what's the scariest thing you've ever
done or another way to say it is what's
the most dangerous thing that you've
ever done and why did you do it I know
what the most dangerous thing is that
I've ever done because NASA does the
math you look back to the first five
shuttle launches the odds of a
catastrophic event during the first five
shuttle launches was one in nine and
even when I first flew on the shuttle
back in a 1995 74 shuttle flight the
odds were still now that we look back
about one in 38 or so 135 one in 40 not
great odds so it's a really interesting
day when you wake up at the Kennedy
Space Center and you're gonna go to
space that day because you realize by
the end of the day you're either going
to be floating effortlessly gloriously
in space or you'll be dead you go into
at the Kennedy Space Center into the the
suit up room the same room that that our
childhood heroes got dressed in that
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got
suited in to go ride the Apollo rocket
to the moon and I got my pressure suit
built around me and rode down outside in
the van heading out to the launch pad in
the Astro van heading out in the launch
pad and as you come around the corner at
the Kennedy Space Center
it's normally pre-dawn and in the
distance lit up by the the huge xenon
lights is your spaceship the vehicle
that is going to take you off the planet
and the crew is is sitting in the Astro
van sort of hushed almost holding hands
looking at that as it gets bigger and
bigger we ride the elevator up and we
crawl in on your hands and knees into
the spaceship one at a time and you sort
of worm your way up into your chair and
plunk yourself down
on your back and the hatch is closed and
suddenly what has been a lifetime of
both dreams and denial is becoming real
something that I dreamed about fact that
I chose to do when I was nine years old
is now suddenly within not too many
minutes of actually happening and in the
astronaut business the shuttle is a very
complicated vehicle it's the most
complicated flying machine ever built
and in the astronaut business we have a
saying which is there is no problem so
bad that you can't make it worse and and
so you're very conscious in the cockpit
you're thinking about all of the things
that you might have to do all the
switches and all the wickets you have to
go through and as the time gets closer
and closer this excitement is building
and then about three and a half minutes
before launch the huge nozzles on the
back like the size of big church bells
swing back and forth and the mass in
them is such that it sways the whole
vehicle like like the vehicles alive
underneath you like like an elephant
getting up lots of up its knees or
something and then about 30 seconds
before launch the vehicle is completely
alive it is ready to go the AP users are
running the computers are all
self-contained it's ready to leave the
planet and 15 seconds before launch this
happens
[Music]
start two one ignition
it is incredibly powerful to be onboard
one of these things you are in the grip
of something that is vastly more
powerful than yourself it's shaking you
so hard you can't focus on the
instruments in front of you it's like
you're in the jaws of some enormous dog
and there's a foot and the small of your
back pushing you to space accelerating
wildly straight up shouldering your way
through the air and you're in a very
complex place paying attention watching
the vehicle go through each one of its
wickets with a steadily increasing smile
on your face after two minutes those
solid rockets explode off and then you
just have the liquid engines the
hydrogen and oxygen and it's as if
you're in a dragster with your foot to
the floor and accelerating like you've
never accelerate you get lighter and
lighter the force gets on us heavier and
heavier and it feels like like someone's
pouring cement on you or something until
finally after about eight minutes and 40
seconds or so we are finally at exactly
the right altitude exactly the right
speed the right direction the engines
shut off and we're weightless and we're
alive it's an amazing experience but why
would we take that risk why would you do
something that dangerous you know my
case the answer is fairly
straightforward I was inspired as a
youngster that this is what I wanted to
do I watched the first people walk on
the moon and to me it was just an
obvious thing I want to somehow turn
myself into that but the real question
is how do you deal with the danger of it
and the fear that comes from it how do
you deal with fear versus danger and
having the goal in mind thinking about
where it might lead directed me to the
life of looking at all of the the small
details to allow this to become possible
to be able to launch and go help build a
space station where you are onboard a
million-pound creation that's going
around the world at five miles a second
eight kilometers a second around the
world
sixteen times a day with experiments on
board that are teaching us what the
substance of the universe is made of and
running 200 experiments inside but maybe
even more important
allowing us to see the world in a way
that is impossible through any other
means to be able to look down and have
if your jaw could drop it would the
jaw-dropping gorgeousness of the the
turning orb like a like a self-propelled
art gallery of fantastic constantly
changing beauty that is the world itself
and you see because of the speed a
sunrise or a sunset every 45 minutes for
half a year and the most magnificent
part of all that is to go outside on a
spacewalk you are you know one person
spaceship that is your spacesuit and
you're going through space with the
world it's an entirely different
perspective you're not looking up at the
universe you and the earth are going
through the universe together and you're
holding on with one hand looking at the
world turn beside you it's it's it's
like roaring silently with color and
textures it pours by just mesmerizingly
next to you and if you can tear your
eyes away from that and you look under
your arm down at the rest of everything
it's it's a unfathomable blackness like
with a touch texture you feel like you
could stick your hand into and you are
holding on with one hand one link to the
other seven billion people and I was
outside of my first space walk when my
left eye went blind and I didn't know
why suddenly my left eye slammed shut
and great pain and I couldn't figure out
what why my I wasn't working I was
thinking what do I do next
I thought well maybe that's why we have
two eyes so I kept working
but unfortunately without gravity tears
don't fall and so you just get a bigger
and bigger ball of whatever that is
mixed with your tears on your eye until
eventually the ball becomes so big that
the surface tension takes it across the
bridge of your nose like a tiny little
waterfall and goes goosh into your other
eye and now I was completely blind
outside the spaceship
so what's the scariest thing you've ever
done maybe it's spiders a lot of people
are afraid of spiders I think you should
be afraid of spiders spiders are creepy
and they got long hairy legs and spiders
like this one the brown recluse I mean
it's horrible if a brown recluse bites
you you're not one of these horrible big
necrotic things on your leg and there
might be one right now sitting on the
chair behind you in fact and how do you
know and so a spider lands on you and
you go through this great spasm II
attack because spiders are scary but
then you could say well is there a brown
recluse sitting on the chair beside me
or not I don't know are there brown
recluses here so if you actually do the
research you find out that in the world
there about 50,000 different types of
spiders and there are about two dozen
that are venomous out of 50,000 and if
you're in Canada because of the cold
winters here in BC there's about seven
hundred and twenty seven hundred and
thirty different types of spiders and
there's one one that is venomous and
it's venom isn't even fatal it's just
kind of like a nasty sting and that
spider not only that but that spider has
beautiful markings on it it's like I'm
dangerous I got a big radiation symbol
on my back it's the black glow
so if you're even slightly careful you
can avoid running into the one spider
that and it lives close to the ground
you're walking along you are never gonna
go through a spiderweb or a black widow
bites you spider webs like this it
doesn't build those it builds them down
in the corners and it's from Black Widow
because it's the female spider eats the
male it doesn't care about you so in
fact the next time you walk into a
spiderweb you don't need to panic and go
with your caveman reaction the danger is
entirely different than the fear and how
do you get around it though how do you
change your behavior well next time you
see a spider web have a good look make
sure it's not a black widow spider and
then walk into it and then you see
another spider web and walk into that
one it's just a little bit of fluffy
stuff it's not a big deal and the spider
that may come out is no more threat to
you than a ladybug or a butterfly and
then I guarantee you if you walk through
a hundred spider webs
you will have changed your fundamental
human behavior your caveman reaction and
you will now be able to walk
the park in the morning and not worry
about that spiderweb or we're into your
grandma's attic or whatever into your
own basement and you can apply this to
anything if you're outside on a
spacewalk and you're blinded your
natural reaction would be to panic I
think it would make you nervous and
worried but we had considered all the
venom and we had practiced with a whole
variety of different spider webs we knew
everything there is to know about the
spacesuit and we trained underwater
thousands of times and we don't just
practice things going right we practice
things going wrong all the time so that
you are constantly walking through those
spider webs and not just underwater but
also in virtual reality labs with the
helmet and the gloves so you feel like
it's realistic so when you finally
actually get outside on a spacewalk it
feels much different than it would if
you just went out first time and even if
you're blinded your natural panicky
reaction doesn't happen instead you kind
of look around and go okay I can't see
but I can hear I can talk Scott
Parazynski is out here with me he could
come over and help me we actually
practiced incapacitated crew rescue so
he could float me like a blimp and stuff
me into the airlock if we had to I could
find my own way back it's not nearly as
big a deal and actually if you keep on
crying for a while whatever that guck
was that's in your eyes starts to dilute
you can start to see again and houston
if you negotiate with them they will let
you then keep working and we finished
everything on this spacewalk and when we
came back inside Jeff got some cotton
baton and took the crusty stuff around
my eyes and it turned out it was just
the anti-fog sort of a mixture of oil
and soap that got in my eye and now we
use Johnson's no more tears which we
probably should have been using right
from the very beginning but but the key
to that is by looking at the difference
between perceived danger and actual
danger where's the real risk what is the
real thing that you should be afraid of
not just a generic fear of bad things
happening you can fundamentally change
your reaction to things so that it
allows you to go places and see things
and do things that otherwise would be
completely denied to you where you can
see that the hard pant south of the
Sahara or you can see New York City in a
way that is almost dreamlike or the
unconscious gingham of Eastern Europe
fields or the Great Lakes as a
collection of small puddles you can see
the fault lines of San Francisco and the
way the water pours out under the bridge
just entirely different than any other
way that you could have if you had not
found a way to conquer your fear you see
a beauty that otherwise never would have
happened it's time to come home at the
end this is our spaceship the Soyuz that
little 1/3 of us climb in and then this
spaceship detaches from the station and
falls into the atmosphere these two
parts here actually melt we jettison and
they burn up in the atmosphere the only
part that survives is the little bullet
that we're riding in and it falls into
the atmosphere and in a senescence you
are riding a meteorite home and riding
meteorites is scary and it ought to be
but instead of riding into the
atmosphere just screaming like you would
if suddenly you found yourself riding a
meteorite back to earth instead twenty
years previously we had started studying
Russian and then once you learned
Russian then we learned orbital
mechanics in Russian and then we learned
vehicle control theory and then we got
into the simulator and practiced over
and over and over again and in fact you
can fly this meteorite and steer it land
in about a 15 kilometer circle anywhere
on the earth so in fact when our crew
was coming back into the atmosphere
inside the Soyuz we weren't screaming we
were laughing it was fun and when the
great big parachute opened we knew that
it if it didn't open there's a second
parachute and it runs on a nice little
clockwork mechanism so we came back we
came thundering back to earth and this
is what it looked like to land in a
Soyuz in Kazakhstan you can see one of
those search and recovery helicopters
once again that helicopter part of a
dozen such Russian mi-8 helicopters
touchdown 3:14 and 48 seconds a.m.
Central time and you roll to a stop is
this something through your spaceship at
the ground and it's humbles end-over-end
but you're ready for it you're in a
custom-built seat you know how the shock
absorber works and then eventually the
Russians reach in drag you out plunk you
into a chair and you can now look back
at what was an incredible experience you
have taken the dreams of that
nine-year-old boy which were impossible
and dauntingly scary dauntingly
terrifying and put them into practice
and figured out a way to reprogram
yourself to change your primal fear so
that it allowed you to come back with a
set of experiences and a level of
inspiration for other people but never
could have been possible otherwise just
to finish they asked me to to play that
guitar I know this song
and it's really a tribute to the genius
of David Bowie himself but it's also I
think a reflection of the fact that we
are not machines exploring the universe
we are people and we're taking that that
ability to adapt and that ability to
understand and the ability to take our
our own self-perception into a new place
[Music]
this is Major Tom to ground control
I've left forevermore and I'm floating
in a most peculiar way and the stars
look very different today
[Music]
planet Earth is blue and there's so much
left to do
[Music]
fear not
thank you thank you very much thank you