Artemis II: Back to the Moon! (Rebroadcast)

Fight or Pilot Podcast listeners, with today's exciting and successful launch of Artemis II, we thought it was the perfect time to re-release Episode 189 from 2024. A fascinating conversation between the Artemis II mission commander, Reed Wiseman, and our very own flounder. This is absolutely worth another listen. Please enjoy. Welcome to the Fight or Pilot Podcast. In this episode, we're here at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. And we've got a very special guest today, Reed Wiseman. Reed, thanks for joining us. This is awesome. And it's going to get even more awesome today. So first of all, I wanted to thank all the folks here at Johnson Space Center. They've been really amazing helping us out. And just like we're going to talk about with flying F-14s or flying Orion spacecraft, it's not just the people in the cockpit or in the capsule. It's everybody else on this team who makes it happen. So really want to express gratitude right off the start. That's awesome. We got to know each other a little bit back in the Tomcat flying days, which we're going to talk about here. But life is good here at NASA for you. Life is great. I mean, as you mentioned in the lead-in, it is really all about the people. One of the things I love most about flying the F-14 was how hard it was to fly that aircraft and how hard it was to maintain that aircraft. I actually got a note on Facebook Messenger this weekend from one of my old maintainers in VF-31. The way I still connect to those folks that kept that machine flying, it feels a lot similar here where it is this team, Mission Control, is right across the street from us. And they're operating the International Space Station right now. And then on Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System, just the team of people that are putting this thing together and then are going to help us fly it. That when you get to work every day, you just smile because these are the greatest of Americans and international partners. Yeah, that's a really great point. A lot of people think about the fighter pilot community and how close we are as aviators. But also that closeness with the maintenance folks, because we work with them all the time in the Tomcat trying to get the Tomcat off the deck sometimes and all that kind of stuff. So speaking of flying Tomcats, so quick, how did you... How much time do we have? Yeah, I know. Well, yeah, we have a good amount of time, but this is going to go by quickly. So you grew up in Baltimore and then RPI, engineering computer degree. Computer and systems engineering, which was basically... This was the late 90s and computers were all the rage. And this was really how do you design a microprocessor for a computer kind of device? And then it started to get into networking as well. But it was really kind of hardcore engineering at that time. And I was fascinated by that degree. It was a lot of fun. So then your commission was through what? ROTC. ROTC. Yeah. So you were a pilot at RPI. So then when did you decide you wanted to fly Navy and fly the Tomcat? How did that work out? Well, I wanted to fly from a fairly young age. The way I've told myself the story is first growing up in Maryland, we live near a quarry and freight trains would come into that quarry all the time. And my dad, if we heard the horn, my dad would drive me down to the quarry and we would just sit on the side of the road and watch these freight trains come in and go out. And over time, one of the conductors, guy's name was Harry, like he just always saw this dad and his son sitting on the side of the road. And one day he stopped the whole trade and invited us up and let us drive the train. That's amazing. Right? So like that was where my fascination began with these like larger than life machines. We also live near, I think an international guard base and ATENS would fly in and out of there all the time. So by the time I got to high school, I knew I wanted to do something like fly airplanes. And really I was thinking about the Air Force. And then my brother had joined the Navy and I was out in California with him. And I saw two F-18s like departing out of Miramar and just heading out to sea. And that was where all of a sudden I was like, oh, that is like that spark hit me. That's exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life. I want to go out to ships. I want to be completely off the grid and operate from the cockpit of a fighter jet. And I went to RPI. I definitely had some setbacks. I had some medical issues with an eye surgery that I had had when I was a kid. So my first application got denied. I tried really hard. I got a waiver, got accepted into flight school. And then from there, I think once I got to flight school, I almost just said I was relaxed, which I wasn't. I mean, I was really amped up. I wanted to fly fighters. And then if I hadn't flown fighters, I would have flown helicopters. And I would have been happy as a clam. And either one of those two communities, but I just worked hard. One thing that I did while I was training emergency procedures is I thought I needed to distract myself. So I learned how to juggle and I would just walk around my neighborhood juggling golf balls, resighting emergency procedures for the T-34. And then I carried that with T-45. I carried that with that 14 F-18. I still do that to this day. Like I juggle as I do emergency procedures just to be thinking about multiple things all at one time. Chainsawers, flaming torches. No, I've never done chainsaws, never done flaming torches. And then my career in flight school was great. And one thing led to another. And I was one of the last folks to get Tomcats. I mean, they were kind of winding down. Everybody wanted hornets, but I wanted to fly the big fighter. I wanted to know what that was like. And it was our only opportunity. I didn't want to miss that chance. So how old were you when you were at Miramar and saw those hornets? And what did your brother do? My brother was a seal. And he told me if I went into special warfare, he would personally beat me up. Like, there was no way. He just knew me. He was like, you are not a good fit for that community. I guess I was probably about 15 right around that time, when that formative time where anything can spark your imagination and like all clicks in your head. That's great. And then through flight training, that was when we were in T-34s and T-2s and A-4. I went straight to Kingsville to do T-45s. At the time, there was a mishap in a T-2 and a student had gotten killed and they lost the aircraft. And so they had grounded the T-2 fleet for months and months and months. That was right when I finished T-34s. So I had no option. I couldn't go fly T-2, T-A-4. I went straight to Kingsville into the T-45A. Worked out great for me. Yeah. So like you said, one of the last guys to get into Tomcats, because this was when was this? I got winged at 99. So there was maybe like a mini generation after us. Yep. But I didn't have an opportunity after my junior officer tour to fly at Tomcats again. Like they were sundown while I was on my short tour. And then you went right into the F-14D and VF-31. So greatest airplane ever built by humans. I joked that humans were invented to create the F-14. Like that is the most beautiful machine. And I was lucky to fly the D with a full glass cockpit, heads up display. We had an infrared search and track system on that thing. G-110s. Oh, the big motors. Yeah. That thing was just a beast and I loved it. Yeah. Now we can get into it because I was a B upgrade guy. So we always had the B upgrade versus D. You guys had some great toys. I will give you that. We did. You had some great toys. Yeah. But from that piloting perspective, like the Tomcat just brought the best of all worlds together. We had that link 16 data link way before anybody else had it. That's right. We had ABG-71, which is a hugely powerful radar at the time. Now whether or not any of these systems worked when you flew, that wasn't either of you nor there as long as you had the motors. You were going somewhere. Yeah, that's right. Getting off the deck. So you went right to VF-101. That's when we had taken the West Coast because there was a D-rag when I went through the FRS. You're that old? Yeah, I am that old. I know I don't look it. I try to look distinguished. I didn't know. Did you train a Miramar? No. So guys I got winged with, you know, some D guys like Greg Gawman and, you know, some of the other guys went off to Miramar to what was a small debt for D training. And so when I was at Oceana, they consolidated that one-to-one. So by the time you came through a couple of years after me, you went right to Oceana. We were fully consolidated into one-to-one there at Oceana. But you only flew the D at the RAC. Only ever flew the D. Yeah, okay. So then when I went to VX-9 after that out in Point Bagou, that's where I started getting more D time. And, you know, it was really fun coming from a B upgrade background to the D. But like you said, I mean, great radar, great systems, but really fun to see the perspective of both airplanes. So piloting though, you know, I'm from the Rio side. You're the pilot side. I mean, what was the fun about flying the Tomcat for you? I mean, every, every, it was just art. That airplane was art, right? You're sitting in the front of this gigantic machine. For those that know that the F-14, you got the jail bar, forward windscreen, you know, that little windscreen that you're looking through this structural metal there. So the view was good, but it wasn't great. It wasn't an F-16. It wasn't an F-18. You had a slightly restrictive view out the front. You had so much power. I personally love flying with a Rio. I liked having somebody there to back me up an extra set of eyes. And I mean, an F-14, you could see that thing from 30 miles away. So in a dogfight, I always needed an extra set of eyes. That's right. Otherwise I would be done in a second. But it really was an art. The thing was very hard to fly. It really took two people and it took a huge maintenance team on the ground to keep that airplane going. At the time, it just seemed like it had unlimited power. I remember the first flight I ever did was with OP-Seth. In the first flight, they put a pilot in your back seat, right? It's pilot pilot. Just, just, I guess for somebody to talk you down, because there's no second set of controls. I remember going out over the Atlantic Ocean off of Oceana and I look at my mirrors and I just see this machine behind me. The biggest thing I'd flown up till then was a T-45 Gossok. I looked in the mirror and I was like, OPI, I'm not going to be able to land this thing. This thing is huge. It's a lot of airplane to land. Your first flight, you got the only set of controls and I got to wrestle this thing back to the ground. There was plenty of buffoonery in that machine coming in and accidentally sweeping your wings back when you're trying to take off or trying to land. There was a lot of ways to hurt yourself in that thing. You always had to be cautious. To this day, that is the only airplane I still dream about. Yeah. I still dream about flying that airplane. That's interesting. You mentioned how big it is. One of the things I love doing on pre-flight, especially on the ship, was when you get up on the back. On the turtle back there? Yeah. On the turtle back and just be on this expanse of, it was like right out of the 70s. There's no substitute for cubic inches. Let's build a big, let's build it powerful. Those were some moments that I really enjoyed out there with the Tomcat. Completely agree. You were at 31 and you deployed on which ships? That was the Lincoln through and through. We were on the USS Abraham Lincoln. You were doing the cross-country over to deploy out the west coast? Absolutely. We would transit out to either San Diego or up to Washington and we would meet our carrier out there because the Lincoln was stationed up in Seattle and Everett. But then sometimes they would come down to San Diego, pick us up and head out from there. Then sometimes we would leave out of Seattle, which is really neat doing carrier calls right off the coast up there, just a few miles offshore where you're on downwind looking over houses and making a left turn into land on an aircraft carrier. That was special. That is amazing. Speaking of landing on the carrier, back to the T-45, you did your first CQ on that and then bring the Tomcat aboard in VF-101 for your first traps. What did that feel like for you? How was that getting through that whole process of landing on the boat? First, I guess if you want to talk about landing in F-14, you need to go have an interview with Lucas Kedar. I know you know, Spicoli, because there is no human being that landed that airplane better than Lucas. Go talk to Lucas at some point. I think wrestling the Tomcat down on the deck of the aircraft carrier, it was always a challenge. There was never a time when I trapped in that airplane at night and my right leg wasn't shaken when I tried to taxi it out of the landing area. You have to be 100% gamed up, top notch, adrenaline flow and every time you bring that thing aboard. Where we had our fun was the daytime. As you get better and better in the daytime, that was when you can come in faster and you can be a little bit more aggressive and show off a little bit for the people of the flight deck. That sort of enjoyment, if I could get a launch that would come back right at sunset where you're still case one, so you can come in to the overhead pattern and land on the carrier at sunset and you can tap the afterburner that's going over the ship, perfect day. I'll take that day forever. That's a beautiful day. The other beautiful day is getting that 45 minute cycle on the front end. Oh man. Where you just leave the burners in all the way up to 40,000 feet. Absolutely. Beautiful clear day. Coming back for the case one, those are some good times to go. Absolutely agree. Oh my gosh. What ships did you see you aboard? I remember. In T45s, day only was the Kennedy. And then in 101, day night was on the Enterprise, which was pretty neat to me on that. So that's two old carriers that I did my carrier qualifications on. And in 101, you got to pick your Rio when you went to the boat. At least we got to pick who we flew with. And I picked this great guy as cost time his preacher because I was going to the boat and I needed somebody really close to God to get through this. And he did. I mean, it was really fun. It was so fun flying that airplane. What you guys would do in the back for us when we were struggling in the front. Like I had Jolly Rancher candy sent up to me. You know, I had pep talks given. All kinds of stuff that would just help you get aboard. And that is a testament to how hard that plane was to land on the carrier, especially at night. You know, in an F 18, I don't think I ever once got a pep talk from anybody because that plane is an awesome airplane. It's pretty easy to land. Tomcat, I mean, and I know the guy in the back was probably just struggling like, please, please get me aboard. Please, please, please get me aboard. And I'll do, you know, whatever you need. You want VSI calls, you want Jolly Ranchers, whatever you need. I'm behind you the whole way. Yeah, so true. Yeah. And I think we've had a few people on talking about PLM nowadays, you know, flying those things with precision landing mode. And I think I mentioned on another one, I had the opportunity to take the boys to Taylor for the first time recently. Nice. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And they got to fly the F 35 and the F 18. And you know, those things are just flying themselves, but a lot of information coming in. Yeah, that's a difference. You know, we're all wizards now. We're all weapons systems officer regardless of where you sit. And I was seeing that even 15 years ago when I left the Navy, just how much information is coming into the crew in the cockpit and how much you have to think and how much you rely on these precision landing modes and autopilots just to get the basics of flying done so that you can execute the mission. This mission is incredibly complicated. And you mentioned with the F 14 D, you know, we had link 16, we had J tids, you know, two channels of J tids, you got your two UHF radios, you got your ICS. So even in the D, you started seeing a lot of this stuff where you're having to bring all this information in. Actually, I just pushed it all to the back seat because they were just assuming everything. Like doing the Ford air controller airborne role in that airplane. You just felt like a complete battlefield commander in the F 14 D because you had so many radios, you had so much link capability and you had two people. That mission was that was my favorite of all the missions. I got to fly. It was like Ford air control where you're just you're managing other aircraft. You're helping out the troops on the ground. You're making a real difference in somebody's day and you're challenging yourself. I loved all that. That's right. That was a great mission. Only a few got to be fat guys. Eddie up. Absolutely. So where'd you do your JTAC training then? I did that down with the Marines. I think we did it outside Lejeune. It was myself and Dale Gregory who just screened for aircraft carrier commanding officer. That's right. Way to go. T bone. Yes. Yeah, we did that. We had to go to the West Coast and to see the professionalism that they carried into the terminal air control world. It was really fantastic as a Navy guy to get to go work with that professional outfit. Yeah, absolutely. I did mine with Zingo Benrenda out in the West Coast. We got to go to the ranges out in the West Coast, 20 amp problems. But that was a lot of fun. Like you said, now you're taking that extension of you got your two people on the airplane. You got other crews that you're flying with. But now you're taking that to managing cast stacks of other assets coming in, all serving the ground force commander. So there were a lot of great opportunities there. And then so as we get into, we're going to go skip past TPS and test your real quick. Talk, you came to VFA 103 after you did your CAG 17 time. So sticking with the FAC A, because it's going to be easy for us to go down tangents. We're just going to try to stay on the FAC A thing real quick. So did you recoil when you went to your department head? What do you think? Of course. 100%. When I was going to my department tour, I asked for two seat super hornets because again, it was that mission. It was that crew coordination. That is like that was my passion in flying. I just I loved it so much. And then you get into rescue mission. I did those out in Fallon. Oh my gosh. So that's a hardest. Like I remember doing my, what was it? Satellite qualification. And I did that in a rescue mission. RMC, RMC, RMC role. And I remember landing that night and just I had to sit in the cockpit for about 10 minutes because I was so exhausted. Just the thought of getting out and walking across the tarmac. I was I was done. I was all left in the simulated battlefield. Like every ounce of my capacity to do that role. And so we had the RMC missions and then I don't know if we also had the soft escort missions. We did a lot of soft escort. Yeah, those scenarios in Fallon were just amazing. And I remember to this day I was flying with Woodbecker. Oh, yeah. And yeah. And department head in 103 a couple of years before your time in 103. And same thing. Just nighttime soft escort. There's so much stuff going on. I had surfs to air rings lighten off on my display. And you know, we're doing Sam leaves and all kinds of stuff orchestrating things. It just like you said, you left it all on the field. It's mentally and physically as taxing as as anything could possibly be, I think. Yeah, intense. All right. So let's back up. So at some time in 31, you decide or maybe it was before that, you're like, I want to go be a test pilot because you pretty much have your weapons school folks, your test pilot or your training, whether it's FRS or VT. So what got you down the test pilot route? I might annoy 99% of your audience. But to me, like Top Gun did not resonate with me. It was not in my soul. I fully appreciated the training that they went through. And then I strongly desired the instruction that I got from them. I mean, they're the professional aviators in the United States Navy are a Top Gun graduates. There's no doubt they are our experts. But for me, I think coming from Rensselaer having a technical background, like I am a geek at heart. And I wanted to learn more about how are we developing the all the manuals? How are we developing these aircraft? What do we do to make sure when we give it to the warfighter that it's at least semi good to go? So to me, that was that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to go study calculus again and learn a little bit about aerodynamics. And I applied to test pilot school, got in and off the packs I went straight from VF 31. And that is that's a tough transition going from your combat unit from your brothers and sisters that is like a family. And then now you're on a shore tour and the mission is very gentle and there you know, the pace of life was a little bit different. School was very hard, but it's a big culture shock. Yeah. So three years operational going out to do good work. So then one year at test pilot school flying the T 38. And what else did you get to fly there? I feel like 30 airplanes. One of the coolest I flew gliders, helicopters. I got to fly a DC three. One of the coolest things I did was a giant albatross, you know, old radial engines and we did landings on Lake Tahoe. Oh my goodness. To get some sea time in. We just did all sorts of wonderful things. And then my capstone course was with the smartest guy you could ever meet, Colonel Doug Wicker Beaker in the Air Force. So he and I went out to Sweden and we flew the Gripping over there and we did like a mock evaluation of the Gripping, which was a true delight. And that was when I realized like I can call myself a test pilot, but Doug Wicker, that guy is a test pilot. Yeah. He just everything was in his brain. It was amazing to get to work with him. That's really cool. Where did you fly the Gripping at? Do you remember? Lynchoping. Lynchoping was the town. I don't exactly remember. Yeah. Lynchoping. Yeah. That was at the Shea in Sweden. And I actually got to fly the Gripping out of the north out of Luleå. But yeah, I visited Lynchoping many times. Oh yeah. And the Gripping was such a fun airplane. So neat. Yeah. That's really neat. So then you go to, was it VX 23? I went right across the street to VX 23. And being a Tomcat guy with no horn at time, I knew exactly where I was going and it was the T-45 project office. And I, like, that was a huge lesson learned for me, which was I went over there kicking and screaming. There was no part of me that wanted to go to the T-45 project office. I wanted to fly super hornets and I wanted to start building my future career in the Navy because there was not going to be a chance to get back to Tomcats. I felt like going to T-45 is just like a nail in my military coffin. But I went over there. I worked with this guy, Flopper Murphy. It was just two of us, two test pilots. We had our own budget. We had two airplanes. And we were doing things. I realized when I got there, we were doing things that were making a huge difference. And the training command, that thing had some direction control issues that one of my classmates at Kingsville had gotten killed on an aircraft carrier, Ryan Shelby. And we were solving those issues. And we solved those issues. I was at the tail end of that, but I still felt very proud of that. And then I was able to sleuth my way into ship suitability to start working with the LSOs, the landing signal officers there, VX 23, standing on the back of the boat. And then I got into more and more F-18 tests, got an F-18 qual, got a super hornet qual, and ended up doing grower tests and F-35 developmental work. I never got in the F-35, but I was in the sim a lot. So it was really neat to see how that command allowed me to build out my portfolio as I was there. But initially, T-40 project office. And I learned, you know, there's a lot of value. Sometimes the less glamorous job can bring you the most reward. And I really look back and cherish that time I had. And that's a lot to have done in two years? Yeah, three years. But I was hungry. Like, yeah, it was a short tour, but I was hungry. I wanted to be marketable back out to the fleet. I wanted to get back out there and fly off of aircraft carriers. And the only way I knew I was going to be useful as a department head was if I had gotten some super hornet time. And that's smart, because like you talked about, and you know, same thing with Top Gun and the weapons schools really valued what they provided. But I wanted to, as well, go more into the test world and to VX-9 and try to develop the systems that we could use against adversaries and maintain that, you know, dominance that we had. I didn't know that much about like the operational test and the VX-9 mission until I was a developmental test pilot and looking back. And honestly, I'm almost lucky I didn't know, because I think that would have been my number one choice coming out of VF-31, out of the Tomcat. The work that is being done out there on systems development, weapon system development, in hindsight, I think I would have enjoyed that immensely. Yeah, I'm sure you would have enjoyed it, because there was a lot to enjoy, especially flying Tomcats at a point of my go for me. But yeah, those were some good days. But one of the things that you had to deal with going into the test community was like you said, you had to make yourself marketable to come back. Whereas when you're at the weapons schools and you're a Top Gun, you're always interacting. You're marketable. Yeah, you're not only marketable, but you're always interacting with folks. So, you know, getting back to the fleet units, kind of showing them what was going on and also trying to encourage people to come explore the test community too, was something that we were having to do a lot. I think, man, this might not resonate, but one of the most important things, leaving the test community and going to a department head tour that mattered to me was I wanted the test community to have a good reputation back in the operational Navy. And so, going to 103, the amount of time I spent in the manuals, in the books, trying to read up on the modern tactics, how do we employ a super hornet. I didn't want anyone to look at me and think I was a test pilot. I wanted them to look at me and think I was a Top Gun graduate. I didn't have the patch, but that was my mindset going in. Like, I have got to be as hungry as possible right now, learn as much as I can about employing this machine because I knew my knowledge was very low. Yeah, that's right. A lot of very technical knowledge, but you've not... It was... ...war fighting knowledge. War fighting and being deliberate about doing that. But yeah, that was smart. So, you did that time at Pax River and a lot of amazing work there. And then, you end up coming to CAG staff. And so, that's where we started as we were talking. I was in 103, but I was working CAG ops at the time and you came to do... What was your role there on the CAG staff? So, it's interesting that we even ever crossed paths because from VX-23, I went to CAG 17 on the East Coast because I knew the Irwin commander there and one of my best friends, Jeff Bowman, was in the staff there. So, it felt like a great fit. So, I went there to be the strike ops officer. But at that time, CAG 17 had no air wing. So, we were a staff without aircraft. And so, I started coming over to the Rippers in 11, 103. I went out to a few other squadrons, some Hornet squadrons, to get some single seat Charlie time. And I started flying with those folks. And then CAG 7, they were on deployment and they knew that we basically had no air wing. So, they invited Jeff Bowman and myself out to the ship to spend time with CAG 7 underway just otherwise we would have had a two-year tour with no operational time at all. So, that was really nice. I think Sternow was the CAG at that time. He was. He invited us out. Yeah. And that was how I started Intersect with you and with 103 and CAG 7. And that's another interesting point you bring up because we were in 103, we joined in Tomcats and CAG 17. So, we come back to do the Super Hornet transition. And like you said, CAG 17 just got... Just disbanded. Yeah, decimated. And so, they still maintained the air wing staff, but you guys were kind of doing little things here and there. And that happens every now and through our cycles where we know we're going to build it up again. So, a guy like yourself, as you build up CAG 17, you got to have that strike-offs understanding because people are going to be relying on you to do your job so that the air wing can have all its scheduled events together and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, we were the glue that was just holding two operational time frames together in CAG 17. So, we had to be there. We had to do that. So, you spend that time with CAG staff and then you go to 103. So, yeah. And so, you get selected for that. And then, oh, one of the things that... So, I was talking to Jinxy Cat before. You know he and I have like the deepest relationship. Where we found ourselves and what he got me through in CAG 7 was truly epic. Well, that's a funny thing. So, we're saying that, you know, bringing you in country in a Super Hornet and you've got all of like 30 hours in it at that point. Maybe. Yeah. And we did the most... I don't know how much of this we really want to go into, but we're out there to do the most vanilla mission. We just had a photo pod on a sharp pod and we were going to go out and take some photographs over Afghanistan. And then next thing you know, it was early in the morning. That was when we did those routes. Like there was no chance of us having any sort of engagement with the enemy. We were in country for all of about five minutes and there were troops in contact and we were the only asset airborne. And so, Jinxy Cat and I are heading in and I had no business doing that. I mean, I knew how to operate that airplane, but without Jinx in the back, there was no way we were going to succeed. And we ended up in Winchester completely. I mean, we employed every bullet, every bomb that we had, trying to keep the enemy forces from the U.S. forces who were doing it. It was a construction battalion working on a highway there who had come in contact. And we also had another CAG staff on our wing and an Echo. And he also expended all of his coordinates. And then we were happy to stay on scene as long as needed, but we had nothing to give. We were empty. Yeah. When you were in 31, you had been in country? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like I was hungry for this moment. I just didn't expect it to come with 30 hours in the airplane. That's right. In an airplane that I was borrowing from a squadron to go into, you know, in the combat with. It was just the whole thing. I knew the junior officers in 103 were going to detest me when I landed. Because no one at that point on deployment had deployed. And here this CAG staff guy from a different air wing is in their airplane and he goes in with Jinx and has like, you know, one of the greatest close air support missions you could ever have. Yeah, that's amazing. You never know when it's going to happen, but you're ready to do it when it happens. Because like we said earlier, you're supporting those ground force elements out there. And so it really gives a lot of great meaning. Absolutely. That. So you go into 103 and at some point in 103. Well, when did you apply for NASA? Was it before? I actually applied in CAG 17. That was where my letters went in. But you know, NASA takes a long time to get the application process going and the interview process. So I started interviewing as our air wing was starting to deploy for my department at tour, which was an awkward time. But I had Brian Garrison was our commanding officer and incredibly supported human being right there and combat Kimmel was our exo. And he was a yes, combat. He was also supportive in his own unique way. Intense combat. Yeah. Yeah. So then you're on deployment, you hear about it. And then off to astronaut training. We've got a couple of great podcasts with Scott Tangle, who goes into a lot of that application and astronaut training stuff. And so I want to kind of accelerate through that unless there's anything kind of nuanced or particular about your time through astronaut training. No, a thousand nuances, but I think you have to nail on the head. If folks can go watch what my buddy Scott said, I'm sure he's way more literate than I am. Some people would debate that. But anyway, we won't get into that here. So then you end up doing an ISS mission. This is post shuttle. And so you go into ISS. Scott and I got hired in 2009. We were in the same class. He was my boss at Pax River. So Scott Tangle and I are great. I just saw him. He was actually right across the hall from where we are. I just saw him this morning. But yeah, I got here in 2009 with Scott. I flew to the space station on a Russian Soyuz in 2014 to the International Space Station. And I think I'll just I'll keep this brief, but I was so sad that the shuttle had gone away. To me, that was the Tomcat of human spaceflight. Everybody wanted to fly that thing. And I was sad it went away until I got to the space station and spent six months orbiting our Earth. And that was when I realized I would have flown the shuttle on a 10 day or two week mission. And I would have missed that opportunity of living off the planet for six months. And I wouldn't have known what I was missing. But to get to be on space station, conducting science every day, learning to live off of our planet, getting to look down at Earth, to see every place I'd been in the Navy, every vacation I'd ever been on, to look down and analyze it from 250 miles up. That was the coolest thing I have ever done in my life. And I had a really cool experience following you through AstroRead Twitter. It went a little crazy. But it was fun to do that. But the camera shots you were taking were just, I remember one in particular, I think it was in the cupola with the red dye that was hanging out there. And just really some really neat, creative, amazing photographs to really share that experience. I know you talked to Doug Hurley earlier, but his wife Karen Nyberg was a good friend of mine here before they moved to Utah. But she was my motivation for that. When she flew about two years before I flew, I just watched the way she did photography and you can tell she's an artist. And the way that she would capture Earth, that is what I wanted to try to do while I was up there. And so everything I learned about photography, I learned from either Don Pettit on how to operate the camera or from Karen Nyberg on that artistic way to just show how beautiful our Earth is. And then you, during that time, you did have an EVA. I had two space walks, about six and a half hours each. First one, I went out with Alex Gerst of German. And second one was with Butch Wilmore, a fellow Navy pilot. I'm not sure the two of us should have been outside together, but we got the job done. It was fantastic. Let's go work with him. What was that like the first time going outside? I expected to be completely terrified. I am scared of heights. Like I can't stand at the edge of a building. I'm fine in a cockpit. I'm fine in space. But I was really worried a couple of days before going out on that first spacewalk. But myself and Alex Gerst were both rookies. We had, and we were heading out together on a rookie, rookie spacewalk, which hadn't happened in a couple of decades here. Now it's commonplace. And I remember opening that hatch and just looking out. And it looked just like being in the stack at night off the carrier in the Pacific Ocean. I could see the clouds down there was nighttime. I could see the Pacific Ocean just way underneath of us. And I was like, oh, this is nothing. I got this. And I went out and we got the job done. And it's it's a little terrifying, but it's glorious to be out there. The only thing you have is your plexiglass visor that's keeping you safe. That's your little motor run and to keep your action system working. And then it's all about the ground teams just walking you through this really complicated maintenance task. And that is another thing where you look at it at a spacewalk from Earth, like just watch it on TV. You can maybe watch about 10 minutes before you get so bored. You turn it off. Yeah. But when you are out there, it is so mentally and physically taxing. It's just like that RMC role that we were talking about earlier. When you come in from that spacewalk, I came in from my first spacewalk. All I wanted to do was go home. I was just so done. Everything I had left on the field, I wasn't frustrated. I was just exhausted. That's right. Mentally and physically exhausted. One of the things I noted looking at Expedition 41, you guys set some kind of record for you mentioned the science experiments you're doing. So you're doing all kinds of experiments up there on the ISS that are being brought up there for you guys to do out there. So you did like 82 hours of experiments. So, I mean, what kind of things did you have to learn to do to make sure these experiments run? We do a lot of training on Earth to learn how to run the machinery that is going to run the experiment. So, you know, all the machinery really well. The thing that's so wonderful when you're up there is you're running these experiments for a team on the ground. So you're talking to them and the neat thing for me was now you're in space, running the experiments and you get to watch what is happening. You're either like melting metal and quenching it and watching the crystallization or you're burning different fabrics to see how they burn and weightlessness. Or you're doing fluids experiments with capillary flow or you're doing experiments on your own body. Like the amount of ultrasound I've done in my own legs and my heart, my eyes, like ultrasound in your own eye and your own heart. But just seeing the changes, like all that was fascinating. It was just like being back as a test pilot. Like you're just learning everything along with these teams. And I love that aspect of it. And just in the experiments, you know, one of the insightful videos I saw you did when you were up there was some of the technology that's up there with, I mean, changing urine into drinking water. And, you know, all the things that we need to do to be able to live up there for long periods of time. So now taking ISS. So now we're getting ready for Artemis 2. So we saw Artemis 1 go off unmanned, go around the 10 day mission around the moon. Fascinating, loved having my kids, you know, watch that and follow along. And so now we're going to do a crew mission. So it introduces to the crew and because you're the mission commander. And in particular, we talked a lot about, like, you know, two place airplanes, multiple airplanes. Who's the crew and how are you as a mission commander interacting with your pilot and the other crew members? Great question. I guess now we're like an S3 Viking or a prowler, right? You've got a crew of four. Myself, I am flying with. I'm not sugarcoating this. I am flying with the three guys, people that you could ever be. They're funny, they're smart. They're so wonderful. So Victor Glover will be with me on the crew. Also Christina Cook, who's got an engineering background and lived in really all steer environments and then Jeremy Hansen, who's a Canadian F-18 pilot. So oddly enough, we have three former F-18 pilots all on the crew. So yeah, one of our Randy Bresnick Marine joke the other day, you know, it's Christina and her three pilots. But man, this crew is so wonderful to work with. We take a lot of focus on interpersonal relations, nothing slides. We talk about everything. But what I see when we're in these classes, I want, first of all, I want every single one of us to fly Orion. Like we're sitting here at the base of the simulator. Yeah, so what is this here? This is one of our primary places to train. So we're in a full dome simulator, the Orion cockpit. You can see kind of highlighted in red behind us. We have four windows, but this is where we're going to train all of our flying for Orion as we leave Earth, head around the moon. As soon as we come off the planet, we're going to do a rendezvous and prox operations demonstration using our booster or upper stage as kind of a target vehicle. So we'll bring Orion off. I'm going to hand the ship over to Victor Glover and Christina, and they're going to operate Orion and fly around this, this upper stage to make sure all the handling qualities are great. So that'll be pure test piloting right there. It's critical for me that all four crew members put their hands on the controls, that all four of us fly this vehicle, interact with this vehicle, because we got one shot to do a developmental test on this thing before we put our friends on it for Artemis III and hopefully land on the moon. So we want to make sure this thing is nailed and getting Victor's perspective. Christina's perspective, Jeremy's perspective is going to be critical to this. Honestly, as the commander, I got the easiest job in the world. All I have to do is sit back and watch these three professionals work and what they bring to the table. I'm just, I'm in all of these people every day, I get to work with them. Mm hmm. That is incredible. So like you mentioned, you know, one of the things that struck me is this is a test flight. We're going to go out there. We're going to test all the systems. Again, Doug Hurley kind of talked about that with Crew Dragon, where he and Bob Bankin were probably the only people are ever going to manually fly that because they did that as test points. So you mentioned the ICPS, the what's the upper stage, the intermcri-genic propulsion stage. And that is once we come off the space launch system, we'll be in Earth orbit. And then the ICPS will boost our orbit first to 1200 miles and then out to 38,000 miles around the Earth. And that's a 24 hour orbit. We will have an insane view of the entire planet. And then if the ship is working great and all systems are go, Mission Control will give us a call for TLI Translunar and we'll use the European service module, much smaller system that's on the Orion capsule that will send us off to the moon. So that upper stage is not going to power us out to the moon. It did on Artemis one. OK. But for Artemis two, we're going to use that for our rendezvous and proxops and then we'll power ourselves out to the moon on the Orion European service model. OK. So we only got a few minutes left. So we're going to try to hit some. We spent too long talking about Tomcats, but. Never too long. Never too long. And I know there's you guys do a lot of interviews and stuff about what you're going to be doing and you're going to be doing. This is going to happen supposedly late 2024. I think we're not going to make that. I think we'll be a little bit later. As the crew, we don't even think about launch date. Like we are working with the teams and when this thing is certified for flight readiness, we'll be ready to go climb on board. So we're a Patreon and supported podcast. So we have folks who do send in some questions. So one of them, Matt McDonough, asks, he's into watches. And so wondering what watch are you going to wear when you're keeping time out there in space? I will wear whatever watch NASA tells me to wear. You know, branding is a huge deal. We just don't do it. We don't do it in the military as well. But historically, Omega watches have been worn by all the Apollo astronauts. We have a digital Omega that we still wear to space station that we are given by NASA. And then we turn back in when we get home. And so I have to assume we'll be wearing something something very similar. The critical thing is we will rely on a standard old wristwatch to make sure we're going out beyond the GPS constellation. We're going out to the moon. We're going where we haven't been since 1972. I was in a training class yesterday and the whole training class was focused on time and how critical time is. And if the vehicle gets out of sync, how can we update it from ground? And then if we can't do that because of some failure mode, we truly are taking time off our wristwatch, punching it into the computers. And hitting a reboot of time. So it's a great question. Time will be very critical for us. Yeah, we talked about the four crew and Jeremy's pretty tall. Jeremy's not short. Yeah. And there's four of you in this for 10 days. Well, the real space gets a little bigger than that. Well, yeah, but we are in that. And, you know, this you get a little bit of an idea here behind us over in another building. Here we have a medium fidelity, full size mock up. And we've gotten in there and you know what? It's going to be tight. I mean, it's not crazy tight, but it's going to be tight. When we set up to go to bed at night, we take up most of the cabin with sleeping bags. Yeah, so it but it'll be fun. It'll be a nine day camping expedition. Nine day camping expedition with the best view you could ever have. Best view, but no walk in the park. You're not doing any external stuff. We'll do exercise. We have like a resistance flywheel machine. So we'll get a few hours a day where each of us can cycle through that. So we'll get a little bit of exercise. OK. And so kind of from the test flight perspective, we talked about the proximity stuff, which is I imagine for when we have Gateway out around so that you can get where human lander so that we know how to dock, how to fly around another vehicle and make sure all the systems on our Ryan are ready for that manual control should we need it. But you hit the nail on the head with Artemis, too. It is like developmental flight test to the core. We're going to get into every manual system that we possibly can. We're going to manually point solar rays. We're going to manually introduce oxygen and nitrogen into the cabin all the way down to like the backup to the backup manual valves, making sure that works. We're going to do our own burn targeting. We're going to do our own burns when we're flying around the upper stage. So we're going to try to have this thing completely tested before Artemis 3. We even have a radiation shelter in the spacecraft. So we'll configure the radiation shelter in case there's some sort of solar event that we would need to shelter on future Artemis missions. So we are going to do everything we can to get this vehicle ready for the next cruise. Another Patreon supporter. He goes by YouTuber. But he brings up a really great question that I wonder about. We see SpaceX Starship getting ready to try to launch again. We've seen all the amazing Falcon 9 stuff just walking around Johnson Space Center and learning more about the systems. You got all kinds of it's not just NASA. There is an entire ecosystem supporting this through the ESA service module and, you know, the rocket nine. Everybody's in on this. So what's that ecosystem like and how much competition is there in the ecosystem? Or is it, you know, cooperation or how do you look at that kind of ecosystem? I think if you looked in the details, you could find competition everywhere and that's OK. Competition is a good thing. But I think if you step back and look at what we're doing in Artemis as a whole, NASA has set a trajectory, which is sustainable presence, permanent sustainable presence on and around the moon so that we can advance to Mars. And then all of the tech that comes in to fill those holes is where my passion comes in. So is it just NASA? No, it's NASA. It's European Space Agency. It's the Canadian Space Agency, Japanese Space Agency. Hopefully the United Arab Emirates are coming on board. The Artemis Accords for the peaceful use of the moon now signed by 29 nations around the planet. And then where we have holes in our ability, you got fixed price contracts with SpaceX to build a lander. Now Blue Origin coming on board to build a lander. And then where you start to get out of the glossy brochure a little bit are these commercial payload systems that NASA has said, hey, we want to land this payload on the moon. Who's going to do that for us? And so Intuitive Machines is right down the road. They're getting ready to launch. One of my former classmates, Jack Fisher, works down at Intuitive Machines. So they're launching payloads to the surface of the moon. It's amazing to step back and look at all of the private industry that's lining up behind a single vision of sustainable presence on and around the moon. Future exploration on Mars just set that goal. And then looking at the space station commercial crew program, incredibly successful, especially on the SpaceX side, what they are doing. They've had now two private missions to the space station through Axiom. SpaceX has launched one fully private mission with Jared, doing inspiration for and they're going to do another with Polaris, Don. What they're doing that's coming on the heels of commercial crew. Bob and Doug got that vehicle ready to fly with SpaceX, really talented SpaceX engineers and now other people are reaping those benefits. And I love that. Like that to me. That's that's like panacea. It's perfect. And it's a lot to do. So it's great to have so many partners huge involved in making that happen. It's the golden era of human space right now. I just look around. It's it's everywhere and it's it's a wonderful thing. Yeah, I wish we had another hour to talk, but we got to wrap it up. So we do have a tradition of, you know, there's I noticed in NASA, not a lot of call sign usage, but you didn't have a call sign before you care to share or shed light on where your call sign came from. I would love to. I just you almost become your call sign. So my call sign is Tonto. And now that I live in Houston, I try to tamp down use of my call sign because fairly Spanish speaking town. And it's not the best word. It's basically idiot in Spanish. But in VF 31, I had just gotten to my first fleet squadron. And you know, there's a big ceremony, the patching ceremony at the officers club that night where you get into your squadron. So I get brought into VF 31. They're putting patches all over me. I feel like King Kong. Like I've made it to the gray fighter, the big gray fighter, the Tomcat. And and I also get handcuffed to me this horrific baboon trophy called the mother trophy. And and the guy who handcuffs it to my arm is like, hey, the junior pilot has got to carry this trophy everywhere. And you can only handcuff it to go to bed and he gives me the keys. So I get home that night and I uncoff the trophy. I put it in my laundry basket under some laundry in my closet. I'm like, ah, no one will ever find it. And then later that night, like all these fleet aviators are coming to my house. Like VF 14, VF 41. Like, wow, this is amazing. I love it. I've arrived. This is the best. And then it dawns on me about 30 minutes later. Oh, no, they're here to steal the trophy. So I go back upstairs and trophies gone, clothes are everywhere. And I called my CEO at the time was Victor Oliveras. And, you know, he's a he's a Spanish guy and he just walks in on Saturday morning. We had to have an all aircrew meeting because of me. I had lost this trophy. So I'm in the fleet for not even 24 hours and I've already had an all aircrew meeting called for me and Victor Oliveras walks right in the righty room. He's just like, Tonto. And that was it, man. I was taught over and I love it. It's a great it's just a good it's a good call sign. And it really embodies me like I just I like to be myself and humans are going to make mistakes and we just get to work and be as professional as we can every single day and they're going to be hookups along the way and just try to deal with them on and carry on. Yep, that's great. We have to end and it's a great story to end on. And also by giving you the fighter pod podcast coin and here's a little guest patch that we give all of our guests when we come on. So this is a really special time for us. I want you to have these things. All right, thank you. Yeah, I'll make sure these get put in a special spot and maybe snuck on a ride if I can make it happen. Well, that would be amazing. I know weight is important out there. Again, Reed, really great to see you. Always really wonderful to follow along on your continued expeditions out to the atmosphere and beyond. So really look forward to seeing that and seeing what you and the NASA team and everybody else gets to make out of this Artemis missions and towards the vision. So thanks for spending time with us on the fighter pilot podcast. You bet.