NASA Astronaut Woody Hoburg | All-In Summit 2024

00:00:00.000 | The path to becoming an astronaut is not clear.

00:00:03.680 | The path was not clear for me either.

00:00:05.600 | Dave Friedberg, this is Woody Hobart calling you from the International Space Station.

00:00:15.200 | How do you hear me?

00:00:16.320 | Hey Woody, I hear you well.

00:00:17.920 | How are you?

00:00:18.400 | 22 years of experience living and working in space.

00:00:23.200 | We have learned so much.

00:00:26.000 | And so what that sets us up to do now is to go further.

00:00:30.320 | Space is hard.

00:00:31.280 | It just is hard.

00:00:32.320 | It's not a forgiving place.

00:00:33.600 | We intend to set up a sustained human presence on the moon

00:00:38.080 | and we're going to set up a proving ground to go to Mars.

00:00:40.960 | Thank you so much.

00:00:54.160 | It is such an honor to be here.

00:00:55.520 | I'm going to start with a bit of history.

00:00:58.560 | The left-hand photo is one of the last moments in recorded human history

00:01:04.000 | when all living humans were on earth.

00:01:06.320 | This was October 31st of the year 2000 at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

00:01:12.320 | And the crew of Expedition 1 launched up to the International Space Station.

00:01:16.160 | It was just three modules at that time.

00:01:18.000 | And they started a continuous human presence in space that continues today.

00:01:24.560 | By 2011, the ISS was assembled and looked roughly like this.

00:01:28.560 | Humans live in the pressurized modules running front to back in this photo.

00:01:33.680 | And the truss running left to right is unpressurized.

00:01:37.280 | So only accessible by spacewalk.

00:01:39.200 | ISS is solar powered.

00:01:41.520 | On an average workday, it consumes about 75 kilowatts.

00:01:44.800 | It is a million pounds of mass in low earth orbit.

00:01:49.520 | It's about 250 miles above earth.

00:01:52.800 | To stay in that orbit, it has to travel five miles every second.

00:01:56.480 | So that works out to a 90-minute orbit.

00:01:58.640 | We see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day.

00:02:01.840 | Now in 2011, when the space shuttle retired,

00:02:06.480 | it left us our only option to continue sending humans up to the space station

00:02:10.880 | was a Russian Soyuz rocket.

00:02:12.560 | That situation changed in May of 2020.

00:02:16.960 | SpaceX made history.

00:02:19.840 | They launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley

00:02:22.960 | on a test flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

00:02:25.920 | And at that time, the world was just two months in grappling with the COVID pandemic.

00:02:32.160 | And All In had just published episode three.

00:02:36.320 | Bob and Doug spent two months on the space station

00:02:40.960 | before they successfully returned.

00:02:42.480 | And I didn't know it at the time,

00:02:43.760 | but I would eventually fly on Crew Dragon Endeavor,

00:02:46.560 | which is the same capsule as Bob and Doug.

00:02:48.880 | Less than a year later, I was assigned to be the pilot for the Crew 6 mission

00:02:53.040 | up to the ISS.

00:02:53.920 | And so my crew from left to right,

00:02:56.560 | on the left, Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedayev,

00:02:58.960 | Commander Steve Bowen, myself flying as pilot.

00:03:02.000 | And then Sultan Alnayati was the first UAE astronaut

00:03:05.760 | to do a long-duration mission, six months on the ISS.

00:03:08.320 | We actually scrubbed our very first launch attempt.

00:03:14.240 | We got within two and a half minutes of launch.

00:03:16.960 | And we had an issue with the system that ignites our engines.

00:03:19.840 | And so we had to scrub.

00:03:22.240 | We got all the fuel off the vehicle.

00:03:23.680 | And three days later, we were ready to try again.

00:03:26.160 | You're on your back.

00:03:44.240 | You lift off at about one and a half Gs.

00:03:47.040 | By the time all the fuel burns out,

00:03:58.400 | you're up about four and a half Gs.

00:04:00.080 | And then we stage.

00:04:00.880 | This is the second stage engine.

00:04:02.800 | And again, it starts off with only a little bit of acceleration.

00:04:05.360 | It builds up to about four and a half Gs.

00:04:07.120 | And so 12 minutes after launch,

00:04:13.280 | you're in space.

00:04:14.480 | This is where we experience weightlessness

00:04:16.080 | for the first time.

00:04:17.440 | And we took about a day, like 24 hours,

00:04:19.520 | to do all the phasing up to the ISS.

00:04:22.000 | For me, the ISS had been this place that I'd trained about.

00:04:24.480 | It's kind of an abstract object off in space.

00:04:27.440 | And actually arriving and seeing it in our thermal camera,

00:04:30.560 | I still remember, sent chills down my spine.

00:04:34.720 | It's pretty fun, the first few days,

00:04:36.400 | getting used to weightlessness.

00:04:38.800 | Steve was our resident chef.

00:04:40.640 | He was famous for baking pies.

00:04:42.400 | Baking pies in space.

00:04:44.960 | And we had a great handover with crew five,

00:04:46.960 | who kind of taught us all the little tricks

00:04:49.440 | to living and working in space.

00:04:51.680 | And we got right to work.

00:04:53.200 | Full complement of science experiments.

00:04:54.880 | This is the Japanese module.

00:04:57.680 | You see the primary glove box mounted sideways.

00:05:00.160 | And that's American astronaut Frank Rubio

00:05:02.240 | working in the glove box.

00:05:03.200 | He currently has the American record

00:05:05.520 | for duration of a single space flight.

00:05:09.520 | Now, it turns out weightlessness causes heart tissue

00:05:12.000 | to age much faster than on Earth.

00:05:13.680 | So we're using that as a model to study treatments

00:05:15.600 | for heart disease.

00:05:16.320 | So I still remember the day that Sultan

00:05:25.120 | looked through the microscope and saw

00:05:26.320 | these beating heart cells.

00:05:27.280 | Just mind blowing.

00:05:28.560 | We printed a section of human meniscus

00:05:30.720 | using a biofabrication facility.

00:05:34.400 | And in addition to all the science,

00:05:35.760 | we have to do all of the maintenance and repairs on board.

00:05:38.320 | So this is some of the less glamorous stuff.

00:05:40.160 | This is fixing our toilet.

00:05:41.600 | We have to do regular maintenance on the spacesuits

00:05:46.560 | to keep them ready for action.

00:05:49.280 | Try to find me in this photo.

00:05:51.440 | This is repairing one of our CO2 scrubbing machines.

00:05:55.360 | You see my legs poking out.

00:05:58.240 | And this is how we get rid of trash.

00:05:59.760 | We load up cargo vehicles and send them

00:06:01.440 | home to a destructive re-entry through Earth's atmosphere.

00:06:04.960 | There is a regular cadence of these cargo vehicles

00:06:07.120 | coming to and from ISS all the time.

00:06:09.440 | Frank and I here are capturing the NG-19 mission

00:06:13.600 | with our Canadian robotic arm and berthing it

00:06:15.840 | to the bottom of Node 1.

00:06:18.400 | And the team on the ground is always

00:06:20.480 | sending us with every new cargo vehicle fresh food.

00:06:23.440 | It's always a special treat.

00:06:26.080 | We also have to take care of ourselves.

00:06:27.840 | This is Sultan on our treadmill.

00:06:29.600 | It's mounted on the wall.

00:06:31.840 | You run facing the floor.

00:06:33.680 | We do like 2 and 1/2 hours of exercise every day.

00:06:36.000 | Half cardio and half this resistance exercise.

00:06:38.880 | So lots of time to listen to music and podcasts.

00:06:42.560 | I did get to talk to Friedberg.

00:06:44.960 | We had a great conversation, actually, from Low Earth Orbit.

00:06:48.720 | I love chess, so I got a chess board sent up.

00:06:51.680 | And we actually played ISS Crew versus Mission Control.

00:06:54.880 | We played a few games back and forth,

00:06:56.960 | did like one or two moves every day.

00:06:59.360 | And we always picked out a flight controller

00:07:01.400 | from a specific console to make our moves on the board

00:07:04.200 | in Mission Control.

00:07:06.680 | Now, one of my favorite parts of training, preparing,

00:07:09.720 | was spacewalk training.

00:07:11.240 | It's really tactile, learning to use a pressurized spacesuit.

00:07:14.720 | So we have the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston.

00:07:16.760 | Amazing team of divers supporting us

00:07:18.440 | to practice all of our procedures.

00:07:21.480 | And I was thrilled when I found out

00:07:23.080 | that I would get to do two spacewalks

00:07:24.920 | to install a couple new ISS rollout solar arrays.

00:07:28.360 | They're the vertical rolls you see in this photo.

00:07:32.680 | We were getting ready for the spacewalks.

00:07:34.360 | And two weeks prior, we were flying over the Pacific Ocean

00:07:37.960 | and got some photos of this storm, which unfortunately

00:07:40.760 | damaged one of the ground sites in Guam

00:07:43.580 | that supports the satellites that we use

00:07:45.800 | to talk to Mission Control.

00:07:47.040 | So this meant that during my spacewalks,

00:07:48.880 | we would not have the ability to talk

00:07:51.080 | to Mission Control for some large chunks of time.

00:07:55.600 | Everyone rallied.

00:07:57.000 | Frank and Sultan set up this kind

00:07:58.560 | of command post in the US lab on the space station.

00:08:02.440 | So in addition to operating the robotic arm,

00:08:04.400 | they would hand off back and forth

00:08:05.800 | with Mission Control for those comm gaps.

00:08:07.880 | And Frank and Sultan would walk us

00:08:09.680 | through all of our procedures.

00:08:12.800 | My friend Brian, who will be speaking shortly, actually,

00:08:15.840 | told me that my mission would be an utter failure if I didn't

00:08:19.020 | get at least one space selfie.

00:08:20.680 | So I got this as soon as I could.

00:08:25.000 | Frank and Sultan flew me over to the arrays.

00:08:27.800 | And Steve and I unbolted them.

00:08:30.320 | And then this is the commute out to the work site.

00:08:34.560 | The array unit, it's 800 pounds of mass.

00:08:37.520 | So it's weightless.

00:08:38.680 | But you still feel the inertia of that 800 pounds

00:08:40.960 | in your hands.

00:08:41.960 | So mainly, I was happy I did not drop it.

00:08:46.500 | After we finished the installation,

00:08:47.960 | Steve got this shot.

00:08:49.000 | There's two Dragon spacecraft in this photo.

00:08:51.520 | On the right side of Node 2 is Crew 6 Dragon Endeavor,

00:08:55.440 | what I flew up in.

00:08:56.560 | And then up on the top is CRS-28.

00:08:58.460 | That's a cargo vehicle that flew the arrays up.

00:09:00.920 | And down in the end of the robotic arm,

00:09:03.160 | you can see the foot restraint that was holding me

00:09:05.480 | while I was holding the arrays.

00:09:08.200 | So it was an amazing mission.

00:09:09.400 | After 185 days, it was time for Crew 6 to come home.

00:09:13.280 | The Dragon hatch itself is closed.

00:09:15.160 | That coming at 419 AM Central Time.

00:09:17.720 | You see the thrusters firing as we back away and get

00:09:22.640 | another nice view of ISS.

00:09:23.760 | Airspace 6 on the big loop.

00:09:25.360 | Depart burn one is complete and nominal.

00:09:29.460 | Sultan got this view past his feet of the plasma

00:09:33.100 | as we re-entered Earth's atmosphere.

00:09:35.020 | We're basically inside a meteor.

00:09:36.900 | Drogue pyros have fired.

00:09:38.260 | And we have good confirmation of drogue chutes.

00:09:41.180 | Two drogues.

00:09:42.740 | The drogue slowed us down to about 140 miles an hour,

00:09:45.340 | sets us up to deploy main safely.

00:09:48.180 | And you can see here the hot spacecraft and cold parachutes

00:09:51.580 | in the thermal cam.

00:09:52.660 | We landed in some of the highest seas to date for Crew Dragon.

00:09:57.720 | An amazing recovery team comes out, they rig the vehicle,

00:10:00.680 | and they lift us onto the recovery ship

00:10:03.880 | with us still inside.

00:10:06.920 | So you see our smiling faces here.

00:10:09.320 | It was like the thrill of a lifetime

00:10:11.120 | to get to spend six months living and working in space.

00:10:13.640 | But there's also just nothing like returning home

00:10:15.600 | to the people you love.

00:10:17.120 | [APPLAUSE]

00:10:20.600 | Thank you.

00:10:26.240 | I want to spend just a moment beyond my mission

00:10:28.580 | and talk about where we're headed next.

00:10:30.240 | NASA is headed back to the moon.

00:10:32.000 | And to really put this in context,

00:10:34.200 | I just have to show you.

00:10:36.160 | So I've asked Friedberg for some help, and he's kindly agreed.

00:10:40.940 | Come on out.

00:10:41.480 | For you.

00:10:45.120 | OK.

00:10:45.620 | Go on this side.

00:10:46.800 | All the way down?

00:10:47.500 | Or--

00:10:48.000 | Stay with me for a second.

00:10:48.920 | OK.

00:10:49.420 | So it's a convenient quirk of the scale of the objects

00:10:53.000 | in our solar system that if you make the Earth a basketball--

00:10:59.120 | this is the Earth--

00:11:00.200 | then the moon is a tennis ball.

00:11:03.880 | And I invite you, if you don't know this answer,

00:11:05.920 | to think about how far the moon is from Earth in this scale.

00:11:11.520 | If you already know, that's fine.

00:11:12.860 | But take a guess.

00:11:13.880 | Should I say the answer?

00:11:16.240 | 180,000 miles?

00:11:18.160 | 225,000 miles.

00:11:19.440 | 225,000 miles?

00:11:20.760 | All right.

00:11:21.260 | When should Friedberg stop?

00:11:21.800 | I'm not going to do very well on Jeopardy.

00:11:23.280 | Here we go.

00:11:23.840 | When should he stop?

00:11:25.280 | Now?

00:11:26.400 | Keep going.

00:11:27.600 | Keep going.

00:11:30.040 | Keep going.

00:11:32.520 | OK, slow down.

00:11:34.600 | There.

00:11:37.640 | So in this scale, it's 24 feet.

00:11:39.400 | You can do the math.

00:11:41.040 | So we will stay here.

00:11:42.760 | Let's lose the tape measure.

00:11:45.160 | And stay there, Friedberg.

00:11:46.520 | I would not make a good astronaut.

00:11:52.520 | I was telling Woody, I'm like, I can't imagine you walk out

00:11:55.400 | in space, and it's like, there's just space?

00:11:57.920 | [BLEEP]

00:11:58.420 | That.

00:11:58.920 | Like, I'm not-- sorry.

00:12:02.240 | Go ahead.

00:12:03.960 | Don't drop the moon either.

00:12:05.120 | I'm sorry.

00:12:05.620 | [LAUGHTER]

00:12:07.640 | I just want to tell you a couple of things here.

00:12:09.600 | This is the Earth.

00:12:10.400 | I told you the ISS, where I was, was--

00:12:13.320 | I spent six months half an inch off the basketball.

00:12:18.040 | That's where low Earth orbit is.

00:12:20.080 | And you guys probably saw Polaris Dawn

00:12:21.740 | launched this morning.

00:12:22.880 | Maybe a quick round of applause for SpaceX.

00:12:24.680 | [APPLAUSE]

00:12:29.920 | So they're going way higher than the ISS, way higher.

00:12:33.140 | They're going an inch off the basketball.

00:12:36.900 | With Artemis-- so we already launched Artemis in 2022.

00:12:40.000 | It flew uncrewed out around the moon.

00:12:41.720 | And the Artemis 2 crew is already

00:12:43.200 | in training to fly Orion around the moon and come home.

00:12:46.800 | And then Artemis 3 is going to be the landing

00:12:48.880 | on the surface of the moon.

00:12:50.040 | And we're going to set up shop.

00:12:51.320 | We're going to make a proving ground to get to Mars.

00:12:54.000 | And so while we have this scale, Mars--

00:12:57.200 | let's see.

00:12:57.960 | If you could imagine 3/4 of a mile away in this scale,

00:13:03.120 | 3/4 of a mile, that's Mars.

00:13:07.920 | And we're doing all this work on the moon

00:13:09.680 | to eventually get to Mars.

00:13:11.080 | And then-- I know you guys are forward thinking.

00:13:13.080 | So I just want you to imagine beyond even Mars.

00:13:16.640 | 34 miles-- 34 miles away is Uranus.

00:13:21.760 | [LAUGHTER]

00:13:22.760 | [APPLAUSE]

00:13:31.200 | I heard Shamov laugh.

00:13:32.720 | [LAUGHTER]

00:13:36.320 | He loved that.

00:13:38.400 | Amazing.

00:13:38.920 | All right.

00:13:39.640 | I think we're going to talk for a minute.

00:13:40.680 | Yeah, that was great.

00:13:41.640 | Thank you.

00:13:42.140 | Let's chat.

00:13:42.640 | Grab a seat right here.

00:13:43.680 | [APPLAUSE]

00:13:45.360 | Grab a seat right here.

00:13:46.720 | What should we do with the Earth?

00:13:49.040 | Good question.

00:13:50.960 | So a couple of quick questions.

00:13:52.240 | What's the timeline, Artemis 2, Artemis 3?

00:13:54.920 | Yeah.

00:13:55.440 | And yeah, just tell us a little bit about the timelines.

00:13:58.520 | It's super exciting.

00:13:59.360 | We already launched Artemis 1.

00:14:00.560 | Artemis 2 crew is in training.

00:14:01.840 | Right now, they're scheduled to fly in the fall of 2025,

00:14:04.480 | so in a year.

00:14:06.360 | They're going to test out the Orion spacecraft.

00:14:08.360 | That flight's going to be a big deal.

00:14:09.280 | They're actually going to go further from Earth

00:14:10.840 | than humans have ever been, because they

00:14:12.540 | go a little farther from the moon than Apollo did.

00:14:14.920 | Wow.

00:14:15.420 | And then the plan right now is for that first crewed landing

00:14:18.800 | in 2026 with Artemis 3.

00:14:21.080 | 2026.

00:14:21.960 | Yeah.

00:14:22.760 | Are you in the running to be--

00:14:24.360 | Yeah, every astronaut in the office

00:14:25.920 | is in the running to be assigned to an Artemis mission.

00:14:28.520 | Is it like the movie "Right Stuff,"

00:14:29.760 | where you guys are all super competitive with each other?

00:14:32.140 | Tell us about the cooperative and the competitive nature

00:14:35.060 | of being an astronaut in the NASA program.

00:14:36.940 | It's actually one of the most fun things.

00:14:38.640 | So it's definitely kind of a wait

00:14:40.060 | in line till you're told that you're assigned to a mission.

00:14:42.240 | I still remember when I got the phone call assigning me

00:14:44.580 | to Crew 6 to do my first mission.

00:14:46.940 | It's just one of those phone calls you'll never forget.

00:14:51.260 | It's actually not-- we all support one another,

00:14:53.600 | and there's honestly nothing cooler

00:14:55.460 | than watching your friends fly to space.

00:14:57.780 | And we all know we're eventually going to have that chance.

00:15:00.240 | So it's less directly competitive

00:15:03.100 | than you might imagine.

00:15:04.180 | So does the moon base kind of feel like an ISS?

00:15:07.380 | Is it like we're going to set up a facility at some point?

00:15:10.980 | And is that sort of long term planning going on?

00:15:13.540 | Absolutely.

00:15:14.380 | And I think, yeah, there's a strategic plan looking way out

00:15:16.940 | into that Artemis campaign.

00:15:18.220 | We talked about it being a sustained presence.

00:15:21.020 | Right now, I mean, I think we'd all

00:15:23.300 | love to eventually have a permanent presence,

00:15:25.900 | meaning that humans are always on the moon.

00:15:28.520 | At first, it's not going to be that.

00:15:30.020 | We're going to send missions.

00:15:32.300 | But unlike Apollo, we are really going to stay.

00:15:34.940 | We intend to stay there for a long time.

00:15:37.100 | And we're actually-- unlike Apollo,

00:15:38.680 | instead of going to the equator, we're

00:15:40.300 | going to go initially to the South Pole, which

00:15:42.220 | is scientifically really interesting.

00:15:44.020 | And the intent is to do all the cool things-- rovers,

00:15:47.300 | moon bases, nuclear power on the moon.

00:15:50.260 | We want to do it all.

00:15:51.220 | Why did it take humans half a century

00:15:53.820 | to come back and do this again?

00:15:56.140 | I think--

00:15:57.100 | Did we really go to the moon, by the way?

00:15:58.800 | We absolutely went to the moon.

00:16:00.760 | Just for the Joe Rogan crowd, I just want to make sure.

00:16:03.220 | [LAUGHTER]

00:16:05.900 | I think it's political will.

00:16:09.480 | We have to decide that it's what we want to do.

00:16:11.440 | And I think that's one of the coolest things about this time.

00:16:14.240 | I mean, who's heard of Artemis program?

00:16:18.460 | Yeah.

00:16:18.960 | Few people.

00:16:19.600 | Good many.

00:16:21.040 | We could probably do a better job advertising.

00:16:23.240 | But you know what?

00:16:24.280 | The cool thing about Artemis is we truly

00:16:27.380 | have bipartisan support.

00:16:28.800 | That's NASA's issue over many years

00:16:34.360 | is, can you sustain as administrations change?

00:16:37.120 | Because it takes a long time to do this stuff.

00:16:39.000 | And right now, we feel like we have real bipartisan support

00:16:41.280 | to go do this.

00:16:41.780 | The people want us to go do this.

00:16:42.960 | And sorry.

00:16:43.320 | And so once you're on the moon, there's

00:16:44.480 | a lot of constant resupply needed in the current model.

00:16:46.940 | So that's part of the logistics.

00:16:48.240 | It's like, how do we continually resupply?

00:16:50.020 | Yeah.

00:16:50.520 | And I think as the missions get more complex--

00:16:52.440 | Is Starship involved in--

00:16:53.760 | 100%.

00:16:54.440 | So right now, we actually have two providers

00:16:57.120 | for--

00:16:57.620 | So SpaceX's big Starship.

00:16:58.780 | Yeah.

00:16:59.280 | Maybe you can just talk about why it's so important.

00:17:01.240 | Yeah, I'd love to.

00:17:02.000 | Yeah.

00:17:02.500 | So we already talked about the Orion spacecraft, which

00:17:06.400 | is what the astronauts are going to fly from Earth

00:17:09.360 | to a lunar orbit in.

00:17:11.040 | But the human landing system, which

00:17:12.560 | is going to take them down to the surface,

00:17:14.400 | we have two providers for that and one of those.

00:17:16.140 | And actually, the one we plan to use for that first landing

00:17:18.600 | is the SpaceX Starship.

00:17:21.200 | SpaceX plans to do an uncrewed demo

00:17:23.760 | before we send our astronauts down.

00:17:25.480 | And we're super looking forward to it.

00:17:27.200 | So is Artemis a close partnership with SpaceX

00:17:30.800 | that NASA relies on, and SpaceX is a critical partner

00:17:35.400 | to that program, to that mission?

00:17:36.800 | Yeah.

00:17:37.300 | We're using them for our landing.

00:17:38.920 | Then SpaceX talks-- and Elon talked a lot yesterday

00:17:41.400 | about trying to get Starship uncrewed over to Mars

00:17:44.120 | in two years.

00:17:45.400 | And I don't want you to necessarily opine

00:17:48.780 | in a negative way, but how realistic is it that there's

00:17:51.080 | going to be a crewed Starship to Mars in four years,

00:17:53.960 | as he claimed?

00:17:54.540 | And is that a NASA partnership, or is that--

00:17:56.560 | We are cheering on every Starship flight.

00:17:59.040 | I mean, I've watched every single one.

00:18:01.320 | We love the development.

00:18:02.840 | So if we can get to Mars in four years, that's great.

00:18:06.160 | What NASA is specifically contracting SpaceX on

00:18:09.440 | is to go to the moon.

00:18:10.640 | We believe the moon is the right place

00:18:12.320 | to go set up a sustained presence

00:18:14.760 | and really practice, set up a proving ground

00:18:18.320 | to eventually go to Mars.

00:18:19.920 | But all the development on Starship

00:18:21.760 | is in the direction of goodness.

00:18:23.640 | And does NASA have a development program

00:18:26.700 | on getting to Mars and timelines?

00:18:28.260 | Do they talk about that at all?

00:18:30.140 | And is there an actual mission yet?

00:18:32.220 | We actually reorganized within NASA,

00:18:34.500 | and we have an entire directorate called the Moon

00:18:36.620 | to Mars Directorate.

00:18:38.500 | And so it's absolutely-- we see the moon as our path to Mars,

00:18:43.540 | and that is absolutely the strategy.

00:18:45.460 | Yeah.

00:18:47.100 | So maybe you could just tell us, coming a little bit closer

00:18:50.620 | to Earth, the Polaris mission.

00:18:53.780 | It's five days long.

00:18:55.460 | They just launched this morning.

00:18:57.660 | Elon was here, and then he actually flew in,

00:19:00.620 | came to the summit, got back on his plane,

00:19:03.140 | went back to Florida, and they got off.

00:19:06.700 | Yeah.

00:19:07.220 | So maybe you could tell us a little bit

00:19:08.100 | about the mission and what these folks are going to be doing,

00:19:10.900 | because we didn't get to talk about it with Elon yesterday.

00:19:13.360 | It's amazing.

00:19:14.060 | And Jared, Scott, Sarah, and--

00:19:17.580 | Jared Isaacman.

00:19:18.380 | Yeah, Jared Isaacman is the commander.

00:19:20.380 | I mean--

00:19:20.880 | And he paid for the whole mission.

00:19:22.420 | Yeah.

00:19:22.980 | Yeah, he paid for the whole mission.

00:19:24.540 | I mean, these guys are friends, actually, friends and family,

00:19:27.420 | so we're rooting them on.

00:19:28.940 | If you've been to Florida and see--

00:19:30.620 | there's a different emotion when you see a crewed launch

00:19:33.860 | than an uncrewed launch.

00:19:35.900 | Like, uncrewed launch, big rocket, go up, cool.

00:19:39.100 | When you have friends and family on board one of these rockets,

00:19:42.140 | it's a different experience to watch the launch.

00:19:44.220 | So we're rooting them on.

00:19:45.980 | They're in space right now experiencing--

00:19:47.660 | And they're going to do a spacewalk.

00:19:48.540 | They're going to do a spacewalk in a couple of days.

00:19:50.180 | That's right.

00:19:51.260 | It'll be the first commercial spacewalk.

00:19:53.140 | So NASA's been doing spacewalks for a long time,

00:19:55.260 | but they are making history.

00:19:56.580 | They're going to depressurize the vehicle to vacuum.

00:19:59.500 | So they don't have an airlock or anything.

00:20:01.300 | They're going to take the vehicle all the way to vacuum.

00:20:02.860 | So they're all in a suit.

00:20:03.660 | They're all going to be in suits.

00:20:04.660 | They have to be.

00:20:05.620 | They'll open the hatch.

00:20:06.980 | And I think it's Jared and Sarah that

00:20:10.260 | are going to go out and do that first, I believe,

00:20:13.300 | do that first spacewalk.

00:20:14.340 | So they're going to go out and be like,

00:20:16.180 | holy shit, I'm in space.

00:20:18.700 | Yeah.

00:20:19.220 | I'll say, I don't know that I'm not super up to date

00:20:22.980 | on the details of--

00:20:23.740 | I'm sure they have objectives for the spacewalk.

00:20:25.620 | It's always how it is.

00:20:26.780 | While you're out there, there's things you want to do.

00:20:28.300 | Because I've got to imagine at the ISS, you walk out.

00:20:30.540 | It's a large structure.

00:20:31.980 | There's some grounding context to it.

00:20:34.780 | But these guys are just outside of the capsule.

00:20:38.740 | Yeah.

00:20:39.220 | And I think another interesting--

00:20:40.620 | I had the benefit on ISS--

00:20:42.860 | I had been floating for months, actually,

00:20:44.860 | before I did my spacewalk.

00:20:46.300 | So I was used to the idea that you're now in this world

00:20:49.260 | where everything floats.

00:20:51.060 | And so going outside--

00:20:52.780 | I mean, you look down, and it's a 250-mile drop

00:20:55.660 | to the surface of Earth.

00:20:57.460 | But it didn't feel scary or anything,

00:20:59.860 | because I knew I was just going to stay floating next

00:21:02.100 | to a space station where everything's falling.

00:21:05.420 | They've only had a couple of days to orient to this.

00:21:08.180 | So it'll be pretty cool.

00:21:10.900 | Yeah, well, I mean, cool for some.

00:21:16.460 | It takes a different kind of person.

00:21:17.980 | I don't know.

00:21:19.380 | Really incredible.

00:21:20.180 | Guys, please join me in thanking Woody for being here

00:21:23.220 | at the All in Summit.

00:21:24.140 | [APPLAUSE]

NASA Astronaut Woody Hoburg | All-In Summit 2024

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