Artemis II Astronaut Reflects Upon Return

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1:12It's not about cleaning files or fixing machines. It's about removing the friction that breaks momentum. CleanMyMac is the quiet presence that keeps creativity uninterrupted, so that when you're finishing a pitch deck at midnight or exporting a large final product, you can trust your Mac to keep up. Experience all the app's optimization essentials in a sleek, user-friendly dashboard. Get tidy today. Try 7 days free and use my code VALLEY for 20 % off. 10, 9, 8, 7. RS-25 engines lit. 4, 3, 2, 1. Booster ignition. And lift off. The crew of Artemis II, now bound for the moon. Humanity's next great voyage begins.

2:06We have a special coda today for Uncanny Valley listeners. It's someone I'm very excited to talk to. He just returned from NASA's first mission to the moon in more than 50 years. He and his crewmates have traveled farther from Earth than any other humans in history. Joining me now is Artemis II pilot, Victor Glover. Victor, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me.

2:30I want to go back to one of the first things you said when you returned home. You said, I have not processed what we just did, and I'm afraid to even start trying. Now that you've had a few days, have you had that time to process? What did you find? Great question. And I have not. We've been in medical checks and science collection and reconditioning. But it's also more than that. It's not because I'm too busy. It's just, I don't know, my body just wants to pause and just enjoy being back and just be with my family. When my kids are around and free and want to hang out, I want to just hang out.

3:03And so I'm just going to keep doing that until it feels right. I've tried picking up my journal. And I'm just not there yet. And I can tell you the facts and maybe give you a little commentary on some things. But there's so much to unpack. I just, I also don't want to rush through it. I want to do it when the time is right. Totally understand. Let's maybe see if we can unpack at least one part of it that I have been thinking about ever since I saw it happen or watched it on the live stream. It's April 6th. You've been traveling through space for nearly a week by this point. You're about to pass behind the far side of the moon.

3:37And for 40 minutes, you lose contact with Earth. You are alone in space with your crewmates, no one to talk to. outside of that ship. Take us back to how that felt. What's going through your mind? What are you doing in that moment? How does it feel to be so distant? You know, in that moment, it was significant, but it was not like entry, the blackout on entry, you know, it's happening in a very dynamic, you know, from a mental, but also physical standpoint. During the blackout, we were actually working very hard. That was the moment we were closest to the far side of the moon and just continuing to try to unlock secrets of our near neighbor in the sky.

4:16And so I said a quick prayer. I was recording observations and I just I intended to say a silent prayer and just, you know, for my family back there watching and to regain communication and for this to go up. And I just wound up saying it into the recording. So there's like science observations, the prayer and then right back to the science. But we were really busy. It was busy. There were some human moments. We made some jokes and had a quick snack. But then we went right back to work in this crew. It's amazing watching them adapt to the cultural, the poetic, the artistic and creative, but then to the technical and operational.

4:48And there's just so much skill and talent because they prepared so much for all of those things. Now, I will say the moment for me, actually, in that that was maybe the most profound from a human connection standpoint was right before. You know, I don't think any of the things we ever shared were written, prepared. We just tried to share what we were thinking and feeling. And I wanted to talk about love and thought of some other fancy things I might say and didn't say them. I just said something that was very familiar and comforting to me, which is loving God and loving your neighbor, how important that is.

5:20I could have said the golden rule. I could have talked about, you know, spooky action at a distance, but I didn't. You know, I just said what was easy and familiar. and that moment to me was an opportunity for us to all kind of, hey, while we're back here, you can think about us. When we're back there, we'll be thinking about you. And I think we just, you know, we crave. This experience told us how much we crave togetherness and that was really the profound moment for me.

5:50Victor, you talk about the re-entry and how that was a dynamic moment, another time you were cut off. Can you describe what makes that a potentially dangerous moment? It's very high anxiety for us on Earth just watching, I can imagine, in the shuttle as well. What was that like for you? Why is it so dangerous? And what was it like to splash down and know that everything turned out okay? We're going, as we come toward the Earth, we're literally falling back to Earth. We hit the atmosphere going seven miles a second. We're going 25 ,000 miles per hour. Or, you know, it depends on how you calculate it, but we're going Mach 39 is what we estimated, 38.8.

6:22And so we hit the atmosphere going so fast that the friction just creates a plasma cloud around us. We are a ball of fire. We are a fireball falling through the sky. We are out of communications for six minutes. The entire entry trajectory takes 13 and a half minutes. And there's so much pressure and temperature on the vehicle that it could burn the vehicle up. We have a heat shield designed to burn off a blade and to absorb that energy. but when we're blacked out, the only people that can intervene if something doesn't go right is the crew. And so we have to pay attention. We're also feeling the first sustained gravitational forces, the first push, the accelerations.

7:02And it was just, it was intense. The word intense, it truly was. Physically on the vehicle, the heat was intense, almost 5 ,000 degrees, 4 Gs for a very long time. It was physically challenging, but we also had to be alert enough to intervene if it needed crew action. And then on the other end of it, we had all of the sensations, every sound, every pyro, every parachute, every riser string that went out, we could hear and feel it. And then when we splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, it was just glorious. It was truly a spiritual moment because we were back on Earth, back home. Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot, thank you so much for joining us.

7:42Thank you, Brian. That's our show for today. Uncanny Valley is produced by Kaleidoscope Content. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Amar Lal at Macrosound. Kimberly Chua is our Senior Digital Production Manager. Kate Osborne is our Executive Producer. And Katie Drummond is Wired's Global Editorial Director.

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