51. Tim Peake: Will humans colonise Mars?

25:03So that's how we get value out of our money. And that's not connected with Brexit. We're still part of all of that. We're still part of the European Space Agency. Yes, it's not an EU organisation yet. Hopefully it won't be. The EU does contribute to the European Space Agency. They're a major contributor. And they run programmes like Galileo and Copernicus, which is why Galileo became a problem for the UK. So, I mean, yes, to get back to your question, a lot of it does come down to politics and funding because part of the return of having a national astronaut flown in space is dependent upon you paying some money into the program.

25:40So it wasn't really until we did that in 2012 that I was then considered for a mission. I look at someone like you and one of the things I'd love to know is why did you not do selection? Why didn't you want to join the SAS? Have I misunderstood something about you? Is there something about your personality type which is more suited to space than that? For me, at that point in my life, it's always been about flying. It really has. There was a moment, I think, in the United States where, I take it another step backwards really, when I first started flying, I enjoyed it so much I wanted to stay flying.

26:10And so I kind of made that decision that you were alluding to earlier about the career choice quite early on because I wanted to be an instructor. Part of the reason was to keep me in the cockpit, keep me flying. I wasn't going to be an adjutant or an ops officer, the things that other captains were doing at the time. And because I joined when I was 20 and I did have time on my side, that was an advantage. So I was able to go away and do my instructor's course. And I built up thousands of hours of flying. So then, of course, that had a value to the army. And so when I then said, well, listen, I'd like to do this exchange program over the United States.

26:44Again, it was another kind of stalling block, but it kept me flying and it kept me doing interesting jobs. And that was a groundbreaking moment because the United States at the time, they just got the Apache Longbow helicopter, this fully digital helicopter with radar, incredibly advanced. And I joined their most advanced battalion. And actually, as the Brit officer who joined, I was kind of given one of the jobs that nobody else wanted to do initially as the ops officer was to make this aircraft speak to the rest of the battlefield. The battalion commander said, Tim, I'm sorry, you've got it.

27:15So you've got one year. We've got a major exercise coming up. this Apache needs to be able to be fully digitally integrated. And I turned into a bit of a geek that year. It has to be said, I just had to get into the weeds of this aircraft, understand it implicitly. And I was working with every other unit in three core, a US Army core, and I was working with the US Air Force, getting JSTARS aircraft overhead so we could digitally speak to them and uh and i came away from that tour thinking this has been so amazing so exciting i really enjoyed you know advancing this aircraft making it more efficient making it safer and more effective that that's what i want to do when i get back to the uk you're obviously incredibly competent technically and i'm the least technically competent person on the planet and will never go to space or iron a shirt or iron shirt uh unless one of you two wants to teach me how probably tip not you but the most useful piece of information i found in your book was that the best cure for vertigo is to wiggle your toes so thank you for that because i get vertigo it lifts the you know open glass lifts so you just wiggle your toes do you that it goes away well it works for me so what height do you get vertigo i didn't know that i did get vertigo until i was kind of out on the on the space station it just happened that once when um it's quite funny your brain plays tricks on you.

28:41And Chris Cassidy, he's a NASA astronaut, an ex-US Navy SEAL. And he had said to me, look, on your first spacewalk, there's probably going to come a time where you'll get a bit disorientated. You might get some vertigo. So just wiggle your toes. And it really, really works. And I was coming back from repairing one of the solar panels. And there's a shortcut that you can take back to the airlock. And I was taking this unit about the size of a small fridge along this shortcut, which is a pole about 20 metres. So you walk along the path. So you're kind of hanging off this pole, shimmying along it.

29:11And of course, you've been surrounded by structure for so long, a couple of hours outside doing these jobs, working with tools. And suddenly I'm hanging onto a pole halfway between two large objects. And I look down and my brain just says, well, if you're hanging onto a pole and you're 400 kilometres up, you must be about to four. And just got this wave of vertigo kind of gripped onto this pole as if my life depended upon it. and then realised, come on, just wiggle your toes, relax. If you let go, you're going to be fine. You're not going to go anywhere. But it was just reminding the brain that I was in weightlessness, that I wouldn't fall if I let go.

29:47Were you scared? Not really scared, but it certainly got the heart rate going a little bit. It was a bit of an adrenaline rush. Right, Tim, let's take a break.

30:01Tell us about an astronaut who you really admire going through a crisis, demonstrating courage in space. This is the most wonderful book you've written called Space, but give us an example of an astronaut coping with a crisis who you really admire. There are several examples I could give, but I'd probably come back to Neil Armstrong. and a lot of people recognize Neil Armstrong as the first human to walk on the surface of the moon but as a test pilot he was a phenomenally skilled pilot and a very competent operator and on his Gemini 8 mission he had a docking to this Agena capsule and it was the first time they were trying to dock and actually that part of the mission went really smoothly and it was textbook and everybody was celebrating thinking this is fantastic Then there was a loss of communication.

30:49And at that point, there was a slight rotation happening. And Neil thought, well, this is time to undock because the Agena module is probably rotating us and knocking us off course. So undocked, at which point their Gemini capsule went into an uncontrolled spin. And it hadn't been a problem with the Agena. It had been a problem with their own Gemini. So when you say that, what's going on when that happens? Well, one of the thrusters was basically firing, it stuck on. And so it was giving a constant force, which was causing the spacecraft to have this constant rotation. And in space, that will build up incredibly rapidly because there's nothing to slow you down.

31:27There's no drag, there's no friction, no air resistance. And it very rapidly got to a stage where the crew were close to losing consciousness with the G-forces and the spin. And I don't think any other astronaut at the time or maybe even since would have been able to rectify that situation. What did he do? Because he had such knowledge of the system. He was able to identify where the fort might be, disable systems, bring up an alternative system. All while the jeep forces. Yeah, all while this is going on, bring up his re-entry control system and use a completely different system to then have to think about what's my rotation rate?

32:04What angle am I going? So which thrusters need to fire? to reduce this rate and not make it worse, bring the spacecraft under control. So he's almost doing maths in his head as it's spinning. Absolutely. I mean, phenomenal. Situational awareness, competence, and intimate knowledge of his spacecraft to be able to do something like that without any help from ground control or anybody else. So I think that's probably one of the examples I would go back to. I was stunned to read he didn't do physical exercise. Yeah, I know. I mean, do you guys want to be super fit? Well, I think that's a bit of a myth, really, because most of us are fit because it benefits you if you are.

32:46And that's not necessarily for the job in hand. I mean, spacewalking is physically demanding, so it does help there. But it's mostly for when you come back to Earth. The fitter you are, the better you're going to be at recovering and the less painful it's going to be on your body. So most of us do do quite a lot of physical activity and we keep ourselves fit and healthy. But actually when the space agencies are doing that medical evaluation, they're not testing Olympic levels of fitness or athleticism. What they're after is medical robustness, really. They're after a low risk candidate, somebody who's unlikely to have a cardiovascular problem, unlikely to have anything go wrong with their immune system or their skeletal system.

33:27So they're whittling down the pool of individuals who are the most likely candidates to be able to go and do a successful long duration mission to space. And back to the theme of kind of working together, you've also worked with other countries, with astronauts from other countries that in other parts of the kind of geo strategic space, there's enmity. So you have to go and learn Russian to fly with Russians. Yeah. What did you learn from that experience that you think might be applied to the world that maybe we know better of politics? Well, working with the Russians, we tend to put politics to one side and our Russian colleagues do too.

34:06We're there to do a job and we share a common goal. So you wouldn't talk about politics? Not hugely at all. No. In fact, I was there, you know, 2014 during the Crimea crisis at the time. In the space station? No, I was over in Moscow, sorry, in Star City. I probably spent a total of about two years in Star City training. We have to learn all about the Russian segment of the space station. And I actually learned how to do a spacewalk using the Russian equipment. And where is Star City and what does it look like? It's just about an hour outside of Moscow. And it's the same location. It's a bit like the Johnson Space Center in Houston, as in it's got all of that nostalgia and history about it.

34:46When you go to Houston, you can go into the old mission control room that was used for the Apollo landings. And the same in Star City. It's got the same centrifuge that the Soviet cosmonauts were trained in. We stay in the same accommodation blocks. Does it look very James Bond? Is everyone walking around in amazing 1980s spacesuits? No, it's quite austere. Star City is definitely of that communist era. What really stands out, which is quite amusing, is that the Americans have built a line of lovely white New England cottages. So when their NASA astronauts go over to stay there, they've got some more sort of American style accommodation.

35:22The Brits have failed to do this. We haven't got there yet, no. You say there's kind of no politics going on, but the levels of trust attached to that are pretty huge. They are, yes. And I think it comes down to the fact that it's that common goal, that the space programme is incredibly important to the Russians. It's obviously part of their history and culture and they're very proud of what they've achieved in terms of their history of spaceflight. And the International Space Station is currently what they have as their space programme. It's their beacon of technology and innovation. So as to why we all work together is because it has an equal value to the Russians as it does to the Canadians, Japanese, Europeans and Americans.

36:06And is your Russian still good? Nietzsche. Sanjilinio. Really? It's a jazz ocean plocker. Which means I'm not very well. I can understand it. But to work with them, you were speaking Russian all the time. I was, yes, speaking Russian. And all of our manuals and our documents in the Soyuz spacecraft, it's all in Russian. There's no English spoken in that spacecraft. And all your communication with Moscow Mission Control Centers. I think your Russian is pretty good then. I think we can say your Russian is pretty good. I certainly had to pass my, I think it was intermediate high exam before you're allowed to.

36:41Which is better than your chemistry level. Exactly. way better than my French C at GCSE. There was one amusing moment when two of my Russian colleagues were out on the spacewalk and I was the one who was having to get them back in. And the other three crew members had to shut themselves inside their Soyuz spacecraft at that time because of the way the space station worked. So I was the only person on board the ISS having to get them back in and my Russian language was letting me down slightly. I was kind of... That's frustrating for them too. a little bit as they were tapping on the hatch window saying, come on to him, you've got this.

37:19So there's a very strange, slightly moving scene in The Crown where the actor playing Prince Philip has got very excited about space and he's invited the astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, to come meet him. And he's got in its head, and he's obviously had in its head for months, that because they've been into space, they must be returning as sort of extraordinary philosophers us, that they're going to be the most profound, interesting people that he's ever encountered. And so he manages to get rid of the queen and he sits them down and he wants to ask them these deep and meaningful metaphysical questions.

37:53And what he finds himself looking at are these very polite, but quite restrained and understated US test pilots who don't really have anything to say about the meaning of life. And the scene begins to disintegrate. Have you ever felt the same, that there is some idea that because you've gone to space, you've suddenly become a sort of godlike figure who's seen the secrets of the universe and people get disappointed to discover that you're still you. I think there's a burden on you to try and articulate what it is, the experience that you've been through. And that is difficult because even now I don't think I fully processed what the spacewalk was like.

38:30And there were some moments there that were completely surreal as you're floating there in the blackness, just waiting and watching the planet go into darkness. I remember speaking to Al Warden, Apollo 15, command module pilot, and he had to do a spacewalk halfway back from the moon. They were retrieving the film canisters from the lander module and he could cover the Earth with his thumb and he could cover the moon with his thumb. He was so far between both. And NASA said, you know, we've got a few problems here. You're just going to have to wait outside for a few minutes till we sort them out.

39:03And, you know, he said, actually, he's never processed that time, just floating there in space. So there is a burden and it is difficult. But also, I think it comes back to Alice's point earlier about who these people were and the psychological tests. And actually, back then, it was leaning more towards their technical capability than their kind of psychological profile. To the extent that they're not actually the ideal candidates, that profile is probably not the ideal profile for a long duration flight. all of these alpha male egos who are, you wouldn't put them together for a year on a space station.

39:36There's going to be problems. And likewise, they're not the best at being able to articulate their experiences. Well, that was the point about Buzz Aldrin was that he said he found it really difficult to explain anything to do with the question, what was it like? Yes. He found it difficult. And I get the sense he did feel that pressure to be this godlike figure who understands the world better than those of us who have the misfortune to be stuck here. And you are transported into another realm. It is a completely different place. It's a bit like diving when you're underwater and you're aware that you're in another environment where other things live.

40:18And this is an alien environment to you. If your equipment were to fail, you would die. And it's very unusual. And when you go into space, you've gone through that launch as well and the violence of launch. And I guess what I mean by that is you're aware of how much energy it has taken to get you into orbit, that you are in a different place, a very special place. You're outside of Earth's atmosphere. The sun is not the same. It's a bright nuclear fusion. It's the purest white you'll ever see. I mean, the surface of the moon must have been incredible, just reflecting all of that white with a lunar regolith with no wind.

40:54And just such an alien environment that it would have been very hard for them to kind of be able to try and articulate those kind of things. We're now in an era which is dominated by people who are obsessed with space and obsessed with science fiction. Figures like Elon Musk, and not just Elon Musk, many of the great Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, many of the people creating the AI companies of the future are people who've grown up loving space, reading science fiction and wanting to set up colonies on Mars. So you're very much part now of these sort of new breed of people. What is it that you think it means to be someone who thinks a lot about space?

41:36And what could we learn about the Elon Musks as well, that they're thinking about space and landing on Mars? What does it tell us about their personalities, their minds? I think space has always been somewhere where people have looked up and you go back through history and imagine what it was like for our ancestors just looking up at the night sky and what the stars have taught us. Some of our greatest scientific breakthroughs have just been about looking up at the night sky and realising that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, that actually we orbit this star and actually there's a Milky Way and there are galaxies out there.

42:11and our understanding of how that then has informed science and technology on Earth. So I think what it is to be part of space is to be part of looking out there for new discoveries, for new technologies, new innovations. The James Webb Space Telescope is already just in its infancy in terms of its life expectancy, but it's producing amazing images and giving us such insight as to the early part of the universe. And so I think that driving factor is that it's where the cutting edge lies. And that was the appeal to me as a test pilot, thinking, gosh, you know, to have the opportunity to go and work with the space industry where we're dealing with new metals, new composites, you know, latest artificial intelligence, all of this kind of new technology.

42:54But it's also about focusing on Earth. People think that we're just people like Elon Musk, et cetera, the space agencies want to go to Mars because we've damaged Earth. Let's just go and colonize another planet, which is absolutely not the case. Nobody I speak to in the space industry has that mentality at all. It's about doing research for the benefit of people back on Earth. I could talk for hours about what we do on the space station for that. There's some really interesting things going on right now with pharmaceuticals, for example, with developing new drugs and the potential for solar power.

43:26Again, clean, limitless energy coming from space. One of the things that Starship and that SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, building this huge new rocket where they just launched the second one last week. One of the things that that offers is a massive reduction of the cost of getting to space. When you look at the space shuttle, it costs$57 ,000 to get a kilogram into low Earth orbit. Elon Musk today will do that for$1 ,500 on a Falcon Heavy. When Starship works, it could be as low as$100. So the stuff that is science fiction, I guess it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, the stuff that we think is science fiction for$100 a kilogram of space, not science fiction anymore.

44:09That's a good business model. That makes economic sense. Do you trust these people to have this access and this ability? I kind of felt growing up and watching the American Soviet space race, I sort of felt quite comfortable in it. You know, I vaguely trusted them. I'm not sure I vaguely trust Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to be the masters of the universe. Do you? No, I think we need guidelines in place. I don't think any company should be allowed to go unchecked. I don't think OpenAI should with ChatGPD. I think the challenge that we face now is that some of the technologies that we're developing are advancing at such a rate that our regulatory framework is not keeping up.

44:54And so I do applaud what they're doing. I think some of the things that these companies are doing are phenomenal and will have huge benefits to humanity. But they must be kept under checks and balances. In space, we're currently working on this 1967 treaty, outer space treaty. So that desperately needs updating to reflect an era where we're about to explore the surface of the Moon. And it could be very contested once we find resources that need to be mined. Talk us through that. It's not really something that we talk about in the newspapers, but you think pretty soon we're going to be exploring the surface of the Moon, mining it, colonising it within our lifetimes.

45:30Yes. Tell us a little bit about that. Tell us a little bit about the potential. Tell us about why the public should be interested in this and thinking about this and when it might happen. So in terms of kind of the science, we're looking at setting up a laboratory, a station effectively at the south pole of the moon. The reason that's being chosen as a location is because there's water ice there. So where you have water ice, then clearly you can get water and oxygen, hydrogen oxygen, which is rocket fuel as well. And so it can help with the life support systems and fuel for future launches. And also there are areas where it's in permanent sunshine.

46:02So you can set up solar panels and provide energy for your base. And then we're starting to look at the kind of minerals that might be on the surface of the moon that could potentially help us in the future as Earth's resources do become more scarce and we become more reliant on precious metals and different minerals for things like our batteries for electric vehicles, for our power plants. Come back to fusion, perhaps helium-3, a fusion energy becomes a viable source. And so these kind of things are potentially going to be hugely important to us. and then there's the element of exploration as well as using the moon as a potential base a stepping stone onto to mars and why is getting to mars even more exciting than getting to the moon apart from the fact we haven't been there again i think it's part of that that exploration footprint i don't think at the moment there's an argument for going to mars in terms of resources that could could help us on earth but in terms of science and exploration in terms of potentially finding out if life ever existed on another planet, being able to do geological surveys and learning more about our own planet.

47:08Mars and Earth about three billion years ago were very, very similar planets in terms of the amount of liquid water forming oceans and in terms of their atmospheric composition. Earth's gone in one direction and Mars has gone in a completely different direction. That could be a wake up call to us here. It could give us an indication of how planets lose their atmosphere how planets lose their oceans and and what we might need to do back here on earth to stop that from happening to us i think i'm right you were quoting rory's friend the king telling you guys that well we've made a big enough mess of this planet you go and saw the next one and there's another quote on to throw at you which i thought was really interesting ed mitchell who was apollo 14 he spoke of how the sight of the whole earth gave him an instant global consciousness an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it.

47:57From out there on the moon, he said, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, look at that, you son of a bitch. Did you have that feeling? I think everybody comes back from space changed in some way. You'd be a very strange individual not to have your perspective changed. And yes, you kind of get this impression of Earth as a different place, that global consciousness. But it's not just seeing the Earth, it's seeing it against the backdrop, the vast black backdrop of space. You're like, that's it.

48:30Space is a big old scary place out there. It's not the nice blue sky that we look up at if the sun is shining. It's the blackest black you'll ever see. And Earth looks incredibly small, remote and fragile against that vast black backdrop. And so that's why I come back to the point that people, you know, my colleagues, astronauts and scientists I work with don't look at just going to Mars because we think that's another viable planet. It's not. Earth is it. It's beautiful. It's home. And I think what we realise when you look down at Earth from space is you get that ownership of the entire planet.

49:06You don't think about your loyalties to your own country or your own continent or anything like that. You become an Earthling. You become very proud of planet Earth as somewhere that you want to kind of look after. And I feel that I can't not follow up on this amazing things you're saying about colonizing the moon and mining on the moon. And Mars. And Mars. Obviously, with Antarctica, we brought together this extraordinary international agreement, basically not to mine Antarctica and kind of leave it alone. And I was at the South Pole and was very struck by how remarkable that kind of law was and the way in which that was brought together.

49:41Give us a sense about how you might think about the politics and the ownership and what happens. And the other thing I didn't quite get to is how quickly could this happen? Is what you're saying that now that Musk can pop stuff up more cheaply, it suddenly becomes much more feasible because the cost is a 50th of what it was. But it's not 4.5 % of GDP, is it? No, it's not. So in terms of what we're initially looking to do, these are science-based missions that we're currently looking at. But what we're trying to do is get the framework, the regulatory framework, ahead of the point at which the conversation about mining the moon might become a reality.

50:16That's not something that's being looked at right now. But we need to get the regulatory framework in place so that it doesn't become something that's contested at the point that it might happen at 20, 30 years in the future. And that's why moving beyond the United Nations, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the United States have set up the Artemis Accords. And the Artemis Accords has, I think, got about 22 signatories to it, including the United Kingdom. And this is the US interpretation, if you like, of the 67 Treaty, taking it into a framework that could be used to explore the moon and could be used to explore Mars.

50:53So responsibly, sustainably. And what's the longest period anyone's spent on the moon to date? The Apollo 15, 16, 17 missions were a matter of days on the Moon. So we haven't spent months on the Moon yet. So this would be thinking about what it would mean to spend months or years on the Moon? Yes, absolutely. Setting up a permanent base on the Moon. And you think this suddenly happened 10 years, 20 years? What sort of timeline are we looking at? We're looking at the timeline at the moment for Artemis 3, which is the return to the surface of the Moon, which NASA currently have 2025 in the calendar.

51:28I don't think it will be. It's going to probably be slipping by one, maybe two years. But certainly by the end of this decade, we will see humans once again on the surface of the moon. And then we'll be building a gateway, which is a small orbiting station around the moon, which will help to service those lunar missions. So I think by 2035, we will have a permanent structure on the surface of the moon at the South Pole. and I think soon after that we'll start to see astronauts spending maybe one month two months at that research station in addition to being in lunar orbit well listen Tim it's been great to talk to you I guess my last question if I may is just you do seem sort of remarkably calm and level-headed are there moments when you just sort of look up and think can't quite believe I did that and how hard is it sort of reintegrating into normal human life when you come back um I I didn't really find it difficult reintegrating as a family man.

52:25The morning after I returned to Earth, my two boys were jumping on the bed, waking me up with a cup of tea in the newspaper. And then it was kind of straight back into family life. And I think that really helped. It helps keep you grounded and helps keep you motivated and gives you a different focus. And so having spent a long time away from my family in the training and the years before spaceflight, That was something that I wanted to do was to refocus on spending more time with the family. And so there are definitely moments where I do kind of pause and look up. I think on a daily basis, I probably think about my time in space at some point.

52:59Yes. But it's something that actually gives me strength and it gives me motivation often to be able to deal with different problems I have back down here on Earth. I kind of sometimes think, well, come on, Tim, if you can do a spacewalk, you've got this. My final question relating back to your book, you have become an extraordinary sort of historian and chronicler of space. And you've sort of chosen it almost in a way that you might have chosen to write about the army or your regiment and its history and its heroes. You've chosen space. Tell us why in the end, this has become the thing which has defined you and led you to write these extraordinary books and become, you know, a sort of walking encyclopedia.

53:38I mean, it's extraordinary. You can recite all the names of these German astronauts, these different missions, these different moments. What is it that's given you such a passion for the sort of history and the heroes of space? For me, it was really looking at what we're doing right now. And some of my friends and my colleagues right now who are looking to fly on Artemis 2, which could be as soon as a year away, to go back to the moon. That's going to be a bit like Apollo 8. And you're not going to be able to go with them? I wish I could. And why can't you? Three NASA astronauts and then Jeremy Hansen, who's a Canadian space agency.

54:09All four of them I know very well. So, no, the UK could definitely have an astronaut on an Artemis mission in the future, but not on this first Artemis 2 mission. And it could be you. You're not too old. I'm not too old. We're still flying till about 63. I think the cutoff is for the European Space Agency. So I've got a few years left of me. So I think... Certainly I'm just beyond. Three years late. Never mind. But by speaking to my friends and by knowing what they're doing and the training they're doing and this return to the moon, I kind of thought it was the right time to reflect on how we got here and the journey.

54:43And why has it taken so long? Why is it that it's been over 50 years? Why do so many people not believe that we even went there in the first place? It's been over 50 years. It's been over 50 years. I mean, 72 was Gene Cernan when he last left the surface of the moon, the last man on the moon. And that's when you were born. Yeah, I was eight months old. So I have no recollections of anybody walking on a service wing. So in your entire lifetime, nobody's walked on a service wing. That is absolutely astonishing, isn't it? Yes. I think that was the inspiration for the book, is to write it not as a chronological sort of history looking into the technical sides.

55:18It was very much a human story of the people, the people who do this and why they do this and what we've done and how we've got there and where we're about to go back again. Well, look, finally, finally, if I can just lower the tone, there's one other. Just looking through my notes, having read your book, what on earth is going on that you haven't, in preparation to fly, you have an enema followed by a full breakfast? I don't get that one at all. Well, the full breakfast gives you the calories that you're going to need for the next day or two. And the enema is going to give you that pause that you need for the next day or two before you actually need to use the facilities.

55:59I mean, if things go well, we've got a six hour journey to the space station. So that's not too much of a problem. But if things don't go well, we could be in that spacecraft for two and a half days before we get to the space station. There is a small port-a-loo in your Soyuz spacecraft, but you don't want to be using it unless you have to. Well, listen, I've thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. It's been great to talk to you. Thanks for coming in. Thank you very much. Thank you very, very much. What do you think of that? Fascinating. Do you think it would suit you? Space. To be honest with you, Frank, I'd find it very, very hard to be in a confined space for a long time.

56:34And I'd be scared. Yeah. You're also actually too big. I am. I couldn't even, because when you look at the pictures of him, square jawed, smart, military, but he's quite small. And Yuri Gagarin was only five foot five. I learned a lot in his book. He's clearly got a very, very analytical mind and he speaks in perfect sentences. One of the lovely things, so he's very open about it. He got a C, D and E in his A levels, which is not great and didn't go to university. Went straight into the army and is obviously a real inspiration. He is super smart, hyper articulate, confident with science, confident with history, confident with engineering, and therefore an inspiration to any of us who are not doing very well in our exams when we're 18.

57:20How did you do? I did very well in my exams. Which is why you sort of, sorry, I walked right into that one, didn't I? So did I, as it happens, but you probably did better. But no, I think, and the point you made at the end about him becoming a sort of space historian, he's a great ambassador for space. It's about the humanity of the whole thing. He doesn't want space to be overtaken by robots. He wants people to be in charge of it. I mean, he's a great modern British hero, isn't he? Because he's not got a massive sort of ego. He's not like sort of show off for alpha male. He's got a wonderful kind of gentle sense of humor, wonderful modesty.

57:54And I hope they pick him. I mean, he obviously is desperate to go back. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was basically a job advert, wasn't it? We'll have to send that to all the NASA people and the ESA people. Maybe the Russians would take him back. Vladimir would be listening. That's right. He's going to have to do a bit better than сейчас очень плохо, which was always... Yeah, yeah. I thought he needs to go back to a course, doesn't he? Yeah. But could you read a space manual in Russian? I don't think... I don't want to do a bit of Russian. Yeah, but could you read a space manual? I can read a space manual in English.

58:22No, exactly. Shoddy good. See you soon. See you soon.