My 2nd Favorite Astronaut - Steve Swanson

Published Aug 6, 2024, 10:00 AM

Daniel explores the final frontier with retired NASA astronaut Steve Swanson, who did three spacewalks, spent more than six months on the International Space Station, and is all too familiar with space bathroom etiquette.

Did you want to be an astronaut as a child? It was the moon landing reel. Yes show, Time to do another episode of Toss Show.

If only there were a way to speed this up.

Eddie, you play me some of that Benny Hill music I love so much?

Oh God, say what you want, Eddie.

The comedy of Benny Hill holds up timeless. I mean, the guy just got it. How's your week, Eddie?

It's pretty good.

How about you good? Where you went to? A Omaha, Nebraska?

Omaha, Nebraska?

Oh, Maha, somewhere in Middle America?

Right? Counting Crows get ready to go?

Oh man? The Counting Crows. Oh I love them.

I love the Counting Crows. Actually I didn't. I actually didn't like them. Did you like the Counting Crows?

Okay, what about the Black Crows?

Black Crows?

I pretended like I liked because they were cool, but I didn't really like them.

I didn't really like that music.

Those are the crows. Cheryl, Cheryl Crow probably the best crow.

Yeah.

Yeah, and Cheryl I liked except for when she dated that alt right fuckhead you know whom I not.

I do not but kid Rock? Oh did they they forgot about that?

You forgot about Sheryl Crow and Kid Rocks romance, Mike, she's got to hate that. She's got to yeah that, she'sed that. She used to let that monster anyway.

I imagine their conversations.

Were tons of conspiracy theories. He's he's a big anti vax Are all that nonsense?

Right? Yeah?

Yeah, me too. I'm a big conspiracy nut. I think global warming. In my day, we just called it seasons. You know how you fight uh, climate change, Eddie, here's how you fight it. Okay, everyone in the country, open up their doors, turn your ac on full blast. Boom guarantee we uh we dropped the temperature a degree or two or back on track.

What other conspiracy theories do you believe.

In, ed, I don't believe in any of them.

You don't know, Oh man, your you're brainwashed, your sheep.

I'm a sheep, part of the sheep. The Aliens built the pyramids.

Nope, No, they didn't do that. That was slaves, all right, I'm positive, right whose slaves that built the pyramid?

They wasn't aliens.

Nine to eleven was an inside jo Nope, Saudis that's what I think. Yeah, that's what you think. I think so chemtrails are a secret government weapon.

Chemtrails.

Uh uh, now that one I actually know for fact. That's just old mufflers, jet mufflers. They're not as good.

Some people think sports are scripted.

Yeah, and those are people whose teams suck. Sports aren't fixed. You're just a Browns fan. I mean, come on, next, you're going to tell me that the moon landing wasn't real. Well, I have it on good authority from today's guest that you're an idiot.

Enjoy Pasha.

My guest today is spent more than six months in space and has over eleven million NASA Frequent Flyer miles.

Please welcome, asked, not Steve Swanson.

Now am I supposed to say thank you for your service or salute you or.

Anything nothing like that?

Now, no opposite way around for me, because I filled the US taxpayer paid for my trips, and so I owe people for that.

Honestly, you get overtime up there.

I get two dollars extra because we do our perdem We fill out a travel form for low Earth orbit right and so, but everything's covered except for miscellaneous, which is two dollars a day.

So you get two dollars a day. What do you spending all of that in a pay per view? Do people say thank you for what they do? They do?

But I just like I didn't.

Suffer, So I mean, I don't know, six months in space sounds like it. That's pretty taxing.

It was. It was taxing.

It's taxing on the body and also psychologically it's taxing. At the same time, I had a lot of fun. So it's one of those given take kind of things.

Do you think you could handle prison? Now?

Not far off r I was stuck with a bunch of guys and a small can for yeah, exactly, but now we had we had a good time together.

All right, I'm gonna get into all of it. Steve started the first one. Do you believe in ghosts?

I heard that was a question coming, so I would like you to find.

Ghosts for me. First.

Well, I'm a scientist, so I'm trying to figure out exactly where we're coming on this actual question.

You know, souls human humans after death?

Right, Well that's a good question. So as for personally, I have not experienced that. However, we had an interested at the house, which is a couple of cases where it was interesting now put it that way. My daughter, who was probably this time meeting around like four was the first time, comes down one morning and says, Uncle Jeff talked to me last night. He had this whole conversation, tells us in great detail about what happened. We get the phone call.

On a couple hours later. He died that.

Night, right exactly, like whoa, Okay, two years later it happens again.

Old she about four or five ish. Two years later you got to get.

Rid of that kids like thirty five now, no, I'm just four.

You had your chance, right, it happens.

Again, uh huh with her with her great grandmother say the same thing.

And then the great grandmother was passing and passed away. Also, how far after the conversation like that night?

She?

I mean that night again.

Your daughter is a murderer with your mind, yes exactly. Let's hope she never has a dream where she's talking to you. You're like, oh no, the clock.

Is ticking exactly all right. So that that's your experience with it. So you believe there's there's something out.

There, something, but I can community you know, I can't define what that is or anything like that.

Did you want to be an astronant as a child. No, when was the first time you got that itch?

When I was just graduating with my master's at twenty five.

Okay, yeah, you were born in Syracuse, New York and became an astronist. That's a pretty great journey, because what I know of Syracuse, I lived there six months.

Six months, and then you moved out to Deny.

It was I moved around a lot growing up.

Huh.

So I think I went to twelve different schools I graduated. My dad just had different jobs and we moved a lot. Fame here and it was good because I got to learn how to socialize pretty well as an engineer. It wasn't my strength.

And you never got to say in when you were moving.

Oh no.

When you hear these kids nowadays where like their parents are like, well, I don't want to pull them from his school, so we're just gonna figure a way. It's like my parents never give two thoughts to move in next week exactly we went.

I went to it leave Venezuela and France.

Oh you did a good move.

Yeah, Well, then I went to Pennsylvania.

Uh huh. Some parts of Pennsylvania are wonderful.

It was Jerry Eerie Mistaked by the Lake. It was the name for Oh.

Yeah, yeah, that's tough.

Yeah, but there was pros and cons to everything.

Now, you went to school at FAU. That was my master's right. I undergraduate was University of Colorado. What do you think of Dione Sanders. That's a really good question.

I do like what he's done with the football program in the sense he can recruit better than probably anybody else.

That sure was fun the first four games, Yeah, all right.

I enjoyed it tremendously, But then reality set in and then then Texas A and M, which, by the way, that's I mean that city.

I enjoy it. One of my best shows was ever? Was that Texas a good? Yeah? That's a fun little town. Did you enjoy that or not? Yeah?

So my wife and I spent a year up there. I got a fellowship at a NASA to go live and do all my studies for my PhD there, right, And so we did that and it was really great actually for us because it was a nice small town and it worked out well for us because we had small kids at the time and we could get a babysitter really cheap, and all the bars were used to having college students, so they would have really the early times, like from six to nine, they would be fifty.

Cent drinks or something like that.

So we'd go out, then get a dinner, get some drinks, and go to a movie after that and we come home. We spend like thirty bucks on the whole night, and that was wonderful for us.

Did you ever live in Titusville, Florida?

Never lived there? Visited many times?

Did you ever eat a Dixie Cross from? Yes? I did? Yes. How many rock shrimp did you go with? I like to eighteen? I think it was.

Oh no, no, I think it's I think you go two dozen, four dozen or all you can eat. Let me tell you some about rock from it's the shrimp that thinks it's a lobster. I'm gonna tell you why I got upset with astronauts as a child, because when launches would get scrubbed. When you lived in Titusville, I was a surfer and we would go out to play alan.

The beach right and close it right.

They closed the beach when a shuttle was on the launch pad. But then if they scrubbed a launch for weather or a million other reasons. It would just stay closed, and sometimes they would sit out there for a long time, and oh, I would fume at you guys.

I'm just get in there and go get out it.

Yes, you were just an engineer at NASA. You you didn't plan to be an astronaut or did you plan?

I started trying when I was twenty five.

Okay, what does trying mean? I applied, uh huh.

And then I work on Okay, I look to see what other people who become mestion nights have done, and then try to work your resume to kind of match up that as much you can.

Now.

My sister worked at NASA. She was an engineer. My sister was there in the late eighties early nineties. She was like the only female, and then she started having children and decided to stay at home and homeschool all of them.

That's listened. She loves.

My dad also worked at NASA for a while, but human resources nothing cool. By the way, on behalf of every father out there that has a job that their kid isn't impressed with, I'd like to say fuck you. Uh you know, they could probably never like, oh, we know your dad's an astroisk.

Did your kids use that all the time.

No, because in the school where they went there was other kids whose dads were Asonauts or moms were Asonauts.

So it was like it was.

The run of the mill thing.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you applied when you're twenty five years old? How long of a process from applying twelve years twelve years? Were you immediately accepted though? At twenty five?

Oh no, no, it's didn't you accepted it all right away. I got the rejection letter, which is normal, right, okay, And I got another job working software. I was at a master's computer science, so I started working software. But then NASA calls up about it nine months later and said, hey, you know, we don't have a national job for you, but we have another job for you, and so I took that one, which actually been a really good job for me.

It was software.

Started off with working on an aircraft called the Shuttle Trained aircraft, an airborne simulator of the Shuttle, and it was a really cool vehicle. I mean it was a gulf Stream G two, so it's like a small business jet kind of thing, but we've highly modify to fly like the Shuttle and in all computer control kind of aspect.

Have you been a pilot for your whole now yet this is.

First to jump into operational world, and I realized I really liked the operational world.

What the hell's going on with Boeing by the way, Yeah.

You got to thanks for them.

Yeah, I've been keeping updated a little bit on that talking to some people. But it's just it's not good. It's kind of a shit show, honestly. Yeah.

Your first mission in the space was what year, two thousand and seven, the first time you're taking off, were you at any point like, oh no, yeah, so yeah, it's a.

Good, good question. Yeah.

So every time we got in that vehicle, as you pointed, with the aborts, right, so I assumed I was not taking off.

That day, okay, And so you get in and so I like, all right.

And you're going through that like standard stuff, like it was a training day, I know, big deal. But then at the like with two minutes to go, everything now is working fine, and they tell you to close and lock your visor and turn on your O two and that means like.

Holy crap, we could be going today, huh.

You know, And that's when I got nervous, because then you really think, you know, did I make the best decisions in life?

Here? Did you ever do a night launch? Yeah? Night launches? I as a kid.

That was when I was like, okay, I'm wildly impressed because when a night launch, even if you were thirty miles away, I mean, even if you were Cocoa Beach or whatever it was, it was daylight. It was daylight for you know, the first fifteen seconds of that.

Launch, you know, we don't get to see that good view though, are you just are you looking out? And so yeah.

So I the first time, I was really trying to pay attention and really do my job. Second time, I didn't there so much. But so there's a window right above me, like here, and I've a so I had a mirror on my hand so I could watch. And you know how that that big you know, vapor cloud comes at the beginning before because they're trying to put the water suppression on the system so you don't damage the launch bad.

And so I could watch that.

I was watching that whole thing and watching the then I watched engines light and then watch the whole thing happen at the beginning, you know, for the first like five seconds. And then as we're going up, and then I got back and paid attention to I was supposed to doing.

It's melting everything below it isn't it?

Well, I mean it doesn't. It's done it in a way so it doesn't really damage it badly, but there is some day there's always some damage to go to repair.

It's a lot of force.

Oh yeah, it is. That's a that's a big boy getting going straight up. Well, it's all that training necessary. By the way, we train.

For a lot of malfunctions. Right, if you don't get malfunctions, then can you consider that good training or not?

Right?

But I also think that I found it interesting on uh, you know, after going through all this training, we spend nice where months in that seam latorre going over all these different malfunctions and working together as a team to try to get better you know, execution on all that stuff. But when you get in the real vehicle and it launches, you are thrown back in your seat. I mean it's a lot of g's on your body, right, and it's shaken one of those solodock of boosters. And the idea that you could reach up and hit these switches, I mean your arms would be going like this right, we're just like laughing at ourselves. Like half the things we trained to do we wouldn't be able to do because of that. And so it's like, I think it was one of those things that make you feel good that you could possibly survive.

Did you do that one training thing where they just give you mock fifteen or whatever and make you just spin you around the thing?

Was that really a I don't think that now. That doesn't exist.

That doesn't exist. No, the centre fearage is that what you're talking about?

I don't know.

That's the only thing I ever remember from movies. It's like, Oh, you want to be an astronaut. Here, see if you can survive being dizzy?

Oh, that's spinning things back and forth.

We don't have that now. What movies get it right? Any of them? A Paul thirteen was the best.

Okay, right, they tried to get it right. They just try to get it right.

Yeah.

Will you boldly go on record as saying that you hate Star Treks and Star.

Wars Star Trek. I am a huge Star Trek fan.

You love it? Yes, That's part of.

The reason I think I became a national is because of.

The worst reason to become as what about the news stuff? Now?

I like Strange New Worlds quite a bit. Uh huh have you seen that one yet? You probably not have a Star Trek fans, but you're telling me.

Oh no, no, I don't watch any of it. You know what?

Uh?

The one space movie that I watched that what was the one that I'm going to talk about that that infuriated me? Where he ends up tiny and he's in the book what is it Interstellar?

Interstellar? Yeah, here's what Interstellar is.

That's like where they're like, we're gonna make a movie, We'll get people interested, and then we're just gonna a huge f u to everybody that watched this.

We're gonna end it like this. Yeah, did you see it? I saw it. I watched it once. Well, yeah, who's gonna watch that twice? Exactly.

I don't remember much about it.

I just remember the at the end.

It was like in the bookshelf or something like pushing books or something like.

That, his daughter to look at them.

The dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. Your first mission? How long were you in space?

For?

Just two weeks?

Two weeks was your body when you came back we're like, oh whoa, this was Yeah.

So what it was is you come back and you feel heavy. You first come back and you're a little wobbly, you're just a little bit off balanced.

What was your fighting weight back then? About it?

If what it is now one hundred and eighty five or something like that, and you came back and you weighed the same or life, Yeah, pretty much the same.

Right?

What about the uh?

What about the paradox of living in such confined spaces in space when it's just infinite space around you?

Is that? Yeah?

Yeah, you know, I would say because we don't really look out into space. I said, we don't have windows. They all look down on Earth, and so you're not really unless you're on a space block, you're not looking out into space and it's just black anyway.

You've never seen anything fly by any junk, Well, meteors and stuff. You can see fly by once in a while, but that's pretty rare.

Nothing nothing ever comes close.

Now.

I'd be exciting to see some whiz by it.

No, we had to move the station a few times just to you know, space debris.

Does the station have an engine? How fast is that?

Yeah, it's pretty slow, actually, because we just move small amounts of speed will change our orbit.

That's all it is.

So you're not really it doesn't doesn't take off.

But it hasn't an actual engine. Yeah, we really use that.

The cargo vehicles will put them on them on the back and use that to actually reboost it and change our orbits.

It does have them. A tug boat up there is basically it's not much. You know, does all the wyts have to come back?

No? No, So most of our trash burns up. We have a cargo vehicle that comes up bring us to supplies, but it doesn't it's not made for re entry, so we just let it go and it burns up boat in re entry, so all our trash burns up and becomes just elemental particles.

You ever been sick in space? No? Does anybody ever get sick up there? Hardly at all.

We go into quarantine prior to going up, and that really limits the amount of you know.

Bugs we with us. What's the temp up there?

Seventy three degrees every day?

Why is that so funny to hear? Just the monotonous Yeah, exactly.

You don't need to look at your phone with the weather's going to be.

What about sleeping did you get used to it quickly or no, It took a little while, a week or.

Two, because you just got to learn to go to sleep standing up sort of like right, yeah, but you're in a sleeping bag, but it's attached to the wall, ceiling wherever, right, and there's no pillow though, there's no blanket, there's nothing, and so you're just kind of floating there and you got to figure out like how to get yourself in that comfortable kind of go to sleep position.

What was the first time that you got to walk, like actually walk in space?

First mission?

The first did you say anything cool before you left?

You didn't have a.

Line, didn't have a line I got, I hope I don't screw this up. That's pretty much what you're thinking.

To infinity and beyond none of that.

But my first base walk that was the most interesting one, I think for me because it was it was different. I mean, we trained in this big, large pool on how we're going to do spacewalk and you do them like in a shuttle. We did it seven times at least before we don't did the real one in the space. And so I go out and I have lights on my helmet so I can see like ten feet in front of me, and I feel like, oh, this is just great. It's like the pool. I'm feeling comfortable. And I work my way out to this worksite, which happened to be the very end of station at this time, the last handrail. I have a spot, and then we put down this tether to hold me right in that spot, right and I'm working away, and then the sun comes out and I get this view of you know, Earth two hundred and fifty miles below me, you know.

The blackness of space, the station over here.

You know. I like that, and my brain goes, what the fuck are you doing?

I froze.

I literally just like could not move, you know, and I was holding on that handrail. I swear I put a debt in that handrail because I was just like like, oh my god, you know. And then and I talked myself though, like, you know, okay, oh no, you're okay. You know, you were just you know a minute ago, all was good, you know, and you had to just go with this whole talk yourself down kind of routine, you know, because I thought like, oh, everything's great, man. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

Man.

Yeah, have you ever had a talk another astronaut down just mentally getting into a space where they're like, oh, this isn't good?

And I would say, not like that. I mean, sometimes, you know, you help them like through like, hey, this is what we're gonna have to do here, and you kind of give them more instruction that way, but not like you know, like you know, it's all it's going to be okay kind of thing like that.

Because I'm always seeing that movie where they're screaming like just look at me, trust me.

No, we haven't been there, so no. But I didn't tell anybody, but you know, of course I was quiet this whole time, right, you know they didn't know.

Nobody knew. Didn't You didn't share this?

No?

My god, Oh you're not allowed to. No I could. I know.

I mean I can share it, I mean with you people, But I mean during that moment.

I did not share. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, you know, we got to be.

Professional, you got to like, you know, no, I'm ready for my next task, you know. But it took me a little while to actually get going again, what's the point of the spacewalk And sort of Shuttle missions.

It was to build a space station.

So we'd bring a piece of space station in the cargo bay of the shuttle, use robotic arms, get it out close to where we're attaching it, and then they go out the space walk and do all the attachment and stuff to get it built.

Now, no, no disrespect, but as as nerds, are you guys the best builders?

Well, we tried to train, like I like working on my car and stuff like that.

Okay, so I felt like, you know, I was decent at it.

That's mean.

I talked about that idea between operational and scientific kind of thing. You're going to be somewhere in the middle, because if you're far over scientific, you can't you know, you don't even know maybe how to use a screwdriver right right, And so you want to be somewhere in between so you can you understand it, but you also cann't do all the operations at the same time.

Because I've worked with some of these guys. Here we're doing some simple dry wall on a new studio, and I'm just like staring at these guys. Eddie's falling off ladders. It's just I'm just like, we're just a circus. Yet you get somebody that does dry wall and a float to wall and fill.

Now it's a talent and it's artist.

It's completely impressive. While on a spacewalk. Can you feel the absence of sound?

Your space shut has a fan going, so you hear this fan are going. Except there was one time on mine, my h we have an old computer inside this base shoot that kind of runs the system right, and mind froze and so I had to power off for thirty seconds standard power round reset right, So for thirty seconds I had complete silence.

And and and the oxygen during that thirty seconds because the regular still works, so I still get oxygen, right, you hold your brother seconds.

But that was kind of cool.

Because it was really that was really quiet out there. I just got to look out, you know, and now it was mly. Job was after it turn off, don't move, just sit there and watch things for a while. And that was kind of cool.

It was the moon landing real. Yes, how do you reason with flat earthers?

Oh well, I don't think one. You can reason with them too, because they're not coming from a.

Spot of logic. Have you ever met any Oh yeah, yeah, oh they talked to you. Yeah, yeah, and what if what's their argument?

Well, it's hard because if nothing is logical, right, they just they have these ideas, but you can try to explain in physics how that would not work out, but they just don't understand the physics to understand that. What you're to get the point of, Yeah, it's just very difficult. And I do like the think that they will say, like they look at other planets and say they're all round, like, yeah, Mars is round and Jupiter's round, but not Earth. Oh how do you even make that logic?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know they had that one. Listen, I want to believe.

I want to believe there's an edge that seems kind of neat, it's beautiful up there.

I mean, what's that like?

Knowing that you're just of a handful of humans that have ever seen that perspective?

Yeah, it was.

I think that's a real lucky thing to be get that perspective, honestly, And really it was on the longer six months one because the short of ones, you're working like twelve sixteen hour days, right, and you don't really get that much time to really look out and really take it all in, I think. But when you're up there for six months, we hang out in this area called the Cupola, which is a glass bottom boat basically looking back at Earth, and you can then hang out there and just get to know the planet really well. And it's kind of I thought that was really nice, you know, and you don't know it by countries because there's no lines of course right on that aspect, and and but it's like this one big ecosyste and you can and when being up there six months, you got to see the seasons change and all that kind of stuff and watch that all happen and that which to me was just a really cool thing to be able to like analyze our environment in that way.

Yeah, that really separates you from almost all of us. I mean that that's seared into your brain. Ye ever, Yeah, but I wish more people could see it. I think we would then cheat our planet a little differently if we could do that, especially world leaders.

Maybe. Ah good luck right, Oh oh boy.

We're on the divert out there because of that debate. Jesus Christ, we're all in trouble. I've always heard that you're doing a space experiments on the space station. But what are they actually like, what are these experiments that you're doing all day long?

Quite a few on the human body? Okay, right, we're doing so like for us, we were determining, now what has happening to our body. We're trying to do that figure out, and there are lots of bad things going actually going on. It's like aging really quickly. We've got cardiovascular disease, got changes in the vision, you got immune systems gets doesn't.

Get as good as goes bad.

All these different things are happening to your body. A muscle loss, bone loss, all these things are going on. So we're measuring all these kind of aspects of that and then try to find ways to mitigate it too. So sometimes you're taking some medicine or something that they're doing something to try to mitigate these things. And so they're trying to get that kind of data. There's tons like pouteen crystal growth, which is trying to look at it because you can grow crystals in space better than you can on Earth because without gravity they form like perfectly in space, right, So we can use that to determine I actually had to make better medicines and stuff like that well, a lot of plant stuff too. I actually grew the first edible food, romaine lettuce, and we had a system for that.

Thank goodness you said romain.

If you would have said iceberg, I'd have been like waste of.

A time, right.

The funny thing about that one for me was since it was the first time we grew this food, they didn't want us to eat it because they didn't want to test it before. They've worried about microbes or something like that. Right, it may be okay, But we looked at them like, hmm, looks fine, fleots find us.

We tested it. It was fine, you know.

But it was the joker that was like when playing romaine let us tasted really good and it's just compared to you what the other food was really like, and you hate the food in space.

The Shattwle flights.

Weren't so bad. The laun duration when a six months one.

It was pretty bad food. Here's what I want to say, Why does the food have to be bad?

It doesn't they just hit nassive does it in house? And some reason I don't really understand. I feel though the people who create the food munst are grown up in like Iowa, and ate it a Denny's every day, and that's what they have to eat, you know.

I don't why can't you bring up real food and have it wrapped properly.

It's not like you can't heat things up up there. Well, they have to have a shelf lif like three years. Why are you why?

Well, because, like you say, the ones on the launderation, they'll send it off on a cargo vehicle and they'll have to pack that cargo vehicle months before it launches and stuff like that, so and then they have to ship it there. So and it's just like this whole process.

I still feel like you could.

They could, that they could, I mean just buying like the off the shelf kind of like you know, camping free stry food is much better than what we had. Now.

See, I couldn't go to space for my stomach. I have a pretty sensitive stomach, little ibs. I just don't know how that would work up there.

I'm not really sure either. But the body is amazing at adapting to that environment because you know, technically you can like turn upside down and eat food if you wanted to here on Earth, right, so even against gravity, you can swallow, you can swallow water everything like that?

Right?

Really, I thought, well, how's water boarding work? I thought the fact that you were and you can't breathe? Is that the problem breathing during waterboarding?

What blood? Blood's never rushing? You're never getting headaches.

Only time I got headaches when I got hungry. And that's how I knew I was hungry. So I did you didn't? I never got stomach paint kind of hungry things.

Huh, I would just get headaches. Did you know the astronaut that drove nine hundred miles wearing an adult?

Yes? I did you knew? Lisa? Oh?

Yeah?

Oh? Sharon Oviser for that about a year she was going to.

Confront another woman about dating an astronaut that she had been involved in regardless, what is the sex light?

Did she have sex and space? Is that?

What?

No?

No, okay? Has anyone had sex and space?

Not that I know of. I'll put it that way, But I also have to qualify that any question, do you mean with somebody else?

There you go?

Because by yourself is happening six months? Are all bets off? When you're up there? Do you get hall passed?

Yeah? Exactly?

Well, because I've always heard of guys, we're like, oh, you know, I'm out of town. There's different rules off the planet. I feel like you should be able to do whatever that Like, I agree with you r logic there.

However, what's the most people that were up there at one time? Oh?

Man, like, there's nine right now, but I think there's time when you had to shuttle and six it could have been up to thirteen people.

Russians are how did they go six months without? Just are they drinking constantly up there?

Constantly?

No? Occasionally? So you get the rule is you have to.

You know, alcohol is not allowed on the space station.

That's what you always say.

So then, but now on.

It's all hypothetical, okay, really and really the.

Reason you do that is because you're protecting the people who actually might.

Hypothetically help get stuff to station.

Because they can get in trouble. Okay, So you have to always qualify everything like, well, if that would have happened, this is how it would have gone down.

What's your perspective of Russian since you've spent so much time as the.

People they were nice for you know, they were always just like normally they have the same kind of goals in life. They want to be happy, to have a good family, safe, secure, all that kind of stuff. So there's really no difference on that people.

There's no Russian just stuck on the space station currently.

No, but actually you know there is a Russian still flies on the space X and we fly a US person on the soil. You still right now we do a swap every time, okay, and so they still we still are, you know, partners in the space program.

You were part of a mission that launched from Kassastan, which is weird since that the only reason I really know the country is because of Borat. I just want to know, is it very nice?

Well, where I was was a little Russian enclave right called Baikan or okay, it's where Yuri Gagarin the first minute space actually launched from. So it was their first space launch facility for Stiviet Union back then. And so it was like this little like I would say, like five square miles or whatever of just Russia.

Do they let you bring a weed gummies up there?

No, we were looking at trying to figure out ways to like homemade stuff, but they check everything.

Out well, because I just think when you're in that glass bottom.

Boat, that would be a wonderful experience.

It seems like something that they would want to test. We always joked like overcolor.

I don't know.

You spend one hundred and ninety five days, twenty hours, and forty seven minutes in space. How much of that time was dedicated to balling yourself up and letting other astronauts space you real fast? A couple hours of that we actually had.

So we had a system that you would be did some Bundy cord you could make tight and you would then blaw yourself around that. Okay, right, so that would be around you're like you gut and your holding inthing like that, and then they could spin you and you would not then float off that way. So you could spin that way and you could really go fast. I mean you went really really fast doing that. It was a child our children, come on, I love it. We came up with so many new games up there.

What about fights? You ever get in a physical fight up there?

No physical fights that we I brought nerve dart guns to solve our disputes.

Oh yes we would have. We'd have dual direct shot into a Russians temple point blank. When you come when you came home, after what was the muscles like?

So that was interesting because we work out two hours every day up there to try to maintain some muscles and some loane density, right, but it's not perfect, so we don't get all the muscles. So you have some muscles that are decently strong and other ones are really really weak. Like a core was just extremely weak, like you couldn't like doing a sit up with almost impossible kind of thing, and so that took like six months of rehab to kind of get that all back going together.

What kind of workout are you doing up there? Just like maxing out on bench?

We actually can't do bench.

We can do squad.

So we have a system for like lifting weights and then we have a treadmill which has a bungee cord system to hold you down, and then exercise bike to say two cardios and you switch off onto the cardios and then you do your lifting every day. That's just a minimize your lass.

Are you happy with what Elon is doing not Elon SpaceX? Are you happy with it? Yeah? Yeah? Good, Yeah, I like that distinction.

So I know I always give everybody a gift that's on my show, And I didn't know what to give you. But then I found this this. I don't know why they gave this to me, but when I graduated high school from Titusville. From Titusville, I went to Astrona High School, they gave me my diploma.

Laminated.

This is my actual Oh wow.

But I guess they thought that when you graduated high school back then, that you wouldn't as.

Far as you're getting right a.

And that you would need to carry it around and show it to people to prove that you graduated high school.

Also, you are from Florida, right, yeah, well I'm not from Florida. I was born in Germany.

But let's not get into it. I was born in Germany and grew up in Florida. It's a bad mix, I'm aware. But anyway, so I want you to I want you to have my diploma from Astronaut High School. People always ask me that like the school, what was its affiliation?

Was it like Space school?

They always assumed that, right, right, You know, there was just already a Titusville High school and we were the second high school. But we were always considered the richer high school. But now that I look back on it, I don't even know if that's true, that's just something that was made up. There was no there was no rich part of Titans. There no, there wasn't you keep my diploma? Get it off my table on the floor. It was also it was the astronaut War Eagles, which that made no sense.

There was it does not make any sense.

Now. So there's a big eagle going through an a which is we just stole the logo from Anheuser Busch.

I never thought about that. Yeah, yeah, right now, explain to me what what you brought present? Yeah, yeah, what let.

Me get let me do this.

Is it your high school diploma?

No, no, this is a there was something about like something about you and issues with you. No, is this actually used you know, I know, but apollo a fecal bag here.

Amazing? Yeah yeah yeah.

And then actually this is the helper so if you need to wait wait wait.

Oh, because you're so constantated well and helping. So we thought that was from the penis.

So we have we called it the safe anxiety.

Why is this? They're old? They're just old. What's this in here?

Probably could hold I don't know what that is.

So one of those things that says do not eat on.

Yeah, yeah, I definitely don't need it.

Hold on, so you do you peel this off it sticks to you afterwards, No, you just close it up. Oh okay, so just hold it to you. Yeah, yeah, so that would be So the station was a.

Much more uh, I would joke in here better because it was just another plastic tube you would go into. We put gloves on because you everything floats and you have to then tend everything into the spot where you want it to go.

Again.

They spend no time on these things that which I could come up with a better system than that.

Yeah, it was cheap and easy, that's what it for sure. Why not like a light vacuum setting.

That would be nice, but that was not happening.

Okay, all right, this but this is disturbing.

Is you know that was Apollo guys. I'm not really sure what they were doing, all right, some kiky stuffing.

Monsters up there. I don't even want to know. I don't even want to know what Buzz was doing.

Really, but this is the the uh, it's the station bathroom that actually, this is beautiful. That's not a nice can.

That's no, that's exactly what you want to see. I mean, that looks like a real bathroom and we were just stand to pee.

No you have there's a hose. But there was a hose coming out of here. You can just see this part of it right now here, right, and it has a funnel on the end of it, and you just float and you just be use the funnel.

It's a wet fact really.

Yeah, okay, that makes more sense now now they're now they're getting.

It if we do recycle though all the year and and condessate on board and you got wet wipes, Oh god, yes you need what watch?

Yeah, you weren't having to wipe dry. That's nice. Yeah.

I have to admit the one my uhbly, my biggest mistake I made in space happened right there.

There. What is what your biggest mistake space was?

Yeah? So so I talk about that wet back right, and you basically on the end of the hose, there's just a valve you turned on any degrees, turns on.

The wet back. It does a little pretreat.

Into the system so that it can help process the urine later and stuff like that, and you know, you wait a few seconds and then you can use it like no big deal. Right, Well, I went into one time distracted, and I forgot to turn on and uh, I still grab it and I'm still using it. And that's and I realized, like, you know, wait a minute, I don't hear you. Oh, and now is urine just floating around the way?

Well, I look down.

This is this is where I got the stupid part of it going in there as I looked down, because I thought, like a check real quick, right, I look down, and sure enough, there's a large sphere of urine, you know, kind of between me and this hose right down here. And and but what I do is I stupidly, I like jolted, I jumped and went like like that, which all I did was create little ones floating out. Yes, So then I turn on the hose and then I'm trying to chase them down.

That's I'm going.

But I don't get all of them, and they get on the walls, and so I spend the next half hour cleaning up the walls of the bathroom.

I mean, as far as big mistakes go, that's not bad. I would I probably would have pained that whole shuttle at some point. Do the guys who trained for years but never get to go to space still refer to themselves as astronauts.

That's a good question. I don't I don't know what they really do. I don't know if they really for them do that or not.

Do they ever feel bad?

Do they give these people like like a rooty moment where they're like, oh, we just this guy's been doing this for so long, We've got to give them.

It depends on the situations. So and one, it's really rare for somebody to go into the program and make it through.

Actually the first couple of years.

You're actually not a full ashnaut yet you're called ashnout candidate, and you got to make it through all these tests to become an astronaut. And that's still like ninety eight were sending people make it through that or something like that, right and then after that, so most people after that are going to get in there. Some people have screwed up though, and not uh flown, but usually they do something that causes that aspect.

Are you always going to be like in the loop of what's going on?

You know, that's a good question, Like you still know people who are there working all the stuff like that, and you stay in contact with everybody, and so I don't know, I always in the loop, you know. I mean, you like you're you're still fascinated by I love the mission. I love the mission. And that was like the best thing I think I was working at NASA was the people, because everybody was there not for money for the mission, right, and it was just great to just to be with a group of people who cared so much about what they did. It was a wonderful place to work. I mean, everybody was happy to go to work, you know. And we also then, you know, it was like a gigs you like the party in a way, because everybody would you know, after missions, we'd all go out and have you know, you know, party, have drinks, all that kind of stuff like that. So it was normal situation that you got to know these people really really well. You want to go back up again? I would go for a short duration. I don't know if I want to spend six months again.

What about one of those planes it just drops for five seconds?

That would be fun too, that really you would want to do that? Oh, sure, it would be fun.

Well, I can respect everything that you've done, and I think it's amazing, and yet I'm like totally, I'm just wired like, Nope, that's not my thing. I'm glad, Yeah, I'm glad somebody is doing it. It's not I will not want to do that.

You have? What are these balloons that we're supposed to do or that I can do?

Oh?

Silfur hex of fluorine.

So what it is?

It's an inert gas.

However, it is the opposite.

Of helium, so as you breathe it in, instead of making you talk in a high voice, it makes you talking a.

Really low voice. And what's the point is this humor?

No?

But really it's used for the things.

It's actually an insulator and you can use it for electrical insulation and stuff like that.

As it has nothing to do with space whatsoever.

No, not at all. It's used for chemistry experiments.

Well this is that disappointing to me? Well no, not at all. I actually like it better.

But it's just strictly for Giggles's too funny.

Bring me one of those balloons. I'm gonna see what this does. Okay, So what I'm what am I supposed to do with this experiment here?

So you're going to breathe out all the air out again, just like you would normally, like that and then just start breathing it in and then I say your quote you want to say.

Let me hear Eddie's voice. He's coming here, citizens of Gotham. I'm here to take that man down. This is amazing. I love this.

Do I take the whole thing much as you can, Steve.

I appreciate what you've done for us. Okay, how long do when do I need to start hyperventilating. It's gonna end here in a second. Okay, there you go. I just breathe it out. Yeah, good, deep, deep breath out. I'll be honest with you. That was a little more exciting that I thought of it was gonna be.

Steve, thank you very much for being on the show. We appreciate it and I look forward to a going to space with you one day.

Yeah, it'd be fun.

Pasha, Hey, Carl, can you believe it? I got to talk to a real astronaut. I want to thank Steve for being on the show. He gave me one of his mission patches that was technically rejected because he had designed it and he'd actually put the Star Trek logo incorporated it into his mission patch because he's a huge Star Trek fan.

Micha, Well, why didn't you give it to me on there?

He's like, well, you were making fun of star Treks, so I didn't want to give it to you. Anyway, It's nice of him. All right, what else is going on? I gotta sneeze. You want to hear it?

Carl? Nothing?

We got the Goat? All episodes are available on Prime. Got new stand up? Where are we going to? Sandy Inez, Vegas, New Orleans, Hawaii? Get your tickets? Tickets tickets here, I'll get your tickets. I'll bark day of show, stand in a street corner, start barking, Sell some tickets. I can usually move twenty thirty tickets. By the way, everyone should know that day of show. Every time I perform, if a show is sold out the day of twenty amazing seats will become available because that's how many tickets they hold for me to give away to friends and family. And to this day, I have never had a friend or family.

Come to a show.

So they're always like, hey, do you still need these twenty comps? And I'm like, no, sell them. Say it's sad. It's like a Ricky Bobby situation. Anyway, boyswearpink dot com. Another one of my sons terrific imaginative bedtime stories from when he was when he was three years old. Check it out on YouTube so you can see Eddie's brilliant animation and the subtitles so you don't go crazy trying to figure out what he's saying, like my wife does every week when I forward her one of these stories. I'm like, hey, Eddie needs you to transcribe this, and she's like, God, damn it, what's he saying here? Then we ask him and he's like, oh, see you next week.

One took plenty of time, and the don't don't job, don't cry with a loop and death and then went on the wool people people watch it on the and outkay okay. One I took them at it. One of the Mummy one love it that way, the Woo one, what the one let one let us see when, and one was the bold a red bolt, and then once one and the one one was a momaid.

The story has gone off the rails. The n

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Tosh Show is a window into the mind of comedian Daniel Tosh. Each week Daniel interviews people from 
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