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Good afternoon.

Welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where they are denault devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Thursday, September 11th, and I'm Jimmy Kenyon, center director at NASA's Glenn Research Center.

I'm pleased to introduce today's forum as part of Ohio's Space Week celebrations.

Before I tell you about our guests, I must call attention to today's significance in history as we pay tribute to those who lost their lives 24 years ago during the terrorist attacks and the wars that followed.

We should also take a moment to appreciate the unity and resolve we found that day.

Unity and determination are what makes us so special as a nation, and what will get us back to the moon and on to Mars.

The road to the Moon and Mars goes through Ohio.

Since the Wright brothers first flight.

Our state has been at the forefront of aerospace innovation.

And at NASA, Glenn, we push the boundaries of what's possible and fuel discovery and innovation for the benefit of all.

In addition to our technology and innovation, our people have played critical roles.

We have more than two dozen astronauts from Ohio.

The likes of John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Judith Resnick and, of course, Sunita or Sunny Williams, who hails from Euclid and joins us at the City Club today.

And now I'm looking at the students because who knows, maybe a few future astronauts are with us today to.

But in addition to sunny, we also have astronaut Doug Wheelock here to moderate today's conversation.

That.

Also each other day.

That means you're getting to hear from not one, but two astronauts.

So this is going to be a very special chat.

But before they get started, just a little background.

She is a retired U.S.

Navy captain, aviator, and a test pilot, completing several deployments and logging more than 3000 flight hours in over 30 different aircraft.

During her time as an astronaut.

She spent 608 days in space during three days aboard the International Space Station, logging 62 hours and six minutes of total spacewalk time during those missions.

She holds the record for the most spacewalking time by a female astronaut, and is in the top very few in space by any NASA astronaut.

During her most recent stay aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Doug Wheelock served as her family representative.

Wheelock, or wheels.

Is a retired Army colonel and has logged 178 days on the Space Shuttle.

The International Space Station and Russia's Soyuz TMA 19 spacecraft.

During his 2010 mission to the International Space Station, he became the first U.S.

Army officer to command the station.

Good morning.

I'm and a little plug if you don't get enough of them here today, both Sunny and Wheels will be at the Discovery Days at Great Lakes Science Center tomorrow and Saturday.

So in just a moment, we will hear more about each of these inspiring astronauts and learn about their lessons on leadership, perseverance, and the importance of space exploration today.

A reminder for the live stream audience.

If you have a question during the Q&A portion of the forum, you can text it to (330)541-5794, and City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

And so now, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Sonny Williams and Doug Wheels.

Weelock.

Thank you all.

It's such an honor to be here.

I'm not from Ohio, but I tell my wife, who is from Ohio, that I got here as quick as I could.

I, I grew up in upstate New York, and was a small boy when we landed Apollo 11 on the moon.

So my life was changed from that moment.

Several years later, in 1993, I ended up at the Naval Test Pilot School, Army helicopter pilot at the Navy Test Pilot School in January of 1993.

Go Navy!

This is what I'm getting to.

So that January, which was how many years ago?

I was 32 years old, a couple, but who's counting, you know.

I ran into a young lady from Annapolis.

Her name was Sonny Williams.

And, we were in class together there at the Naval Test Pilot School.

And in those early years, and, Sonny is amazing.

And we've we've flown together on so many things.

We were selected together as astronauts in 1998 as well, five years later.

But one of my earliest memories of Sonny, which is some of the things I'm going to talk about.

She, of course, ran the Boston Marathon on the treadmill, on the ice, in a harness bill at NASA.

Glenn.

So, so, it wasn't the smartest thing ever.

So.

But one of those very first days, we were at, Patuxent River, Maryland, at the Naval Test Pilot School.

And I was a little nervous as an Army guy.

And in a world of, marine and, Navy pilots and, and so I was going for a run that or this one day at noon and sunny, who I just met a couple of days prior.

She said, okay, what do you do?

And I say, I'm going for a run.

You are.

She's going.

I'll go with you.

So I was like, okay, cool, we'll get changed.

Just meet you out front.

So we get out there and I'm all ready to go and kind of stretch.

And Sonny shows up ready to go with bare feet, like no shoes.

And, I said, I said, wear your shoes.

And she goes, I left about home and I said, do you need to go?

No, no, no, let's just go.

We ran the perimeter road around Patuxent River Naval Air Station on the road on the shoulder with her and bare feet.

I'm thinking to myself, okay, this is somebody I really got to get to know.

This, this over.

So, And the rest is sort of.

Well, I've got to lead one more thing, because Navy, Army.

And of course, you have to declare when you get to.

And it's tough being an Army guy at the Naval Test Pilot School, but, Sonny and I, there's a tradition at the Army Navy game that we would.

One of the cool things.

We have it both academies, are really cool bathrobes.

And they're, they're nice and plush, and and they've got the school crest and everything here.

And, it has been tradition that you bet a bathrobe on the Army-Navy game with your Navy buddies.

And so whoever loses has to come up with their their school bathrobe and send it to, And, of course, after we left, Pax River about 14 years in a row, our, Navy beat Army in the in the game.

So it was about two years after we had left, and Sonny and I made the traditional bet.

Okay, bathrobe on the game, bathroom from the game.

And so I was off deployed and, And to my house came this bathrobe, to my wife who opened the open the.

And, I just she and, I was overseas somewhere, and I had a call with her and, on Skype and, she said, hey, there's a package here from Sonny Williams.

I said, oh, okay.

So, go ahead and, go ahead and open it.

I think Army won that year.

So she owed me a bathrobe.

And so my wife opens it.

And here's a bathrobe, and a little note from Sonny with a heart on.

It she's like, go Navy beat Army or something like that, you know?

And so my wife, it was a few weeks before I got home and, I had some splaining to do.

I wasn't on her favorite list at that time, but it started a friendship that's been really lifelong for us.

We've flown together.

We've been in situations, as test pilots together that, kind of tested your mettle.

And, Sonny, I wanted to, first ask you about your experience.

You just had a you just had a incredibly different experience.

And this, as you remember, the start of the Boeing Starliner was supposed to be a short duration mission.

We were trying to get a at least a 30 day mission, but it was started out eight days at least, to kind of prove out the life support systems and things like that.

And if things are going well, we'll extend to 3 to 30 days and then bring that, bring the crew back home.

So they ended up staying for about nine months.

And so, Sonny, I'd like you to share just sort of your the humanity side of that, like, being from Ohio and and what you're what you're taught in those early years about resilience and perseverance.

Could you share just a little bit of, some snippets from that experience?

Absolutely.

And it was an incredible experience.

I feel very lucky.

I was talking to some other friends and, I think you sometimes are at the wrong place at the wrong time and maybe turn it into the right place at the right time.

When we launched, you know, it was a it was a big deal, like first time people are in the spacecraft.

And so, like, Butch and I were in there and we're like, okay, we got this.

We're ready to go on the launch.

And then that happened 1 or 2 times because we had a couple delays even just getting off the launchpad.

But we finally got there and we were pretty excited about it just to be up flying the spacecraft.

And it worked.

Amazing.

Perfect.

First day we were up there.

Everything we were doing, like we got to change seats where I got to fly the spacecraft for a little while.

I was joking around.

My task was to moon the sun because our solar panels are on the side of the spacecraft, and we were coming up with an idea of without, guidance from the system inside.

How do you, you know, put that part of the spacecraft facing the sun.

So we came up with an idea of just looking out the the window and being able to, pitch us ourselves down so precisely.

I got our butt facing the sun and we were mooning the sun, and, you know, power's generated.

It was awesome.

Which did a couple other points for communication, and it was flying great.

We were like, so psyched when we went to bed.

Now we were freezing.

The spacecraft is a little chilly.

And the the funny part about that night is like, I'm like, oh my God, I'm just a girl.

I'm such a wimp.

I'm like, sort of cold.

Like, why am I so cold?

And then I hear Butch go, hey, can you hand me my boots?

I'm like, oh, okay.

Like, are you cold?

He's like, I'm a little cold.

And then I was like, on the side of the spacecraft with our spacesuits, two of them around me like a bear, you know, like in the bear skin.

And he's like, hey, can you give me my spacesuit?

So I'm like, okay, I'm justified in being so cold.

So it was all good, all good.

And so, but that was a minor thing.

We'll just figure that out.

Like with the work with our environmental control team on that one, it wasn't, you know, terrible, terrible.

It's just a little chillier than we had expected.

So the next day, we get ready to dock to the space station.

And things started a little bit different that morning.

The spacecraft is automated, so it's starting to do its own burns coming up to the docking access.

And we heard this like, like shotgun fire of the thrusters before us is actually junk.

This time it was like like that.

So we were like, something is a little bit wrong.

And the spacecraft was trying really hard to get to the right place at the right time.

And both of us like, at that moment, knew that there was something a little bit wrong.

Right.

So we're, you know, not even having to really talk to each other.

We were both like, this doesn't sound quite right.

And then we were talking to our bigger team.

You know, the folks on the ground, mission control and all the engineers who have been working on this, hundreds, if not thousands of people have been working on this for many, many years.

And I know that the experts are down there.

We have a little, you know, teeny periscope of how this spacecraft works.

But we knew the experts, the big family of experts were there working on it, and we worked.

I mean, I think that day was like one of the best days for how professional, how good a team can work together.

We had they had us, you know, hands on the controls, looking at the spacecraft and then all of a sudden hands off the controls so they could shut a thruster down, start it back up again, get it back in the set and one after another.

We did this after we had lost a bunch of thrusters and it was like so precise, so fast.

It was so professional, was awesome.

So a great day.

Like even though it was a bad day, it was a great day because it was like, wow, this team can really work together.

Like really, really well.

Like the best control team in the world.

I don't think anybody's had to work that hard before to get the spacecraft docked to the space station.

So an amazing day was docking.

Obviously, there's this crazy video out there with crazy hair almost as good as Doug's hair, by the way, since 1993, he's had perfect hair and and my hair was like this.

We came in the space station, but it was such a great day to see friends there to be docked.

We knew that this was where we needed to be.

While the whole team understood what was wrong with the spacecraft.

I'll just jump ahead a little bit because the summer went on.

Right?

And I, we had heard through friends and family that there was a little bit of craziness going down, going on down here on the ground.

People were saying all sorts of things about being stranded in this, that the other thing.

But us up there where we were able great communications, we were able to even participate in some of the conversations and listen in to the technical, discussions that were going on about the spacecraft.

You know, of course, we have our opinions, but we don't have actually the whole data set.

And so we relied on the people on the ground to make the right decisions.

But I think it was pretty obvious as the summer went on, that the testing probably wasn't going to get there by the time the space station program had to make the call that, we were coming back or not on the space station on the Starliner.

One of the saddest days was watching Starliner fly away.

We had worked so hard with not only the engineering team, but also the landing team.

We knew those guys were all out in the field getting ready to, you know, accept this spacecraft coming down in the desert.

So cool.

I just really wanted to land on airbags.

It just seemed like such a cool way to land.

And if you ever watch it, it's like it's like boof, like a marshmallow just coming down and, you know, landing on a big marshmallow.

So cool.

But didn't get that opportunity.

Had to say goodbye.

Got our families.

I think one of the biggest things is also, you want to make sure your family is good with this and understands the situation that we're in.

So both of us had sort of warmed up our families over the summer, so they knew.

But by the time the decision was made that we weren't going to come home and because of the space station alternates people, it wasn't going to be for another 4 or 5, six months.

So, everybody was okay with that, which was like such a warm, wonderful thing to feel that they were like, you got this, this is, you know, it's where you want to be.

This is awesome.

It's okay.

You know, just take us along with you.

It was like, okay, you know what a great support structure.

I think that is really key.

Family and friends who are just just with you, you know, that was that was really cool.

And so then we just pivoted.

Then you just got to do what you're what you're assigned to do.

With understanding that two people who are supposed to be on that spacecraft, crew nine that came up for us were not, and they actually had to take themselves off of that, the Earth for that mission.

And it's it's a big team effort.

Nobody does any of this by themselves.

And so I never felt people ask us, do you feel stranded?

I was like, and I've talked about it here, I think for a little while.

It's a huge team effort.

And I never felt strain because I knew people on the ground.

We're working super hard to figure out a way for us to get home and never felt left behind, never.

The always felt part of the whole situation.

So, I'm happy to be home, but I really do love it in space.

We knew that Sadie was something just the awesome all smiles around us.

So.

So it's kind of funny that, Sonny's husband, Mike.

So I was her family support person, and so sorry you had to put up by.

But Mike is also, sort of a former, Navy helicopter pilot as well, and a former former U.S.

Marshal as well.

So he's kind of a tough guy.

He doesn't really need the, the, the social support that most of us need.

And, so, we, we sort of had a fun time.

But that Mike is, we're just dear friends now, but I, I remember as we went, I was calling him about every other day, and then, like, every week and then once every couple weeks.

And then it was kind of once a month when it started.

And so, Mike, it was so funny.

I'd say, like, I need to talk to Mike to see how things are, go and see if he needs anything.

And so I call him up and I said, hey, Mike, this has wheels.

He goes, wheels.

Is this your monthly your monthly emotional support calling?

So I said, I need your support Mike.

So but just a tremendous, family, support structure.

Can you could you share a little bit about your Ohio connection?

Because, I've gotten a chance to meet, of course, said his immediate family.

But some of the extended family as well.

Who?

Some of them are here today.

Yeah.

And so you.

So, Sonny, could you.

Yeah.

Could you just share sort of your your your Ohio connection?

Yeah, absolutely.

And I will just back up real quick and say Mike's from Toledo.

So another Ohio connection here.

So, so we've got, Cleveland we got we got Lake Erie covered.

Right.

So just, I was born here in Euclid.

My, my mom's family Slovenian.

There was.

I think the very tough side of us.

Right?

The no shoes thing.

I told them a story earlier today.

I don't know, maybe the sort of not quite right thinking people or the, or the or the tough side, I don't know, but, Yeah.

So my mom's family was here for a long time.

They came over, of course, from Slovenia and then were a big group of people down around the 185th Street Euclid area.

There's a bunch of Slovenians down there, a couple of good places to get sausages and stuff like that.

Not a shameful plug for sausage and potato, but hey, you know, you know the good things.

And I grew up, when I was born, my brother, my sister and I were all born here in Ohio.

My dad immigrated, to Ohio, went to Case Western, did his, residency, and then was a doctor in the area.

He got a really good job in Boston and couldn't say no and sort of pulled my mom a little bit, kicking and screaming from her family over to the Boston area.

So we would come back here every holiday, and it was like I was mentioning earlier.

It was like one of the best things to come on the highway was a welcome to the Buckeye State.

And, you know, we were my grandparents lived.

And a little further up, actually, in that other state of Michigan was where my father's, brother lived as well.

So, we like I mentioned, we had pretty much, Lake Erie area covered.

And I have some great memories from all my cousins, you know, coming here and being with all my cousins over the holidays.

That's amazing.

Thank you to your family.

That's here as well.

And I met some of you at Sonny's first attempt in March.

And then some others.

And a smaller number at the actual launch, of for for Sonny and we were together with, that's another place where Mike's, Mike was with your mom and some others at the, at the, essentially a public viewing site.

And I got a call from our chief of the astronaut office, and they said, hey, Mike needs to be on the on the roof of the launch control center with the other immediate family members.

I was like, okay, and I said to Mike, I said, Mike, they want you to.

Yeah, I'm not doing that.

I'm thinking like, yeah, okay, I'm staying here with Sonny's mom.

And I was like, okay, Mike's not doing that.

So, I wanted to also, one of the cool things.

So Sonny and I have been astronauts since 1998, last century.

So it's been 27 years.

And I'm finding and I think Sonny's probably a similar mind, that I'm finding the joy in, in handing the torch to the next generation, of astronauts and I'm finding a lot of joy in training those folks to get ready for their exciting missions as well.

Sonny, if you could share, we've got a lot of students here, and probably a lot of aspiring astronauts.

And so, could you share your message of inspiration to these to these students and actually kids of all ages?

Yeah.

How do I I'm super excited for this next generation.

And and wheels and I have are both helicopter pilots.

So we are working on how to give the next group of younger astronauts a good vertical picture of landing on the moon, how to understand vertical descents both on the moon and then getting ready to go to Mars, because there's no runways on the moon.

As far as I could tell.

And there's no runways on Mars, so we're going to be landing and spacecraft vertically.

So that's what our goal is right now, is to get these young astronauts ready to do that.

But there's so much more that's going to go into getting us to the moon.

Glenn is a big part of that with, power generation and understanding how we can live sustainably in another place.

But there's so many more questions that need to be answered.

And we need young, innovative minds and ideas to help us understand that.

And just reflecting on, something Dan mentioned earlier, you know, my biggest take home by the way of, from this flight was people are good and people care about each other like people.

I didn't even know come up to me.

It's like, thank God you're home.

And I was like, people care and people are good.

We might have discussions like heated discussions, have different opinions and maybe just about how to solve technical problems as we're getting ready to go to the moon, or maybe even bigger problems that the world has to face.

But people people are good and we need new, young engineers to come in and try out their new ideas, defend their new ideas in front of other people and, and put them into production.

And so we are I'm psyched for this next generation.

There's so much more.

I wish I was, 30 years younger or so, honestly.

So to be part of all of this and to like to set the stage on this whole world as we as we look at leaving low-Earth orbit not only as a country, but as a species as we get ready to go on to Mars.

That's what we're working on.

And, we got to work together to be able to do that.

And you guys, you guys have the show.

We'll we'll be there to help you a little bit if you need us every now and then.

But you got you guys got it.

And, we're ready to watch.

You do great.

Thanks.

I was talking to some of the students.

Thank you.

Said I was talking to some of the students yesterday at Case Western.

We were there, and my encouragement to them was, I want to be like sunny, because when we see the passion that she lives her life to.

And so the encouragement that I like to give to our students that are here and listening online that, find something you love, find something you love, and then work and study with so much passion that people cannot take their eyes off of you.

That should be your goal with whatever profession you choose.

And so and when you do that, you end up like being like sunny and and people like me looking up to her.

I want to be like that.

I want to live my life with so much, so fearlessly and with so much passion, that people cannot take their eyes off of me.

That's what I want.

And that's what.

I'm.

So you guys.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So for our students, that should be your goal.

Now, the first step in that is having a curious mind, opening your heart and opening your mind to new ideas.

Because if you don't do that, it's a you're going to be on a different path.

And so sometimes that's hard for us to do.

And sometimes, you know, we're we're afraid of challenge.

We're afraid of failure, as humans.

And so we train every day at NASA.

To be prepared for failure.

In fact, not only is failure not an option, failure is inherent in our training as well.

We practice failure.

We fail our spaceships and Sims.

We fail our spaceships when we're practicing for various dynamic maneuvers because we want to know when the astronauts get there.

It feels like a simulation.

And on the real day when something breaks, they don't panic.

So we we teach our crews not to panic.

That's step number one.

And step number two.

Usually as humans, when something fails, we naturally we do this, whether it's in a dynamic, situation or in relationships.

We do this in our lives, when something goes wrong and we lose something, we our immediate reaction is to go after that.

Whatever was just lost and in space, you can't do that.

And so they we train, very intently at NASA to when things goes, something goes wrong.

We quickly triage what remains, what's left that's working, which includes your hands, your mind and your crew members as well, because those are the things they can get to save the day.

And the quicker the for our students, the quicker you can get to that type of arrangement and how you triage problems in your life, whether it's at school, in a relationship, in her family, something like that, that when you when you come with that mindset, like, what do we have that still working and how can I help be a part of this solution?

So that would be my encouragement to to young students out there as well.

Yeah.

And also how do you learn from the from what just happened.

Right.

So picking yourself up after after a failure, I would say I was one to have many failures in my life.

I, I didn't graduate college super easy.

I went to a couple academic boards, pushing myself a little bit.

But I learned from that right.

And that's I feel that way about Starliner, you know, as a right now example, we learned so much from, what we tested, what maybe we didn't test what assumptions we made.

And so all of those lessons learned, we can push into the next, spacecraft, next generation of spacecraft, next generation of spacesuit that we're designing, what questions we can ask.

And so I think it's it's about it's also about failure.

What what do you do after there is a failure?

Because inevitably everybody will have some some stumbling block that you're going to go through.

And then how do you pick your yourself back up and how do you lesson learned lessons from all of that.

That's something usually failure's not something we choose, but the way we react to it is certainly our choice all the way down the line.

So, sunny, one last question before we open it up to the audience.

I wanted to Sonny ran the Boston Marathon, the space station in the harness built NASA.

Glenn, on the treadmill.

Can you like to share with us a little bit of some of that, or maybe some other funny moment that you experienced and to say that was the brightest moment of my life.

I've had a couple silly marathon moments.

The first one I ever ran was actually Boston.

And, so my feet were nice and ready for the run in Pax River because, when I ran that one, I was complaining a little bit to my mom, my Slovenian tough mother.

I was out there mowing the lawn, and I was going to go to the Naval Academy.

And so I was like, this will be the last year that the Boston Marathon is happening.

And I didn't get to run it, you know, just very dramatic 17 year old.

And, she's like, put your shoes on, let's go.

And I was like, okay.

So we jump in our station wagon, she drives me the, you know, the starting line says, good luck, I'll see you.

And here's a quarter.

And so I, I shoved it in my basketball shoe and I started running.

And I was like, okay, here we go to live.

I got to about the halfway point, and my mom met me because that's where, our town was and, she's I said, I think I'm done.

And, this other guy came up next to us also, she has this Gatorade type stuff with her that she got from the she went into my mom's pretty resourceful.

She ran into the hospital.

So give me something for my daughter.

And so she grabbed something.

I don't know what it was.

We both took a sip of it, and the guy and I said, I think I'm done.

He goes, no, let's go.

We got to finish.

She goes, yeah, get up, get going.

I'll find you this.

Mind you, this is the day before cell phones and you think about the thousands of people who are running into Boston during this race, and somehow we ended up finding each other at the end of it.

And, I, you know, I attribute some of my toughness to my mom.

My dad.

I contribute my maybe some of my smartness to my dad because he was an amazing individual, like I mentioned, came over here essentially by himself on the boat, eating cheese because he didn't know anything else that was on the menu on the, you know, QE2 at that time.

Anyway, so I think the foundation that we have from our parents and from our teachers and all those people around us really turns us into the people that we are.

And maybe sometimes, we have a lapse of, of thought and run a marathon in a, on a treadmill on the space station.

But really, the point of all of that was to highlight that physical fitness is really important to, being smart or doing well in school and being, you know, adventurous is great.

Also, being athletic is really important and putting athletics into your daily life and how important that is just for your general health is something that I wanted to highlight.

And that's one of the reasons why I did that.

I didn't do it again.

I'm getting older.

I said once was enough.

You know, maybe, you know, A5K is good, ten K at times, but, you know, that's enough.

But, it's good to have your whole life, very athletic.

Awesome.

Thank you.

So mazing.

All right, we are about to begin the audience Q&A for our live stream audience.

I'm Cynthia Connelly, director of programing here at the City Club.

Today, we're joined by two NASA astronauts, Sonny Williams and Doug Wheelock, to mark Ohio's space Week.

We do welcome questions from everyone city clubs, members, guests, students, and those joining via our live stream at City club.org.

If you'd like to text a question for Sonny or Doug, please text it to (330)541-5794 and our City Club staff will try our best to work it into the program.

A quick reminder to keep your questions short, to the point and actually a question so we can get to as many as possible.

And I really encourage our students to lean in on this moment.

They we have the first question, please.

Yeah.

Hi.

I'm with the International Women's Air and Space Museum just down the road at Berkeley for an airport.

And we have, one of Sunny's shirts on display that she generously donated to us.

I hope I washed it.

I think you did it.

Yeah.

My question is for both Sunny and Doug, both of you veterans of space and space station and space station is going to be coming to an end.

2030 is the year where we hear it's going to be coming back to Earth.

So, you know, if you could bring one item back from the space station and have it on display to share with people to explain about life up on space station, what would it be and why?

Oh, this is a tough one.

There's so many good things up there.

I mean, yeah, some of it doesn't smell good.

Back to the washing thing.

But, you know, probably something from the kitchen for me.

I don't know, maybe that maybe that's just typical of the way I grew up, but something that shows how we because the kitchen was very important to all of us is where we all get together.

We gather there usually not every meal, but at least once a week.

All of our international partners either come down to our kitchen or the Russian kitchen, and tell stories and do karaoke sometimes and other things like that.

But, so probably something, I think, from either the Russian and the space station kitchen or ours for me, I'd have to think of it specifically, though, I think because there is so many things that one thing I took an Ohio state flag up there like 15 years ago or so, Ohio State Farm, did you did you see it up there?

There's a whole state flag every.

Yeah.

It's stranded somewhere out there for 20 years.

I, I think I would bring something back from the party from that.

Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, I'm a, I'm a ham fisted test pilot.

So, it was one of my probably two weeks into a six month stay on the station.

I was up there with two of two of our, actually one of our classmates, Tracy Caldwell Dyson and, and, Shannon Walker, both brilliant PhD scientists.

And I was not I'm not.

And I was doing some science one day in a glove box and kind of sweating, you know, reading the reading the procedure, doing it, read it, rereading.

And, Shannon came up to me.

She said, party's broken.

I'm thinking like, oh, we need to fix the potty.

She said, if you fix the potty, I'll do all of your science for sure.

That is such a we did the zero g high five, you know.

Yeah.

And I went and I, I, it took me about an hour and a half, and I started with a Houston.

We have a problem with our from, It took about an hour and a half to fix the potty on the space station.

And I figured out in that hour and a half is like, if you're trapped in a spaceship with, six other people.

Five other people, and, you can fix the potty, you are, like, truly a guardian of the galaxy.

So I think I would bring back just a little trinket and put it in a shadowbox.

Yeah.

What goes in comes out.

I that's, I learned to be a great plumber up there to, get home, and my wife says, how about fixing that fast?

Okay.

Hi.

My name is Matthew Young.

I'm the astronomy teacher from Euclid High School.

So I'm here with table eight, some of my astronomy students from your native, home, place.

My question is, you talk wonderfully about resilience, especially.

I love how you said that message out to our students.

But there's one thing that's always I've wondered about in space is resilience over the things you can't control.

For example, if you're in your suit and you have an itch on your nose or something, or you're sleeping weird or the potty issue, I thought was a great segue to this.

How did you prepare yourself to adapt to those discomforts, if you will?

I'll take that one.

Yeah, sure.

So, you know, it's it's a little bit like a camping trip, right?

So you've all been on a camping trip and you haven't been really comfortable the whole time because maybe it's too hot or it's too cold or the food all of a sudden, some crappy food that you would never eat at home tastes like the best food ever.

Sort of similar to being up in space, right?

So, you know, you're going to go through some of the little discomforts we we actually practice for this on a quote unquote camping trip.

The National Outdoor Leadership School, where we try to go with our crewmates and try to understand a little bit more about leadership, followership and some of those discomforts that you're talking about.

So it's a good training to get ready to be able to do that.

But yes, on my first flight, I will say, I had this little hair in the face type of issue in, in the spacesuit.

I had really long hair when I launched.

I cut my hair on the space shuttle discovery because I wanted to give it to Lux of Love.

And then I had short hair for, like, the first time in my life, and I was like, oh, since I was at the Naval Academy, I suppose, but I thought for sure short hair will just be up, but and stay behind in the little cap that we have.

But short hair.

And I wish I had trained where I put everything in a in a braid.

Right?

So it was behind my head.

So it was never in my face in the pool, but with short hair it was too short to make a braid and also sudden all these pieces kept going like this in my face.

And I there's definitely video of me going.

Spending a lot of time doing that.

But, you know, I mean, you just sort of have to deal with it.

You could still see.

Right?

And I could do whatever I needed to do.

And I had a moment of rest and I do a little bit like that.

So, you know, you just have to adapt.

You're there.

You're in the moment.

You know, my nose runs sometimes.

I have a tissue with me.

You know, we have this piece on the front of our spacesuits where you can.

Val Salva because the pressure changes.

Well, it it ends up being a nose at your thing.

So you'll see people sometimes doing that, and that's what's going on in there.

But, you know, a spacewalk, just for example, is you can it's every range of emotion that you can have.

I think your, your cold and your hot.

You're excited because you just got something done that you thought was going to be really hard.

And then something easy doesn't work and you're beating yourself up over it and then you're hungry and then you have to pee.

I mean, it's just like this roller coaster of emotions, and we deal with it by practicing a little bit in the pool.

Practicing on the NOLs trips, trying to mentally think about what things that can happen, and just and working through the issues that you're going to have, because you also know nothing's going to work exactly as planned.

I think we all realize that.

We all recognize that.

So you just have to always have like a little bit of a backup plan or a little resilience to just push through those here in the face.

I love that, thank you.

My name's Michael.

Michael.

Do I look like when in the first time you were in Spain and were in space?

Yeah.

Michael's a decade, by the way.

I know Michael and I are buddies.

We met earlier, and you told me, Michael, that if we had a rocket out here, I asked you if you could go to space with me if we had a rocket outside and he was brave enough to say yes.

Let's go.

So awesome.

Yeah.

So we up.

And then he wanted to know the what's first time in space.

Oh, like the first time in space.

Yeah.

So first time in space.

It was magical.

I because I, I went up on the space shuttle on my first launch, and, so I only takes eight minutes, to get to space.

And so it's a kind of a violent ride on the rocket going uphill, but then those engines cut off, and then it's just pure silence, and I, I everybody's I took my helmet off, and I just floated it in front of me.

I took my gloves off and they were floating there in front of me.

I thought, like, this is cool.

So the feeling is is very much euphoric.

Michael, when you first get to space, and that kind of catches up with you after a while, you're, you begin to learn after, especially after a few months up there, that everything is floating.

So you have to make sure that the things you don't want floating are not floating around the experience, the the other experience that sunny has experiences, as well as when you first go on a spacewalk, a much different experience when you open that hatch and go out for the first time.

And, there's a handrail, a circular handrail right outside of the airlock and the, the airlock actually faces toward the Earth.

And so when you come out, you get a face full of Earth, you know, when you come out.

And, and so I came out feet first, on my first spacewalk, and so my EV1, my lead spacewalker, went out headfirst, and I came out with my feet and my heart was pounding, and I was like, because I have to think of something profound to say because I knew my mom was watching me and everything.

You know, and all my friends.

And so I came out and I grabbed that handrail and I hung there, and my first words were, yeah, that was my first word.

So, and just now you have a panoramic view and you're in your own little spaceship and, quite a dramatic difference in that moment as well.

Sonny, would you like to share?

Like your.

Yeah, some moments of.

Oh, the first moment.

It's sort of like you said, everything floating.

Right.

So then I was on the space shuttle, also in the in the middeck, flying around, getting the turning our rocket into a spacecraft, which means like opening a party, getting the, you know, the sleeping bags out, making sure that galley work, everybody needs something to drink.

So we just fly back and forth.

Me and my friend Bob Kirby, and then, our commander called us up to the up to the flight deck, and they were the commander and the pilot are in their seats because we have more to to do as we get circular eyes in the orbit around Earth.

And it came up and there's the window, because we didn't have a window on the bottom and the mid deck.

I looked out the window, I was like, oh my God, it's round.

It really is.

So no more.

No of those flat earth people in this audience, it's really round.

But and it was just incredible.

It was beautiful to see your planet from that perspective.

Like I was mentioning, this is one planet.

This is where we all live.

Every planet, every person, every animal that you know is right here.

It's a little bit overwhelming when you think about it.

It's like, wow, incredible.

And then he put my astronaut wings on.

He said, now get back to work.

I flew down to the mid deck again and I was flying around.

So I flew up and flew down and then I threw up.

So very anti-climatic moment to actually and Michael the the earth looking at it from outside especially.

And you look at the backdrop of empty the emptiness and darkness of space.

It looks like an explosion of color in the daylight.

I thought back when I was your age or a little bit younger, actually.

I used to dream about what it would be like to live on another planet.

Back then, Pluto was a planet, so Pluto was my favorite planet.

I think it should still be a planet, but I used to dream about, living on another planet.

And I thought to myself, in those moments when I looked on the earth, I thought like, man, if I had been a kid, like growing up on Mars or something, I had a telescope and couldn't look out into the night sky and see this beautiful planet, this explosion of color in the darkness.

How much more vivid my dreams would have been when I was your age, Michael, to go.

I want to go to that place, that beautiful planet.

So, so, Yeah.

Pluto used to be my favorite planet.

But now Earth is by far is the flat Earth.

Hi, my name is Anna Brandt.

Thank you both for being here.

You mentioned going in this phase.

What's the transition like coming back to Earth both physically and I imagine after being gone for months, it's kind of a tough transition in other ways to to come back to Earth.

I know it's hard.

It's harder, I think, to come back to Earth than it is to go to space physically.

Mentally too.

I think honestly, just because it's a big change, particularly when you're up in space for a long period of time.

I remember just on the mental side, mentally, challenging side.

I came back on my first mission, and at that point in time, we only had three people on the space station.

So you're only up there with two other people for a long time, and you come back and, it was a pretty quick transition at that point in time to, to come back to see everybody.

We landed at Edwards Air Force Base.

We got on an airplane and we flew back to Houston.

And then there's a hangar full of people there who are friends and family and coworkers that you hadn't seen for a long time.

And I was literally felt my heart like beating because I didn't know what it was like to be around people.

I was like, oh my God, there's people.

It's people.

It's people like and, you know, but it was it that just took a little bit to get used to.

I think this the overwhelming, like sensory emotion of people talking, and you're listening to somebody watching a video and hearing what's going on in the world, I think was a little bit was a little tough, but it was pretty quick.

My husband wouldn't let me get away with being a baby for too long anyway.

But the physical part is also a little tougher.

You probably saw us coming out of the dragon on a stretcher.

Also, Soyuz, when we came back from that.

You see us in seats being taken to the tent.

It's not like we can't walk, right?

We have exercise equipment up there.

We have a treadmill, we have a bike, we have advanced resistive exercise device, where we can actually lift weights with a bar.

And so you can do deadlifts and squats, and we do all that for loading for your bone density and muscle mass.

So people are strong when they come back.

Actually, I think I was a little stronger than I am now.

But it's all those little balance muscles, small muscles in your neck that hold your head up.

All of that has to get reengaged.

About a month or so for that to happen.

And that manifests itself in me as being pretty tired, as well as going to the rehab, physical rehab to get all that worked out with our trainers.

But then for me, that's the biggest chunk was over.

But then it takes me a little while, and I'm not going to say it's age, to get my fast twitch muscles going.

I'm a little slow right now, but we'll get there.

Yes.

So it's a it's a I think it's a harder transition, but, I think we look pretty normal, right?

You do, you do.

Now, I wanted to add to that that, everything is floating in space, including your clothes on you.

And when you're out on a spacewalk, you're floating inside of your suit.

So everything visually is floating, so it's hard to.

You have, like, motion, parallax, cape type, but depth perception, judgment and things like that.

Those are just really kind of coming back to life when you come back.

Also your when your clothes are floating on you, all these little receptors on the bottoms of your feet, you know, just different, nerve endings all over your body.

Those now have to support, like a shirt hanging on you or a spacesuit hanging on you.

And it's.

It seems trivial, but it's.

Boy, those synapses are firing.

And so you can feel like it's almost like when your foot falls asleep and it's just coming, you know, all those tingly so you can feel that sort of all over your body when these nerve endings are coming back to life with the, with the clothes now sitting on your shoulders.

So, yeah, you mentioned that when you saw first time you saw the Earth from the space, how it made you feel.

And if you go back 60, 70 years, you know, the first time that we went to space, all of the things about Earth, about environmental protection came out of that vision.

And also at the same time, the immigration from the southern hemisphere started happening with Sunita and her father coming here.

How do we go back to that sense of the world being one, and how do we get back to thinking that we need to protect this earth as our home?

Yeah.

That's a lot.

Great question.

It's going to take all of us.

By the way, I'm going to let you tackle.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I think we're actually living in a really great age of communication that allows us actually to feel like one.

Wherever people are, we can be in touch with them.

We can be in contact with them.

That's pretty awesome.

That's pretty powerful.

And so global views, I think, are easily transmitted that way.

And that's good.

And bad, right.

How do we get people to understand that they need to protect this planet?

I think getting more and more people to go to space is a really good way to do that.

It's a it's the perspective that we just talked about, taking as many pictures and bringing that video back to life, to everybody here on the planet and letting people see it.

We'll be showing, by the way, again, it's a little bit of advertisement tomorrow at the, at, Great Lakes Science Center.

Some of the, some of the video that we took while we are up in space.

And this is how we get people to understand what our planet looks like.

We saw the most what a great, time to be up in space.

Last summer, we had the most incredible aurora that makes you really stop and think.

Not only that, this is like the only planet I know where people are, but also, like, what other energy is in the universe?

What is happening?

Our space station flew right through the middle of the Aurora last last summer it became.

It came lower than it usually is right in the Northern hemisphere.

And you see this wave of green all around us.

Not only that, you see reds and purples, things we haven't seen in a while, which made made me really think about like what else is happening in the in the universe and the, you know, the environment here that's influencing our planet.

And so being able to be a communicator about what we saw, trying to get space companies and organizations flying more and more people to space is a great thing because more and more people will have that perspective.

I'm psyched for Katy Perry.

I would love to go and have a conversation with Katy Perry about her impressions when she got to go up and see the planet, see the roundness of the planet, My name is Kate.

I'm a therapist, and I'm really interested in relational dynamics.

And so I apologize for my ignorance about this.

But on the space station, is there a room if you get upset with your fellow astronaut to go into and cool off?

Or how do you all deal with the interpersonal dynamics when you're in such close quarters and you can't escape, you know, and drive away or something?

And so I just curious about that.

Thank you.

It's a great question to, yeah, we do have, the space station, we have a crew quarters, and it's about the size of a phone booth.

And for those of you that don't know what a phone booth is, it's, there's 1 or 2 in here which a lot of students are finding out nowadays.

Like, what's a phone booth?

It's like, okay, well, so it's about that size and that's sort of your own little cubby.

Everything else is, is, a common area, Tell us your experience of hand preparations and exercises and training you had, and working in the in the gravity.

So I'm not exactly sure the point of the question, but I, I'm just reflecting back on doing spacewalks, as they say in on the space station, spacewalks on the moon are going to be different.

We're actually going to be walking.

And we need suits that are able to do that, sort of like the Apollo era.

So we're we're learning more about suits and we're making advanced suits.

But on the space station, which Doug and I both have done spacewalks, it was very hand intensive.

Right.

So you're actually moving from one place to another.

Gloves are super important, not only on spacewalks but also in a spacecraft as you're trying to manipulate the controls or switches or whatever.

And we spend a lot of time on gloves to get back this human grip on whatever we're going to do.

It's a little in contrast, I think, to the Russian suit, which Russian spacesuit which operates at a higher pressure, some of their tools and things are optimized for not like a normal human grip.

Maybe just a lot easier to turn, wheels or whatever they're going to do on the outside of the space station.

When they're doing electrical connectors, they're a lot easier.

Maybe it's just a twist.

It's not getting your hand in there and doing specific hand tasks.

So interesting question.

I as I'm talking, I'm learning.

Thinking about these things myself is like, how are we going to design, space, spacesuit, gloves in the future?

Depends on the tasks that we have, and it depends on the activity we're going to have.

We can change.

It doesn't have to be exactly like what we do on Earth.

It could be something else.

Just as another idea.

But hands are super important.

Yes.

And I wanted to point out, what Sony was talking about on the spacewalk.

We practice underwater in the pool, and it's like, it's like a, like a CrossFit workout for six hours in space that works against you because we have drag in the water, we have viscosity.

And so we're neutrally buoyant.

We're not.

So you're it's like a workout for six hours in space.

You can't do that because you're overcorrected.

Get pow!

So it's almost like a spacewalk is like a ballet on your fingertips.

It's just.

It's just light touch here and there.

If the minute you grab onto something, if you're in, Zero-G or micro G, you begin to oscillate because our muscles are trying to hold us firm or keep us from falling, you know, or that that fear of falling.

And so, it's very, very light touch control.

So, like a ballet on your fingertips, except when you're trying to get a big box off, then you get the crowbar out, you get the crowbar.

Yeah.

Or you start, you start hammering out.

You do.

You go back to the Neanderthal and all of us, right?

Right.

Yeah.

On that note, please, Sonny Williams.

And we're like, let's.

Forms like this one are made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

You can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at City club.org.

I know there was a lot of questions here in the audience that we did not get to.

The good news is they are going to be at, Discovery Days at the Great Lakes Science Center, Friday and Saturday, free admission, please.

Definitely check that out and you'll get more time with Sonny and Doug.

Today's forum is presented with generous support from Cleveland State University's College of Engineering.

Thank you so much, Dean.

And of course, our gratitude to Kirsten Ellenbogen and her phenomenal team at the Great Lakes Science Center, with their programing partnership for today and for, having us celebrate Ohio's Space Week.

Of course.

Thank you to the team at NASA's NASA's Glenn Research Center for making today possible.

And we would like to welcome all of our students joining us from Campus International School, Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School, Euclid High School, and Warrensville Heights High School.

And also thank you to the guests at the tables hosted by Cleveland State University's College of Engineering, Cuyahoga Community College, Great Lakes Science Center, and John Carroll University.

Thank you again to Sunny and Dog and to our members and friends at the City Club.

I'm Cynthia Connolly and this forum is now adjourned.

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