, the wicket is such a narrow, Yeah, it’s near a hoop to jump through. 

[00:36:16] Mike Massimino: Well, I realized when I wanted to do it, you know, all those Navy SEALs, I was reading up on you, Mark, and they’re like 190 guys and 15 made it through or something like that?

[00:36:26] Mark Divine: Yeah, I had 185 in my class and 19 of us graduated. Nineteen? Pretty slim 

[00:36:31] Mike Massimino: pickings 

[00:36:32] Mark Divine: there, too. Yeah, pretty 

[00:36:32] Mike Massimino: slim. This is a lot different. This is just an application. They didn’t torture us. I don’t want to last, you know, they couldn’t. They couldn’t torture us. We went to like some of the, uh, You know the survival school training, but if they would have hurt one of us, they would have got in trouble It wasn’t like what they did, you know, it’s completely different completely different universe from what you know Your selection was like but so ours was just like mainly paperwork and interview and and stuff like that Don’t like thousands of people apply for like 20 slots.

[00:36:59] Mike Massimino: That’s the thing You know and guys like you mentioned like bill shepard and you know in chris cassidy People like that who are really sharp with, you know, who have great military backgrounds, but also great academic backgrounds. Most of those guys have master’s degrees from MIT for Christ’s sake. No, they’re really high performing people.

[00:37:14] Mike Massimino: And the, and the civilians were like that too. We didn’t have the military background, but they had other things going on, which were incredible. And when you have that many people who are qualified and high performers. Trying to get just a few slots, it’s kind of impossible. And so I realized that, you know, well, it’s very unlikely, but it’s not impossible, right?

[00:37:34] Mike Massimino: The only way it’s impossible is if I didn’t try, then it’s not, no one’s gonna knock on my door to be a NASA astronaut. No one’s gonna like give you the opportunity to be a seal, right? You’re gonna have to go through those trials. They’re not gonna knock on your door, you know that you gotta, you gotta seek it out and, and do whatever you need to do to try to get in.

[00:37:49] Mike Massimino: The least that I could do is just keep trying. So as you say, I got rejected twice outright, you know, so you keep applying and then they go to a selection. So the first selection, I got rejected. The second one, I got rejected outright. The third one, I got an interview and then got medically disqualified for my eyesight.

[00:38:05] Mike Massimino: So I did some vision training to, to get my eyes better. This is not an issue anymore. All the training standards have changed. This is, you know, going back however many years that was. 19, you know, geez, like 30 years ago. The standards have all changed. But back then you had to see pretty well with uncorrected vision.

[00:38:19] Mike Massimino: And I couldn’t do it. So I did some training. I was able to, to get a couple extra lines on the, on the eye chart. Because I just wanted to try. You know, if I was going to be told no, I wanted them to tell me no. Like, Hey, we’ve got all these other people out. I didn’t want to be just medically ditched. So I was able to overcome that.

[00:38:33] Mike Massimino: So at least I could try again. And then the fourth time I applied, I got the interview and everything went well and I got picked. My view of success now is a little bit different because you can’t guarantee that you’re going to be successful at what you’re trying to do. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile to try.

[00:38:50] Mike Massimino: And so I feel like as long as you’re trying, that’s success. As long as you’re pursuing whatever that goal is and not giving up, no matter what happens to you. That, to me, is the definition of success. You might not be able to make it through, and sometimes it’s factors beyond your control, but certainly you shouldn’t be the one pulling the plug on what you want to do.

[00:39:08] Mike Massimino: Let other people do that to you. You know, you should just hang in there as much as you can. 

[00:39:12] Mark Divine: Embrace the journey, and the challenges, and the lessons, and be surprised by where it leads you. 

[00:39:18] Mike Massimino: That’s the other thing, Mark, is that, you know, you never know where that journey is going to take you. After that second interview, when I was waiting to hear, right?

[00:39:26] Mike Massimino: And I was on vacation with my family, my kids were little, and we, I was teaching at Georgia Tech, and we went to, I think San Simon or one of those islands off of Georgia, and we were on the beach, and I was saying, you know, I was thinking to myself, you know, if I get rejected, which is probably going to happen, I’m going to apply again.

[00:39:42] Mike Massimino: You know, I was still young enough at that point to even, to try again. But, but I was like, if it ends here, if I never get it, if I get told no again, I’m in a pretty nice spot. You know, it gave me motivation to get more education. I learned to fly airplanes. I got my scuba license. And I did a lot of really cool things with NASA.

[00:40:00] Mike Massimino: A lot of cool experiences. And I was set up as a professor doing space research at Georgia Tech. And life was pretty good. And I think it’s good to have, when you’re motivated and you’re trying, you keep pushing yourself to do things that are out of your comfort zone. All of a sudden, stuff starts happening you can never even imagine.

[00:40:16] Mike Massimino: So I think you’re right. The journey, what’s going to be in front of you, you have no idea. If you’re pursuing something, you never know what’s going to, what’s going to come your way. 

[00:40:24] Mark Divine: I’ve been asked a question similar to the one I’m about to ask you, but I’d love to hear your perspective as an astronaut.

[00:40:30] Mark Divine: People think that Navy SEALs don’t experience fear, and I say that’s bull Everyone experiences fear. Fear is just a natural occurring thing. It’s how we deal with it that makes the difference. So how do you, either individually or how are you trained as an astronaut, to really Manage fear and stress and the intense, you know, environments and turn that into, you know, success.

[00:40:53] Mike Massimino: You know, again, this is new for me, Mark. I was not a military guy and not a high adventure guy. So a lot of these things were, were new for me to be put in situations. Where I was scared. I think there to me there are like two categories. Maybe I just making this up now mark I love when you’re thinking to yourself.

[00:41:08] Mike Massimino: I can’t wait to see 

[00:41:09] Mark Divine: what comes out of my mouth next. 

[00:41:10] Mike Massimino: Yeah, here we go So, I don’t know what’s gonna come out, but I think it is actually one I’ve talked about before But there’s times where you don’t have time to think right the times You don’t have any time to think and there are other times where you can think right, right So let’s say you’re in one of those those situations where you don’t have time to think I’ve only been in a couple of those I don’t think anywhere near what you’ve experienced But it was an airplane incident.

[00:41:33] Mike Massimino: We had a hydraulic failure and we, we thought we might have to eject out of the aircraft because we can’t control the aircraft. If we had about 20 minutes to get on the ground and we were going through the ejection sequence and I remember thinking you should be scared right now, but being scared is not going to help being scared.

[00:41:47] Mike Massimino: If it paralyzes you right now, this could be really bad. Right? So I needed to think. And so we lie on the checklist and I was with a buddy and we’re going through the checklist and we’re going to remain calm. We’re not going to panic because that could kill us in this situation. So it was like, Being scared is not going to help.

[00:42:02] Mike Massimino: And I never thought I would react that way. It happened to me once in space as well. When I had a problem during a spacewalk and I was like, you should be scared right now, but I was like, no, no, no, no, that’s not going to help right now. So I think part of that was, you know, part is like realizing that being scared is not going to help, or it could, and it could really be a problem.

[00:42:19] Mike Massimino: And that was, I would say in the category, right. I felt like I didn’t have time to think. I didn’t have time to be scared. Being scared is a luxury. There are other times, like when I was going on the spaceship, I remember looking up at the shuttle for the very first time. And it looked like a beast, man. It was like all ready to go and fueled and smoke’s coming off of it.

[00:42:35] Mike Massimino: And it’s making these really horrible noises. You know what I’m standing there looking up at this fricking beast that looked angry and I was like, it looked alive. And I realized, you know. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. 

[00:42:47] Mark Divine: It’s 

[00:42:48] Mike Massimino: a little late to have that thought. You know, I actually thought about running for it, but I’m just going to run me down.

[00:42:53] Mike Massimino: There was all these security guys with these big weapons around us, you know, and we weren’t there for terrorists. They were there to make sure we were going to get on. I was convinced that they’re looking right at me. I go, shouldn’t you guys be looking over there for bad guys? You know, but they’re like, nah, you know, 

[00:43:07] Mark Divine: he’s a risk.

[00:43:08] Mark Divine: He’s a flight risk. Yeah, that’s right. Like 

[00:43:09] Mike Massimino: they were like, I think they knew what was going through. I think that probably someone warned him, like all these rookies. You know, keep an eye on them. They’re the ones that, you know, make sure, you know, so I was like, well, I got to go. But the thing that I learned in those situations is like, you have to trust, like, okay, wait a minute, you know, trust your, trust your training.

[00:43:25] Mike Massimino: My name wasn’t picked out of a hat. I’m ready to go. I know the procedures. We just refreshed all the emergency procedures. It’s like the last thing you do before you get on board. If something happens, we’re going to be able to act and hopefully take care of it. But I’ve been trained and I’m ready to go.

[00:43:39] Mike Massimino: They wouldn’t let me go if I wasn’t qualified to go. We are trained. I’m going to rely on my training. So that was one. The second trust was trust your gear. You know, we needed things to work. We needed more parachutes or any of our emergency equipment. The shuttle itself. All the stuff that we had from the stuff we were wearing to the stuff we were going to use inside.

[00:43:57] Mike Massimino: All that gear is going to be there for us. It’s going to work for us. So trust your training, trust your gear, and then trust your team. Life’s an open book test. You know, and I had six other crewmates with me. I had a control center full of people that are going to be looking out after us. And if we needed help, they were going to be just as involved as we were in coming up with a solution.

[00:44:15] Mike Massimino: So trust your training, trust your gear, trust your team. And then that, that allowed me to trust myself and those trusts. I think that’s what you have to, when you, when you get a little worried about getting like, Oh crap, how did I get myself in this situation? You know, you’re, you’re ready for it and you have to be able to engage it.

[00:44:31] Mike Massimino: I think being nervous is okay about things ahead of, like way ahead of time. Yeah. It was like, Oh man, what happens if this happens, that happens. And then it’s okay. That’s good. You know, if you’re nervous because it shows that it matters, I think. 

[00:44:41] Mark Divine: That nervousness causes you to think through contingency plans.

[00:44:44] Mark Divine: But once 

[00:44:45] Mike Massimino: you get to the moment, I found like, Okay, that’s done. Now it’s time to execute. And let’s execute the plan. You know, the time for being nervous, that’s not going to help now. What we need to do is rely on the training and the tools and the team and let’s go, let’s go execute the plan. Right on.

[00:45:01] Mike Massimino: Love it. 

[00:45:02] Mark Divine: Man, I could talk to you for hours. This is so much fun, but we got to wind down pretty soon. Not a couple more questions. So NASA is kind of focused on going to the moon with the Artemis program and Elon’s focused on going to Mars. Hopefully NASA and Elon will work together on that one. I think so.

[00:45:18] Mark Divine: What’s your perspective on where we are today, United States in terms of. of our space programs. Are we moving forward? Is it good? Or are we in a doldrums? No, I 

[00:45:27] Mike Massimino: think it’s good, Mark. I think it’s overall good. I think what happened, I didn’t really realize this was going on at the time, but as the shuttle was winding down, there was an emphasis put on, we knew we needed another spaceship.

[00:45:39] Mike Massimino: It was, after the second accident, you know, I was like, alright, you know, we’re going to fly a few more flights and then we’re going to retire this thing. We need another spaceship, of course. So I think we were kind of thinking, well, it’d be like a new space shuttle or something. But then what NASA did is they started a commercial crew program where they, they started to fund a few companies and they had a few, they downsized the competition after a few rounds, and they settled on SpaceX and Boeing.

[00:46:03] Mike Massimino: So the Starliner that’s up there now is part of that program. And the SpaceX Dragon that’s been going up and down for the past few years, that’s part of that program. But at the time when it was first brought up, we were like, ah, we don’t know if this is such a great idea. But it, we, we do have, in this country, we have a lot of good things, I think.

[00:46:18] Mike Massimino: You know, I think that the military and NASA and the science we’re able to produce as a government, our government agencies I think do a pretty good job of that. You know, I think in some cases a great job of it. I think NASA was a little bit constrained because being a government agency, when it was developing a new spaceship, for example, You know, that, that tax dollar was spread around different places, and it’s the tax dollar you’re dealing with.

[00:46:39] Mike Massimino: You can’t spend it for all, every, you can’t spend all that money, you can’t spend all the tax dollar. You’re gonna be given a budget, right? NASA is. And so I think they’re maintained pretty well, and, you know, kind of like national parks, sort of. You know, everyone likes them, but you’re not gonna bet the farm on them.

[00:46:55] Mike Massimino: So I think NASA realized that we can’t do everything we want to do, but You have this, this amazing entrepreneurship and an American economy and technology that can be used to, if you could direct it towards space travel, I mean, look at airplanes, for example, you know, that was mainly a military government development for World War One and then World War Two, and then eventually it became a thriving commercial airline industry once commercial activity and companies got involved.

[00:47:24] Mike Massimino: And I think that’s what we’re seeing now with, with space travel. So I think the government will always have a role. But I think to do all these things, they’ve dreamt about for decades, to go to Mars and settle on the moon and all that, I don’t, the government I don’t think can afford to do that. They’ve, they’ve teamed up with other countries, that’s been helpful, but I think teaming up with industry, and it’s industries, you know, the companies are around the world that are coming up with ideas.

[00:47:48] Mike Massimino: We’re all kinds of ideas and they’re getting, they’re getting investments from, from all over the place, but not just money coming from the government. So I think overall that’s a, that’s a good thing. It’s showing benefits. I mean, the amount of launches. of not just people, but satellites and experiments and all kinds of stuff.

[00:48:04] Mike Massimino: Incredible. 

[00:48:04] Mark Divine: We watched the launches from Vandenberg off our back deck over the ocean. Oh, cool. In the Pacific. It’s really cool. We watched them launch the, uh, the Starlink, the satellite. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:48:13] Mike Massimino: Yeah. It’s amazing. It’ll go up 

[00:48:14] Mark Divine: and then you see these little pods go out in these little lights. Yeah, yeah. It is really cool.

[00:48:19] Mark Divine: Yeah. 

[00:48:20] Mike Massimino: This whole commercial stuff, so. Overall, I think it’s a good thing. I think there’s always going to be role for governments to do stuff. You know, I think that there’ll always be government astronauts like NASA, or at least for a long, a long time anyway, but I, I think that kind of mix of. Industry and, and government, I think, is a good thing.

[00:48:37] Mark Divine: You know, um, last question, a lot of military pilots have claims to, you know, have run ins with unidentified vehicles that defy, you know, the, the laws of physics as we know it. What’s your take on that? Do you think we’re alone? Do you, you know, do you think these things are real? 

[00:48:54] Mike Massimino: Well, overall, I think there’s got to be someone else out there.

[00:48:57] Mike Massimino: I think that, you know, you look at what Hubble has shown us and, and what web is showing us as well. There are billions of galaxies with billions of stars in each one of those. That’s a big number, Mark. I don’t know what number that is, but that’s big. Most of these stars have multiple planets orbiting around them.

[00:49:14] Mike Massimino: There’s a lot of possibilities. And as we’re getting. The technology and the ability to analyze even our own solar system. We’re finding the signs of, the building blocks of life, not signs of life, but looking out at the, um, the moons of Jupiter. We, they thought they’re frozen, they’re far away from the sun and they’re made of ice.

[00:49:34] Mike Massimino: But they thought they’re just frozen solid. But what they’ve discovered is they’re warmer than what they expected. They’re like frozen with ocean underneath, right? That’s right. So you, you know, we think that a lot of scientists think that life began in the ocean here. You know, there’s possibilities out there.

[00:49:48] Mike Massimino: That doesn’t mean there’s any anything at all out there, but just to find these building blocks within our own solar system, imagine what we might find elsewhere. So I do think there’s life out there somewhere. As far as like the UFOs go, I think a lot of it is illusions sometimes, you know, it’s like your brain tries to make sense of something.

[00:50:05] Mike Massimino: And it sums optical illusions and so a lot of that stuff can be explained or it’s, you know, some Drone or who knows what it is or maybe it’s a classified aircraft or something and they don’t know about it But that’s maybe 90 or 95 percent of that stuff. There’s still that 5 to 10 percent They don’t know what the heck this stuff is, you know, that doesn’t mean it’s ET You know, that’s like a big leap that oh, we don’t know what it is.

[00:50:25] Mike Massimino: It’s gotta be ET I don’t know about that because you need real evidence for that, but certainly there are things, you know, that high altitude balloons or other things that maybe shouldn’t be flying in certain places and are, we should know what’s going on. So I think identifying what those things are important, and NASA put together a committee to study these UFOs, and it was a serious group of people.

[00:50:47] Mike Massimino: My classmate, my astronaut classmate and friend Scott Kelly was on this. I met Scott. I did a podcast with him a while ago. He had a twin brother. The twin brothers were up in space, right? Yeah, right, yeah. His brother was in a talk to become a vice presidential candidate. Until today. But that’s a whole other story.

[00:51:02] Mike Massimino: That’s a whole other story. We don’t want to go there, I don’t think. Politics. But yeah, that’s the guy. So Scott was on his committee along with a bunch of other like really serious scientists. The guy who was the head of this committee was a guy named Matt Mountain. And Matt was the head of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

[00:51:17] Mike Massimino: During my, when my first flight was up. So the Space Telescope Science Institute takes all the data from Hubble and Webb and other places. And, you know, they’re, this is a pretty, you know, incredible bunch of astronomers and scientists and other people on this committee. And this, what they found was that, yeah, you know, we can explain a lot of this stuff.

[00:51:33] Mike Massimino: But there’s still that five to ten percent that we don’t know what it is. I have a doubt that it’s ET because that’s quite a leap. But I do think with stuff that we need to try to figure out what it is. So, but, and I do think there’s life out there. I think that they were going to hopefully find more signs of it as the time goes on and then maybe make a connection, but I think it’s gotta be, I don’t think there’s any reason to think that we’re the only ones here.

[00:51:54] Mark Divine: No, it is. It’s just curious. Cause I agree with you that 5 percent that, that hump factor. And then, you know, there’s just little data points that pop up, at least in my conscience, like one of them that really just got me scratching my head was there was a four star. Israeli Mossad general who had retired and he came out and he said, Okay, I’m just going to say this.

[00:52:14] Mark Divine: I got nothing to lose anymore. I’m retired. I’m going to get canceled for this or killed, but we’re already working with aliens. Really? In a secret base on Mars. And I was like, what? He just said that? Days later, I tried to find that comment, I tried to find references, and it’s gone. It’s gone. I know, isn’t that cool?

[00:52:33] Mark Divine: It’s like, what? And then the other thing that always blew my mind is, is the Air Force’s X whatever plane, right? The like, little mini That’s a real thing! It’s a real thing, yeah. I’ve seen it land out at Edwards Air Force Base. This thing goes up, disappears for like nine months. Yeah! And then it comes back and nobody says anything, like, where the heck is it?

[00:52:54] Mark Divine: It’s in orbit. No, I 

[00:52:56] Mike Massimino: don’t think, I 

[00:52:57] Mark Divine: don’t think 

[00:52:58] Mike Massimino: that’s it. Maybe it’s in Mars. No, I don’t think it’s, there’s no way. I don’t think, you know, that’s, that would be interesting. But I, no, I think that’s an orbitable vehicle, an orbital vehicle. orbiting 

[00:53:09] Mark Divine: with another platform. 

[00:53:11] Mike Massimino: No, I think it’s just going around. I think they’re just collecting data on it.

[00:53:14] Mark Divine: I really don’t know, Mark. I mean, probably. Why do they need to collect nine months of data? Like, that’s just a puzzle to me. It’s like one of those things that just Doesn’t add up the official story 

[00:53:22] Mike Massimino: for I would say is trying to take data on radiation exposure Maybe readings in the upper atmosphere. I know you’re probably I’m just I’ve got to try to make sense of it They say they’re sending this thing to Mars to hang out with ET.

[00:53:35] Mike Massimino: Why don’t they let us know about that? I mean, this is big. This is the thing. I mean, this is big No, you don’t 

[00:53:40] Mark Divine: think humanity is ready if it’s all at all 

[00:53:42] Mike Massimino: true. They don’t think you I mean, I don’t think no I first of all, I don’t think they can hide it We learn everything now with cell phones. There’s someone that’s going to slip.

[00:53:51] Mike Massimino: They’re sending like a probe to, you know, whatever it is, a bunch of people on Mars to start working with the aliens that you 

[00:53:56] Mark Divine: would think that we would have. 

[00:53:57] Mike Massimino: I don’t see how you cover that one up. 

[00:53:59] Mark Divine: If the news breaks someday, 

[00:54:00] Mike Massimino: you and I got to connect and say, see, yeah, I’m going to be pissed. They didn’t let us know about it.

[00:54:04] Mike Massimino: I mean, they got to let us know. I mean, why, why hide this sort of stuff? That’s what I never understood. Like with these alien sightings of people who have been abducted and everything. Why do they always go to aliens in these stories? They always go like to the middle of nowhere. I would go to San Diego, you know, and never mind New York, you know, I just don’t think we can cover these things up.

[00:54:22] Mike Massimino: So I, and there’s no real credible evidence. So I’m just, you know, saying, well, no, it can’t be E. T. yet. So it’s got to be something else. 

[00:54:30] Mark Divine: We’ll see. Right. I hope so. Hopefully we’ll too. Hey everyone. This is Mark Divine, founder of SealFit and Unbeatable Mind. And I’m super stoked to announce that my new book, Uncommon, is due out from St.

[00:54:43] Mark Divine: Martin’s press this summer, July 16th. And we’ve launched a pre order campaign. You can learn more about that at readuncommon. com to try to get early awareness for the book. Which I hope will help a lot of people where I go and do a deep dive on the five mountains. Of personal mastery physical mental emotional intuitional and spiritual uncommon simple principles for an extraordinary life Check it out at read uncommon.

[00:55:10] Mark Divine: com And thank you for your support and being part of the change you want to see in this world. Hooyah Mike, what a great time. Thank you so much for your conversation. I really, really 

[00:55:21] Mike Massimino: appreciate it. No, it was an honor. Great talk. We didn’t even 

[00:55:23] Mark Divine: talk about your book moonshot, but 

[00:55:25] Mike Massimino: I don’t worry about it. I really want to know about more of your life.

[00:55:27] Mike Massimino: We should do this in reverse. I’ll come on your podcast. I want to hear more of your stories, man. Interview me. That’s a cool one. Yeah. All right, man. All right, my friend. Thanks buddy. Take care now.