Latest / National Immigration Law Center Freedom to Thrive Podcast / Ep. #108: Space for Everyone | NASA Astronaut Danny Olivas

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Ep. #108: Space for Everyone | NASA Astronaut Danny Olivas · National Immigration Law Center Freedom to Thrive Podcast

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For thousands of years, humans have been captivated by space.
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Ancient cultures worshipped lunar and solar deities, with some even building
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temples to the moon and the sun.
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The ancient Greeks, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Vikings used the stars for navigation,
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and early calendars were based on the progression of the sun and the moon.
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And of course, our popular culture is filled with stories of extraterrestrials,
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UFOs, characters in a galaxy far, far away, and voyagers going boldly where no man has gone before.
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My childhood favorites were all the Twilight Zone episodes about visitors from
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space, and I loved the stories from Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.
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Our curiosity as humans and our desire to explore the heavens,
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to know the unknown, fueled space exploration and the race to put a man on the moon.
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It's even brought together people from more than a dozen countries who are now
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part of the International Space Station.
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This, to me, exemplifies our enduring shared humanity. that no matter how much
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money we have, what we look like, or where we were born, we all awaken to the
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same sun and end our days under the same moon and stars.
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And while I've obviously never been to space, so I don't know this for a fact,
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I imagine that from way up there, the Earth's continents have no borders.
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Today, I'm thrilled to welcome my guest who has been to space.
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NASA astronaut John Daniel Olivas has flown missions on the Space Shuttle Atlantis
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and the Space Shuttle Discovery.
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He was the first person of Mexican-American heritage to walk in space.
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He's the author of a children's book, Endeavor's Long Journey.
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And he and his wife created the Space for All Foundation, which I can't wait to hear more about.
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This is the NILC Freedom to Thrive podcast, powering pro-immigrant narratives one story at a time.
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I'm Victoria Ballesteros, Executive Vice President of Narrative at the National
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Immigration Law Center.
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Hi, Danny. How are you? Hey, Victoria. How are you doing today?
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Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm looking forward to the conversation today.
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Likewise. Thank you so much for making time in your busy, busy schedule traveling the world.
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Well, I have so many questions about space that I want to ask you,
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but before we get to that, I would really love to just start out asking you
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about your early life and your upbringing.
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And what was that like? And how did that influence your journey?
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Sure. Well, let's see. So I was actually born in North Hollywood, California.
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Parents lived in Van Nuys from the valley, I guess native born SoCal.
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But my family, most of them are from the El Paso, Texas area.
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So right on the border between Mexico and the United States there in West Texas.
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And so we moved there when I was around four years old, so relatively young
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age, moved back to West Texas and, you know, just grew up as a West Texas kid.
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You know, one of the beautiful things about being that far out in West Texas
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at the time, there wasn't a whole lot of light pollution.
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And so being able to look up at these beautiful, clear stars at night,
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you know, the elevation in El Paso is about 6,000 feet.
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And I'm sorry, about 4,000 feet. And the, you know, you just could see forever.
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And I remember as a kid, my dad bought me a little telescope and crawling up
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on top of the house at night.
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For some reason, I thought that would get me closer to the stars and looking through a telescope.
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And even with my dad up there, maybe it was just kind of a special time to spend time with my father.
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But yeah, I just really kind of grew up just being fascinated by the stars,
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looking out into the heavens, looking at the moon.
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I'm, as you can probably tell, a little bit older. So I consider myself to be
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a child of the Apollo era.
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The Apollo missions were going on when I was a kid.
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And that was a big inspiration to me, seeing all of what we were doing, going to the moon.
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And just remember watching the launches and the recoveries on television as a kid.
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And then I guess it was around age seven or so that I remember going to Houston,
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Texas on a family vacation.
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And just really being blown away by all the cool things that they were to do
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in Houston, including they took us to the Johnson Space Center,
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which is the center for the human spaceflight program at NASA.
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And for me, that was just a big inspirational moment that I think changed my life.
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I think it was at that time that I really realized that I wanted to be part
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of space, wanted to be part of the space program because I realized that this
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is something that human beings were doing. and I wanted you know to participate and.
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What beautiful experiences and what a time to be alive.
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Okay. So from an early age, you were fascinated with space and maybe there were
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some seeds planted there for wanting to be an astronaut.
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What was it like? What was the process like for you? At some point,
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you made a decision that you wanted to pursue this. What was that like?
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How does one go about becoming an astronaut?
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That's a really good question. And I don't know if there's a magical answer
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that anyone could follow.
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It's not like a cookbook recipe. Okay.
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You know, as a kid growing up, I was mechanically inclined.
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And I remember like my father, who I looked up to tremendously while he was
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alive, was a big inspiration for me.
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And, you know, he was an engineer from the School of Hard Knocks.
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He worked a lot of labor jobs, but there was never a problem or a project he
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was unwilling to tackle.
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You know, I remember him telling me that there's nothing that one man could
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put together that he couldn't tear apart and put it back together again himself.
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Yeah. It was a simpler time when you didn't have computers.
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But he used to take me for all of his little repairs that he would do,
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everything from washing machines to refrigerators to cars to whatever.
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So I grew up being a gearhead.
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My 1969 Ford F-100 pickup I still own today. That's the one I had in high school.
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I've got some really special things that I'm doing to it in the future,
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but I'm working on that right now.
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But that was kind of my inspiration to become a mechanical engineer. year.
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And I always had this seed in the back of my mind that I wanted to be part of the space program.
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At the time, there weren't people who necessarily looked like me in space.
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And I guess I never really saw myself as being an astronaut,
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as much as a person who could enable space exploration.
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You know, the way I look at it is, you know, I may not be able to be an astronaut,
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but they're going to need someone to fix the rocket.
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And that's what I could do. I could, you know I can fix spacecraft and that's
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when I decided to get my degree in mechanical engineering from UT El Paso.
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And before I even graduated in 1988, I submitted my first application to become
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an astronaut, knowing full well that I wasn't going to be qualified because
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I had minimum requirements and I didn't meet them.
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But I wanted NASA to know that this was the job that I wanted to pursue.
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And it was kind of maybe a commitment to myself that that's something I was going to pursue.
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So over the years, I continued to apply, and over that same duration,
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I continued to improve my background and my academics, my understanding of the
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world around us and areas that I cared about.
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Went back to school, got my master's degree in mechanical engineering,
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and then ultimately my Ph.D.
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From Rice University in mechanical engineering material science.
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Continued to apply, continued to apply, continued to apply. And so nine years
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after my first application went in, it was finally accepted,
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and I came in for an interview.
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And so literally a decade from my first application, and in 1998, I became a U.S.
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Astronaut, part of Class 17, Group 17, and we were called the Penguins.
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That began my journey to becoming an astronaut.
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Why were you called the Penguins?
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The group before us let's see we had there were
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25 u.s astronauts selected from between three to five thousand applications
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that year which was actually a pretty big class but the class before was even
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bigger they were a total of 44 u.s astronauts that had been selected none of
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which at the time that i began working for nasa or that we began working for nasa,
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none of none of which had actually flown in space yet and so
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the tradition is is that
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the class prior names the class that comes in
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and they were called the bugs i know they were called the sardines there
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were so many of them like every their all their classes they were all you know
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scrunched together and they said oh you guys are never going to fly you know
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you guys are like flightless birds you guys are penguin and so we became we
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became called the penguins and it stuck but eventually we flew and it all worked out great.
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It's a lot of really cool NASA traditions I was able to participate in.
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So yeah, that's how Penguin came about.
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Oh, I love that. The fun and the joy that's part of being an astronaut.
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And what is your dad's name? Is it okay if I ask? Because I want to honor him
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and his influence that he had on your journey.
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Yeah. Juan Olivas Jr.
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Juan Olivas Jr. That's beautiful. I just wanted to honor him for the influence
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that he had on you because you have achieved so much, including what I've just
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learned, that you were a penguin who actually flew.
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So how many trips have you made to space?
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I had two flights in 2007 and 2009. I was a member of the STS-117 crew in 2007.
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My job was I was a spacewalker.
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So for that mission, I had two spacewalks.
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The first one was to set out a set of solar rays on the International Space Station.
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We had some problems with our space shuttles.
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We were going uphill and we had some damage to the thermal protection system.
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So my second spacewalk, they actually asked me to go out there and fix it.
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So I went out there and actually repaired the space shuttle and were able to come home.
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My second space mission was in 2009, STS-128.
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And that was a logistics flight getting the space station ready for long-term
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space exposure because we were getting ready to retire the space shuttle program.
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So we're trying to get everything up there that we could.
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It was three spacewalks. And I was really, it was a very needed mission because
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I was actually, the first one, I was basically kind of the lackey.
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I was a person who, you know, was a rookie on the flight, didn't really know anything.
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But I think I'd done well enough on that flight that when I flew the second
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mission, they made me in charge of the spacewalk.
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So I was EV1 on STS-128.
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And I got a lot of sense of pride with that because we had three very successful spacewalks.
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Nobody got hurt. We completed all of our mission objectives,
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and the spacewalks went off without a hitch.
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I have so many questions. Okay, so that's where you wear the big puffy space suit, right?
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And you're walking. So when you're walking in space, what are you walking on?
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Are you just walking on nothingness?
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I mean, what do you walk on when you're walking in space? Spacewalk is a little bit of a misnomer.
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It's probably considered a space crawl.
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Remember when you were a kid, you would go into like the jungle gym and you
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had all these bars around you and you would kind of like move from one to the
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other and kind of move around inside this jungle gym. Um,
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It's kind of like that on the space station. You have all these handrails around
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there and you move yourself around with your hands.
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You don't really use your legs. The only time you use your legs is if you're
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going to secure yourself into a foot restraint.
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And that's normally because you're getting ready to react a bunch of loads and
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you want to be able to send the loads into your feet to give you a little bit more leverage.
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But for the most part, you know, working on space stations pretty easy because
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it's all just the upper body strength that you really rely on.
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And you don't really use your legs a whole lot.
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That's going to be a bit different when we go to the moon. If we go to the moon,
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it's going to be like going out on a hike.
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You're going to have a big, heavy backpack. You're going to go out there and collect rocks.
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And that time you will be using your legs and pretty much most of your body
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muscles, although it won't be as bad because it's one-sixth gravitational force
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on the moon. So you won't feel as heavy.
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But yeah, so it just generically referred to being out in space in that puffy
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suit as a spacewalk or an EVA. Okay.
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Okay. I was picturing you walking on something, but I wasn't sure what you were
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walking on. Okay. Thank you.
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For those of us, the vast majority of us humans who have never been to space
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and likely will never be in space, how would you describe that?
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Is it even possible for you to describe what it's like to be up there for those
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who will never experience it?
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I think being exposed to that kind of environment, certainly in the a standpoint
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of being selected to be a NASA astronaut. You know, you're representing your country.
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You've worked really hard. The people who become astronauts,
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you know, we're not billionaires.
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We're not anybody special. We're just people who love space and work really,
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really hard and remain determined.
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And when you're in that environment, you know that you're only there because
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of what everyone else has done to get you there.
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And I know I felt an overwhelming sense of wanting to be able to take space
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and put it into a bottle and bring it back just so I could expose, you know, my friends,
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my family and people to just a small taste of what space is like,
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you know, and the best that I could do was,
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you know, I have some stories that I bring back and I talk to my friends and
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family about, tell them a little bit about the experience.
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It can never do it justice.
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But I'm here to say is that it's a very overwhelming experience.
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It's a humbling experience, but it's also a very inspirational experience that
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you get. But, you know, on the space station, it's an island in space that we
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built. We put it up in 1998.
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We've had it populated by human beings since the year 2000.
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It's been there as part of our history for many children now.
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That's all I've ever known is a world with a space station where it's like,
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you know, I knew a world where we were trying to get to the moon. Yeah.
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It's satisfying to know that we can do these wonderful things as engineers and scientists,
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but then when you consider that accomplishment against the backdrop of the universe
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and how much is left to explore and what is out there,
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it pales in comparison.
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So again it's humbling because you
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realize it's significant as we are as human
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beings you know against the backdrop of the universe
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we're pretty insignificant not even a you know a grain of sand on on the beach
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of all that there is to know yeah but it's also inspirational because that means
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look at the opportunity out there to learn look at the opportunity out there
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to explore and that's what i find exciting about space yeah i feel inspired
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just hearing you talk about it.
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And I feel like probably we, maybe me, overuse the word awesome,
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but it sounds like an awesome experience.
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Like you would just be in awe while being up there.
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So you mentioned earlier on that when you were much younger and thinking about
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this space and space program, you didn't see a lot of people like yourself up
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in space or working as an astronaut.
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You are the first person of Mexican-American heritage to walk in space.
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What does that mean to you?
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You know, so I've struggled with this over the years because I've only ever seen myself as Danny.
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And the people who know me who only have ever seen me as Danny.
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And I feel like the accomplishments I've accomplished in my life have been because
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of what I've put into it and less about, you know, the color of my skin or my ethnicity.
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But I also understand that
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it's important for those of us who come from these diverse backgrounds to be
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present in a way that the next generation can see that these are attainable goals for all of us.
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And it is through hard work and determination gets us there,
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not the color of our skin, but that the color of our skin or ethnicity should
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not be the barrier which prevents us from, you know, attaining these goals and objectives.
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I think as I've gotten older,
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I've come to appreciate that it's important that we remain in a fashion where
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we can be seen and where we are present and we are vocal. Yeah.
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Because there are elements that are out there that do see the color of my skin,
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who do look at my ethnicity and will ascribe that to being the reason why I've
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obtained whatever I've obtained.
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I mean, I look at myself and I know in my heart, I'm really good at what I do.
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And it's up to me every single day to go out and just continue to prove that,
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prove that to myself and prove that to the world around me and not worry so
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much about what people think about how I got to where I got to,
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because I know the truth.
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Yeah. Yeah. I think you've certainly proven that many times over.
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And your great-grandfather was an immigrant to Texas, correct?
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Can you talk about your great-grandfather and his story?
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Yeah. So Valente Olivas, he immigrated to the United States.
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I think the census shows around 1894 or so, maybe about 14 years old.
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I didn't see any other relatives with him at that time. So I think he came maybe by himself. Wow. Yeah.
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Into El Paso. And ultimately he found work as a laborer.
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He worked at the local smelter in El Paso, Texas. So a copper smelter.
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And I've got some photographs of him in his older years where he's,
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you know, he's in front of his bicycle that he used to, you know,
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get to and from the different locations that would ultimately became a Sarko in El Paso.
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You know, and it's kind of fitting that, you know, years later,
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his great-grandson ends up becoming, you know, a material scientist,
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you know, graduating from Rice University.
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It certainly brings it full circle. And I think, when I think about the risk
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that he took, to come here and establish himself and ultimately his family.
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None of what I've experienced would have ever been possible had it not been
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for the sacrifices and the risks that he took.
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But by the same token, I feel like my contributions to this country were tied
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to that immigration of my grandfather coming here to allow me to,
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generations later, be able to contribute back to this society,
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being able to contribute back to this country.
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So I'm really proud of my heritage. I'm really proud of where I've come from,
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and I'm proud of where we're going.
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And what do you think Valente would say or think, what do you think he would
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think or say about his great grandson traveling to space?
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Oh boy. When myself, my sister,
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and my brother are like the first
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generation of offspring to have gone and gotten their college degrees.
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My mother, actually, my mother, Carmen's on the ball.
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She was a source of inspiration to me because while I was in middle school,
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she went back to school, back to UTEP, and ended up getting her degree in education.
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So I got an opportunity to sit on the front row of her educational experience.
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And my parents knew the value of higher education.
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But in the previous generations, you know, that same exposure and experience just wasn't there.
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My father used to tell me stories about how his grandmother,
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my great-grandmother, used to relay to him that they would look up at the stars at night.
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And she tried to convince my father that the stars were hung in a black box by God.
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And that's why you kind of see him kind of swinging back and forth.
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I think anyone from that time, whether it be my grandfather or anyone else,
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would just be really impressed with where society has come today and what we've
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been able to accomplish.
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And I think it's what we owe to the past generations is to continue this wonderful
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American story, you know, going forward and continuing to improve our society.
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So I think you'd be really proud.
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I think so, too. I think so, too.
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And, okay, so let's talk about the Space for Everyone Foundation.
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Tell me about the foundation, why it was created. I think you and your family,
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you and your wife created this foundation. What is it and what are you hoping to achieve?
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Well, we created the Space for Everyone Foundation back during the last administration.
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We were horrified by what we were seeing that was going on at the southern border.
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You know, the separation of children from their families at the border to us
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was not who we believe we needed to be as Americans.
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And we welcome immigrants to the United States.
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There's a path for legal immigration, and we strongly encourage that. Yeah.
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And we were seeing a lot of the hatred that was being sowed at that time,
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especially around people who look like me, who have my background,
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you know, rapists, murderers, drug dealers, et cetera.
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And I actually, you know, being from El Paso, Texas,
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a lot of folks remember that there was a crazy guy from North Texas who, on his own accord,
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went down to El Paso, Texas to walmart and committed
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a mass murder that walmart was
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walmart by sylvester mall i grew up about
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a mile away from there and this was my backyard this is this is my home i used
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to go there you know as you know you know when i go to el paso to you know just
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go get groceries or you know it's like this these were this was like my my people
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in fact my my wife's best friend who she grew up with,
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Her mother was among those who were killed that day in that Walmart.
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So we felt like we needed to do what we could within our means to try to rectify
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the misunderstanding that was out there regarding immigration in the United
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States coming from the South,
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especially those people who are Hispanic and Central American heritage.
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And so we started Space for Everyone Foundation. It's a family foundation, and we are supporting –.
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The various causes associated with legal immigration in the United States,
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especially with regard to those organizations which are family-oriented to keep
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the children with the families and support the families.
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Through this experience, you know, we, you know, I've been able to expose my
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children to what it was like growing up on the border, growing up in El Paso,
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Texas, understanding the community that was there that was binational and the
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fact that we did live in harmony.
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Of course, you always have things that come up, right?
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But the lion's share of our interactions with our brothers and sisters across
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the border was very familial.
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In fact, many family members live on both sides of the border.
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Yeah. You know, we spent the time to try to understand what was going on with family separation.
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We sat in on several court hearings.
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Some, you know, it's really just heartbreaking to see a child who's like three
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or four years old sitting in court with a representative there not being able to understand English.
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And the judge basically talking to them as if they're a fully-pledged understanding
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adult who is aware of the decisions that are being made for them.
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And so that's why it was important to us. So we wanted to make sure that.
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Again, I represent the United States.
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You know, when I took the oath to become a NASA astronaut, I was swore to protect
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and defend the Constitution of the United States, which means the laws.
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I'm a law-abiding citizen. And so we are as a family and we want to do what
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we can to, with the laws and the structures that are within place,
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to make sure that immigration is dealt with in a legal, fair,
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and just manner and a humane manner.
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To really represent the embodiment of caring that is America and that who most of Americans are.
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And we want to do what we could in anything we can. Yeah, and you mentioned
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family separation and you mentioned legal pathways for individuals seeking freedom
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or, you know, for whatever reasons coming to this country.
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And the families that were being separated and the children being separated
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from the parents that you're talking about were seeking asylum and asylum is
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actually a legal pathway.
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So it's not, yeah, I just felt the need to say that because there are a lot
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of people who look at what they see and hear on the news every day about an
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invasion and all of the horrible things and some of which you referenced.
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And there may not be an understanding that the families approaching and entering
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this country are seeking asylum, and that is an actual legal pathway, a legal right.
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Speaking of the border, and you grew up at the border, you've spent a lot of time at the border.
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I wonder if when you're up in space and you're looking down at the earth, what do you see?
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What do you see? I imagine you don't see borders. You're looking down,
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you see this big earth. What do you see when you're up there?
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Right. Well, I think that the tagline for the Space for Everyone Foundation
26:38
is that, you know, let's say the only borders that are visible from space are
26:43
those where you have the boundaries between land and sea.
26:48
You see blue, then you see browns and greens that marry one another.
26:53
But for the most part, the things that you don't observe are the things that
26:57
ultimately cause a lot of consternation here on earth. And that is the construct
27:02
of human minds of what a border is.
27:06
You know, we have for—I'm not sure how we got to this point,
27:11
but it is the way it is, right?
27:13
And so these borders that exist in the minds of ourselves, the ones that we
27:19
fight over, the ones that we kill one another over and have all sorts of consternation
27:24
over spending, you know,
27:26
billions and billions of dollars each year to fortify and protect,
27:31
you know, from the universal perspective are non-existent.
27:37
There are things that we as bipeds on this planet as a human species have chosen to create.
27:45
And so that aspect of the borders tends to get us focusing more on the things
27:54
that separate us and make us different rather than the things that make us the same.
27:57
And because we're all one species on this planet, you know, the 99.9 some odd
28:04
percent of what we care about as individuals are cared for by everyone across the planet.
28:11
It's that very small percentage that ultimately becomes the differences.
28:15
And this is what causes human beings to do horrible things to one another.
28:21
And I think from a celestial perspective, looking down at the planet,
28:27
you almost, you asked a question earlier about what you would want to bring
28:32
back, what I would want to bring back.
28:34
I think it's that perspective, that overview effect, to recognize that we are
28:38
one species on this one planet. And we're out in the middle of a vast ocean
28:44
of nothingness, which is the universe.
28:47
And you know as numerous as the planets are as numerous as the stars are our
28:53
next door neighbors are you know lifetimes away from us being able to visit
28:58
you know assuming we even know where to start looking it's just us,
29:02
And if we could just focus on the things that we have in common and find a way
29:06
to get along, what a wonderful planet we would have.
29:09
Because think about what we've been able to create by, for example,
29:13
the International Space Station.
29:14
There's 16 countries across our globe speaking different languages,
29:18
different cultures from different parts of the world.
29:20
You know, different financial mechanisms, different ways of doing engineering,
29:25
different everything, right?
29:27
But yet we found a way to get along and we did something phenomenal with the ISS.
29:33
And think about what else we could do if the whole globe were energized in that same way.
29:39
Thank you. Thank you for that. I want to geek out now, if that's okay,
29:42
because I have these burning questions that I'm having a hard time containing.
29:45
And the most burning one that I have that I've been wanting to ask is about
29:50
life, other forms of life, space aliens, if you will.
29:55
We've all seen the movies and the shows of The Little Green Man.
29:59
Are we alone in the universe? Are there other life forms in space?
30:03
It could be just your opinion.
30:04
It doesn't, you know, doesn't have to be a factual declaration,
30:06
but I'm just curious your thoughts on that.
30:09
Well, I think statistically, if you look at the numbers, you know,
30:13
as James Webb Telescope continues to learn more about the universe that we live
30:19
in, we take everything that we've ever learned and we pretty much put it,
30:24
you know, turn it on its head.
30:26
There's, I think at one time, I used to use an old number,
30:29
which I'm sure it's very antiquated now it's a 400 trillion stars out there
30:33
and if you assume that the 400 trillion stars have an average number of planets
30:38
around just like the one star that we're familiar with the sun you know you
30:41
have you know depending on how you count eight or nine planets right,
30:45
one of which is inhabitable and you you start doing the math on that you realize
30:50
that the likelihood of life being out there is incredible and but i'll share
30:56
with you a story real quick.
30:58
On SDS-117, we were on our way back, coming home from the space station.
31:03
And we had a one-day wave off, which basically means we were trying to land
31:07
at Kennedy Space Center.
31:08
And the weather was really, really bad. So they said, hey, take a half day off,
31:12
do whatever you guys want to do, and we'll try to come home tomorrow.
31:15
They're like, great. So me and Jim Riley, JR, who was my EV-1,
31:19
my boss, my spacewalking boss, we said, hey, let's go stargaze.
31:23
Because I told you about West Texas and being able to see the stars at night,
31:26
right? So we went on the flight deck of the space shuttle, everybody else is in the mid-deck.
31:30
We turned off all the computers really, really low, so there was no stray light inside the cockpit.
31:34
And we were just looking out, you know, at the stars at night.
31:38
Now, you're going around the planet basically one, you have the sunrise or a
31:43
sunset every 45 minutes.
31:45
So you get lots of opportunity to have nighttime passes at night.
31:50
I mean, you've got to remember, you're going 17,500 miles an hour.
31:53
That's pretty fast. Yeah. Okay.
31:56
And so as we're looking out of the rear window of the space shuttle,
32:01
I see what looks like two clouds in space.
32:03
And I'm like, wait, that doesn't make any sense. There's no atmosphere up here.
32:07
How can you possibly have clouds in space?
32:09
So I reached out and I grabbed some binoculars. And what I'm looking at is something
32:13
that we don't experience here in the north of the hemisphere,
32:15
which is referred to as the Magellanic Clouds.
32:17
The Magellanic Clouds are two irregular-shaped galaxies that were formed about
32:23
the same time as the Milky Way. They're our next-door neighbors.
32:26
They were about the same time that we formed.
32:29
But they're like 150,000 light years away.
32:33
And so as I'm peering into the large Magellanic Cloud, it dawns on me.
32:39
It's like, I wonder if right now someone's looking at me, looking at them.
32:45
Oh, my gosh. And I remembered about the distance of time.
32:50
Yeah. And I thought, well, if they're looking at me right now,
32:54
they're not going to see me for 150,000 years.
32:59
Oh, my gosh. And it puts into perspective is that not only are we talking about
33:04
the sheer numbers, but also, you know, we as human beings have lived in this universe just a small,
33:10
small sliver of time, which is the other dimension that we're very familiar with.
33:15
Yeah. And the reason why you couldn't have had life, you know,
33:18
whether it's the dinosaurs or wherever, you know, it's like at some other point
33:21
in time in that timeline of the universe or sometime in the future.
33:25
And it's pretty exciting to think about that.
33:27
Yeah, I think you just broke my brain, by the way, but just trying to process all of that.
33:32
But it's so fascinating. And I'm taking that as a yes.
33:35
So my crazy imagination will continue to come up with stories about what's out
33:41
there. How do you sleep in space?
33:44
I'm very blissful. like very blissfully really
33:47
i never had a problem sleeping in space you
33:50
know when you close your eyes in space i had
33:53
a sensation like i was falling oh wow which
33:56
would be unsettling yeah but i thought it was kind of neat because you know
34:00
you don't get an opportunity to feel like you're falling continuously really
34:04
ever here on planet earth yeah but when you close your eyes you know like astronauts
34:08
they sleep in a sleep restraint so it keeps them in like keeps them from floating
34:11
away You don't want to be floating around the cabin while you're sleeping.
34:15
So you put the sleep restraints on, which is kind of like a little bit like
34:18
a sleeping bag. It's got hooks or Velcro on it, and you attach yourself to a wall someplace.
34:23
You can sleep anywhere you want to. You can sleep on the ground.
34:26
You can sleep on the floor, the ceiling, the walls, upside down,
34:30
right side up, diagonally. It doesn't matter. You can sleep anywhere you want to.
34:35
What's really comfortable, though, is that when you're in your little sleep
34:37
restraint, you're not going to float away.
34:39
Is that if you – some astronauts have a hard time sleeping with a sensation like they're falling.
34:46
So they'll take bungee cords and they'll secure them to a wall to give them
34:51
a sensation like they're leaning up against something.
34:54
But it's just – it's more mental than anything else. Same thing with a pillow.
34:58
You know, you feel like you want to have your head on a pillow.
35:00
Otherwise, it feels like you're constantly straining your neck.
35:02
So they have this basically a foam pad that you just put on the back of your
35:06
head and you Velcro it to your head and makes you feel like you're sleeping
35:10
on a pillow, but you're not.
35:11
You just have your head on, you know, a piece of foam attached to your head.
35:15
But I found the experience of sleeping in space just phenomenal.
35:19
I think the biggest treat for me about sleeping in space is that you experience
35:25
what's called eye flashes.
35:28
And these are the heavy particles that are being, you know, that are part of the space radiation.
35:33
They're zinging around in space and they're just small stray neutrons and protons.
35:40
Occasionally, one will hit your optic nerve. And when you're asleep,
35:44
it experiences like what's called an eye flash.
35:46
And for me, they were streaks of light that would go from the left to the right,
35:51
green to blue. That's what I remember.
35:55
And it wakes you up. and then you open up your eyes and you see that everything's
35:59
dark. You're like, wow, those were some eye flashes.
36:03
And you kind of get treated to the celestial firework show as you sleep,
36:07
which is, you know, it's a little disturbing because it does wake you up,
36:10
but it's also kind of fun because you never experience that down here because
36:14
the atmosphere protects us from that radiation.
36:16
That's amazing. And what do you eat? What was your favorite thing to eat?
36:20
Do you eat the dried food or is that not a thing?
36:24
Do you eat actually? Yeah. So they work really hard at nutrition in NASA,
36:28
but they just – I don't think they've ever been a good solution for space food.
36:33
What I enjoy doing, you know, so I guess, you know, the Mexican in me just kind
36:38
of came out because we – in the space shuttle, we used to fly tortillas,
36:41
right? My tortillas, because bread is very voluminous and it gets dry very, very quickly in space.
36:48
Tortillas, they found, actually can stay moist longer and they can stay fresher longer.
36:53
And we had an area that they had a cold plate on the space shuttle by an avionics
36:58
bay that you could stick the tortillas in there.
37:01
So we didn't have a freezer or a refrigerator, but we had an area that was kind
37:03
of cold and we could put the tortillas in there.
37:06
I think they actually got the tortillas, I think they got them out of El Paso
37:09
or maybe San Antonio, someplace in Texas.
37:12
And so you know i i invariably what
37:16
i would end up doing is i'd make myself you know burritos tacos so
37:19
i'd take you know sausage and maybe rehydrate
37:22
some eggs show some tabasco sauce in there or you
37:25
know maybe take you know some some potatoes or chicken or try to make some fajitas
37:29
or you know just try to be a little bit creative because after a while the food
37:34
eventually all tastes the same so you try to kind of get things spicy and and
37:38
you know flavorful that's that's awesome Who would have thought that you're
37:42
eating tacos in space? That's beautiful.
37:45
Tacos are everywhere. So I love it.
37:48
Well, it's really fun. So on STS 128, I flew with my buddy, Jose Hernandez.
37:54
So he's also Mexican-American, first generation immigrant. His story is absolutely
37:59
wonderful. You ever get an opportunity to hear about that?
38:02
He's got an Amazon movie out. I'll do a little plug for him.
38:07
But we were both on 128 together. and it was,
38:11
We had a great time making breakfast for the crew downstairs at the galley,
38:16
making breakfast tacos, getting everybody ready for the day.
38:19
It's just a lot of fun. I enjoy cooking. I love to cook. Yeah.
38:22
Nice. Okay. So the tortillas, were they corn or flour?
38:27
Flour. Flour. Corn gets too dry too quickly. So you were eating good up there. Okay.
38:33
Nice. Okay. So you and I are not that – I don't think we're that far apart in age.
38:38
Did you ever by chance watch The Twilight Zone when you were growing up?
38:41
Oh, we still watch it today. Oh my God, I love it, right? The marathon?
38:47
Yeah, every time the marathons come on, absolutely. Oh, I love the Twilight Zone. Best show ever.
38:53
So yeah, there were so many just fun episodes about space and the cookbook,
39:00
the one with the famous, it's a cookbook.
39:02
Anyway, I just, I wanted to geek out and ask you if you were also a Twilight
39:05
Zone fan, Because I think that also, it's just, again, just the imagining of
39:10
what's out there and what it
39:12
might be like to engage with other life forms from space. It's just fun.
39:16
So what was one thing that you experienced in space that you weren't expecting? Go to our vet.
39:22
I'm sure there were many things, but or not. One thing that I wasn't expecting.
39:27
Well, I would say for my first flight, the entire flight.
39:31
You know, obviously it's a rookie. You've never seen any of that before.
39:34
Try to prepare yourself for it.
39:37
I think, you know, we were talking earlier about the STS-117 flight and you
39:45
had mentioned about like, it was good to have all those engineers are working on the solution.
39:50
But I think what I experienced in that flight, I think is, has been something
39:57
has really stuck with me today.
39:59
And it's something that I believe in my heart. And I think it actually kind
40:03
of ties into the conversation regarding immigration as well,
40:06
is that the solution for that flight didn't come from an engineer.
40:13
It actually came from a person who has no engineering background at all,
40:17
but he has a background in medicine.
40:21
What happened was, as I told you, this Apollo 16 or Apollo 13 type moment where
40:26
you had all the tools on the table, they're trying to figure out how they were
40:30
going to repair the space shuttle.
40:31
This was on the ground. We were busy doing our work up there.
40:34
And there was one guy at the corner of the room, a guy by the name of Jim Locke,
40:39
who was a flight surgeon.
40:41
And as the engineers are struggling, trying to figure out what they could do,
40:46
he raised his hand and says, could you use a stapler?
40:50
And they turned to him and said, what are you talking about?
40:52
We don't have staplers up, you know, in the EVA toolkits.
40:57
And he said, well, you have a stapler in the medical kit.
41:02
And so you remember those, if you've ever seen, if you have like a laceration
41:06
in your head, they have these little metal staples that you can kind of inch
41:11
this thing up so that you don't, basically like a suture, as opposed to so many.
41:14
And so they pulled it out and they tried it and they created ultimately the
41:19
repair that was called up to me that I used on Atlantis.
41:24
But I think that moment, that's why I said to me,
41:28
that kind of really spells what I love about space exploration,
41:31
especially within NASA, is that it's the willingness of inclusion of diverse thought.
41:40
Right someone who doesn't necessarily have the expertise and the background
41:46
could actually have a solution right if you're willing to listen to them if
41:52
you're willing to be open to that and this this idea this idea of inclusion
41:57
of diverse thought to me carries over into.
42:01
Kind of us here in america you know one of the reasons why i feel like i was
42:07
successful you know And, you know,
42:10
obviously I had a great crew that was supporting me during the repair.
42:13
Could not have done that without them. But also, you know, I had a specific
42:17
background in an area of material science and mechanical engineering. So, yeah.
42:23
And I had a lot of familiarity with thermal protection system,
42:25
material system. So I kind of knew what I was getting into before I even went
42:28
out the door because I touched them when I was on the ground.
42:32
But just because I was a rookie didn't necessarily mean that I wasn't like one
42:36
who was qualified to be able to do this repair.
42:39
And so I think that's what I love about NASA.
42:42
And I think it's a take-home message for all of us is that
42:45
sometimes we have to be willing to challenge our perceptions or
42:50
our preconceived notions of who people are
42:53
and what they can actually contribute and listen to them and explore how we
42:59
can best utilize the people around us to come up with some very creative solutions
43:04
and ultimately get everybody what they want at the end, which is success, right?
43:10
And that to me is like the one thing that really resonated with me through all
43:15
my NASA experience is that, that, and it carries over into my life.
43:20
And I feel like that that's, that's emblematic of what we as a society have
43:27
to gain from, from immigration is being able to take people who can do these wonderful things.
43:33
We just, they have to be willing to be given a chance, right? Yeah.
43:36
And then we'll continue the, the American story.
43:40
What a beautiful note for us to end this conversation, because I know that I
43:45
have taken way more of your time.
43:46
And thank you for letting me. Thank you for letting me geek out a little bit, too.
43:50
And you have a beautiful story, beautiful family history and family story,
43:54
and an inspiring story. And I'm so honored to have had this conversation with you.
43:59
And I want to thank you for the work that you do continue to do on behalf of
44:04
immigrants and keeping families together. I just really, really appreciate you
44:08
as a person and your story and your contributions. Thank you.
44:13
I appreciate that. And I couldn't end without acknowledging the significance
44:19
of how inspirational my wife has been towards helping make all this a reality.
44:25
Not only did she support me while I was trying to become an astronaut,
44:29
we have fought these battles shoulder to shoulder.
44:34
We have five kids in our family.
44:37
So, you know, children are very important to us. You know, I think I draw on
44:42
her, on her strength and her inspiration to keep the fire lit under me,
44:47
to continue doing what I can do in whatever form I have, to be able to continue
44:52
the message that is truly,
44:55
one of our family and that, you know what, there is space for everyone.
45:00
There is. There is. And what is your wife's name? Her name is Marie Schwarzkopf
45:05
Olivas. Marie. Thank you, Marie, as well.
45:09
I want to thank our listeners for spending time with us. For more immigration
45:12
truths, visit us at nilk.org and freedomtothrive.com.
45:16
And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.
45:20
I look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you.