The podcast episode is introducing Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, and discussing her book, which is aimed at inspiring young people to pursue careers in STEM and the military. The episode highlights Collins' background and the process of writing the book, as well as the importance of parental and educational influence in shaping a person's goals and aspirations.
Guest: Col. Eileen M. Collins USAF (Retired)
Retired NASA astronaut and United States Air Force (USAF) colonel. A former flight instructor and test pilot, Collins was the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle and the first to command a Space Shuttle mission.
On Linkedin | https://www.linkedin.com/in/eileen-collins-8a582351/
Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
"The podcast episode is introducing Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, and discussing her book, which is aimed at inspiring young people to pursue careers in STEM and the military. The episode highlights Collins' background and the process of writing the book, as well as the importance of parental and educational influence in shaping a person's goals and aspirations."
Welcome to the Redefining Society podcast, where we bring you inspiring stories of people who have made a positive impact in society. In this episode, we have the honor of having astronaut Eileen Collins as our guest. Eileen Collins was the first woman to command a space shuttle mission and has contributed significantly to space exploration. The episode is split into two parts, and this is part one, where we will dive into her book and her life journey.
Host Marco Ciappelli begins by introducing Eileen and thanking Charlie Camarda for making the podcast possible. He describes Eileen's accomplishments as crucial to humanity and space exploration, and invites listeners to look her up if they don't already know her. Eileen then shares her life story, growing up in a lower-middle-class family in upstate New York and being encouraged by her parents to pursue her dreams. She discusses how she joined the Air Force, became an Air Force Test Pilot, an astronaut, and flew four times in space. She is now an author and has written a book to inspire young people to pursue STEM degrees and military careers.
The book is set to be released in March 2023, and Eileen shares that it was written to inspire young people. She tells listeners that she wrote the majority of the book, which Jonathan Ward, her co-author, helped refine. Eileen shares that she has an extensive collection of notes from her life and work, which she used to write the book.
Host Marco Ciappelli mentions that the book is emotional and technical, with Eileen sharing details about what went wrong and how many people work on a project. Eileen explains that she has a tremendous amount of notes from her life, including checklists, and logbooks of every flight she has flown. She credits her long-term memory for being able to remember so much from her life, including the day she decided she wanted to be an astronaut, which was when she was in Mrs. Whitmarsh's fourth-grade class.
Eileen shares that her parents took her and her siblings to the library on Saturdays, and her father took them to the airport in the summer to watch airplanes take off and land. She credits parents and teachers everywhere, emphasizing that you never know which incident will have a lasting impact on a child.
The episode is a captivating conversation that inspires listeners to pursue their dreams and strive to make a positive impact on society. The Redefining Society podcast is a platform for individuals to share their stories, and listeners are encouraged to subscribe to the podcast and YouTube channel.
About the book
The long-awaited memoir of a trailblazer and role model who is telling her story for the first time.
Eileen Collins was an aviation pioneer her entire career, from her crowning achievements as the first woman to command an American space mission as well as the first to pilot the space shuttle to her early years as one of the Air Force’s first female pilots. She was in the first class of women to earn pilot’s wings at Vance Air Force Base and was their first female instructor pilot. She was only the second woman admitted to the Air Force’s elite Test Pilot Program at Edwards Air Force Base. NASA had such confidence in her skills as a leader and pilot that she was entrusted to command the first shuttle mission after the Columbia disaster, returning the US to spaceflight after a two-year hiatus. Since retiring from the Air Force and NASA, she has served on numerous corporate boards and is an inspirational speaker about space exploration and leadership.
Eileen Collins is among the most recognized and admired women in the world, yet this is the first time she has told her story in a book. It is a story not only of achievement and overcoming obstacles but of profound personal transformation. The shy, quiet child of an alcoholic father and struggling single mother, who grew up in modest circumstances and was an unremarkable student, she had few prospects when she graduated from high school, but she changed her life to pursue her secret dream of becoming an astronaut. She shares her leadership and life lessons throughout the book with the aim of inspiring and passing on her legacy to a new generation.
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Resources
The book: https://www.amazon.com/Through-Glass-Ceiling-Stars-American/dp/1950994058
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording as errors may exist. At this time we provide it “as it is” and we hope it can be useful for our audience.
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SPEAKERS
Eileen Collins and Marco Ciappelli
Marco Ciappelli 00:01
And here we go. This is redefining society podcast. And nowaday podcast also means video I don't make, I don't make a separate introduction for the media that we're going to use. So if you're watching the video, you can already see that I have a guest with me. And if you're listening to the audio, I'm gonna tell you that I do have a guest. And I have to thank, before I announced you, to thank the person that made this happen, which is my friend, Charlie, Charlie Camarda. komentar at the mentor project, and also somebody that flew in space with you on a very important mission. So I'm kind of giving away what we're going to talk about here. And my guest is Eileen Collins. And if you don't know who she is, you probably need to look it up, because she has made some important things happen for for a lot of people, I'm gonna say, for humanity, and for space exploration, and also the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, that and many other things that I don't even want to start reading because it will take forever. So I rather say welcome to the show, Eileen, Eileen Collins, and introduce yourself in in the in the shortest possible way, and get started talking about your book and many other things that we are planning to cover.
Eileen Collins 01:32
Well, sure, thank you, Marco, and thanks for the invitation to talk with you today. And I don't know what else to say about myself. You know, I grew up in upstate New York in a small town, kind of lower middle class family. I like to tell people my story, which was you can in this country, you can be whoever you want to be. You don't have to grow up rich, you don't have to have, you know, parents that are well connected. But what we had was a very, I want to say a tight family, we of course, we had our problems. i Every family does, but we supported each other my parents told me that I could do what I wanted to do in life and be what I wanted to be. And I saw by watching them that hard work was, you know, in an discipline, where needed to really reach your dreams. So I joined the Air Force and Air Force pilot, Air Force Test Pilot, became an astronaut, I flew four times in space. And now I can say I'm an author, and I show you I wrote a book.
Marco Ciappelli 02:34
And that's what we're gonna talk about,
Eileen Collins 02:37
just comes out in March of 2023. So the paperback version, the hardback has been out for a while. So the book that I wrote is to inspire young people. So young people can read it. It's a, it, I wrote it, to inspire them to look into STEM degrees stem with science, technology, engineering, and math, career fields, as well as the military. And a lot of young people don't really know. And I think that through reading in you, you know, read biographies, things that other people have done, and it'll give you an idea what those career fields are like. So that's why I wrote the book. And so that's just maybe a short synopsis of what I've done.
Marco Ciappelli 03:22
Absolutely. And it makes me think, because I actually did listen to the book, and I finished, you know, before the weekends a few days ago, I'm fresh out of a beautiful ride, actually, I have to say, and there's a little joke that I want to say, because I know that on the audiobook, I don't have the actual book. But on the audio book, there is a note from from Tom Hanks that says what a read. And because it's so small in my phone, when I play the book, I thought he said what a ride. And I agree on what a ride because it really bring the the reader or the listener in the case of the audiobook, with you in this adventure, not only in your career, but also I mean, you start literally the book with the experience of taking off on on the space shuttle. So it's very emotional. I think it is. It is very, very inspirational. I hope that you get the point. But one of the things is saying the book at the end said, the people were asking you, where is the book? And then you say, okay, here is the book. So why did it take you so long? I mean, I'm sure you've been busy. But were you waiting for a moment in? I don't know in your history in in our society that you felt like he was more important now than ever.
Eileen Collins 04:46
Yeah, that's a good question. I'm a mother of two children. And my husband is an airline pilot. So in the fact that I was an active astronaut, my life was so busy I really had I did not have time. And to write, let me say, a quality book, a book that I wrote in, I did not want a ghostwriter. And I didn't want someone else to read it for me and put my name on it. I wanted it to be my book. And I think back to the time, when I was an astronaut, I had several authors approached me and asked it could they co author a book with me in every time I said, No. And this started in 1999, after my first flight is commander, and then again, in 2005, when I flew my last flight is Commander, which was the return to flight mission after the terrible Columbia accident. There was so much story there to tell. And you know, it was so important that I get that story out. But it was probably the worst time in my life, I flew the mission, which was a huge success. But when I came back from that, we had a series of disasters in my family, my husband's company went bankrupt, a hurricane hit Houston. I mean, this was just a month after we returned from the flight. And then, three months after my flight, my mother died. And then two months after that, my father died. And there was even more going on, I had the post flight report, the post flight briefings and traveling that I needed to do in my children. Were nine years old and four years old. So I had so much going on in my life at the time, I had authors asking me let's write a book. I know, no, I can't read a book now. So you know, years went by, and I thought, well, maybe now's the time to write a book. But authors and publishers want the book to be timely. And all those years had gone by so they had really lost interest. Because, oh, that your mission was so long ago, it's not in the news anymore. So I waited until my youngest was off in college, and then the pandemic hit. And I had a lot more time because I wasn't traveling. And my I have a co author, Jonathan Ward, who had been asking me, let's write a book. And I called him back and said, I think it's time, I have the time to write a quality book, and I wanted to write the book. And I wrote it like one chapter at a time and send it to Jonathan in heat. He would, you know, fix it up and make it sound better. And, you know, he would interview me, why don't you add this once you take this out. So we really, I'm not a professional writer, Jonathan really made it a quality book. And Jonathan also wrote the proposal to send off, which is not easy. That took quite a bit of time. But he sent the proposal off to the publishers. And he also there were several chapters that Jonathan, we were getting behind schedule. So I was trying to think, can you write a couple of these chapters for me, and then he would interview me, and then we would kind of switch roles. But for the most part, I wrote the majority of the book, in people are even telling me, they can hear my voice in the book, which, which I find interesting, I'm not sure how they see that. But apparently, there's a certain way that I talk and people that know me say, they can hear my voice in the book. And it up, we also had to cut quite a bit out, we had to get it below 90,000 words. And I think we originally had like, 120. So we had to cut a good, almost 25% had to be cut out. And we might even have enough for a second book, we'll see how that goes.
Marco Ciappelli 08:31
Well, I have to say that there is a lot of I mentioned that is both emotional and sometimes a little bit technical, because then you explain a lot of details in you know, what went wrong, you know, the reason why maybe if flight is postponed and you know, in all the people that the work around, because that's something we tend to forget how many people actually work on a on a project that I was reading some incredible number of those of working on the Artemis now. You know, it gives job to so many so many people, and they're all responsible for the success of the mission. Yeah, like for being so long as you start from when you are, you know, literally a little a little kid that get inspired and you're gonna have to tell me how that happened. That that a that you get in love with airplanes, and the idea to fly because it wasn't even in your in your family if I if I recall from from the book, but but the details that you're putting in that I mean, you must have take, I don't know a diary or some notes throughout your life because sometimes I don't even remember what I have for for breakfast the day before. So were you actually taking notes also due to all your reports and the things that you need to do when you are both a test pilot and a pilot and then a commander of a space shuttle?
Eileen Collins 09:56
Yes, I have a tremendous amount of notes. I I have so many that I actually have a storage facility because I can't fit it all in my house. And these are checklists. I mean, I could just go on and on. In fact, the National Air and Space Museum wants my records I was having, I haven't given them away yet. I, I still want them because I used them to write the book. I have what mostly I use my logbooks. So every flight, I have a every time I flew a flight in any airplane, I that night, I came home, and I wrote it down in my logbook. And if anything special happened, I put the notes there. So I mean, I had things like, who'd I flew with what the tail number of the airplane was it I had all kinds of details. And of course, the ones that I wrote about were the ones that, you know, when something really drastic happens in your life, you're not going to forget it. Like the times I went into a thunderstorm, or the times I have wind storm and you know, was low on fuel and an airplane, that third flight in the space shuttle where we had a leak, we had a hydrogen leak all the way to orbit, we also had an electrical short things that put you close to death, you're not going to forget those so many of those are just ingrained in my mind. Now, the part of your question that you asked about when I was young, my sister tells me, I lead you have an incredible memory, because I'll talk to my sister about things that happened when we were kids. And she's like, how do you remember that? But I for some reason, I think I have a very my long term memory is much better than my short term memory. But I you know, it's funny what you remember, as a kid in there's a message here, for parents. The message is things that you say to your kids will echo in their mind for the rest of their lives. And I still remember even today, things that my mom and dad said to me, will just pop in my head based on some circumstances that I come across. The other thing is teachers. So I remember very specifically some of my teachers, you know, for example, the story about the day I decided I wanted to be an astronaut. I was in Mrs. Whitmarsh is fourth grade class and I had the magazine. It was a it was a junior scholastic with the article on the Gemini astronauts. It was like yesterday, I remember I in fact, I went and I tried to find that magazine somewhere. And I haven't been able to find it. But they had an article on the Gemini astronauts and I'm reading this thinking, that's what I want to do. I want to be an astronaut. And some of that came from the books that I read. You know, my mom took us to the library, like it was a routine on Saturdays in the winter, when you couldn't really go outside because it was too cold. She took us to the library. And my dad in the summer would take us to the airport in the glider port. We have the national soaring museum near my hometown, soaring gliding. And he would take us to the glider field or the airport and we watch airplanes take off and land. So I think things that your parents, for people listening that our parents or our teachers, you just never know what little incident that you have happened with a child, your child or one in your classroom, that they are going to remember forever. And I just give credit to you know, teachers and parents everywhere, that you don't have to be perfect. And sometimes kids learn a lot more from the mistakes that you make. And, you know, in fact, I don't even think perfect parents and perfect teachers are good for kids. Um, kids need to see, you know, where, when you can do things better? Also.
Marco Ciappelli 13:41
Well, you know, I always think about when people talk about an overnight success, like in sports or in everything, you know, music, that musician just had a hit song? Well, yeah, no, it did happen. But to get there, there is an entire history, there is a family that maybe inspire them or a teacher or, you know, a lot of training on an instrument and I'm just taking the music example. But of course, when people read your book, I mean, you flow like I was looking for the number but an incredible amount of hours not only in space, obviously but you know, as a pilot, and I want to touch to that because in these ride or read, either you listen to me, whatever. Right or Tom Hanks, what a read. I would like for you to explain to people listening right now and hopefully the people that can be inspired by you, you know, become do and be a role model as you are because I don't think people realize that. There has been two women Commander of the Space Shuttle, right? That's right. And I just got lucky because I realized that I had palm Pam Melroy on a show with me two years ago. So I'm like, wait a minute, I'm gonna have both of them. So lucky to talk with, and how hard it was all, you know, the, I don't know, the battery or the hopes to call that a woman when you did it. And even now, it's, I'm sure it's much harder than being a man. But to actually get all the loops that you have to go because you couldn't be a fighter pilot, you couldn't log the hours. It's kind of like, at a certain point, the book becomes like, Oh, my God. I mean, you know, you made it because that's in the past, but there was so much so maybe to give you an idea of how far we have gone and how far your contribution to this maybe for for women to really look at the stars and say I can do it now. And a trailblazer, literally?
Eileen Collins 15:58
Well, yeah, I think I can give you a quick history of you know, women pilots in you go all the way back to the Wright brothers. There was a woman named Bobby trout, who I'm going back to like 1915 or 1920, Orville Wright signed her pilot's license, and body was in her 90s. She gave me her pilot's license, and I took it up with me on my first flight in the space shuttle. So that's like, you know, the future connecting with the past. The other thing is, when I was when I was a kid, I read books on the women Air Force Service pilots who flew in World War Two. And then there were the mercury 13 Women who did the testing for the Mercury space program. None of them were able to fly. But they did so well in the medical and psychological testing, that they really did prove to NASA that women had the ability to be astronauts. Then in 1974, the Navy took their first women into active duty military flying 1976, the Air Force took their first women into active duty military flying, I came in in 1978. Back in those days, women were not allowed to fly in combat. It was a test program, can women can women fly in the military. And of course, the women did very well. Back in those days, we were allowed to fly trainers, cargo and tankers, tankers are the in flight refueling. Then in 1993, our country opened up combat flying to women. So now women could fly fighters and bombers, and reconnaissance. So I was already an astronaut in 1993. So I never had a chance to fly out combat aircraft. I mean, I did. I did fly some combat aircraft, but not operationally, I just flew them as a test pilot. So that's a little history behind it. But I do want to add to that, I'm military flying, whether you're a man or a woman, it's really about discipline. And I think that I learned discipline when I was when I first joined the military. And that discipline, what is that it's like, showing up on time. It's like having a, I want to say a metal way of thinking that you have a responsibility to other people, and you stick to that responsibility, and you don't make excuses. So I'd like to share just briefly with your listeners. Over the years of flying, I have learned to be very disciplined because your life can depend on it. So you're really, you're really kind of forced into it if you want to survive some of the harrowing circumstances that we fly in. So I wrote my book, a lot of this got edited out of the book. So I'll mention it here. I have a four step process for dealing with mistakes. Okay, so everybody makes mistakes, we need to be humble enough to admit that we made a mistake and learn from it. So my four step process is number one, admit it at least to yourself into the people that need to know that you made a mistake. Number two is to fix your mistake. Number three is to do something to prevent it from happening again, either to yourself or to another person. And that might mean like making a change in the checklist. And then number four, you move on, you know, don't dwell on your mistake. And I find that this is important for people who are athletes. You know, if you're in the game and you've made a mistake, you just can't be dwelling on that because you're not going to play your best. You've got to you know, remember if I put it behind you I learned from it. I'm going to move on I'm going to keep you know working towards my mission. You know, whether it's to win the game or to complete, you know, your flight in the airplane or to complete your spaceflight. And I have many things like that in my life one I have one for dealing with conflict procedures in my mind. I have one for dealing with decisions. Proceed You're as I go through in my mind, and I think that we all face problems in our life. And I know that there's a lot of people because I used to be one of them to avoid problems, you know, maybe run away from your problems. And I found that that only makes them worse. So as soon as you get a problem, you categorize it not as a problem, but as a challenge. And you start, you can sit down and write out, you know, this is what I'm going to do, or this is what I'm not going to do. Or you can talk to somebody about it, but look at every problem is a challenge. And that that goes back to the discipline thing. And, you know, I raise two kids, and they'll have a problem in their life. And I'm like, Okay, let's just do, I don't need to deal with it right now. Or can I put it away and put it over here for a minute and come back to it. But come back to it with a, with a procedure, step by step by step to try to take this problem and, and fix it. But don't avoid it completely. So those are just some of the things that I found, you know, dealing with, I think, getting through life, with without a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety. Because I see a lot of stress and anxiety in our culture today, more so today than I did back in the 1960s when I was a kid in the 70s. And there's a lot of other reasons for that. But I think that these are things that helped me and I think having some humility through the whole thing, too. You can let a lot of success go to your head, but there's going to be more problems down the line. So just be ready for it.
Marco Ciappelli 21:43
Well, that's definitely a big lesson. And I have to say that the book is such a story, like an adventure, which is true. But also is a big lesson on team and leadership. Or both, I think and correct me if I'm wrong, but I get that you, you were lucky in a way to have people that were your leaders that kind of show you the way I'm not gonna say in every circumstance, because there are moments in the book that you're like, Oh, why did that happen? Shouldn't not be. But that's a lesson as well, right? Maybe you don't want to do the same thing. Like maybe that's the wrong way to do it. But you have a beautiful one that inspire you and a new deed inspire that, and I can say this, because, you know, in one of my conversation, actually with Charlie that we recorded about the return to flight, he was telling me that, and I don't necessarily want to go in that particular area of the conversation, but it was a tough flight. And I think we can agree with that. There was a lot of uncertainty, a lot of things about, you know, to space shuttle had mortal accidents. So you know, you guys were going back on that. And he was so he was telling me like how your leadership was so important, like, everybody needs to have something to say like, if you're Don't Don't, don't say yes, just because you're not the commander, actually, you need to tell what your Dobson maybe you bought, your uncertainty is about something, and everybody's on that same, you know, some adventure together, and you get to make it out of it. So I think that's, that's a very, that's a very important lesson. And I don't know, if you want to share other situation where this style of leadership, it's important and how it's just not for when you are in extreme, extreme situation, like flying in space, but also in everyday life. So maybe some advice for kids
Eileen Collins 24:00
that that is a really important question. And I because we all have leadership roles. I mean, even if you may not be like the designated boss, you have times in your life where you know, people look up to you, you're the leader. And, you know, people want someone who's confident that he hears I think what my message is, when I was younger, I was more of an autocratic leader, you know, I thought, Well, I'm a woman in a man's world, and it's the military and I've got to be decisive, and I've got to give people the answers that they need. And I've got to be the most knowledgeable person. So I studied a lot. And I, you know, I found through making mistakes, that if you are telling people what to do, that isn't always the right leadership style, especially once I became an astronaut, and now I'm working with people who are extremely intelligent. They're decisive, they're really motivated. They want the mission to be successful. They don't need somebody telling them what to do. So in especially after the accident after the Columbia accident where I saw the mistakes that NASA had made. And I had to put myself I'm in the same culture, right? So how am I part of this culture that made mistakes? And how can I be better? So there were three things that I learned after the accident. One of them is to be a better listener, and not just passively listening, but actively listening, like asking people, What do you think about this? You know, you just can't sit there and absorb it, you have to tell me you have to think What are you thinking? I want to know what you what you're thinking. So that's listening. The second one is humility. I think a lot of leaders go around with maybe it maybe I was one of them, acting like they were, or I in no way at all. And that's where the humility has to come in. People have to be, I think, not intimidated by you. So I is I got to be more and more senior in the office, I started in the Astronaut Office realizing that maybe people didn't want to speak up to me, because, you know, I've been there 10 years more than they have, and what can they tell me? No, no, it was important that I have a sense of humility as a leader, so people will come to me, and that's really tied in with listening. And then the third one is creativity. You know, we had been flying the shuttle when the accident happened in 2003. We I mean, we've been flying the shuttle since 1981. And we were getting what what we might say is operational and doing the same thing over and over again. And, you know, you really don't want to, like be trying new stuff, because, you know, maybe you might introduce risks into the operation. But there are times when you must to prevent accidents, you must try to do something different in in one of them was the rendezvous pitch around maneuver that we did for the first time on our flight. The one that Charlie was on with me, we actually is we are approaching the space station, we actually turned the shuttle upside down. So the crew on the space station could photograph our heat shield to make sure there was no damage to it. And that was something that never would have been approved before the accident. But that was a very creative engineer who came up with that idea. People initially said, Well, we can do that for a variety of reasons, you know, you know, of course, we can't do something that crazy. But I, when I heard about it, I thought, Well, why don't we just try it in the simulator, and see if it's even possible. And it was and it turned out, not only was it possible, but it was very inexpensive. And it was very elegant, operationally, and it was very doable. So that was an example of creative thinking after the accident that would not have happened before. And so I think that, you know, you can't carry every creative idea through to the end, but it's important to, as a leader to go into people go up to people go in their office, or you know, when you're with them in a meeting and say, What do you think about this? Is there a better way to do it? You know, what are the problems here? You know, what are the things that frustrate you every day? Have you had an idea that was maybe squished two years ago, and you know, maybe now's the time to bring it back up again. So I learned to be that kind of a leader after the accident. And it is not easy. Let me tell you, it's always it's always easier to say, Hey, this is my way. We're doing it this way. But I think you know, that for a leader to be too autocratic, in a risky environment, like spaceflight can be dangerous. And so I think that the leaders in risky jobs like test, pilot flying or spaceflight, really, really need to be open minded listeners, sense of humility, invite creative ideas. And so I think that's, that's where I changed. And it what I say it's hard is because you can't go with every, you have to occasionally go up to people and say, you know, we tried your idea, we can't use it. I'm sorry, I need to have you get on board with this other idea, which is the one we chose. And sometimes people are, no, they're, they're upset that their idea didn't get carried through. But again, the the leader needs to motivate that person to get back with the team. And you know, you're now a team member, we all have the same goal. And that's to get this flight safely up in space and get the space station built. So that was our ultimate goal was to get the space station built in fully operational.
Marco Ciappelli 29:46
Yeah, I mean, there is an entire series of podcasts here. I can think just from what you said, I'd like you could have an episode on each single one of those like innovation. We've never done it that way. So we're not going to do it well, that's the easy way out with but if you're in a, in a such a experimental environment like NASA is I mean, then then we would have never even you know, even the Wright brothers would have takeoff on a flight because people would be like, now you can do that. We've never done it before. But yeah, guess what, then you do? Yeah. And then maneuver, the description of it is very, very, very visual in in your in your book as well and your visit to the mirror that then become the International Space Station I think people get a historical view on what happened there the relationship with the Russians and hanging out with with them, it's and then it brings me to the overview effect that every astronaut, well, maybe not every but many astronaut experience when they are above the planet. And they're like, you know, we're all here together on this planet. What I would like to do with the time that we have left, and I know we're going to talk next time, so I'm already telling people to stay tuned, because we'll talk about the way you see and the future of space exploration. But what what do you do now, so you achieve all of this, it's your dream, that's what you set up when you were a little kid. And then you do that and even more, because you set a certain point like I would have been happy if I was a test pilot. And then I would have been happy if I was the pilot, because and then commander because you need to pilot at least twice if I believe in order to command emission. And then you come back on your last flight, you raise the family, you deal with all the things that are happening in life. And and then what you do I mean, what are you doing now? You You're speaking you're inspiring other people to do what you've done. Tell me what it means to be an astronaut. When you don't fly anymore. I'm very clear.
Eileen Collins 32:07
No, I would say I've spent the majority of my time speaking. And you know, just last week I spoke at high school. Talk to the young people about opportunities in the Air Force the military in general and space. I showed him one of my videos of spaceflight. I spoke to a local Air Force organization also last week and talk to them about the future of space and some of the things that I thought were important, and to help them in their careers. So I do a variety of speaking and plus the book has not been out for that long. So I'm still doing book signings, and traveling around the country going to various museums and just wherever an invitation comes, I try to do as many as I can. I also do board work. And I there was a time when I was on eight boards, which is too much Don't ever do that many. And now I'm only on a few. One of them is the astronaut Memorial Foundation. And we memorialize the astronauts that lost their lives in spaceflight. And we also have an education, the Center for Space education, where we teach teachers how to bring space into the classroom and inspire the kids in STEM, we host a robotics competition. And there's many things that we do we have an award that we present to teachers, the Alan Shepard Technology and Education Award, which teachers are eligible for they have to be nominated. And, you know, I I'm a judge for a variety of awards. And I do these things routinely every year for the astronaut Scholarship Foundation, and for the Rotary, space Rotary Club in Houston. So I keep very busy, I actually tend to get over scheduled. And those are times when I need to, like live one day at a time. And sometimes emails don't get answered for a while. But I do keep pretty busy. But you've got to always maintain time for yourself. So I try to go to the gym. Every day that I'm not in travel, I go to the gym, trying to whether I do cardio or lift weights, stay in shape. I actually play video games because I think they're, they actually help your mind stay sharp. And I read a lot of books. In fact, I gotta tell you something funny. When I was a kid, I read a lot of science fiction, but now I love to read history. So I tell people that when I was young, I read about the future. And now that I'm older I read about the past, which is actually funny, but I'm reading I'm reading a book now on the Battle of Thermopylae, which was Greek history. 500 BC. You know, I've read a book on the Alamo in I recently and I could go on and on about history, there's so much that we can learn from history because I believe Human Nature doesn't change. I mean, our, our tools, and our technology changes, and now it's changing rapidly. But it's interesting that as you read history, you see that human nature, we're still people, you know, we still have the same emotions. And the same, I want to say motivations that people had, you know, 1000s of years ago. And I just find this fascinating. So this is one of the things that I'm doing now, in my free time. And I think it's important that we always have free time, scheduled for ourselves, because if we're just working all the time, you know, we're gonna die young, and you know, from stress, so you need to always put time in for yourself. And I encourage people to do that.
Marco Ciappelli 35:50
Absolutely. And I still agree with you, most of my conversations are actually in between technology, lately, artificial intelligence, and how it is actually a way that for us to look inside ourselves, like I feel like working on technology, and especially when you start thinking about general artificial intelligence and generative now with all the charts and the dolly, and so on, it's a way to, to learn about ourselves. Because I agree with you, we're still driven by kind of the same. You know, I mean, the DNA is there, we're still reacting to certain things in a very primordial way, even if we have this amazing tools in our hands. And that's something to consider. But yeah, I like that about about you. Because you would think that somebody that is been always to, to the highest level of performance and testing our airplanes and flying and reorganizing, changing things to make us safer for the space shuttle you think like, that's what you do all the time to slot always look at the future. And I know you do that, because the next step is, we're going to talk about the future of space exploration. But I love how you look into the past. And I'm, I'm thinking, one question I want to ask you, before we start wrapping here is, is this so when someone think about going into space, you think about PILOTs, you think about mission specialist, and so forth, and you think about people that come from the military. I mean, they all Apolo mercury, they were all military pilots. But the truth is that now when the people are going spending time to the International Space Station, we're talking about researcher, we're doing medical research, you mentioned that many time, all the experiments that you actually do, you're not just flying around in the orbits, you're actually doing constantly, every sort of experiment. And even the astronaut body in itself is an experiment out there. But where do you see it? How can you give an inspiration to people that say, Look, I'm interested in other thing, history, for example, or philosophy or anything else? But I feel there is a big space for them in, in space exploration, as it become more the future of, of humanity. What's your take on that into becoming more inclusive, not only from a diversity perspective or minority, but also for different disciplines?
Eileen Collins 38:42
Yeah, well, I 100% support, expanding spaceflight to, you know, anybody who's interested in and I think that, you know, spaceflight has become also more international, we've got more countries involved. The for the professional astronauts, the medical requirements have been expanded, you know, you have to be almost physically, physiologically perfect back in the early days. And now they've really expanded. And we've got the commercial private companies going up and flying missions, like completely independent of NASA, these are very important missions in the other thing is, we've got to fly more and more and more, because the more we fly, the safer it'll get in, the cheaper it will get. And I would like to see the day when people could go to space is a vacation and, you know, in the near future is still going to be too expensive. But when I can't say but it's going to be someday at the point where an average citizen can go for a spaceflight. And why is that important? Well, I believe that, you know, people will want to take care of our planet. More so if they've seen it from a distance. And I also think that if we don't dis completely separate, but if we as humans don't get out into space, that someday we could use up all the resources on our planet to the point that we may even be hurting ourselves, you know, how far can we grow, I mean, there's going to be a limit as to how, how far we can grow here on planet earth because of the resources that we have. Now, I don't think we're there yet. But I think it's something that we need to start thinking about is we build space stations, we put space stations on the moon, and then we put space stations on Mars, and the next giant leap will be in propulsion. So right now it takes three days to get to the moon, for example, you get to the space station in less than a day. But it takes three days to get to the moon, it takes at least six months to get to Mars. And that's if the planets are on the same side of the sun. If If Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the sun, it's a two year trip, because you have so much farther to go. Our closest star Alpha Centauri is like four plus light years. I mean, that's, I mean, if you could travel at the speed of light, you wouldn't get there for four years. I mean, that's completely impossible to do, right now in one person's lifetime. So the next giant leap, I believe, will be in propulsion, we need to be able to travel faster. And we need a whole new creative idea on how to get to other stars in the Milky Way. And we have not figured this out yet. But when we do, we may find another planet like Earth, that people could live on. So that is certainly beyond our lifetime. But I think this is an idea that we need to pass on to young people. And, you know, think about history, in transport, like giant leaps in transportation, you know, a wheel was invented, you know, millennia ago, somebody invented a wheel to help with transportation, you know, then you've got horses, you know, someone figured out how to use animals for transportation, you know, and then you've got trains and cars and the airplane was invented, and then the rocket was invented. But we need like a really, incredibly creative idea that will need, someone will have to invent or discover a way to travel beyond chemical propulsion, and even beyond, possibly nuclear propulsion. So, so these are some of the things I talk to young people about, and try to inspire them when they go off to college to look into degrees in math, science, engineering, technology, we don't have enough people. I mean, we do need people with degrees and English and history, those are very important. But if a person has a talent in the technology area, you know, don't just discard that idea, because you don't know anybody who's doing that. Do some reading, and listen to podcasts like yours, and, you know, find out what the possibilities are out there. And I think if a person has a talent for STEM, they really ought to look into those career fields, you know, who knows who our next inventor is going to be, or what the next major discovery will be, you know, I'm Hope I'm not alive to see it. But so I tried to inspire people to think, again, creatively and outside of, you know, just what is possible today. In by the way, one of your thoughts you mentioned artificial intelligence. You know, many, many decades ago, Arthur Clarke wrote a book 2001 A Space Odyssey, where you know, the computer how h a l was, you know, many of your listeners might be familiar with this. And that was artificial intelligence that just went totally arrived, went went crazy. And, you know, Is that realistic? Who knows? But I think that, you know, reading books like that can kind of give you an idea, you know, where can artificial intelligence go? And could it eventually end up being a risk? I mean, it can, it can really solve a lot of risk, but it can, it can also open up a lot of new risks, and hazards and, you know, maybe something even dangerous for society. So, those are things I know, that you look into, and I think those are things we really need to be thinking about is we do this, you know, creative type of engineering for the future.
Marco Ciappelli 44:28
Absolutely. And one quick question if Hal 9000 actually did stick with the order that was given and kind of maximize that to the excess or if he went crazy, so we can go philosophical on that. But But I have to add to what you said there's also other fields that I had conversation, like you know, there is medical profession in a Mars colonization and I don't like to call it colony because it kind of reminded me, past colonies, kind of like we go there to, to take possession of things but you know, human installment there and civilization that we may start on on those planets. But then you need rules, you know you need legal aspect its entirely new, I mean who's flag is going to fly there. So in a way we can even open to lawyers to, you know, doctors that are studying the way we can do things there I mean, you said to go to Mars, take a while so if somebody is going to get sick there who's going to who's going to take care of that is it going to be done remotely is going to be done by AI is going to be I mean, that's where you really go into sci fi that become the reality of the future.
Eileen Collins 45:45
A very important point because spaceflight touches every single discipline, every single career field, you mentioned, Doctor lawyer, but we also need administrators, we need janitors,
Marco Ciappelli 45:57
teachers,
Eileen Collins 46:00
people that know how to fix things, you know, different technologists. You know, we have historians in space, we have space art we have artists and very successful do space are in so I think that, you know, spaceflight, we shouldn't just think stem, we need to think how this is like spaces a place, we used to say that back in the Air Force back in the 1980s. This was a saying that we had spaces a place, and it someday we I mean, if you when humanity goes there will be taking every aspect of humanity with us, in another thought with that is the Outer Space Treaty. So in 1967, almost every country in the world signed the Outer Space Treaty, there's two key elements, one of them is you don't you will not put nuclear weapons in space, which makes total sense. And then the other one is that people may not know, the countries that signed the treaty are not allowed to claim any part of outer space as their own. So for example, the Chinese can't land on the south pole of the moon, and say, we own it. Now, you can't come here, because we own it. They signed the treaty. So do the United States, the Russians and in pretty much every country that could be exploring. Now those those treaties do need to be updated. There is the moon Treaty, which was 1979, I believe the United States did not sign the moon treaty. Because in there, it says the moon is the providence of all mankind. So if a country went there, or I'm sorry, a private company went there in mind, the resources on the moon, like helium three, or you know, whatever they find there, they could not claim it as their own, because it will be whatever they mined, would be the provenance of all mankind, and the profit would have to be shared. So the United States didn't sign that and it and there were many countries that did not sign even back in 1979, the United States wanted private companies to have the incentive to go to the moon on their own without government help, because they're looking for a profit. And so although a private company cannot claim that part of the moon, they can mine it, whatever they bring back, they can sell and or use use the moon for a profit, but they can't like claim the land, if that makes sense. So So there might be some gray areas in there. So these treaties there is we need lawyers, we need smart diplomats and leaders in governments around the world to come up with, I want to say more advanced, because we're actually going there now more advanced forms of these treaties that are fair.
Marco Ciappelli 48:45
Absolutely. I think this is a great way to end our conversation knowing that we could probably just take it straight from right from here and go to a vision of the future that touch humanity and the fact that Yeah, I think I think we have to do it together. We can't just do it as individual government. I'm a big, big believer of that. But with this I want to thank you so much for this time has been a fascinating conversation. I'm going to say that again. For me it was a fascinating audiobook. That's what I listened. I mean, I love reading the books, but I can consume so many more when I walk the dogs are two other things and I can listen to those and podcasts. But yeah, I'm gonna finish it with the book. It's through the glass ceiling to the stars and is the story of the first American woman to command a space mission. It is right there. So I honestly invite you to read it, or listen to it because I enjoy the the audiobook as well. And then Now will love you know get in touch with Eileen get in touch with us comment on on social media on this, if you have read it already or if you will, or if you had in a few weeks from now and let us know what you think in terms of ours, you can say tune because we will be recording an out there episode soon again talking about the future of space exploration. And, again, Eileen, it's been an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show.
Eileen Collins 50:30
Thanks. It's been great talking with you.
Marco Ciappelli 50:33
Great. And for everybody else. Stay tuned with redefining society, and ITSPmagazine There'll be notes and link even to the book and and stay tuned for the next episode of redefining society podcast. Bye bye