Victor Glover, astronaut: We went into sci-fi

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:31Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life stage or experience, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place, so you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

1:00over the world. I want to get freedom. I like that freedom. A gender equal world would be a better world for men too. We need assist fire. We need healing. We need trust. These companies don't really, they don't care what governments do. This is a war. The first thing that we want is the war to end. For this episode, I speak to Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover. As part of The first mission to the moon in more than 50 years, he and his crewmates travelled further from Earth than any humans ever have. We discussed the extraordinary sights he witnessed on the journey, why he believes we're closer to reaching Mars than many think, and he reflects on how being in space has changed the way he thinks about humanity.

1:45The miracle of being where we were when we saw that eclipse, or of making, surviving a launch, or surviving re-entry, going 40 times the speed of sound and still landing on the spot you're supposed to land in. All of those things are wonderful. If I explain them in detail to most people, they would summarize them as magic or a miracle. My advice is, if you trust me, if people value the words of astronauts, it's that wonder and awe and amazement exist. And it's not just out there in the cosmos, it's here. Your story, my story, there's wonder and amazement in all of us. And if we can just slow down and take the time to appreciate that, we might treat each other differently and we might treat the planet differently.

2:28This place is special and the people who inhabit it, all of us.

2:35Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Victor Glover. I lived on the International Space Station for six months, 167 days, and I saw the Earth. It was about this. Like, from my perspective, it was about where my elbow is to my elbow, and it always looked that way. Day, night, the place you flew over the ground changed, but it was always this size. And as we got far away from Earth, we pointed the windows back, and when we could see the entire disk of the Earth, this was on the first day. I could see all of Earth in one glance. That was profound. But what was more profound was seeing how much nothing.

3:11On the space station, it was like equal Earth, nothing of space. And this was little Earth and lots of nothing. And I tell you, we're on a spaceship and we're a crew. And I think that perspective is something we should think about more. You're telling me we, the human population. We, the human population. We, but, you know, Americans, British, but everyone, you know. I want to get to the philosophical part, but I just want you to tell me what it's like to leave the Earth bound for the moon. well uh interestingly the moment we launched no one was more surprised than the crew you know you wake up that day and you're prepared but you don't expect to launch because there's going to be a breakdown or someone's going to stop it and we had a battery fault and it was like okay that's the thing that's going to keep us and the team worked and they fixed it and so but when we launched we were surprised but hey we're going to the moon we you know we better be on but i there's nothing like.

4:10We've done all the simulations. We've practiced everything from the science to the flying, the spaceship to launch and landing. But when we launched and it was true that we were going to the moon, I will tell you, we are four professionals that were on a very serious mission, a very dangerous, risky mission. But we were giggling like school kids, like it's really happening. And at one point, Jeremy was like, guys, I love this. I just have to say I love this. He's the one to go to space the first time, our rookie from Canada. And it was a very serious thing, and we were very focused on the mission, but we were also just blown away.

4:46Listening to you, we've all been at the takeoff of a jet plane, 170 miles an hour. What speed are you doing vertically, and what does it feel like? You accelerate essentially continuously for almost 10 minutes. You're accelerating straight up. So you start at zero, and we clear the tower going 100 miles an hour. At 8 minutes and 19 seconds or so, we are going 17 ,500 miles per hour. We're going fast enough to circle the entire globe in 90 minutes. What's it like when your little capsule is completely separated from the mechanism that got you there, the rocket? It's this big rocket, you know, 250 plus feet long, and this little spacecraft that's 20 feet long.

5:33and there's a mass difference, a huge mass difference. And in the simulation, you hear the sound of staging. And then you're moving, looking at the screens and the dials. The real thing felt like a car crash because the springs that pushed us away were so powerful. And the big rocket, it's so much bigger that the little Orion just ejected off and the big rocket probably barely moved. And so when we separated from the core stage, it was like we got rear-ended. Do you feel protected to the Orion? Is it like your first car? Do you think of it like your home? Do you think of it like your mother, your father?

6:08Do you learn to think of the Orion like a kind of protector? Yeah, no one has asked me that yet. And it's interesting because it is somewhere between like a first car or as a pilot, my favorite airplane, and I would say even a relative or a friend. We have a special relationship with that spacecraft, the real one. The one we flew, that kept us alive for nine and a half days. We couldn't have survived this mission without Orion. But it also captured so many of the pictures that you saw. It had cameras on it externally. It provided us the water, the bathroom. And so we gave it a name, Integrity.

6:47And you'll hear us call each other Integrity Crew, Integrity Crew. And that word means so much more to us now. It is the name. It's almost like we talk about it almost like a person. And it also tells us you wanted the mission to have meaning. This was not a flight. Very much so. This was a mission, a journey, and you went to the dark side of the moon. So you're at the point where you can't see anything. You can't see the sun. That was one of the more awe-inspiring moments. I mean, the human awe. Just we say that word, we say awesome so much. We say it about a lovely tea cake. Yes. Yeah. And that's probably a really good tea cake.

7:29But when we were behind, when we were on the farthest side of the moon and the earth is way off in the distance, the earth had gone by behind the moon. The earth set and then the earth rose and it went out of view. And then the sun comes in. The distance from the earth to the sun, it's so far away that when we were at the moon, we're essentially the same distance from the sun. So the sun still looks like it does in the sky from here. But the moon is so much bigger because we're close. And the sun goes behind the moon. The moon appeared 35 times larger than the sun. And because of that, the eclipse wasn't instantaneous.

8:04It didn't like start and then go away right away. It lasted for 20 minutes. When we took off our glasses, our eyes were adjusting. And so first we saw a black hole. Then we could see this glow, a halo around the moon. And then we could see stars in that halo. And then the last thing to come into view was this blue glow. And we could see craters, the surface of the moon. But the sun is on the other side. So what was lighting the moon? It was earth shine. It was the earth, the light of the earth reflecting off of the near side of the moon. And we were just blown away. I said to one of my crewmates, just look at this.

8:40They floated up to the window and two of them said, oh, my God, oh, my God. And Reed, my crewmate, says, I don't think our brains are evolved to understand what we're seeing. And I called Houston and I said, I think we've just gone into sci-fi. It's hard to describe what we were actually seeing. It was so amazing. Except that you are describing it very vividly. And I think that phrase, you've just coined a phrase, I'm going to hear that, see it in movies, earth shine. Earth shine. That's going to be a big thing, that phrase you've just used. That was one of the most hard to believe things. And I was in a spacecraft a quarter of a million miles from home, floating, right, and of all the unbelievable things happening, the blue glow on the moon was one of the most amazing things to see the Earth lighting up the moon, because you usually see things lit by the sun.

9:29And, well, I guess it was reflecting the sun, too. You talked about the craters you could see. Commander Wiseman's late wife, Carol Taylor Wiseman, who passed away in 2020, the crew named a new lunar crater Carol. Yes. Were you there? Were you looking out of the window? Did you spot the crater? Yes. When humans see it in daylight, you get to name it. And so the Apollo astronauts, when they flew by that part of the moon, It was dark. And because of the day we launched on a part of the moon that had never been seen in daylight was in daylight. And so we named one integrity and one carol. The one we named carol, it was new, it was fresh.

10:09And so it was a very bright white crater. You could tell how new it was because it was a bright spot. And that when Jeremy said those words, but he wasn't talking about the physical characteristics of the crater. He was talking about the Carol that he knew very well, that she was a bright spot. I mean, by that time, all of us were in tears.

10:31You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service with me, Paddy O 'Connell.

10:40Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. so I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills but it turns out that's very illegal so there goes my big idea for the commercial give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch up front payment of$45 for 3 months $90 for 6 months or$180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms summer is here which means we all want to look and feel our best a GLP-1 may be right for you Visit orderlymeds.com to learn more about which GLP-1 you could be eligible for.

11:21Getting started is fast, easy, and happens virtually through telemedicine from licensed professionals. Check it out for yourself. Go to orderlymeds.com slash podcast. That's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Taking care of yourself feels great. Comp-out and medications are not FDA-approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.

11:44So when I met Victor Glover, it's not the first time I've touched the hand of a man who's been in space and shook him warmly by the hand to thank him for giving me time and reflections. Years ago, as a young man, I met John Glenn, the pioneering American explorer of space. And he became a senator for Ohio. And I was working at the time in American government as an intern. I didn't have very much experience. I spoke to him. I shook his hand. I asked him about being above Earth and what it does to you. And also the strange link there is between astronauts running for office. It's obviously not the first time that we're going to ask Victor, I think, what his future may be.

12:31Anyway, the interesting thing to me was Victor, who's got this historic place now in space exploration, wanted to talk to me about John Glenn. What was he like? Where did I meet him? What did he say? And he asked to shake my hand, saying, I want to shake the hand of the man who shook John Glenn's hand. I said, no, no, Victor, I wanted to meet you. We wanted to meet you. It's your view we want. And I suppose I was bluntly just charmed by this man who had been all the way out into the heavens and retained a sort of humanity and humility about him. And I am intrigued having met John Glenn. I'm intrigued to think, does Victor Glover have a future in public life?

13:12And with that sort of charisma that you can hear for yourself, I suppose I'm going to have to say the chances are that he has a big role down here on Earth. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Victor Glover. I'm just wondering what it does to a man. I mean, did it change your politics, your philosophy, your religion? Have you got advice for us based on what you saw? Well, I think space is like a catalyst. It can encourage a thing, but it's not consumed in the thing. And it mostly nudges. It moves everyone, I think. But it can move you in either direction. It can move you closer to God, further away from God.

13:49And so I would say the miracle of being where we were when we saw that eclipse or of making, surviving a launch or surviving reentry, going 40 times the speed of sound and still landing on the spot you're supposed to land in. All of those things are wonderful. If I explain them in detail to most people, they would summarize them as magic or a miracle. My advice is, if you trust me, if people value the words of astronauts, it's that wonder and awe and amazement exist. And it's not just out there in the cosmos. It's here. We, your story, my story, there's wonder and amazement in all of us. And if we can just slow down and take the time to appreciate that, we might treat each other differently and we might treat the planet differently.

14:35This place is special. And the people who inhabit it, the earlier we that I was talking about, all of us. But we're always arguing. And then I go into my little bit, which is only one atom away. When you look at it from space, it's only one atom away. But then I hate your little bit. And that's the atom next to my little bit. That's the thing we can choose. So here's the thing that I find amazing. People ask us as the crew to come talk about the mission. But when we show up, what's obvious is during the mission, it wasn't just us doing something different. It was the whole world, the countries that we came from.

15:10And even here in the UK, people were telling me how they were glued to the TV. Their kids would drag them to the TV. That is us doing something different. And for me, we call things moonshots when humans do something great. Maybe we need to think about that more. What the crew did, we understand that. But what the rest of the world did, that's different. And maybe we should think about that next time we want to argue over the little bits. Fix things. To fix things. Go for things. Collaborate. Get to destinations. Don't just argue about the launch pad. Yes. Take us. Fix. Go do something amazing.

15:43And on the way, we're going to disagree, but that's just the cost of doing business. But the guy I disagree with may be the best scientist to help me get there. Yes. So a guy who encapsulated a lot of across the aisleism is Senator John McCain, the late senator, and you worked for him. Do you feel that you're talking with his language when you tell me about kind of collaboration and cooperation? I hope so. You know, I learned a lot watching him work, and I have a ton of respect for him. And I wish he was around when I launched my first time. I wanted him to be at the launch. He gave me a charge when I got selected.

16:21I was working for him when I got chosen to be an astronaut. And he gave me a charge, and he said, go, and I want you to help NASA fly American spaceships. And it's amazing. Some of my colleagues fly spacecraft made in other countries. I've flown twice and both of my missions were on American spacecraft. And I'm very proud of that. And I think I do try to channel some of what he brought in his leadership and the kind of leader that he was, was very instructive to the kind of leader that I want to be. Let me ask you about the stars and stripes on the moon. Do you think that the moon could be exploited by nation states in the future?

16:56Are we going to have a space race for the mineral rights on the moon? you're going to take a glass of water to watch no no can the moon be exploited it can and so you know we talk about a sustainable presence around the moon something you'll hear us crew say is also a responsible presence it could be exploited so here's what i will say that reality is already there we know that there's some geopolitical tensions but if we think about why we ended the Apollo program. At the end of the day, the simple answer is politics. We achieved a political objective. Get to the moon. If we make this Artemis campaign about political objectives, then when we achieve it, it'll be easy to ramp it down and turn our attention to something else.

17:43I'll say the NASA mission here. We explore the unknown in air and space. We innovate for the benefit of humanity and we inspire the world through discovery. If we make that the mission, As we learn and turn the unknown into the known, there's new unknown beyond that. That's the mission. And if we focus on that, we don't get to drop the ball as easily as we did for the Apollo program. And going to Mars, are we going to use the moon to get to Mars and how soon? I spoke to Tom Hanks, who's obsessed about this. I love Tom Hanks. And he said to me, Perry, people are going to get conceived on the moon.

18:19In fact, he used a different phrase to that. Yeah, I've heard him tell that. And I think he's right. He is right. At some point, that will be the case. I don't like the word using the moon. The moon is already a waypoint on the way to Mars. We're learning how to fly in deep space again. One of the things we learned on this mission, not just how to make the spacecraft better, we've learned some lessons, our deep space network, the satellites and ground stations at work to support communication with those assets that are really far from Earth, that needs to be upgraded. Do we need people born on the moon to get to Mars?

18:51Do we need that? No. But is that likely to happen eventually? Very likely. If we spend a lot of time there, at some point it won't just be NASA folks. It'll be people that go because they choose to, just like cruise ships and airplanes now. It's not just the military and the postal service like it was in the beginning. Mars is going to happen. And here's the point I wanted to make. We were 25 years from going to Mars in 1972 when we left the moon, when Gene Cernan was the last person to walk on the moon. We've been 25 years since because we stopped going deep space. So we caught up. Artemis 1 happened in 2022.

19:26It's 2026 now. So I think we're 20 years or less from going to Mars. And on Mars, is success a human colony? And do those people know they're never coming off Mars? Success? We are not done figuring out what that mission is going to look like. We've got objectives. We've got plans. But as we learn more about living on the moon, we're going to adapt those plans. Success is saying this is what we're going to do and then doing that. And for NASA, that involves bringing them home safely. My favorite part of all of this mission was splashdown. So if those crew members launch, they know that they have a safe return.

20:04If we get to the point where we can sustain human life there indefinitely, that is a huge barrier. We will get there eventually, but that's what's going to take a generation to do. then one day there will be a trip one way and that might be safety. At some point this will change. But as of today, every space mission's ultimate destination is Earth. And is that possible with Mars? It has to be. We won't send the first group without a possibility of getting them safely back to Earth. They might be a lot older by the time they come back. They will be. They will be. It may be a two-year mission. It may be a five-year mission.

20:40I mean, the trip one way to get there and then to get back without the moon being on the other side of the sun. It's six to nine months of one way travel so that just the trip is a year to a year and a half. I told you when I met you that I'd met Senator John Glenn, who turned his astronaut life into his pioneer life into politics. In America, you're angry. You're polarized. You've got this big problem in the United States of America. You've asked me to zoom out and see the whole world. Do you think you're going to have to come down to earth, Victor, and run? Well, I think I'm running. I'm running, but I'm running a race, not a campaign.

21:22I'm running a race, and I recognize very clearly to me, it's a relay race. You can't win a relay race by yourself. And so this race requires us to receive the baton from the person running before you, to run your best leg and then to hand off this baton. And I'm running this leg now, but if we don't figure out who our team is and build up our team and value the team aspect of this, then we're going to just drop the baton because there's no one to pass it to. So America is in a perilous state then? Babies are higher likely to survive when they're born. Teenagers are having less babies. More people can read now than ever in history.

22:02The sky has not fallen, but our choices, our actions and our inaction are going to drive us to where we're going. So it's not a perilous state. It's a state that we've let it get to and we have to take responsibility. We did this and let's drive us to a better place. The sky has not fallen. You've been through the sky. You've been up through the sky. Literally. The younger Victor, if I said, Victor, would you go and live on Mars? You'd have to go for fly for nine months. You have to live there for two years. What would you say? Younger Victor might have said yes, because he had never flown in space.

22:34The one who's been there and spent six months in space and two years on aircraft carriers away from home, by the way, would say no thank you. In that relay race, I've run my leg. I want to hand the baton off to a very strong next generation. I want them to be ready. And so my job now is to help get them ready. Can I ask if it's important to you, do you represent anyone? Because you don't look like a lot of the other people who went to the moon. Is that important to you? Oh, very. Of course. You know, there are young people that see themselves because of my role, you know, little brown kids. But you know what?

23:08Little girls should look at me as well and see a connection to what they do because I try to honor the human dignity in all of them. Little brown kids should also look at Christina and Reed and Jeremy and see a piece of themselves if we're doing our jobs right. But there are kids who maybe connect to this only because I'm there or only because Christina is there or only because a Canadian is there. And so I value that. I also value my grandfather's service in the Korean conflict in a time when it was very challenging for a man who looked like me to serve his country, but not have the full rights of being an American citizen.

23:39I value Ed Dwight. He could have been an Apollo astronaut. He could have been the first man who looks like me to go to the moon. But also, like I talked about the space race, if our objective is only to beat China, when we do, it'll be easy to drop the ball. If we only end this conversation at flying men of color and women to the moon, when we accomplish that, when we land on the moon with this diverse crew, it'll be easy to drop the ball. The goal is excellence. The goal is to accomplish these missions, to say we're going to do this and then to meet that standard. And if we focus on the right things, it will be a lot harder for us to lose interest.