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the path to becoming an astronaut is not clear the path was not clear for me either Dave fredberg this is Woody
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hoberg calling you from the International Space Station how do you hear me hey Woody I hear you will how
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are you 22 years of experience living and working in space we have learned so much and so what that sets us up to do
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now is to go further space is hard it just is hard it's not a forgiving place we intend to set up a sustained human
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presence on the moon and we're going to set up a Proving Ground to go to Mars thank you so much it is such an
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honor to be here I'm going to start with a a bit of History the leftand photo is one of the last moments in recorded
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human history when all living humans were on Earth this was October 31st of the year 2000 at bikon or cosmodrome in
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Kazakhstan and the crew of expedition one launched up to the International Space Station it was just three modules
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at that time and they started a continuous human presence in space that continues today by 2011 the ISS was
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assembled and looked roughly like this humans live in the pressurized modules running front to back in this photo and
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the truss running left to right is unpressurized so only accessible by Space Walk ISS is solar powered on a on
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an average workday it consumes about 75 kilowatts it is a million pounds of mass
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in low earth orbit it's about 250 miles above Earth to stay in that orbit it has
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to travel 5 miles every second so that works out to a 90minut orbit we see 16 Sun and 16 sunsets every
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day now in in 2011 when the space shuttle retired it left us our only option to continue sending humans up to
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the space station was a Russian so rocket that situation changed in May of 2020 SpaceX made history they launched
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NASA astronauts Bob bin and Doug Hurley on a test flight of the crew Dragon spacecraft and at that time the world
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was just two months in grappling with the co pandemic and Allin had just published
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episode three Bob and Doug spent two months on the space station before they successfully returned and I didn't know
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it at the time but I would eventually fly on crew Dragon Endeavor which is the same capsule as Bob and
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Doug less than a year later I was assigned to be the pilot for the crew 6 Mission up to the ISS and so my crew
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from left to right on the left Russian cosmonaut Andre fidth Commander Steve Bowen myself flying as pilot and then uh
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Sultan aladi was the first UAE astronaut to do a long duration Mission six months
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on the ISS we actually scrubbed our very first launch attempt we got within 2 and a
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half minutes of launch and we had an issue with the system that ignites our engines and so um we had to scrub we got
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all the fuel off the vehicle and 3 days lat later we were ready to try again ready for an on time launch for
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the instant 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 engine full power and lift off you're on your back you lift off at about one and a
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half [Applause] G's station pitching down R 1.7 Million by the time all the fuel burns out
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you're up about 4 and2 Gs and then we stage this is the second stage engine and again it starts off with only a
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little bit of acceleration it builds up to about 4 and 1/2 GS there you can see on your screen confirmation Dragon
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separation confirmed and so 12 minutes after launch you're in space this is where we experienced weightlessness for
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the first time and we took about a day like 24 hours to to do all the phasing up to the ISS for me the ISS had been
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this place that I trained about it's kind of an abstract object off in space and actually arriving and seeing it in
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our thermal camera I still remember it sent chills down my spine it's pretty fun the first few days
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getting used to weightlessness Steve uh was our resident Chef he was famous for baking pies in
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space and we had a great Handover with crew five who kind of taught us all the the little tricks to living and working
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in space and we got right to work um full complement of science experiments this this uh is the Japanese module you
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see the primary glove box mount sideways and that's American astronaut Frank Rubio working in the glove box he
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currently has the American record for uh duration of a single space flight now it turns out weightlessness
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causes heart tissue to age much faster than on Earth so we're using that as a model to study treatments for heart
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disease so see that top one beating looks like happy heart cells so I still remember the day that Sultan looked
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through the microscope and saw these Beating Heart cells just mindblowing we printed a section of human miniscus
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using a biofabrication facility and in addition to all the science we have to do all of the
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maintenance and repairs on board so this is some of the less glamorous stuff this
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is fixing our toilet we have to do regular maintenance on the space suits to keep them ready
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for action uh try to find me in this photo this is repairing one of our CO2 scrubbing machines you see my legs
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poking out and this is how we get rid of trash we load up cargo vehicles and send them
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home to a destructive re-entry through Earth's atmosphere there's a regular Cadence of these cargo vehicles coming
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to and from ISS all the time Frank and I here are capturing uh the ng19 mission with our Canadian robotic arm and
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birthing it to the bottom of node one and the team on the ground is always uh sending us with every new cargo
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vehicle fresh fresh food and it's always a special treat we also have to take care of
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ourselves this is Sultan on our treadmill it's mounted on the wall you run facing the floor we do like two and
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a half hours of exercise every day half cardio and half this resistance exercise
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so lots of time to listen to music and podcasts I did get to talk to fredberg for uh we had a great conversation
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actually um from low earth orbit I love chess so I got a chess board sent up and
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we actually played ISS crew versus Mission Control we played a few games back and forth did like one or two moves
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every day and and we always picked out a flight controller from a specific console to make our moves on the board
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in Mission Control now one of my favorite parts of training uh preparing was spacewalk
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training it's really tactile learning to use a pressurized space suit so we have
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the neutral boyancy lab in Houston amazing team of divers supporting us to practice all of our procedures and I was
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thrilled when I found out that I would get to do two spacewalks to in install a couple new ISS rollout solar arrays
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they're the vertical uh rolls you see in this photo we were getting ready for the
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spacewalks and two weeks prior we were flying over the Pacific Ocean and got some photos of this storm which
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unfortunately damaged one of the ground sites in Guam that supports the satellites that we used to talk to
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Mission Control so this meant that during my space walks we would not have the ability to talk to Mission Control
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for some large G uh chunks of time everyone rallied uh Frank and Sultan set up this kind of Command Post
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in the US lab on the space station so in addition to operating the robotic arm they would hand off back and forth with
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mission control for those com gaps and Frank and Sultan would walk us through all of our
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procedures my friend Brian who will be speaking shortly actually told me that my mission would be an utter failure if
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I didn't get at least one space selfie so I got this as soon as I could uh Franken Sultan flew me over to
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the arrays and Steve and I unbolted them and then this is the commute out to the
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work site the array unit it's 800 lb of mass so it's weightless but you still feel
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the inertia of that 800 PBS in your hands so mainly I was happy I did not drop it um after we finished the installation
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Steve got this shot there's two dragon spacecraft in this photo on the right side of node 2 is crew6 Dragon Endeavor
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what I flew up in and then up on the top is CRS 28 that's a cargo vehicle that flew the arrays up and down in the end
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of the robotic arm you can see the foot restraint that was holding me while I was holding the
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arrays so it was an amazing mission after 185 days it was time for crew 6 to come home the dragon hatch itself is
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closed that coming at 4:19 a.m. Central Time you see the thrusters firing as we back away and get another nice view of
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is on the big loop the part burn one is complete and nominal Sultan got this view past his
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feet of the plasma as we re-entered our atmosphere we're basically inside a meteor so pyro Hive fired and we have
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good confirmation of drug shoots Two drugs and releas the drug slow us down to about 140 mph sets us up to deploy
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Mains safely and you can you can see here the hot spacecraft and cold parachutes in the thermal cam we landed
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in some of the highest Seas to date um for crew Dragon an amazing recovery team comes out rig the vehicle and they Lift
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Us onto the recovery ship with us still inside so you see our smiling faces here
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it was like the thrill of a lifetime to get to spend six months living and working in space but there's also just
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nothing like returning home to the people you love thank you I want to spend just a
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moment uh beyond my mission and talk about where we're headed next NASA is headed back to the moon and to really
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put this in context I I just have to show you so I've asked fredberg for some help and he's kindly
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agreed come on out for you okay go on this side all the way down or stay with me for a second
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okay so it's a it's a convenient Quirk of the scale of the objects in our solar system that if you make the earth a
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basketball this is the earth then the Moon is a tennis ball and I invite you if you don't know
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this answer to think about how far the Moon is from Earth in this scale if you already know that's fine
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but take a guess should I say the answer do uh 180,000 miles 225,000 miles 225,000 miles all right when I'm going
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to do very well on Jeopardy here we go when should he stop now keep going keep going
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keep going okay slow down there so in this scale it's 24 feet you can do the math so we we will stay here
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let's lose the tape measure and stay there freedberg I would not make a good aftera I was telling Woody I'm like I
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can't imagine like you walk out in space and it's like there's just space that like I'm not
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sorry go ahead don't drop the moon either I'm sorry I just want to tell you a couple
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things here this is the earth I told you this the ISS where I was was I spent six
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months half an inch off the basketball wow that's where low earth orbit is wow and you guys probably saw Polaris Dawn
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launched this morning maybe a quick Round of Applause for SpaceX [Music] so they're going way higher than the is
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ISS way higher they're going an inch off the basketball with aremis so we already
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launched Artemis in 2022 it flew uncrewed out around the moon and the Artemis 2 crew is already in training to
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fly Orion around the moon and come home and then emis 3 is going to be the landing on the surface of the Moon and
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we're going to set up shop we're going to make a Proving Ground to get to Mars and so while we have this scale Mars
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let's let's see if you could imagine 3/4 of a mile away in this scale 3/4 of a mile that's
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Mars and we're doing all this work on the moon to eventually get to Mars and then I know you guys are Forward
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Thinking so I just want you to imagine Beyond even Mars 34 miles 34 miles away is Uranus
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[Applause] [Music] I I heard Cham laugh he love that amazing all right I think we're
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going to talk for a minute yeah that was great Woody thank you let's chat grab a
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seat right here grab a SE right here what should we do with the Earth good question um so couple quick
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questions what's the timeline emis 2 Artemis 3 yeah and um yeah just tell us a little bit about the timelines it's
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super setting we already launched emis 1 emus 2 crew is in training right now they're scheduled to fly in the fall of
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2025 so in a year um they're going to test out the Orion spacecraft that flight's going to be a big deal they're
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actually going to go further from Earth than humans have ever been because they go a little farther from the Moon than
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Apollo did wow and then uh the plan right now is for that first crude Landing in 2026 with Artemis 3 2026 yep
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are you in the running to be yeah every astronaut in the office is in the running to be assigned to an emis
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mission is it like movie Right Stuff where you guys are all super competitive with each other on like or how tell us
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about the Cooperative or the competitive nature of being an astronaut in the NASA
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program it's actually one of the most fun things so it's definitely kind of a wait in line till you're told that
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you're assigned to a mission I still remember when I got the phone call assigning me to crew 6 to to do my first
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mission it's just one of those phone calls you'll never forget you know um it's it's actually not we all support
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one another and there's honestly nothing cooler than watching your friends fly to
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space yeah so and we all know we're eventually going to have that chance and so it's less like directly competitive
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than you might imagine so does the moon base kind of feel like an ISS is it like
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we're going to set up a facility at some point and is there that sort of long-term planning going on absolutely
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and I think yeah there's a strategic plan looking way out into that Artemis campaign we talked about it being a
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sustained presence you know right now um I mean I think we'd all love to eventually have a permanent presence
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meaning that humans are always on the moon yeah at first it's not going to be that we're going to send missions uh but
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unlike Apollo we are really going to stay we intend to stay there for a long time and we're actually in unlike Apollo
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instead of going to the equator we're going to go initially to the South Pole which is scientifically really
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interesting and the intent is to do all the cool things Rovers moon bases like nuclear power on the moon we want to do
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it all why did it take humans half a century to come back and do this again I think um did we really go to the Moon by
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the way we absolutely went to the moon just for the The Joe Rogan crowd I just want to make sure we're
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like I think I I think it's you know political will right yeah we have to decide that it's what we want to do and
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I think that's one of the coolest things about this time I mean who's heard of Artemis
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program yeah few people good good many um we could probably do a better job advertising but you know what like the
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cool thing about Artemis is we we truly have bipartisan support that's NASA's um
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like issue over many years is can you sustain as administrations change because it takes a long time to do this
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stuff and right now we feel like we have real bipartisan support to go do this the people want us to go do this and
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sorry and so once you're on the moon there's a lot of constant resupply needed in the current model so that's
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part of the logistics is like how do we continually resupply yeah and I think as
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the missions get more complex it stship involved in 100% so right now um we actually have two providers so SpaceX is
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Big Starship yeah maybe you can just talk about why it's so important yeah so um the we already talked about the Orion
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spacecraft which is what the astronuts are going to fly from Earth to the to a lunar orbit in but the human Landing
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system which is going to take them down to the surface we have two providers for
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that and one of those and actually the one we plan to use for that first landing is the SpaceX Starship they' uh
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SpaceX plans to do an uncr demo before we send our astronauts down and we're super looking forward to it so is emis
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um a close partnership with SpaceX that NASA relies on and SpaceX is a critical um partner to that program to that
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mission yeah we're using them for our for our Landing then SpaceX talks and Elon talked a lot yesterday about trying
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to get Starship uncrewed over to Mars in two years and is I don't want you to necessarily aine in a negative way but
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like how realistic is it that there's going to be a crude Starship to Mars in four years as he claimed and is that a
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NASA partnership or is that we are cheering on every Starship flight I mean I've watched every single one it's we
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love the development so if we can get to Mars in years um that's great what NASA
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is specifically Contracting SpaceX on is to go to the Moon we believe the Moon is
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the right place to go set up a sustained presence and really practice um set up a
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Proving Ground to eventually go to Mars and does all the development on Starship
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is in the direction of goodness it's yeah and is it um does NASA have a development program on getting to Mars
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and timelines do they have talk about that at all and is there is there an actual Mission yet we actually
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reorganized within NASA and we have an entire directorate called the Moon to Mars directorate and so um it's
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absolutely we see the moon as our path to Mars and that is absolutely the strategy yeah um so uh maybe you could
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just tell us coming a little bit closer to Earth uh the Polaris Mission it's 5 days long they just launched this
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morning Elon was here and then he he actually flew in came to the summit got back on his plane went back to Florida
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and they got off yeah so maybe you could tell us a little bit about the mission and what these folks are going to be
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doing we didn't get to talk about it with Elon yesterday it's amazing and you know Jared Scott Sarah and um Jared
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Jared isman yeah Jared isman is the the commander I mean and he paid for the whole M yeah yeah he paid for the the
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whole mission I mean these guys are friends actually you know friends and family so we're rooting them on if you
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if you've been to Florida and see there's a different emotion when you see a crude launch than an uncrewed launch
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like uncrewed launch big rocket go up cool um when you see when you have friends and family on board one of these
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Rockets it it's a different experience to watch the launch so um we're rooting them on they're in space right now
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experiencing and they're going to do a space walk they're going to do a space walk in a couple days that's right um
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it'll be the first commercial space walk so NASA's been doing space walks for a long time but they are making history
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they're going to depressurize the vehicle to vacuum so they don't have an air loock or anything they're going to
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take the vehicle all the way to vacuum they're all in a suit they're all going to be in suits they have to be they'll
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open the hatch and um I think it's Jared and Sarah that are going to go out and do that first uh I believe uh do that
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first space walk so they're going to go out and be like holy I'm in space yeah I I'll say I don't know that
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I'm not not super up to date on the details of I'm sure they have objectives for the
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spacewalk it's always how it is you while you're out there there's things you want to do imagine at the ISS you
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walk out it's a large structure there there's there's some grounding context to it but yeah these guys are just
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outside of the the capsule yeah and I think another interesting you know I had the benefit on ISS I had been floating
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for months actually before I did my space walk so I was used to the idea that you're now in this world where
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everything floats and so going outside I mean you look down and it's a 250 mile drop to the surface of Earth but it
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didn't feel scary or anything because I knew I was just going to stay floating next to space station where everything's
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falling um their experience they've only had a couple days to orient to this um so it'll be um pretty cool yeah
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well I mean cool for some it takes a different kind of person I don't know um really incredible guys
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please join me in thanking Woody for being here at the all Summit