Get ready to blast off as we explore the fascinating future of space exploration in this thrilling episode of Redefining Society Podcast! Join host Marco as he chats with Eileen Collins, a trailblazing astronaut, and discusses the possibilities that await us in the cosmos.
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
"Get ready to blast off as we explore the fascinating future of space exploration in this thrilling episode of Redefining Society Podcast! Join host Marco as he chats with Eileen Collins, a trailblazing astronaut, and discusses the possibilities that await us in the cosmos."
Welcome to a thrilling episode of the Redefining Society Podcast, hosted by Marco!
Today, we dive deep into the fascinating realm of space exploration and its future. We are honored to have Eileen Collins, a retired NASA astronaut, who shares her invaluable insights and experiences in the vast cosmic ocean. Get ready to embark on a mind-expanding journey as we unravel the mysteries of space, discuss why it's not covered enough in the news, and explore the different layers of the cosmos.
In this riveting conversation, Marco and Eileen discuss the reasons behind the fading interest in space exploration in the mainstream media, despite people's enduring fascination with the subject. They ponder the current state of space exploration, from the suborbital flights of Blue Origin to SpaceX's impressive accomplishments in orbital flight.
Eileen sheds light on the different dimensions of space, defining it as suborbital, orbital, and deep space. She talks about the significance of having a heat shield for orbital flights, the space station's location, and how long it takes to get to the moon or Mars. She highlights the groundbreaking achievements of the James Webb Space Telescope, which is enabling us to look farther into space and time than ever before.
This thought-provoking episode invites you to envision the future of space exploration, ponder the vastness of the universe, and contemplate humanity's place in the cosmos. It's a conversation that will leave you yearning for more, eager to learn about the endless possibilities that await us beyond Earth's atmosphere.
Don't miss out on this captivating discussion that will surely spark your curiosity and leave you pondering the infinite wonders of space. Be sure to share this episode with friends and family, as it's an incredible conversation that is not to be missed! And don't forget to subscribe to the Redefining Society Podcast to stay updated on all our exciting episodes.
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
HOST: Marco Ciappelli
GUEST: Astronaut Eileen Collins
Show intro 00:15
Welcome to the intersection of technology, cybersecurity, and society. Welcome to ITSPmagazine. Let's face it, the future is now we're living in a connected cyber society, and we need to stop ignoring it or pretending that it's not affecting us. Join us as we explore how humanity arrived at this current state of digital reality, and what it means to live amongst so much technology and data. Knowledge is power. Now, more than ever.
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Marco Ciappelli 01:53
Hello, everybody, this is redefining society podcast with Marco Ciappelli on ITSPmagazine. And I am really excited to have a second episode with Eileen Collins. And if you haven't catch the first step is that which has probably been published right before this one. So let me just go back one episode, and either on YouTube, on our podcast hosting platform, and you will see that you can there is another episode. Now don't stop these. Listen to this. It's not it's connected, but it's not necessarily in the same chronological order. So enjoy this conversation. And then you can catch up on the first episode, as well. So to get to the point of this conversation, we're going to start with a guest, of course, Eileen Collins, I hope you know who she is. She's been in space four times on the space shuttle first woman to command actually a space shuttle on also on the return to flight after the unfortunate Columbia accident at this point few years ago, and we got to talk about that on the first step is where we focus on the book that a lot of people want to Eileen to write. And she finally did this out there is called through the glass ceiling to the stars, which was the focus of our first conversation, this one here, you gotta stay tuned, because we're going to talk about the future of space exploration and also the present, we're going to talk about automation, commercial flights, robotics, flat, again, our mission, meaning, you know, maybe we don't need those pilot skills that Eileen had back in the days, and she still has it. I'm sure she could still fly. So without further ado, Eileen, thank you so much for coming back. I'm delighted that you gave me too, too precious hour of your time to go on a podcast with me.
Eileen Collins 04:01
Oh, thanks, Marco. It's great being here. And I think I think you pretty much did the introduction. I'm not sure what else I can add to it. But I, I do want to say that I find people are so interested in space exploration. Notably, what are we doing today? Because we don't hear enough about it in the news. But also what are the plans for tomorrow for the future? And what's really possible? So I'm looking forward to our discussion.
Marco Ciappelli 04:28
And I don't know, we're probably going to left leave a lot of things untouched, because in my head, there is a lot of different angles that we can look at this from but I think I think you said something that is very, is very important to me. I think it could be the first step into all the things we're going to talk about. So space, you said may not be in the news as it used to be so we watch this movie like I don't know Apollo 13, for example, and it was the moment And I remember during the movie that despite the accident before the accident, people were not really watching it as much as the first Apollo mission, almost like a fade away the interest like, Oh, we're going to the moon again. So let's, let's jump from that to nowadays. Why, on your opinion, we're not talking enough of this in the in the news?
Eileen Collins 05:26
Well, I think first of all, there's a lot more distractions today, you know, people have so many other things that they can do. Mass media is everywhere, social media, you know, parents have their kids in sports, and you want to keep your kids busy, you want to keep your kids away from drugs, and I'm a parent myself, and I know I kept my kids super busy. So they would be, I mean, you want to give them some downtime, too. But I remember back when I was a kid, I had a lot of time to kill, I had a lot of free time I go to the library, and I would read books. And I was fascinated with space. And, you know, I think, back in the 1960s, it was something that was so new and so different, it was a whole new mode of travel, you know, putting a astronaut on a rocket and shooting them up into space. And the other thing back in those days was the space race with the Soviet Union. And today, we're not really in a space race. I mean, some say that we will eventually be in one with China. But right now, it's really international cooperation. In theory, I can tell you firsthand, there's still many, many people that follow space on a daily basis. And it's almost like a club, you know, this great big giant club of people that read books and space, you know, they love to get NASA's everyday email, they're on the NASA app, which by the way, NASA has a great app. It wins awards, so don't just listen to me, but listen to the award presenters in NASA, in my opinion, does a really great job reaching out to school kids and teachers and, and whatnot. But but to really answer your question, I think space travel has become more common. And, you know, having said that, the fact that people are still interested back, you know, just a little over a year ago, when Blue Origin launched their first racket into it was called the new shepherd. And they launched that with Jeff Bezos on board who's the CEO of the company, he put his life at stake, launching in that racket in it, he wanted to put faith in it that it was safe. So he wound up himself with a family member and several high profile people have flown in that little Blue Origin. New Shepard rocket since then. And that was really, that was covered very heavily in the news, William Shatner flew, Michael Strahan flew in, there's been, I can't even tell you how many fights now there's been quite a few of them. Well, they're not in the news anymore. The first two and three, and the fourth, were all in the news. But now it's become routine. And one last thing on that question is, many years ago, I asked back when I was an active astronaut, I asked a high profile person at NBC News. Why do you not cover space? The way I think, you know, I think you should more often because people want to hear about it. And He answered me, news is change. And if spaceflight becomes routine, we're just not going to cover as much we cover when things change. So you know, first flight for second flight, something new I hate to say but if there's an accident, you know, we're going to be all over that. And I've had a news person tell me the only reason they send anybody down to Florida for the launch anymore is in case there's an accident we want to have somebody there. So you know that that's kind of sad that when you hear things like that, but that's reality so you know, I just realized I'm not going to change the news business but I think I need to work with them in try my best to you know, bring the story of spaceflight to people everywhere.
Marco Ciappelli 09:19
Well being news and mass media one of my interest and background, I could go over and over on that one, but I'm gonna it's gonna give my personal opinion which is there. It's too much. Tragedy baits lately are shocking, right? But that is not about culture as much but you have to find your own niche when you want to know something. So you mentioned the app. Thankfully, there's so many website about space if you follow social media account on Instagram, and I'm one of those it you know, I get the NASA news. So I'm part of that club. So let's talk about one thing that we kind of mentioned last time when we finished the conversation, the first one that we recorded the question and you cannot hint about that, like, where is space? Right? It's because we have Blue Origin. We did I mentioned Branson from Virgin intergalactic was the same period was kind of a competition between Branson and and the Blue Origin versus going up. So that was another reason for the news, I guess. And then there was the controversy of, did they really reach space? Did they pass the limit that you consider a space? And then of course, you got what this International Space Station is where you used to go with it with the space shuttle and then then you go to the moon, you go to Mars, so help us to have a picture of space. And I know it's a big picture, but at least the one close to us.
Eileen Collins 10:50
So I think this is an important question. Space is defined in two different ways. Back in the 1950s, the Air Force defined space as 50 miles, excuse me, 50 miles above the surface of the Earth, weather statute nautical that I mean, it really doesn't matter. They're pretty close. And the airforce pick 50 Miles really as a kind of a round number. So think about this 50 miles. And I like to tell people because I live in Texas, if I could drive my car from San Antonio to Austin, that, you know, that would take maybe 15 minutes to for me to do that it if I'm driving 60 miles an hour, okay. Take that distance from San Antonio to Austin, and go up with it. That's not very high. And you can get there in this Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, you can get there in 10 or 12 minutes. I'm sorry, you can get there and a half the time have you get there in four to five minutes, because the entire flight up and down is about 10 to 12 minutes. So you know cosa rockets going much faster than a car. So that so space is actually very close. Now why did the Air Force picked 50 Miles while they were flying the x 15. And the pilots had to wear a pressure suit. So let me give your listeners an idea. They're a person a hiker can breathe up to about two and a half miles, three miles before the hiker needs supplemental oxygen. So three miles will be about 18,000 feet, you know you're going to start getting hypoxic, you need to take oxygen with you. Airplanes fly commercial airplanes fired about six or seven miles. And of course, if there's an emergency, you have supplemental oxygen that will come down. And then space is 50 miles. So so that kind of gives you perspective compared to airplanes. Now one other thing, the international community to find space was something called the von Karman Line, which is 100 kilometers, and that translates to 62 miles. So that's where to answer your question. There might be some confusion. So some people say, Oh, you have to go to 62 miles to really be in space. But yet years ago, the Air Force defined 50 Miles is space. So if your Blue Origin flight goes up to you know, 59 Miles vino did to reach space defined by international standards, as far as I'm concerned, it reached space. I mean, I personally would say it's 50 miles, the Air Force still allows pilots to put astronaut logo on their flight wings, if they go over 50 miles. Now, where's the space station? Okay, here's where the big differences. So these Blue Origin flights go up and they come right down. They launch and they land very close to where the launch site is. They do not go around Earth. There are only 10 minute flights. When you go to orbit, you actually circle the earth and to get to orbit you need to be pretty much over 100 miles. And that is something that SpaceX is doing is a is a private company. They're the only private company right now that has sent people to Earth orbit. And why is orbital flight different from sub orbital, okay, so the sub orbital is the up down when you know 10 minute flight land, we're close to where you take off. The orbital flight is where you go around Earth. The big difference there is you must have a heat shield. I'm your spacecraft. Because when you go to orbit, now you're circling the Earth, you're going to be going at 1500 miles an hour. You have a lot of energy, a lot of speed. A lot of altitude, you know these orbital flights, I say 100 miles or more. They normally go to two to 300 miles our space station is in about 250 miles. So to come back with it from that very high speed circling the Earth. You're going to heat up to 2000 3000 degrees on your exterior Your your spacecraft, so you must have a heat shield. And the space shuttle had tiles, we had reinforced carbon carbon, which was material that could withstand heat. And we we got very, very hot and we would glow either was plasma would develop around the shuttle. And we actually had an accident with the shuttle because there was the Columbia back in 2003, because they had a hole in their heat shield that they didn't know about. So So that's orbital flight. Now, how, how long said mentioned, suborbital 10 minutes to get to orbit. Frankly, it's, it's about 10 minutes to get to orbit. But once you're in orbit, it would be at least 90 minutes to circle the Earth. Now, let's talk about the moon. The moon is what I would call deep space. Although the moon is orbiting the Earth for us to get there, we need to escape Earth's gravity field. For the most part, it takes three days to get to the moon, you know, where as you can get to the space station, and you know, pretty much less than a day, it takes three days to get to the moon to go to Mars, it takes at least six months, if Mars and Earth are in the same side of the sun six months, but if Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the sun, it's a two year flight. So so that's why I tell people Where's space. So I think of it three ways sub orbital orbital in deep space. And I explained the differences there in and I think when people say, space, it, it means like one thing to most people, but to me, I think of all these subsets of space, you know, you know, and then there's, you know, you can go even beyond our solar system, where our telescopes are looking outside of our solar system. Other places in the Milky Way Galaxy, looking at other galaxies, and the telescopes is especially the James Webb Space Telescope, which has been up there now for a little over a year. That's looking, you know, farther into space than we ever have before, but it's also looking farther back in time. And maybe someday we'll be able to travel farther than the Moon and Mars and outside of the solar system, but that's a topic for for later discussion.
Marco Ciappelli 17:28
Yeah, it is, it is a topic for later discussion, but also I think we can talk about that in certain aspect because you know, I when I when I look at the, the picture of the pale blue dot, from Carl Sagan, when he called it that it was taken I believe what is the Voyager was was leaving pretty much the solar system and it gives you a perspective, but then now when you go on social media, sometimes they give you the reference of okay, here's the planet here's the planet in comparison with these there's a mat and then you go and you look into okay, we're just on the arm of the Milky Way, which is a huge galaxy, which is a big cluster of galaxy, which is like okay, and your mind just exploded. So I think that looking at the way you put it into something that is more we can refer and kind of grasp the concept but I think is very relevant because it makes me think about also what you mentioned at the beginning about automation and what I said about the fact that do we even need at this point people that know how to pilot because nobody is really pilot in the SpaceX right I mean at all the correct me if I'm wrong, but all the approach to connect with the International Space Station I don't think anybody touch anything anymore while you had to literally do the flip the belly and all that the procedure to get there. So who is going to space now apart from those that are doing research? Those are doing I don't know they pay just to have the experience I guess. But how do you see the the near future of the quality and I'm don't want to diminish anyone but I mean, you had to go through so many so many training just just to get even into the NASA program. Now seems you pay your go to space. So I don't want to be polemic here but your perspective on this and and what it means really is that we welcome in the commercial space flight and the automation.
Eileen Collins 19:50
Yes, I would say definitely I personally am welcoming, you know to questions there but I personally am well welcoming the people that are not professional now. to astronauts, it is very important for our country and frankly, for the world to have more and more people of different backgrounds, you know, different, you know, whether they're professional or one time fliers, or whatever reason they're going up there to have more of these people fly, because the more flights that we have, the safer it will get. And the less expensive it will get in the market of space travel will open up to more and more people. So I say I use the word scale, but we need to get spaceflight to go to scale like the airline industry has, and have more and more people flying and having that experience for so many different reasons, you know, even giving people an appreciation of planet Earth, because once you go up there, and you, you look back at the earth, you think, wow, the atmosphere is really thin, who said tiny little thin atmosphere I mentioned earlier, two to three miles of breathable air protecting us from micro meteorites and the sun, solar radiation, cosmic background radiation, you know, giving us air to breathe. And you know, that tiny little atmosphere is protecting us. And then you look the other direction, and you see nothing but black space, you know, we can't really see anything other than the tiny little pinpoint stars, you start really appreciating the Earth more, I think more and more people need to have this opportunity. So I'm very, very excited about I'm gonna say commercial spaceflight or private spaceflight or tourism. It's not all just one thing. There's many, many different categories. So you had the question on automation, which I want to address. Back in the shuttle days, when I, you know, flew the space shuttle it was it was really, you know, three things, the shuttle was a rocket going up, there was a satellite in orbit, and it was an airplane, or a glider coming home. There were 135 Space Shuttle flights, if you include the two accidents, but if you don't include the two accidents, every one of those flights that came back to Earth was landed by the commander. By hand, like a traditional airplane, we tried to do auto land twice, I won't go into the details here. But it didn't both times. One time, the commander actually clicked off the autopilot, you know, a couple 1000 feet because he didn't like what it was doing. And the other time the commander cancelled the planned auto land because he wasn't comfortable with the way it was the way it was going, he didn't have confidence in the system. So the technology back then was just not as good. Well, we use radar altimeter to determine what our altitude was over the ground. Well, now we have GPS and we have much better hardware and software without going into the details, the systems are much better. And we're not landing anymore, the new spacecraft that we're flying splashes down in the ocean or will come down under under parachutes on land. So you really don't need a pilot to land those spacecraft. I mean, you still need pilots to land airplanes. But that is not a skill that's needed in in the aircraft or, excuse me, the spacecraft that we have right now that are coming back from space. So the other thing about the space shuttle, it was flown to orbit every single flight under autopilot computer control, the commander or pilot was able to take over manually if they saw something that was not they were not comfortable with or the trajectory was not going where it was supposed to be. But every flight to orbit was they were all flown on the autopilot. A pilot cannot hit the window of the variables that you need to hit if you are going to rejoin to the space station. It is a very very small window in XYZ which is position and then what we call x dot y dot z dot which is your velocity and your acceleration and each one of those different directions. And it's very, very difficult window to hit. So you want the auto pilot to fly it. Pilot will probably use too much gas in you could even run out of gas. So but on orbit, the rendezvoused in the shuttle were all flown by hand. Well, the software today is so much better that it can be fully automated. So I've addressed the launch the landing and the anaerobic flying. So GPS, which is a global positioning system, which gives our navigation and the improvements in software and hardware. Allow us to fly the entire flights now on autopilot automatically, but you still want The professional astronaut there to maybe intervene if something is going to arrive, and it's not going where it should go. And those things still happen. The Russians have been doing this for decades. And occasionally the cosmonauts will have to take over manually and fly the, for example, the Daqing, by the by hand. So, is this good? Or is this bad? You know, I don't, I don't want to say it's good or bad one way or the other. Because there's so many different things to look at, you know, for example, the autopilot will use less gas, and the the autopilot will free up their crew to do other tasks. And also, less training time also allows people who are not professional pilots to be in the position of commander, and what we used to call the pilot seat, it's not really a pilot seat anymore if the person is not a pilot, but maybe we need to call it something else. So I'd say, you know, in the long run, it's, it's, I would have to say, this is important that it's the way that things go. And that will allow us to fly more people in space with less training, and less gas. So I think that's the answer to the autopart. Now, when we start going farther and farther into deep space, let's let's take Mars, for example, because it may be another 10 years before people go to Mars, do we really want to have somebody who's constantly flying in if it takes you six months to get there? No, I mean, you need, there's other things that you need to do, the crew needs to stay busy, they can do experiments that I mean, there's so many different things that can be done. And then every once in a while you go in and you check the software, you check the the flight control systems, and your life support systems to make sure that everything is operating the way it should be. And then you can start talking about artificial intelligence, do you want the spacecraft to be making decisions for you? You know, that's where I'm going to maybe put up a little bit of a stop sign, you know, I think, because it's very important to the astronauts that we stay busy, and that we stay in control of our spacecraft, you don't want to just be a blob, you know, for six months, he wants to have some kind of control over your spacecraft. So I I'm not like a big fan of artificial intelligence for, you know, maybe six months or even two year flights. Now, you can start looking maybe 100 years into the future, if at some point, we find a way to travel to another solar system, and you want to put the astronaut bodies into some kind of hibernation mode, there's different words for it, but I'll call it hibernation, then you are going to have to have some type of artificial intelligence that is in control of the spacecraft that has been thoroughly tested and can be trusted. And in that case, the the these future astronauts who is really putting their lives you know, in in the trust of the software, planet Earth isn't going to be able to control it. Because if a signal from earth to a spacecraft travels at the speed of light, I mean, it's going to be neat, I mean, it's gonna take a long time for a signal to reach you. So you're going to have to have some type of artificial intelligence controlling the spacecraft for these extremely futuristic flights. So many different things to think about. I am not opposed to any of these things, but I'm following it with fascination. And I think we need to be ethical, we need to be safe, we need to always keep in mind the lives of the astronauts, whether they're, you know, in some hibernation mode, or if they're awake. There's mental health considerations, also, which is a different subject, we can talk about that if you'd like. But, you know, being cooped up in a spacecraft where you can't walk, you can't go out and get sunshine, like, you know, take a hike. You only have the same couple of humans around you all the time. I mean, that that can be very interesting. Human nature study, and these studies are going on in the area of psychology. But, but I won't get into that now. So
Marco Ciappelli 29:23
I kind of want to I want to get into that. But I think we should do it another time because we're gonna go off with that because I'm going into the Sci Fi realm, which I know last time and make again a reference. When you when you were young, you used to read all the Sci Fi and then now you're actually into reading about things about history and kind of undoing both but because we can learn and you know, you can make many reference about what you said from a sociological and psychological perspective in what people would experience when they were traveling, exploring the ocean back in this 70 and 100 or 1500, and not having anything that you could do if something goes wrong goes wrong. And the story No, no way to save to descend the rescue mission or, or put the autopilot on those boats. So in a way, I think I think you look into what the psychology of the human is, but then there is also, and you mentioned that in the book too, like, and we know, when you go to space, your body gets affected by the lack of gravity. So as you want to keep your mind in, in shape, you know, we still don't really know, I think to the 100%. What happened to the body? When you stay for longer period of time? I mean, there's been people in on the space station for hundreds of days, I think cumulative. But we still don't know. So if you're gonna go in the outer space, first of all, there is a limit on our age, right? Second thing unless we can preserve ourselves, I think that's the big issue on actually getting out there. So my my brain to two different things to add to the, to the many questions. One is, why does it take so long? To go where we're going? I mean, do we need some super leap into the propulsion system? Or the way we traveled? We need to go through wormholes and and who knows what make the travel faster? And do we need to find an alternative to explore by not only AI piloting, but also robotics that are our avatar in space? I'm going to sci fi. So if you want to go with me, and let's do this.
Eileen Collins 31:52
Yeah, I think that's fascinating. And I think we're certainly going to you talk about avatar, artificial intelligence. And back in the old days, science fiction said, you know, the hologram or you can go into a room where you're actually, you know, you're in a big computer, it's physical space, but you but the computer has control of what you're seeing and hearing. And you can have those experiences. And, you know, I think all of that is great, also, as long as we are careful about how we use it. And, you know, we realize what, what we're actually doing, and we we always as humans know, when it's reality, and when it's not reality, we need to make sure that we are always capable of making that distinction in our mind. It you know, your question on propulsion is really interesting right now, chemical propulsion is how we fly in space. So to get off planet Earth to get away from the gravity field, here, I'm you know, which actually decreases as you go up, you need a lot of thrust to get off off the surface. So for example, in the spatial program, we had about seven and a half million pounds of thrust, which lifted about six and a half million pounds of weight of the space shuttle. So you're thrust to weight ratio, and you have to have more thrust than you do weight. So on the shuttle, we, the way we initially get off the ground was with the, with the solid rocket boosters. So first of all, we would light our main engines, which were very burn very clean, they were liquid, they were you have to have a fuel and oxidizer. So our fuel was hydrogen, you know, cryogenic hydrogen, and our our oxidizer was cryogenic oxygen. So to burn a liquid engine, you need fuel and you need oxygen. You know, an aeroplane gets your oxygen from the atmosphere. But a rocket since going into space has to carry its own oxygen with it. So those main engines that we had burned for eight and a half minutes, but it wasn't good enough to get us off the initial pull of gravity. So we had those white rockets on the side. Those were solid rocket boosters. And there was some kind of ammonium perchlorate, this, there's a lot of chemicals in the solid rocket motors. And they burn for two minutes, and they were used up the fuel they dropped in the ocean, they were reused. We still use solid rocket motors on many launch vehicles. I think, today, there's a lot of liquid engines that are getting us out of planet Earth. And there's different kinds of fuel you don't have to use. You don't have to use hydrogen. But I think we'll be using chemical propulsion in the near future to get off of the surface of the earth. Now, what about traveling through space that's different. You need a different kind of engine for that in the space shuttle. Once we were in orbit. Now we're in space, there's no air. So we used something called omes engines. They had monomethyl hydrazine for fuel oxygen tech trackside for the oxidizer, they were hypergolic fuels. I don't want to get too technical here. But hyperbolic fuel is when they the hydrogen, or when the fuel and the oxygen come together, they don't need ignition, they just spontaneously Ignite. Those engines were extremely reliable. I can't even think of a time when we had a major failure with those. That was also the type of back oxygen, I'm sorry, the type of engine that was used when the astronauts were on the moon. They lifted off. I mean, a lot of people thought, what if they're stuck up there? What if their engines don't like you're trying to come back to Earth? Well, they had engines similar to that, that brought them back home. But again, it's chemical propulsion. So in these different kinds is I've mentioned. So we want to travel in space. And we don't want to carry all of this chemical in oxidizer with us. So there's research going on into nuclear propulsion. There's nuclear fission, there's nuclear fusion, it can be used for propulsion, like moving in a spacecraft or can be used for power, like giving you electricity. And there's, I'm gonna tell you, there's a lot of research going on, and a lot of it is very promising. Another type is solar propulsion. Now solar, by the way, is used for power, it's used for electricity on board, the space station, we have solar arrays, you know, the space station is completely, all of its electric power comes from the sun, on the space station. But the Sun maybe can be used for solar sailing. And it would be much, much slower, but it would be very clean, and it would be very reliable. But once you get away from the sun, you got problems. So that's not really going to work for Inter, I want to say, you know, inter planetary type, travel far away from a sun. But I think that the nuclear propulsion is where it's going to be at now, how fast can you go? Well, theoretically, you can travel up to the speed of light. When you start getting close to the speed of light, weird things start happening to your, your sense of time and your sense of mass. And I'm not a physicist, so I don't want to go into that. But let's say theoretically, you could travel at the speed of light. And as I mentioned, before, the closest sun to us is over four light years. So it would take you four years to get there, if you could travel at the speed of light, which we can't. So even if we could approach that, it's still gonna be, you know, a massive amount of in person's lifetime. So that's where you're going to be sending, you know, sometime, but you'd call them robots, that you're going to send some type of automation. And you can tap into that somehow, visually, and, you know, using some kind of new technology where you can participate without actually having your body there. And these are all like sci fi kind of concepts right now. But I find it fascinating. And I like to talk to young people about it and use your imagination to you know, become an engineer, become a scientist, and really Tuc try to explore what are the possibilities for the future, there will be a breakthrough at some point. And we're going to figure out how to get to some of these stars in our galaxy, much faster, not using these primitive types of transportation that are will really probably work in the short term for us. And in the long term for shorter distances. But if we want to go farther and faster, we're going to have to develop some new concept. And I, I can't tell you what that is, but I can tell you that I like to talk about it and try to get other people thinking about it. And maybe somebody smarter than me, will someday, you know, figure out but here's another example, no one's figured out how to do artificial gravity. It's just I mean, you can go in a space station and spin it like a centrifuge and create artificial gravity that way. But no one's actually figured out how to do it. Like you would say, you know, maybe in some of these movies, like, like Star Trek or Star Wars, where they're out in space, and they're all walking around, like they're like they hit them. And you know, that's not realistic, but maybe somebody could invent that. And the other thing is, you know, people ask me about the zero gravity room on the Where's NASA zero gravity room? Is it a Johnson Space Center? I'm like, no one's figured out how to do that. You know, that's the other side of it. We can go up in an airplane in and do what we call marvelous in, you know, for 20 seconds, you can get zero gravity while the airplane dives. But we haven't figured out how to do zero gravity on the surface of the earth. People think we have you know, they want to go into Zero Gravity room. So all these things, all these things I've mentioned are very, very futuristic. Probably not possible in my lifetime. But I think that we need to keep setting the seeds of curiosity in our young people, and they can continue to pass that on to, you know, their children and their next generation. You know, someday I believe that humans will figure out how to get how to really travel into into deep space.
Marco Ciappelli 40:27
Cool, I feel like I just read a book here. And my mind is going in reference to two famous movies and TV series and books, a lot of authors come to mind. And you know, I'm with you. I mean, I'm sure we'll figure out all of this. I mean, our future as a race depends on it anyway. So there's that. So let's go back for the last few minutes to what is possible, and what is more of the near future. So I'd love to hear about the idea of we're going back to the moon, right? We there has been the first Artemis completely Ironman Snoopy was there. So I was excited about that. And then we're going to do another one, which is going to be more of a test, much test, landing, I guess. And then the third one where actually people are going to go there. And then there is the whole idea, but what are we going to do there? And then is the next step, Mars? Why do we want to go to Mars? And why do we go to Mars? So I'm sure and I tried to ask question that I think the audience may have right now is the famous question. Why? Why are we going to space? Why are we going to explore but maybe more immediately? Why? What are the reason why we're going into the moon? Or going to Mars? And then who knows where from? From where?
Eileen Collins 42:01
Yeah, I'm glad you asked me that. That? Yes. It is definitely important in Yes, the United States, we'll do this. I think it's important that the United States is a leader in that we bring in the international community. But, you know, why are we going? I mean, this question goes all the way back to the 1960s when the United States started the Mercury, Gemini Apollo program, back then there were a lot of questions. Why are we doing this? There's a war in Vietnam, through civil rights protests going on, you know, we had a precedent assassinate me, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, all this stuff, assassinations. And there was so many problems, but the United States, NASA, in parallel with all of these unrest of the 60s, campus protests, and we were launching people into space. And the question was constantly asked, why are we doing that? Why are we spending money in space? We're wasting it? Well, here's, here's the answer to it. First of all, the money is not being spent in space, because there's no stores. There's no banks up there. I mean, all the money was spent on Earth. And it had to do with research, keeping people employed, keeping people motivated, getting kids interested, you get kids in school interested in studying math, science, engineering, it gave us hope for the future as humans, it gave us something that we could be happy about. And we could claim to in you know, get away from I mean, it's important that we stop the war in Vietnam. But meanwhile, we can see where success is happening. And we can see that humans can do it. So I think it I think it gave us this subjective. You can't really measure it. But it gave me just interesting story. In 1968, when Apollo think it was Apollo eight, first humans to circle the moon, they didn't land but they circled the moon and Frank Borman was the commander. And they were able to put through film out in the whole earth disappeared behind their film, while they were circling the moon, that's how far away they were. And they read from Genesis, they read from the Bible Genesis and the Capcom in Mission Control said to them, thank you, Apollo eight, you saved 1968. And that was Christmas Eve, December 24, of 1968. So that's just one example. There's, there's many others about how you know, just this the human spirit of exploration and discovery. So so that I would say is reason number one, and then you could get into more concrete things like, you know, why do we build a space station? Well, frankly, we built it because we want to understand the human body how it can survive for long periods of time, in zero gravity or low gravity fields, so we can spend more time on the moon in Mars. But while we're up there in the Soviet Space Station, which, by the way has been up there since the year 2000. So it's been over 22 years doing research on the human body. And we're learning so much about ourselves. But on the other hand, the technology that we are developing, is helping us overall. So the space station is completely powered by solar, we actually give some of our power to the Russians and the Russian side of their space station is part of a contracts we have with them. And we are studying, I want to say, without using technical terms, we're recycling the air, the air revitalization, but we're learning how to take carbon dioxide out of the air in a Senate very small scale, but humans breathe out carbon dioxide. And we have many different ways to take the carbon dioxide and, and convert it back to Oxygen. It the systems are not very reliable, they tend to break down but we're trying to develop them to make them more reliable. So we can use them on the Moon and Mars, where if it breaks down over there, you can't, you know, just order part from Earth, you want them to be reliable. And the other thing is, we're recycling the water up there. And NASA has gotten their water recycling to they're reclaiming, like 97% of the water, through humidity and through wastewater. So so there's a Technic technology reason, and then I'll only give you one more, there's so many but we're looking back at the Earth from a different perspective. Instead of just seeing it from the surface or from an aeroplane, we're seeing it from a distance. And we can take imagery, again, it can be taken with satellites. But yet when a human looks out the window, see most of our satellites are look neater, they look straight down. But an astronaut will look out in an oblique angle, maybe you can look out at the horizon is Oh, I see something over there that I'm going to photograph it and send it down to the scientists. And you know, just using, you know, maybe the human filter that you have in your mind, I know this doesn't look right, let's let's ask Let's send it down to our folks on the ground. So those are just a couple reasons of why we're going. Now you can use it maybe a reason that people would argue with is if we don't do it, the Chinese will do it. I'm telling you, they will do it. The Chinese Chinese right now have a rover on Mars. The Chinese have, they have a space station. Our Congress does not allow us to work with China. The Congress of the United States Congress does not allow NASA to cooperate with China in space, although we do cooperate with all the other countries, Russia, Europeans and the Japanese. So China has said we're going to go to the south pole of the moon, which is actually the goal of the United States. And we're going to build space stations there. And so we're kind of in a little bit of a space race with them. Right now, we are ahead, obviously, just look at what we've done. But the Chinese are catching up very fast. It kind of breaks my heart to think that there would be a this kind of space race competition with another country, I believe, you know, ideologically we should be working together. But the reality is, that's not that's probably too idealistic, because the Chinese have, I think, different intentions than us in the long run. And we're, I would probably have to say we're probably in a in a mild space race with China right now that will only escalate. So we need to keep doing these things. And then, of course, international cooperation, you know, we were working with the Europeans with Japan, we're still working with Russia, even though there's sanctions due to the war in Ukraine. It this has been through the State Department. And we're hope we're still launching Russian cosmonauts out of Florida on our SpaceX partners, spacecraft. And American astronauts are still launching on the Soyuz out of Kazakhstan. And the reason we're doing this is we want to make sure that our space station will always have at least one Russian and one American onboard, because of the way we're trained to operate the systems. So it really our space program really depends on cooperating with the Russians. So anyway, I'm talking about a lot of different things here. But I think when we started working with the Russians back in the 1990s, it has really helped both of our countries, at least in the short term, and maybe we'll see what happens in the long in the long term, but it's not looking good there.
Marco Ciappelli 49:59
Wow. swerd My, my idealistic view, you know, gonna wrap this entire thing of like, I think about the overview effect, I think about the fact that even despite the cold war and, you know, and the race to space back in the in the 50s, the 60s, and you know, I've read a book about that very fascinating from, you know, Sputnik to Eureka garden, and then Shepard and all of that. I mean, it's beautiful. Because again, you look at the history of that, and you shake your head, because, you know, you guys got on the mirror mirror was the beginning of the space station, right. And so I'm hoping that there is not going to be a colonization with the flags on the moon. And it's just symbolic, eventually, because it's for all humankind, and so will be in the interest of everyone. I mean, the planet, is this the overview effect that I encourage everybody to learn about that? You mentioned that? I think that's exactly the point in we need to do it together? I don't think a country alone, it's going to be I don't know, I don't, I don't think he's gonna be able to, to establish colonies on Mars, unless we all are part of that. And again, I'm being more from a societal perspective,
Eileen Collins 51:24
I would like to add something to that. The reason we have a space station is because of the international cooperation in 1995, when Congress voted on the space station, the one we'd had up there for 22 years, the ISS International Space Station, it passed Congress by one vote. one another, and yeah, it would have but you know, many of these congressmen that voted for it were like, well, it's so expensive data, but we've promised our international partners, so we don't want to break that promise. And then the second one is, after the Columbia accident in 2003, many people wanted to shut down the shuttle program, because we closed your cruise. Why should we keep flying this dangerous machine? The reason we kept flying the shuttle was we had international commitments to finish building the space station. And we didn't want to let down our international partners, we wanted to be reliable partner. So just I just wanted to add that to what you were saying it's so true that, you know, could the United States do all of spaceflight alone? Yes, it would be possible, but it's not realistic, you know, to get the funding. And to really, I want to say, make sure that the program go all the way to the end, we have to do it internationally. And then having been an international participant myself. Having our astronauts from other countries has just been wonderful in what we've learned from each other and how it's really, I think, helped me grow to be better astronaut, by learning about other countries in the way they do things and having the friendships it's you know, just kind of a nice cake.
Marco Ciappelli 53:05
And you have beautiful stories on your book about spending time even having a drink in space with with everyone else and you learn some of the language so you could cooperate and collaborate you get when to train there. So I'm saying all of this because this was a beautiful conversation. I think we just touch on certain things that we could have entire episode about. But in the end, I want to wrap it with again, reference to your book, through the glass ceiling to the stars. Where is your biography but also I think you understand here it is on the video. You can see it and there'll be link to that book and to learn really, I felt like I lean alien. I already kind of knew you before we got together because I did read the book. But but you know as somebody said they can hear your voice I couldn't actually say that before but now after a couple of hours that we spent together. I agree that I think that book is is that with your with your voice. And it's beautiful. And what to say i don't know i have an app that I'm in LA in Los Angeles and when the the International Space Station fly by you got five minutes to look at this bright light if there's no cloudy and I don't know it's not an overview effect I'm just here on earth but to know that there is people there and the history of those like Cuba build it and the people there working together in cooperation for me it is it is a light is a bright light on us three of the show that unity and what we can do all together instead of collaborating and cooperating
Eileen Collins 54:53
Scott's spot the station. You can sign up to get emails or text messages. Just got to put the City where you live. And it'll tell you when it's going overhead so you can see it.
Marco Ciappelli 55:03
And it's really cool. It's just the bright star that goes really fast. It's faster than an airplane and rider. Yeah, exactly. It's beautiful. So again, we are a 53 minutes, I am so honored that you took the time to spend it with me, I hope you will come back whenever you have something to say I know that you're part of many initiative for STEM and, and bringing the education and knowledge all over the places I know you're going to visit schools, you're talking to young kids and so very, very excited for for all other people that are going to space and then they're going to come back and and bring the message that you're bringing in is really important. So Eileen, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
Eileen Collins 55:53
Thank you, Marco. Great talk.
Marco Ciappelli 55:56
Thank you. Same here and for everybody else, subscribe to the channel where the finance society podcast Catch, catch up on all the links that will be for the book for Eileen and, and just stay tuned for the next episode. I don't know what we're going to talk about, but it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be interesting. Thank you very much.
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