#478: Scott Kelly — Lessons Learned from 500+ Days in Space, Life-Changing Books, and The Art of Making Hard Choices

Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly) is a former military fighter pilot and test pilot, an engineer, a retired astronaut, and a retired US Navy captain. A veteran of four space flights, Scott commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on three expeditions and was a member of the yearlong mission aboard the ISS, the single longest space mission by an American astronaut. In October 2015, he set the American record for the total accumulated number of days spent in space. Go for Launch: How to Dream, Lead, and Achieve https://knowable.fyi/scott is Scott’s two-hour audio course available exclusively on Knowable https://knowable.fyi/. In this candid and entertaining audio course, Scott shares instructive stories from his childhood in New Jersey, his days as a US Navy test pilot, and his year hurtling around the globe at 17,500 mph and teaches hard-earned lessons on perseverance, personal motivation, and the human side of success, drawn from his experiences in the most competitive, extreme environments imaginable. You can find it now at knowable.fyi/scott https://knowable.fyi/scott. Please enjoy! * This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job every episode to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, who knows what, that you can hopefully emulate or apply in your own lives. My guest today is none other than Scott Kelly, @StationCDRKelly on Twitter and elsewhere. Scott is a former military fighter pilot and test pilot and engineer, a retired astronaut and retired US Navy captain. A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station, ISS, on three expeditions and was a member of the year-long mission aboard the ISS, the single longest space mission by an American astronaut. In October 2015, he set the American record

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  for the total accumulated number of days spent in space. Go for Launch: How to Dream, Lead, and Achieve is Kelly's two-hour audio course available exclusively on Knowable. In this candid and entertaining audio course, Scott shares instructive stories from his childhood in New Jersey, his days as a US Navy test pilot, and his year hurdling around the globe at 17,500 miles per hour, and teaches hard-earned lessons on perseverance, personal motivation, and the human side of success drawn from his experiences in the most competitive, extreme environments imaginable. You can find it now at knowable, that's K-N-O-W-A-B-L-E dot F-Y-I forward slash Scott. You can find him on social, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, @StationCDRKelly.

• 1:29Tim Ferriss?

  And before we jump into the interview, I want to play you one lesson from Scott's audio course. The lesson is titled "The Smartest Person on the Mission", and it really highlights decision-making under pressure, a superpower of his. Also, after the interview ends, I'll share two more of Scott's lessons, so be sure to stick around.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Sometimes in space, you get a call from a third-grade classroom that wants to see what it looks like to go to the bathroom in zero gravity. Other times, you get a call from Michigan Control saying there's a hole the size of a golf ball in the heat shield, and you might burn up on re-entry. I got that call a day or so into commanding my first and only space shuttle mission. A similar issue had killed seven of my colleagues on Columbia a few years earlier. We could do a spacewalk to try to repair the heat shield, but spacewalks are extremely risky on their own, and there was always a danger we could just damage the heat shield more while trying to fix it.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  But if we left the hole as it was, the heat of reentry might tear the space shuttle apart. As commander, I had a lot of say in what our approach was going to be. It would have been tempting to make a quick decision on my own, but over the years I've spent leading and following, I've learned that the best decisions aren't made that way. Instead, I found a good time to take each crew member aside, one by one, in private. I kept a picture of the heat shield damage and a printout of some analysis from the ground in my back pocket, so I'd be able to take advantage of a quiet moment. I made sure I spoke to each of my crew members individually to get their honest opinions. I took this to such an extreme that I asked everyone I could.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  I even asked the astronauts and Russian cosmonauts who weren't coming back with us on Endeavour. Why not call a meeting? Why not make a decision together, as a group? Well, I've seen what can happen when people try to make decisions in groups. One person will offer an opinion, and if that person is knowledgeable or well-respected, everyone else might go along with what they said. Group think sets in. People aren't even conscious of doing this sometimes. It's something we do as a social species to get along, and it's often a useful instinct. But in a case like this, it could be deadly. There's a sign on the wall in a meeting room at NASA. "None of us is as dumb as all of us."

• 3:56Speaker 01

  And it's a lesson NASA had to learn the hard way. It's part of what went wrong with the Columbia accident and with Challenger before it. People who raised concerns were silenced because group think had taken over. With the input of my crew and after thorough analysis, we decided, along with flight controllers and leaderships on the ground, that coming back with the hole in the heat shield posed less of a risk than attempting a repair.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  And the gouge goes pretty much through the entire thickness of the tile itself. It's 1.2 inches thick.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  We fired the de-orbit engines, and as we came out of darkness and started hitting the atmosphere, the plasma field, the fire outside the space shuttle, continued to build.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Pretty soon, we were in a 3,000-degree fireball, falling towards Earth at an incredible speed. Me and my entire crew were mostly silent as we approached the point where the Space Shuttle Columbia had come apart. As we transitioned through that altitude, my pilot Scorch said, “Passing through peak heating.” “Understand,” I replied. I let about 20 seconds go by and added, “Looks like we dodged that bullet,” as we all reflected on the loss of our seven colleagues. About 30 minutes later, we landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  But this kind of decision-making can help in other places, too. Places like a Level 1 Trauma Center in Tucson, Arizona. When my sister-in-law, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in 2011, I was in space halfway through her six-month mission. My brother Mark was constantly having to make difficult decisions about her care. He found himself in meetings with many of her caretakers, trauma surgeons, brain surgeons, neurologists. But instead of just hearing out the top doctor, or more experienced expert, Mark would go a step further. He would find one quiet person in the back of the room and ask them who they were. “I’m just an intern,” they might say, “or ‘I’m just a nurse.”

• 6:12Speaker 01

  But Mark didn’t care what the person’s training was. “What do you think?” he would ask. “What are we missing? What are we overlooking?” Even if they hadn’t been there long, their opinion mattered and he learned valuable information by gathering as many perspectives as he could. I learned as much as seeing from how he handled Gabby’s care as I did from anyone I flew with in space. The smartest person in the room, I’ve learned, is usually the person who knows how to tap into the intelligence of every person in the room.

• 6:49Tim Ferriss?

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• 7:30Tim Ferriss?

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• 8:15Tim Ferriss?

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• 8:59Tim Ferriss?

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• 9:26Tim Ferriss?

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• 10:10Tim Ferriss?

  Most recently, I've been working with a designer at 99designs to update the illustrations and layouts for all of my downloadable ebooks. I've developed a really great working relationship with the designer, who goes by the username Spoonlancer, and I intend to continue working with him to bring ideas to life, one project at a time. I've also used 99designs for all sorts of high-end illustration for different books, like the Tao of Seneca. You can see a bunch of examples on my Instagram that I've put up, and they've turned out better than I possibly could have hoped. So from logos to websites to packaging to books, 99designs is the go-to creative resource to build your brand on any budget. So check them out. Right now, my listeners, that's you guys,

• 10:52Tim Ferriss?

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• 11:27Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first

• 12:07Tim Ferriss?

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• 12:25Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 12:32Speaker 04

  No, I would assume an appropriate time.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 12:48Tim Ferriss?

  Scott, welcome to the show.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Tim.

• 12:51Tim Ferriss?

  And I wanted to start not with space, but with West Orange, New Jersey, in I suppose the 60s, and your mom specifically. Could you please speak to your mom's experience with joining the police force?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Well, that's a, that's a good place to start with my mom, because we all started with our moms. And really, this, this all happened kind of in the late 70s and throughout the 80s where... My dad was a cop in New Jersey and he was in my hometown of West Orange. He was one of those like stereotypical like Irish cop guys you'd see on TV. And my mother was a secretary and a waitress, various jobs she had at different times. And about the time my brother and I were becoming teenagers, when she could spend more time at work, she decided that she wanted to have a career like my father's and was going to attempt to become a police officer in our hometown that never had a female police officer before.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  At the time, there were very few in the state of New Jersey. You know, it was a challenging thing for her, especially the physical part of it because, you know, at that time, it was, the physical fitness test was really designed for the men that were trying to become, you know, policemen and firefighters, the civil service exams that included physical fitness portion. And it was a challenge that for her was not easy, but you know, I saw her work really, really hard at this and you know, my dad helped her by setting up this obstacle course in her backyard. And you know, when she first went out there, she was not very successful and you know, I was a little bit skeptical, I can remember thinking, is she going to really be able to do this?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  But she, you know, she had a goal that she wanted to achieve, a plan to get there and she was successful. And it was the first time in my life that I saw the, the power of having this goal you think you might not be able to achieve, a plan to get there and then working really, really hard at something. And I always wanted to thank my mom for giving that lesson to me and my brother Mark.

• 14:56Tim Ferriss?

  Is it true that the family or she built a mock-up wall in the backyard to practice climbing over in preparation for the police exam?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I was saying, my dad helped her and he built the whole, all the, the activities she would have to do in her, in her backyard, including a wall that was seven foot, four inches tall. He actually built it an inch taller without telling her. So she thought she was practicing on a. You know, a seven foot four inch wall and she was practicing on the one that was an inch taller. My dad thinking that might help her on the, on the real day when she had to scale this thing that she would be overly prepared. Yeah. The first time she went to climb over that, she probably got her foot, a foot high and fell off, fell back into the dirt. But I can remember picking herself up, you know, brushing herself off

• 15:51Speaker 01

  and, you know, just saying, I'm going to just try to touch the top for now. And then, you know, once I can do that, I'll see how long I can hold on for. Maybe someday, eventually I'll be able to do a pull up and quite possibly at the end of the summer, perhaps be able to get over this wall. You know, some of the other tests was she had to drag a 130 pound dummy, 100 feet. And we just happened to have a long backyard. I happened to, at the time, weigh 130 pounds and also fit the role as a dummy. Cause I wasn't particularly good at school. So, yeah. So with my help and a summer of really hard work on her part.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  And when she went to, to take that test, she actually did better than a lot of the men did and became the very first female police officer in my hometown, one of the first in the entire state.

• 16:48Tim Ferriss?

  She was off to the races. You, you just mentioned school and that's, that's where I want to go next. I think that many people listening have a certain, I suppose, archetypal narrative that they would impose on astronauts in terms of life story. And they see star students knocking it out of the park, knowing from the age of three, they want to be in space, et cetera. You mentioned you weren't necessarily the, the best in school. My understanding is you graduated in the bottom half of your high school class and had various sort of misadventures along the way. What happened in terms of course correction, if there was a particular course correction? Was there a point at which you learned to study? Was there a catalyzing event?

• 17:33Tim Ferriss?

  For you that reoriented your focus?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, most people would would think as an astronaut, you must have been the smartest guy in the class, the overachiever. And that is certainly the case with a lot of my colleagues. I mean, I know folks that I've worked with that saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon and when they were little kids and decided right then and there, that's what they were going to do. And they did the best at everything from there on out until they became an astronaut and was flying and were flying in space, which is great. I wish I could have done that. I think it's kind of a boring story, though. I think it's much more interesting when it's someone like me who couldn't pay attention in school, spent probably the first 13 years of my education staring out the window, winning,

• 18:21Speaker 01

  when is this going to be over so I can get out of here? And it was, felt like it was impossible for me when I was a kid to pay attention. It's not like I didn't want to. I always went into the new school year with the intention of doing well. And three days into school, I'd be three days behind. And then the rest of the year was just basically on autopilot, not really learning much, not paying attention a whole lot, not getting good grades. I think back then, it seemed like it was easier to do that than I think what I've noticed with my kids today. I don't think you'd be able to get away with, you know, the amount of effort I put in then.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  But I could just remember it being impossible for me to pay attention, basically having the feeling that if you would have held a gun to my head to force me to pay attention, I wouldn't have been able to do it. That's how I felt. And I think, you know, I probably have like ADD or ADHD, never diagnosed. So that's probably why I had such a hard time. And it wasn't until I got to college and I was still, you know, still struggling, didn't know how to study, really didn't do well. Eventually, I'm not even going to class anymore, or at least much.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Basically, you know, on the fast track of how a lot of kids experience their first year of college, you know, basically one and done, you know, one year and you're done. And then I was just walking across the college campus, just happened to walk into the bookstore, not to buy a book, I was probably, you know, going there to buy gum or some other non-educational related thing. Maybe they sold beer there, I don't know, who knows? But I remember seeing this book on the end of the aisle, you know, where they highlight the stuff that they're trying to sell, I think it's called like the end cap or something of a bookshelf.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  And, you know, there was this book that had this very patriotic red, white and blue cover, a cool title, caught my eye, made me pick it up. Wasn't a big reader at the time, so it's kind of unusual for me to actually buy a book like that then. And I read the back, found it interesting, looked through the first few pages, took my gum money or my beer money or whatever it was and bought the book, walked back to my dorm room and then opened it up and basically didn't get out of my bed for the next few days, just reading the stories of the fighter pilots, military fighter pilots and test pilots that became the original Mercury Gemini Apollo astronauts.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  And the book was The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. You know, something in that book just really sparked my imagination. I think it's probably partly his creative nonfiction writing style that was just really caught my attention and my imagination. It was the fact that I felt like I could relate to the people in the book, the guys that were, he was writing about. They were all guys at the time, not anymore, and you know, there are obviously a lot of female astronauts now, but back then there was only men and it felt like I had something in common with them and...

• 21:44Speaker 01

  You know, with regards to like risk taking and putting myself in challenging and risky situations, you know, the adventure of it really spoke to me. But then I realized I am not a good student. And these guys, you know, most of them went to the military service academies. I think Pete Conrad went to went to Princeton. I mean, they were very accomplished students before they were pilots. But I thought to myself, you know, if I could just fix that one thing about me, you know, if I could learn how to pay attention and study and do better in school, perhaps I could change colleges, change majors, become a get an engineering major. The place I was at wasn't quite working out for me and get a commission

• 22:29Speaker 01

  in the US Navy and go fly fighter planes off of an aircraft carrier, maybe become a test pilot, maybe quite possibly an astronaut someday. So you know, that inspiration, I think, is important. That's what I tell kids that also a lot of parents, you know, if their kids are struggling, I think you can tell them all you want that they have to do better, but you really have to show them why they need to do better. You know, there has to be that thing, that inspiration, that spark that just provides inspiration to get people moving in the right direction. And that's what Tom Wolfe's right stuff was for me.

• 23:04Tim Ferriss?

  And later, you shot him an email from space with a photograph of yourself with that book, if I am getting my facts straight, which just is such a an incredible full cycle to return to the origin, in a sense.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:21Tim Ferriss?

  And incredible prose writer, as you noted, just a wonderful craftsman of of nonfiction. What happened or what did you change after that inspiration? Was it valuable because it aligned your academic focus in a way where you were simply choosing courses that were more oriented towards that path? And that is what helped you to then find a different sort of vector of of progress? Was it just despite your difficulties with attention?

• 23:58Tim Ferriss?

  Was it just doubling down because now you had a better reason? What changed?

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Well, hey, let me just comment first on you, you mentioning that email, which his response was so Tom Wolfe like in that he had words in there that were not really words.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  And outrageous punctuation.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  It was a pretty cool email to get back from him. But you know, in my case, it wasn't really focusing on like new subjects that more and more in line with being an engineer or pilot, because those were really the subjects I had the most challenge with, like math as an example, I wasn't really a great math student, or actually I wasn't great at anything. But for me, it wasn't necessarily like a change of course, or like you said, a vector doubling. It was more the doubling down on the fact that no matter how hard I've tried in the past, that didn't work. And I just have to try a lot harder to force myself to learn how to learn, really, was the first challenge of the next year.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  After I read Tom's book and I decided that this is what I'm going to do. I, um, yeah, I just had to do it kind of brute force method by myself. I think today you would have a lot more help. Especially if you have diagnosed ADD or ADHD, you would be, there'd be ways to get support and assistance. But for me, strictly the brute force method, like chain myself to my desk. Don't move until I can figure out how to do this. Precalculus problem. I remember that being a big struggle at the school I was at. But eventually, you know, like, like many things, you know, what I, what I've always found in my career, whether it's in the military, in the Navy, you know, flying airplanes, whether it's at NASA.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  And that is how good we are when we start something. It's not related at all. To how good we can become at anything.

• 26:00Tim Ferriss?

  When did you first, and maybe you just had the confidence from the get go after reading Tom's book. Was there a point after you chain yourself to the desk, you double and triple down with this brute force method? Was there a particular point where you thought to yourself? I can actually do this. I.

• 26:22Tim Ferriss?

  I believe that I can forge a path that will take me to where I want to go.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know if confidence is the right word. I don't, I've, I've always felt that kind of like a below average guy performing at an above average level. And I think that's a good place to be because if you get too confident, I think you get lazy. And, you know, once I figured out what I needed to do, I always felt like I needed to work harder than other people. Because maybe I didn't have as much natural smarts or talent or ability. So there was never a moment where I ever got confident. There was kind of a turning point, and that is from a learning and education perspective. And that is eventually I figured out how to study well enough that I was able to change schools.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  I changed majors. I became an engineering major. But now I'm starting my freshman year all over again, but still haven't really cracked the code on what it takes. It was coming up on Columbus Day. I went to a school called the State University in New York Maritime College. It's in the Bronx. It's a college that has a military regimental system, which I felt like I had to have that. So that was the primary reason I went there. The other reason was it was really one of the few places I could get into. Cause I had such bad high school grades and my first year college grades weren't all that great. But I needed that kind of discipline and structure. I felt like I did. My brother, who was on a completely different trajectory, once we went into high school,

• 27:58Speaker 01

  was at the US Merchant Marine Academy and asked me a little bit later how he became on a, upon a different trajectory. Cause it's actually kind of a funny story, but he was across the river, actually the Long Island Sound, at the US Merchant Marine Academy and he's, he was a year, wound up a year ahead of me because I, I took that first year mulligan on college.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Well, we were coming up on Columbus Day weekend, so it's kind of the beginning of the school year almost. And I call my brother up and I say, hey, some of our friends are having a frat party at Rutgers, some of our high school friends. And I was thinking of going there for the whole weekend, you know, leave on Friday, come back on Monday. And I called my brother, I said, hey, you want to go with me? And he's like, yeah, I got some work to do. I got some tests next week. And then he says, he goes, hey, have you had any tests yet? Like a calculus test? I was my first year of calculus. And I said, no, we have one next week. And then he like immediately like cursed at me, yelled at

• 29:02Speaker 01

  me, and said, basically said, what the hell are you doing? I mean, you've never been good at this. You have this motivation to like, change your path in life. And you're thinking about going to a frat party and spending the weekend at a frat house? And I go, yeah, well, you know, the test is at the end of the week. I'll study on, you know, when I get back. He says to me, he goes, you should be doing every single problem in every chapter, multiple times, until you can't stand it anymore. Because that's what it's going to take. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm not too sure I'm going to listen to him. I actually really wanted to go to this frat party. And, but I decided

• 29:46Speaker 01

  he had gotten good grades through high school and was doing very well where he was in college. And I thought, well, maybe I'll listen to my twin brother after he was yelling and cursing at me on the phone. And yeah, I did what he said. And then at the end of the week, I took the test and I got 100. And then from then on, I basically knew what it took to do well. And that is for me, what has always taken for me is just know as much as you can about anything you're doing. And then even if you fall a little bit short, You're still not going to fall so far that you're failing or doing poorly.

• 30:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that story also makes me think of someone I know named Jersey Gregorik. He's a Polish born Olympic weightlifting champion, has a few world records. And his expression is easy choices, hard life, hard choices, easy life. So I mean, flashing back, choosing to do those problem sets three, four times instead of going to the frat party. I mean, that's sort of a, seems like a defining example of the hard choice, at least the emotionally hard choice. I'd like to ask you about failure and how you relate to failure.

• 31:07Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm going to take a, take a left turn because I know you've spoken a lot about space. This doesn't have to be space specific. It could be related to it, of course, but how has a, how would you say a failure or apparent failure has set you up for later success? In other words, do you have any favorite failure in retrospect? That in some respect kind of planted the seeds for a greater success later?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Well, you know, failure is an option. I think it's something that we all probably experience. And hopefully we learn from it and, and move forward. Certainly my early education was one big failure after another. I'm not proud of that. Wish I could have a do over. It's actually one of the greatest regrets of my life. And that is sitting in class for 13 years, not paying attention. You know, talk about a colossal waste of time. I wish I could have a do over on that. You know, other failures that would set me up for success.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  The first time I qualified to land an F-14 Tomcat on the ship, I disqualified. My first landing, the hook of the airplane, the tailhook, actually hit the back of the aircraft carrier, the stern, you know, the part that goes down towards the water. And I was one and done on that, sent home. You know, had a stern talking to. I was given an option of actually going to fly a cargo plane that the commanding officer thought, well, maybe that would be easier for me because my first experience at the ship was so ugly. But, you know, I was given another chance and, you know, in this situation, I just

• 32:52Speaker 01

  thought to myself, I'd never flown a big airplane before, didn't even know if I could do that. But I thought, you know, if I'm going to fail at something, I might as well fail at something that I think I might not be able to do, rather than something that's easier. Because at least this way, you kind of know what you're, where you stand, you know, like what you're capable of. I always feel like if we're not always moving that bar higher and risking failure, then we're not really reaching our potential. And the people I've come across, not only at NASA, the military, industry, are the people that are really successful are the people that are willing to take the risk of failing.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  And oftentimes I'll come across kids or adults that they don't want to do something because they think they might not be able to do it. But what if they are able to? They would never know. So to put yourself out there, to expose yourself to failure, I think is something that everyone should strive for because if they don't, they're never going to be able to see what they could possibly achieve. Now, now hopefully the, the risk-taking I'm talking about is not something that would get you killed. It almost got me killed on a number of occasions, but yeah, hopefully it's not those kind of

• 34:20Speaker 01

  risks, but career risk, you know, other kind of risks in putting yourself out there for maybe getting a degree you don't think you're capable of, applying for a job you think you might not get. Those kind of risks are something I think people should be challenging themselves like that all the time.

• 34:38Tim Ferriss?

  It makes me think of this quote from Larry Page, one of the co-founders of Google, that I'm paraphrasing here, but he often observes that something that's easy to miss is that if you aim really big, it's quite difficult to fail completely. Now, there are examples, certainly within the context of flying where that does not apply, but in a lot of these other areas, like you mentioned, career decisions, et cetera, even if you fail, meaning you don't reach your objective, there can be a lot of carryover benefits that you don't get if you aim really small. But let's go back to the F-14 Tomcat. How fast are you moving when you land such a plane? I know it's variable because it's

• 35:18Tim Ferriss?

  changing as you're on the approach, but what's the range of speed as you're... My understanding is the F-14 Tomcat is about 50 feet wide, and how wide is the aircraft carrier or the landing portion?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  I'm not sure how wide the landing area is, but it's not much wider than the airplane.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  You don't have a whole lot of margin. The airplane lands, it depends on the weight, what weight you're landing at, but it's somewhere around 150 miles an hour. Not the fastest landing on the ship, you have to land relatively slow. The T-38 that we flew at NASA would land at like 170 knots, so the F-14 is a little bit slower. But the thing about the Tomcat or any airplane that's landing on the ship is not only are you trying to land on this very small runway, but that runway is constantly moving up and down, heaving up and down, it's pitching bow to stern, it's rolling left to right, and it's moving

• 36:22Speaker 01

  away from you because the deck is angled as the ship is going forward. So, and then sometimes it's dark, so you can't really see anything either. So, it's a pretty challenging piloting task. Actually, it's harder than landing on the Space Shuttle, believe it or not. Difference with the Space Shuttle is you're not feeling well, you're dizzy, you might be nauseous. You don't have a second chance in that. It's a glider, a big glider, with very poor flying qualities, and you're only going to get to do this once or twice in your life. You know, everyone's watching you, so it's a lot of, a lot of pressure. Different kind of pressure in the F-14.

• 37:04Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in The Four Hour Body. This is more than 10 years ago and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'd be very hard pressed to find a more nutrient-dense and comprehensive formula on the market. It has multivitamins, multimineral, greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, adaptogens, and much more. I usually take it once or twice a day just to make sure I've covered my bases

• 37:49Tim Ferriss?

  if I miss anything I'm not aware of. Of course, I focus on nutrient-dense meals to begin with. That's the basis. But Athletic Greens makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available. From travel packets, I always have them in my bag when I'm zipping around. And right now Athletic Greens is giving my audience, that's you guys, a special offer on top of their all-in-one formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So particularly in the winter months, adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. So make an investment in your health today and try the ultimate all-in-one wellness bundle.

• 38:30Tim Ferriss?

  Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D for free with your first subscription purchase. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 38:47Tim Ferriss?

  Aside from your own books,

• 38:51Tim Ferriss?

  what are the books that you've given the most as gifts to other people and why? Do any come to mind that you've given to more than one person?

• 39:03Speaker 01

  I'm looking on my bookshelf in my office here. You know, certainly the right stuff. I've given that to people. Shackleton's or Alfred Lansing's book Endurance, which is partly where the name of my book Endurance comes from because that book about Ernest Shackleton and his voyage with his crew of Endurance, the ship to the Antarctic in the beginning of the last century, was really one of the greatest examples of leadership in a very challenging and dangerous environment that I could ever imagine.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  I mean, it's just extraordinary what Shackleton, as the leader of that expedition, was able to do when their ship Endurance got stuck in the ice, eventually crushed, and they spent, I forget exactly how long, but it was almost like two years, saving themselves that involved, you know, living on ice packs and transits of hundreds and hundreds of miles in lifeboats in the Arctic, a crossing of South Georgia island in the winter that no one had ever done before, but Shackleton and a small team of his guys did that as at the end of them trying to save themselves.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  And he was able to do that and no one died. None of his crew members died. Everyone survived. That book is a very meaningful book for me that I have actually given it to other people. Hemingway fan, certainly, you know, The Old Man in the Sea is a favorite. And I'm also looking at Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. I think I've given that book to other people.

• 40:51Tim Ferriss?

  What is The Good Earth about?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's about Pearl Bux, the good earth. It's brilliant. It's about this guy named, this farmer in China, this peasant farmer. That I haven't read it in a long time, but I think his name was Wang Lung. He goes from peasant farmer and survives all these famines and eventually becomes a major landholder. Really a great book, incredibly well written and a great example of like what life was like in that time during China before the revolution and when they had many, many years of famine and, you know, having massive numbers of people having to migrate as a result. Highly recommended. One of my favorites of all time.

• 41:36Tim Ferriss?

  That is a nonfiction or fiction?

• 41:38Speaker 01

  It's nonfiction.

• 41:40Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about scientific literacy for a few minutes. Yeah, so, so I am not a scientist. I support a lot of science. I have a basic level of, I would consider it scientific literacy. There is a lot of froth and noise out in the, the world today, certainly magnified by social media and so on in many respects. Could you speak to what happened with respect to Steph Curry and the moon landing? Because this may be an entry point for discussing how people can develop the greater ability to separate fact from fiction.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what, I'm not a scientist either, although I do play one on TV occasionally in space. I do other, you know, a lot of people think, hey, you're an astronaut, you must be a scientist. No, I'm not a scientist. I've, I've done a lot of science. I think I'm a science minded person. I know what science is, I know what it isn't. And unfortunately, I think in today's society, a lot of people have lost their reality in some ways where all of a sudden in our society, like science is now opinion or politics. It's not. It's subjective observation, it's evidence, it's experimentation, it's critical analysis,

• 43:10Speaker 01

  it's peer review. It's always evolving, but it is the truth as we know it at that particular time. The science deniers we have in our society now are dangerous. It's like, I used to kind of goof around with the, the flat earthers. Now I don't even like acknowledge their existence. And I probably shouldn't even brought them up because I don't believe that they should even be given any kind of acknowledgement because it's just so absolutely outrageous. It's like, if you're a flat earther, well, why don't you just deny that the sun is in the sky? I mean, the earth is round. I mean, you can go up in an airplane and look out the window and see that it's round. You gotta look pretty closely because you're not very high.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  But if you do look closely, you can see we lived on a curved planet. Not to mention that, you know, thousands of years of science has determined that the earth is round. And of course, I've seen it from space and it is pretty round. It's not flat. It was, and if it was flat, wouldn't the edge be like the most popular tourist attraction on earth? I would just go set up a, like a taco truck and, you know, make a billion dollars with my, uh, you know, edge of the earth tacos. Yeah, so I generally don't give those kind of folks any acknowledgement because I just think it's so outrageous. And I know some of them do it kind of as a goof and they think it's funny or it's cute

• 44:38Speaker 01

  or whatever, you know, some people really believe it. The danger is, if you're willing to believe that the earth is flat, what else are you willing to believe? That vaccines don't work? That we are not living in a pandemic where people by the thousands are dying every day throughout, you know, around the world? That climate change is a hoax? So it's a, it's a risky thing. You know, with regards to Steph, Steph is an awesome guy. I think he's a smart guy. I think in his situation, he just kind of got caught up in one, in a thing where he said, he just agreed with somebody about the moon landings, probably would not even given it a whole lot of thought. And then he got a lot of heat for it.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  And I felt bad for him because I like him. I'm a fan. So I just reached out to him and I said, "Hey, you know, if you want to talk about the moon landing, I'd be happy to share what I know with you." And he was very happy to have that conversation and to take back his, what he said about that because and I and he did, he wasn't doing anything malicious. He was just kind of agreeing with the guy, a guy who said that and then he was kind of on to the next thing. But a lot of people gave him a lot of heat for it. So we will talk about it. I think he understands now.

• 45:52Tim Ferriss?

  If we look at the spectrum of, let's just call it sort of scientific, not scientific thinking, but sort of detached on some level rational skepticism, et cetera, the ability to navigate the world and to the best of our ability, separate fact from fiction. It does

• 46:16Tim Ferriss?

  seem to me that there are people out there who are not, let's just say, flat earthers, right? Or people who are trying to convince you of God knows what that is just, it seems clearly at face value ridiculous to the people in the middle who really don't know how to best discern what is true and what is not. And I think vaccines are a great example in the sense that I have many friends who I would consider in many, many domains to be very smart, high performing, effective people who do not even know where to begin with vaccines, just in terms of claims from friends, certainly different sites on the

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Their Facebook friends that are claiming to be experts on this stuff?

• 47:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or they or those Facebook friends linked to a site that seems to have citations and they just, I mean, I will, I will just say like these people I'm talking about, some of them are not, they're not people I would consider broadly stupid people at all. So how can someone who wants to become more discerning and capable in sifting through the noise become better tuned? Do you have any suggestions for how they can cultivate that?

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm not an expert on many, many things. You know, there are things that I know a lot about, things I don't know a whole lot about. But when I don't know about those, I ask the rocket scientist of whatever that thing is. I get my information from trusted sources, government agencies that are the authority on the pandemic, like the CDC, the World Health Organization, these kind of places, media outlets that, you know, have been there for a long time and that have a reputation. Not your crazy uncle on Facebook, not people you've never heard

• 48:11Speaker 01

  of. So it's just shocking to me that people will just discount things that are the truth without even trying to go find out what the real story is and just saying, well, I just don't believe, I don't believe that. I don't believe that. Yeah, you don't have to be a scientist to understand science. And even if you don't understand it, you know, find the person that's the expert and believe them because they're the experts, right?

• 48:39Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about something that you are, I would think, very qualified to comment on, and that is possible future missions to Mars. I would love to just hear your thoughts on the feasibility or attractiveness of future missions to Mars, in part because there are many diverging opinions here. You have, for instance, you have Elon Musk on one side of the spectrum. You have then also people like Jeff Bezos, who I believe have publicly said, you know, the last thing you want to do is have to deal with gravity and the environment on Mars. Like, once you get into space, you want to build communities in space

• 49:24Tim Ferriss?

  as opposed to on another planet for a host of different reasons. And if you, you mentioned Shackleton. So, you know, if you like the idea of being on Mars, you should try living in Antarctica for a few months and then let me know how you feel, since that's pretty temperate and forgiving compared to the ecosystem on Mars, or the climate at least. How would you suggest people think about, or how do you think about, missions to Mars?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, a few things come to mind. You know, one, and one is, and I'll quote my brother and give him credit for this because he said it, and that's the only place I've ever heard this. And he says, going to Mars is not about rocket science. It's really about political science. Because, you know, we know much of what we need to know technically about how to do it, but if we're gonna really do that someday, put people, put boots on Mars, it's really more about having the money, the political support, and the public support. It's gonna take people to vote in to office, you know, science-minded people that feel like this

• 50:29Speaker 01

  is important. You know, I do think we can do it. We could probably do it pretty soon. There are some challenges. I think we need better lives, you know, our life support systems probably need to be a little bit more robust. We certainly have to protect the crew from radiation, whether we have some protective materials, or we just get to Mars quicker, so they're not exposed to radiation for that long. But it's something that we're absolutely capable of doing, and I think we should do. I don't think, though, we need to look at Mars as a lifeboat for Planet Earth. Now, I say that having been wrong about things that Elon has said before. So, you know, when he was gonna land his,

• 51:12Speaker 01

  the first stage of the Falcon rocket on a ship and reuse it, my initial thought was, he's crazy. But then he went and did it. And he did it again, and again, and again, and again. So, I will never say Elon's crazy again. But I always think it'll be easier to live on Earth, regardless of what bad thing might happen to it. And I also think it's important that we need to recognize that, really, this is our home. We need to take care of it. We're not gonna move the whole planet to Mars. I think it's important to go to Mars, and, you know, establish a foothold. It's great that we've had a foothold in space. We're coming up on the 20-year anniversary of having people in space continuously.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  So, kids that are alive today have never been on Planet Earth with everybody else. And I think we should continue to do that. I think we should go to Mars someday. I think we should have people living on Mars. But I don't look at it as a Plan B. Necessary, as a Planet B kind of thing. Yeah, I do think, you know, this planet could be pretty well destroyed, and I don't think we should do that, but it could be, and it would still be easier than living on Mars, living here.

• 52:22Tim Ferriss?

  What are the most compelling arguments for the importance of getting people to Mars? Or more simply asked, why do you think it is important? Because it would involve, of course, very significant cost.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think going to Mars is, you know, it's going to be expensive, but that expense is paid with, you know, very high-paying jobs that recently there was this NASA study that talked about the return on investment. So, you know, NASA is a money-making prospect in that it generates more tax dollars than it uses. A mission to Mars would be the same thing. A mission to Mars would develop technologies that we may not have today. Maybe it won't, I don't know. It may, it may not. It'll definitely push our envelope of what we are technically capable of doing. I think it would be a great way to cooperate internationally.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  You know, we have a lot of conflict here on Earth, but we've been flying on that space station with the Russians for the last 20 years. And it gives countries that are sometimes in conflict with each other a place to work on something that is peaceful, that benefits everybody. I think that we're explorers. I think it's in our nature, our DNA. I don't think we would have developed to be the species we are today if we didn't explore. I think it's part of who we are, and we should continue to do it. And then, I think if everything I said was wrong, the fact that that kind of mission, that going to Mars, going to the moon, the space station, the space shuttle, the space

• 53:59Speaker 01

  program in general, it inspires kids, not only in the United States, but around the world, to be better students, to study math and science and STEM careers, to be better at those, in those areas of study that are so, so important to our economy. Because all those people, all those kids around the world that are so inspired by NASA, they're not going to work for NASA. I mean, some of them will, but all of them aren't. You know, they're going to go into other fields that contribute to our economy, our society, and our way of life. And if that's all we got out of it, that's worth every penny. I mean, if the six or whatever billion dollars we spend a year on human spaceflight, if the

• 54:42Speaker 01

  only thing we got out of that is that kind of inspiration for our kids, which I don't think is the only thing we get out of it, but if it was, worth every cent.

• 54:50Tim Ferriss?

  Here, here. Thank you for that answer. Let's talk about Go For Lunch. So subtitle, How to Dream, Lead and Achieve. This is your two-hour audio course on Knowable. Why did you produce this audio course? And what do you hope people will gain from it?

• 55:09Speaker 01

  You know, I think, you know, my, my life story has a lot of lessons in it that I think will help other people and inspire other people that they can do things that maybe they didn't think they were capable of. They can take risks. They can challenge themselves. They can, I'm hoping that people will look at this as a way to find maybe more success in their own lives. And I've done that with the public speaking I do. I've done it with the books that I've written. And this is just a new way of reaching a different audience. I didn't, really didn't know much about Knowable before I was approached to do this. But when I learned about it, I was like, hey, that's a really good idea. You know, people like to listen to books on tape now, especially a lot more recently. And why not

• 55:54Speaker 01

  listen to something that is not a book, but has a, you know, particular lessons from different kinds of people? So for those that don't know, Knowable is, it's a, it's a new app that gives exclusive audio courses from different types of experts. Chris Paul is one of them, Alexis Ohanian, me, a bunch of other people. It's basically kind of like listening to Spotify, but it's for learning something. And, you know, hopefully people will learn something that will help in their lives from the audio course I was able to

• 56:31Speaker 01

  put together. They can find this course on knowable.fyi/scott. At least that's what they told me, where you can find it. And I hope I said that right. And yeah, I hope people enjoy it. There's some, some humor in there. They tell a couple of jokes every now and then. I hope people find them funny and I hope they enjoy it.

• 56:57Tim Ferriss?

  And we'll link to that also for everybody in the show notes, since that's heavily trafficked at tim.blog/tim. So we'll link to everything, including noble.fyi/scott for folks. Just maybe two more questions and then we can bring this round one to a close.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Wait, round one? There's a round two?

• 57:20Tim Ferriss?

  I always want, you know, I like saying round one. I could say this conversation, but if it gives you more anxiety that you enjoy, I could say this is round one of 17, the forthcoming indefinite series with Scott Kelly. No, this is, this is the end of the conversation. So I always like to say round one, just in case there is a round two.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  I'm hung up on you right there when you said round one.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  I'm out.

• 57:44Tim Ferriss?

  Understandable, understandable. So two questions. The first is, and these are sometimes dead ends, and I'll take the blame if they are, but we'll, we'll give it a shot. So the first is, if you could put anything on a gigantic billboard, this is metaphorically speaking, to get a message or a question, an image, anything out to billions of people, what might you put on that? Something non-commercial.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Right now, I'd say something like, "Science is real. Believe it."

• 58:16Tim Ferriss?

  Science is real. Believe it. Yeah. What a world we live in.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Imagine Galileo coming or Newton coming to this, this world now, they would lose their minds.

• 58:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the, I saw a cartoon at the beginning of the pandemic, which featured this guy, clearly that's sort of the husband and wife couple, and the husband's sitting at his computer and he says, "Honey, it's amazing. Last week, all of my friends on Facebook were constitutional lawyers, and this week they're all epidemiologists."

• 58:53Tim Ferriss?

  Search for the signal, folks. All right. The second question is, and this might seem like a bizarre question, but I'm curious, when is the last time you cried tears of joy that you remember?

• 59:05Speaker 01

  This might be an answer you're not expecting or weird, but I don't think I ever have. Maybe.

• 59:11Tim Ferriss?

  Ever?

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think so. Tears of joy? No, I'm not, I'm not much of a crier.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  There's no crying in space.

• 59:26Tim Ferriss?

  No crying in space, no crying in baseball, people. All right. Well, Scott, is there anything that you would like to say just as closing comments? Any recommendations or asks of the audience that you would like to add before we close?

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Well, you know, certainly, I think, you know, having this platform and an opportunity to speak to your viewers and that is, we're living in some really crazy times right now. And I've had the privilege to see people work in some really challenging environments and things that are very risky, things that you might not even believe is possible. And we're able to be successful. Success requires teamwork. And I think our country just needs to realize that we just got to have to start working together. I mean, we can't live in this divided society where people are in conflict with one another because we have some serious challenges. And the way you meet those challenges is with teamwork.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  And that has been my experience my whole career at NASA. And I just wish more people would just kind of come together, identify problems, do it in a thoughtful way, believe in science, solve those problems, and then move on to the next thing. And I'm just very hopeful that we can get there and hopefully get there soon.

• 1:00:43Tim Ferriss?

  Science is real. Believe it. And this is a great place to end. Well, Scott, thank you so much for taking the time today. I know this is a long-form conversation and I appreciate you carving out the time to have a chat and to share your life lessons and to answer my sometimes obvious, sometimes peculiar, sometimes in the middle questions. So thank you very much for carving out some space to do this.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks for having me, Tim. I very much enjoyed it. Thank you.

• 1:01:12Tim Ferriss?

  And to everybody listening, you can find show notes, links to everything we've discussed at tim.blog/podcast. You can find the Noble course at noble.fyi/scott. And until next time, thanks for tuning in.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  I'm grateful that throughout my 20 years at NASA, I had the chance to work with a wide variety of people from different backgrounds. I flew in space with a French engineer, a schoolteacher from Idaho, a Swiss astrophysicist, and more Russian cosmonauts than I can count. He spoke different languages, believed different things, problem solved in different ways. And when you're trying to do something as challenging as flying in space, you need as many different strengths as you can get. And then, I met Katy. When I was preparing for my first long-duration spaceflight, I was slated to overlap for a majority of the 159 days with Katy Coleman.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Katy was a military officer in the Air Force, a chemist, she was a veteran of two space shuttle missions, just like me. But Katy and I were as different as two military officers can be. In fact, some of our colleagues were seriously concerned that we might kill each other. For months, we would have to cooperate and live together in a space the size of the inside of a 747 filled with stuff. So when Katy first arrived, I could see why people had been worried. Katy didn't entirely live her life by schedules, and I would often find her in the little window-filled module called the cupola, looking at the Earth and playing her flute at 3 o'clock in the morning.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Throughout the workday, I always knew what Katy was working on, because she would leave experiments and projects half-done, or there would be scraps and remnants of her activities just floating around. I used to call it a Katy Trail. But whatever else she needed to do, Katy always made time to speak with people on the ground, especially schoolchildren, even beyond the many events that NASA schedules us for.

• 1:03:25Speaker 04

  Hi, my name is Shaq, and my question is, how do dispose trash on a space station? Shaq, you have an excellent question for exactly this week. It is very difficult.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  She made time for art and music, even playing the first Earth-space duet on her flute with the founder of the band, Jethro Tull.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  It was one more aspect of our personalities that couldn't be more different. I had always seen the public relations part of my job as a nuisance. It needed to be done because the public has a right to know what's being done with their tax dollars and to feel involved in the space program. But I'm not a newscaster or a YouTuber, and I didn't really enjoy being pressed into service as one. I felt that my job was to command the space station, carry out the many complex procedures and experiments I was tasked with, to run a tight ship, to keep my crew safe, and obviously, to keep everything from exploding. One day, we had a standard public affairs interview. Here's what I sounded like, answering questions in my factual, straightforward, "Are we done yet?" tone.

• 1:04:34Speaker 05

  We got up here about a little over a hundred and something days ago. Not that I'm counting, but felt like I picked up just where I left off last time.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  This was not my favorite part of the day. Later, Katie confronted me. She said, "You know, if you don't sound excited about what we're doing up here, no one else will be either." She was right. I learned a lot by watching Katie, and by the time I flew a year-long mission on the space station, you could certainly hear the difference.

• 1:05:04Speaker 06

  And you actually packed a gorilla suit in your gear, which is incredible.

• 1:05:07Speaker 05

  You know, it's interesting when you vacuum pack something, it doesn't take up a whole lot of room. And, you know, for one, when you try to get kids' attention and teach them about science and math and engineering and things like that, the first thing you have to do is get their attention. And nothing gets people's attention like a gorilla in space.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  By this time, I'd figured out Twitter and Instagram, I'd been building up the year in space hashtag, I did a Reddit AMA, I showed off the first flower we grew in space, I played water ping pong, and had a Super Bowl party for one. I juggled fruit, which is still impressive even though the fruit just kind of hangs there. I also explained how I had to clean up a gallon-sized ball of urine and acid. I explained that space smells like burning metal, and that my favorite David Bowie song is not "Space Oddity," but probably "Under Pressure."

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  It wasn't what I thought I had been trained for, but this kind of work was able to bring all kinds of people into the experience of our mission and bring them closer to science, engineering, and the amazing things we accomplish when we all work together. But it was Katie with her flute and her always positive attitude that made that possible. We all learned a lot from each other up there. In training to fly on the Russian spacecraft, I spent a lot of time in Russia, getting to know the culture and learning to speak the language—not very well, I might add. I've had the chance to get to know Russian literature and history in a way I never expected. There's always potential for conflict and challenges, particularly with the Russians. Our countries are not always the friendliest. I guess you could call us frenemies.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  But in space, you set all that aside, because we rely on those cosmonauts, and they rely on us. Space is a great place to do that, because no one owns it. It's a common ground where peaceful scientific collaboration can occur. I've learned from my colleagues who grew up in different cultures, practiced different religions, and were born with different sexual orientations. It's only been very recently that NASA has recruited astronauts who openly acknowledge a same-sex partner. And I hope to see a transgender astronaut in my lifetime. I have a transgender son who is one of the smartest and kindest people I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  And it would be a loss to NASA if they didn't choose to include people like him among their ranks someday.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  In retrospect, I think the people who told Katie and me we would kill each other in space underestimated both of us and overlooked the power of our differences. I try to keep this in mind when I see people who seem very different working together, and I want to encourage them to see their differences as strengths, and what we referred to in the military as a force multiplier. Katie and I are now lifelong friends, and when I think of the mission we flew together, I hope she remembers as fondly as I do the times I'd find her playing her flute in the cupola and couldn't help but tell her, "Katie, go to sleep. It's a school night. I don't care if you're friends with Jethro Tull."

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Sometimes people are incentivized to dodge blame or even cover up their mistakes. And I've seen this in action as well. The Russian Space Agency has a very different way of managing and compensating their cosmonauts than NASA does its astronauts. And part of that has to do with how blame is distributed. Both astronauts and cosmonauts are paid extra when they are flying in space. In the case of the cosmonauts, they get a significant bonus of somewhere between 350 to 700 US dollars per day, depending on how experienced they are. So for someone like my friend Gennady, who has spent 879 days in space, that can really add up.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  By contrast, American astronauts are paid the government per diem rate, $5 per day. But our salaries are much higher to begin with, which means we are less dependent on that bonus for our livelihoods than the cosmonauts are, which is where the problem comes in. Cosmonauts are given higher bonuses for their achievements, like a successful spacewalk, and lower bonuses to reflect mistakes: for flipping the wrong switch, missing a step in an experiment, or similar everyday human errors. And you might not believe this, but there's actually a real person in Russian mission control whose only job is to track the mistakes of cosmonauts.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  And when each cosmonaut comes back to Earth, they have to sit in a room with a mistake tracker and an accountant to determine what their bonus is going to be. I've experienced firsthand the way this sort of negotiation is supposed to work. When I was preparing to fly on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, I trained with my crewmates in a simulator, much like the simulators I've trained on in Houston to fly the Space Shuttle. After our final simulation flights in Russia, we would have to answer to a panel of Russian Space Agency officials about our performance. Kind of a "public stoning," I would call it. It took me a while to understand that we were actually expected to create an elaborate

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  excuse matrix about how we hadn't done anything wrong, how everything was somebody else's fault, and that no blame should be attached to us. I came to think of this practice as blame-smithing, and some people were quite skilled at it, bending the narrative of events to always move the blame away from you and towards some other poor bastard.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  I was terrible at this, but that was fine with me. And I think it annoyed the Russians that during the public stoning, when it was my turn to make an impassioned speech about how I didn't flip the wrong switch, I'd just say, "Yep, that was me." Now, once we were in space, the question of blame got real for my Russian friends. They were always dealing with the possibility of losing their income to the smallest mistakes, so I'd tell them to blame me. As far as I could see it, it was a win-win. They wouldn't lose their bonus, and their control center wouldn't spend a day trying to figure out what went wrong because they were avoiding responsibility. Real teamwork means it's crucial for everyone to admit their mistakes.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  If you want to solve problems, move fast, and make sure everyone's doing their best, you can't punish people for speaking up. That's true in space, but it applies anytime, anywhere. In my experience as a space shuttle crew member and later as commander of the International Space Station, I learned how important this was. On the space shuttle, if I had actuated the wrong switch at the wrong moment, always a possibility with 2,000 of them, I might have caused 100 people in mission control to spend hours or even days trying to figure out why their data looked funny and not focusing on what is important.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  It's so much better to just be honest and move on. And if that doesn't work, you can always say, "The American did it."

• 1:12:30Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered, it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:13:13Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by 99designs, the global creative platform that makes it easy for you to find and work with amazing graphic designers online. Longtime listeners of this podcast know how much attention I pay to detail, how obsessively I approach nearly all elements of my work, because the small things often end up being the big things. So whether it's your logo, your business cards, website design, even your email templates,

• 1:13:54Tim Ferriss?

  all of these visual elements tell your customers, tell your users who you are and what you're about. So I think it's worth sweating the details. I've been using 99designs for years now to ensure that many of my creative projects, whether big or small, are as cohesive, professional, and beautiful as possible. I've worked on draft mockups of book covers, I've worked on all sorts of those. Most recently, I've been working with a designer at 99designs to update the illustrations and layouts for all of my downloadable ebooks. I've developed a really great working relationship with the designer who goes by the username Spoonlancer, and I intend to continue working with him to bring ideas to life, one project at a time. I've also used 99designs for all sorts of high-end illustration for different books, like the Taos Center.

• 1:14:40Tim Ferriss?

  You can see a bunch of examples on my Instagram that I've put up and they've turned out better than I possibly could have hoped. So from logos to websites, packaging to books, 99designs is the go-to creative resource to build your brand on any budget. So check them out. Right now, my listeners, that's you guys, can get $20 off plus a free $99 upgrade on their first design contest. Contest is a great way to get started and find the right designer for long-term work. You can also book a free design consultation with a brand expert at 99designs to receive personalized branding advice over the phone. Their hands-on team has helped thousands of business owners to this point. It's a great way to get the most out of your experience with

• 1:15:20Tim Ferriss?

  99designs. So, take a look. Head to 99designs.com/tim for your discount and to sign up for design consultation today. That's 99designs.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by Rockform. That's without a C, R-O-K-F-O-R-M. Rockform is the active lifestyle iPhone and Galaxy protective case company. I've been using their stuff for a few months now and good God, they can survive anything. First off, Rockform protection is beyond great. You can find thousands of five-star reviews and customer testimonials, which the team at Rockform calls survival stories that include things like a drop from

• 1:16:01Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:16:42Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:17:25Tim Ferriss?

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