Pushing Beyond Your Limits

DH: Yeah. Isn’t that a big challenge for, not necessarily most people, but many people though Scott? Because they think that they may be from a developed country or have a degree from the most prestigious university, then the best idea should be coming from those areas.

SP: Yeah, that’s kind of been entrenched in our culture but I’ve seen it in the real world. A job that I had, at one point, I was the Chief Technology Officer at a medical research Institute here at Houston, Texas called Houston Methodist and I would do these round table sessions and I would get nursing staff and respiratory technicians and janitorial staff and doctors and business people all in a room and we would talk about things that were working well in the hospital system and things that weren’t. And I tell you by a large, it was the nursing staff and the respiratory technicians who are on the front lines who were not the people that were traditionally sought after for their ideas but they had the best ideas. They saw what was working and what wasn’t. They knew what generated the best outcomes and what didn’t and so that really reinforced in me the need to really broaden your aperture. It’s not just the fancy degree that gets you the best ideas.

DH: The fancy degree and the big title, that is so true. I think people disregard or discount the fact that the person on the ground, as I say on the front line, who was having the everyday experience and because they’re passionate and care about what they are doing, they can actually see ways to improve.

SP: Right on.

DH: So, you have, wow, such an adventurous spirit. You’ve gone out of space, you’re mountaineering, you scuba dive, we’re going to talk about the fact that you abseiled or rappelled down into volcanoes in addition to all the other things that you do and so I look at your resume, so to speak and I’m like, man, I’ve been wasting my time away. I’m not so accomplished. When do you sleep?

SP: Well, my motto in life, and it’s probably yours too because I know the kind of pace that you keep and the things that you do, and you’re a real pioneer in so many different ways. But for me I tell people you sleep when you die, right?

DH: That’s an idea. All right.

SP: But you know, life is an adventure and there are challenges to be taken so, I don’t watch much TV. I’d rather be doing than watching. So that’s just kind of my approach.

DH: Got you. So, how did you develop this adventurous spirit though?

SP: I owe a lot to my parents. I was an only child, so we had the opportunity to pick up and move and so in the aftermath of the Apollo program that first sent astronauts to the moon in the late sixties, early seventies, my father’s company, the Boeing airplane company, was looking to diversify around the world and my folks love to travel, they’re very adventurous as well. And so they said, hey, there’s this opportunity in Dakar, Senegal, the Westernmost point of Africa. They needed business representatives there and so my dad stepped forward and it was one of the most wonderful experiences in my life. I think how my life would’ve been so much different had I just grown up in Arlington, Virginia and gone to Yorktown high school and just kind of stayed the straight and narrow. I would have not had any of the wonderful things that have happened in my life.

DH: So, you mentioned the Apollo program, I think I read that your dad was a rocket scientist and worked on the space program?

SP: Yeah. He was an engineer helping develop the first stage of the largest rockets ever built, the most powerful rockets ever built. And I remember seeing from the beach in Florida, Apollo nine launch and knowing that my dad had been a part of that and knowing what they were up there to do. It was so exciting and I developed this long-range view. I’ve got to find a way to be a part of this. Even if I couldn’t become an astronaut I wanted to be a part of the space program in some way, contribute.

DH: Right. So, from a very early age and knew you wanted to be involved in NASA and perhaps become an astronaut.

SP: Right, absolutely. Yeah.

DH: Who was your childhood hero growing up?

SP: I had so many. I read a lot about adventurous people; so explorers. So, Lewis and Clark, Jacques Cousteau, Hillary and Irvine….not Mallory and Irvine, Hillary and Tenzing Norgay the first on Everest and, of course, the pioneering cosmonauts and astronauts, Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn. Those are the types of folks that really inspired me to become an Explorer.

DH: How many of those persons did you get a chance to meet?

SP: Well, let’s see. I got to meet Captain Cousteau and I met….flew space with John Glenn, the very first American to orbit the earth, so that was really awesome but only those two, unfortunately. I’d idolized Ed Hillary, but unfortunately, he passed before I got a chance to meet him.

DH: Right. So what was it like hanging out with John Glenn in space? He was the first American…

SP: The first American to orbit the earth, yeah. He had flown in 1962 on a tiny little spaceship. It’s about the size of a VW Bug, tiny little thing. And so yeah, he got a chance to come back and fly with us aboard the shuttle and it was a very different experience because you could actually get out of your seat and float so a more physical experience and a great view of the planet. He was kind of limited in his first space flight back in the 60s. So it was awesome to share outer space with my boyhood hero. It’s sort of like playing soccer with Pele or basketball with Michael Jordan. You got to be in the game with the ultimate hero.

DH: Yeah, I can imagine that. I remember watching the news on that and I didn’t know you were on that flight, but when you guys came back and the crew didn’t alight from the spacecraft immediately because they said that John was a little bit nauseous, was throwing up, is that correct?

SP: Yeah, he had a little bit of motion sickness after the flight. It’s not uncommon for some people that have a little bit of nausea and so, he ended up for about one day after the flight, having a little bit of an upset stomach. So we gave him some IV fluids.

DH: Right. So you, obviously from a very early age, wanted to be involved in a space program, possibly flying as well, but you chose to become a doctor as opposed to an engineer. Why that choice?

SP: Well, the space program actually takes a number of different fields from medicine to engineering to aviation in aerospace and then other types of science. So we have astrophysicists and plant biologists and even a couple of veterinarians have flown in space. So people of different scientific and engineering backgrounds are selected to become astronauts because that’s the type of science that we do up there.

DH: But also, I guess it speaks to something you said earlier just about having all of these multi-disciplines on a team to get the best results.

SP: That’s exactly right. And in fact, one of the things that I really loved about the job is that it really called upon us to become generalists in a lot of different areas. So I became quite knowledgeable in oceanography and meteorology and astronomy because these are the kinds of things that I was called upon to support up in space. So, a lifetime of learning is something that I really value, it can change, kind of pressure your knowledge.

DH: Indeed, continuous learning. I speak about that all the time. So, how does one become an astronaut? How do you get accepted into the space program, Scott?

SP: Well, in this day and age it’s gotten even tougher. So this last class that they selected about a year and a half ago had 18,000 applications for I think 12 people who were ultimately selected. So, it’s long odds, but having the right kind of skillset which includes a scientific or engineering background but then I think a team framework, to have been successful in different team environments. And obviously, there are certain other skillsets that are helpful to have been on expeditions, to have been a pilot or a scuba diver, these are the kinds of things that are useful skills. You can learn it after you’ve been selected too if you want to. And then, I think it’s a very multicultural environment now as well. We fly with European, Canadian, Japanese, Russian colleagues and in the future, there will be even more participants from around the world. So, speaking other languages, having cross-cultural sensitivities I think is really useful.

DH: Yeah. So, dude, you operate in some really extreme environments where failure is not really an option. We’re going to get into that in a minute, but for those areas where you know, you can recover from failure, let’s say on a luge run when you crash or…

SP: A lot of bruises, a lot of bruises, man.

DH: Bruises, yeah. I know we spoke about the fact that you climbed Everest, but that was your second attempt. So how do you deal with failure?

SP: Well, I guess in the broader context, the way you prepare for challenging environments, high-risk environments is being really well prepared. So understanding is many of the potential risks out there as you possibly can, having risk mitigation strategies for them, to be as mentally and physically prepared as you possibly can, to know your team is as well as you possibly can too. Everest is a good example to look at the weather forecast, to make sure that you have a long enough weather window to have a good shot at making it up and back. You’ve got to plan on making it a round trip, not a one way.

DH: A round trip, right? Not just a one-way.

SP: Yeah, there are enough of those examples up there, unfortunately. So, I took the same rigor to Everest that I use for preparing for space flight. Just I was really laser-focused on not just seeing myself successful in attaining the summit, but getting back to base camp at the end of the climb.

DH:  So, outside of those extreme environments in the personal or business environment, how do you deal with failure and what lessons do you draw from say, Everest or space flight to apply to those experiences ungrounded?

DH: Failure’s a part of our everyday existence and we can’t be avoided. No person is universally successful. I don’t care how wonderful and smart and perfect you happen to be or think that you are, you’re never going to have 100% success. In fact, we have to kind of take advantage of failure and learn from failure. And so, we started talking about Everest there. My first attempt on Mount Everest in 2008, initially, I called it a failure, but when I look back on it now, I consider it one of my greatest successes. I didn’t make it to the top of the mountain in 2008 because I had ruptured a disc in my low back, my lumbar spine, and I could have potentially pressed on in a very compromised way because my aspiration was to stand atop of that mountain but if I had done that I would have jeopardized not only my own life potentially, but I would have jeopardized the summit success of my teammates, maybe even put them in a life or death situation. So when I look back on that defining moment in my life, the go, no-go decision I did the right thing. I succeeded. I decided it’s time for me to descend. And so when I finally got home here to Houston and I got in an MRI scanner, I needed emergency surgery. I had a ruptured disc that needed to be repaired.

DH: Right. As you said earlier, you could have, caused significant damage or even kill yourself and others.

SP: Right, yeah. Yeah.

DH: So you spoke about mitigating risks when you’re in an environment like climbing Everest are going to outer space, you prepare as well as you possibly can mentally, physically but then there’s still the possibility that things could go haywire, you could get killed. So I often look at, when I assess risk, I always say, is that something I can “live with”? If it goes awry, I may not be alive but is that something that I’m prepared to deal with? How do you view that? How do you approach those extreme risks?

SP:Yeah, it’s a very difficult thing, especially as a parent. And I struggled with this as an astronaut, knowing that the risks were as considerable as they were but it was my life’s work. It’s something that I aspired to as a young kid and also, I consider that the benefits of the work by large outweigh those risks. So, if you’re part of a mission that’s larger than life and you can do everything that you possibly can to minimize those risks to maximize your chances of success then sometimes taking of that risk is worth it. So, when I think back to my Everest years I’m not sure that the benefits of going there really warrant those risks. And in fact, when I look at the risks now on the mountain with the hundreds and hundreds of people that are attempting to scale the mountain and the exposure that those people have, I don’t think that I would take on the mountain at this point in my life.

DH: That’s an interesting point. I can see the higher purpose, so to speak, of space travel. I can definitely see the draw to the top of Everest by Norgay, Tenzing Norgay, and Edmund Hillary. Nobody had ever done it before. What do you think is the draw today, if there is? I don’t know. Do you think there’s a scientific purpose? There’s a scientific reward for climbing Everest today?

SP: I think so. It’s still something that’s deep within the human imagination. There’s a deep fascination with the highest peak, the deepest part of our ocean places that are difficult and inaccessible to get to. And for my visits to Everest, they became a platform for education and outreach. So we were able to reach out to hundreds of thousands of school kids around the United States during that climb. So we derived a lot of benefit from it, talking about the corollaries between space flight and the exploration of Everest. But yeah, in terms of the ultimate good that can come from standing atop Everest, it’s mostly a personal fulfillment. For me when I look back on my Everest years, the fact that I was able to go back the second year and overcome the challenges of the prior year and stand on top of that mountain, it gives me incredible strength. I feel that anything I set my sights on if I work hard enough if I’m tenacious and resilient, I can get there. And so it gives me an inner strength that perhaps your Olympic, yours kind of gives you that inner power that I’ve done tough things in my life and yet right now it’s tough again, but I’m going to keep going.

DH: Precisely. So, yeah, so talking about toughness and the Olympic experience. So, when I’m standing at the start of a bobsled,I’m nervous, scared to death. Certainly, when I started out I was scared to death. How do you deal with fear, Scott? Because I am picturing what’s going through your mind as you’re preparing to get in that bus and go to, is that I forgot the name of the vehicle that you get into.

SP: The space shuttle.

DH: Yeah, to go to the launchpad. What’s going on in your mind?

SP: Yeah. Your heart is racing but you have a calmness that’s derived from the fact that you’re surrounded by people that you love. They become a second family to you. You know that they’ve worked assiduously to be prepared for the flight, you know that your flight control team is well-prepared. You know that every person who’s turned a wrench to prepare that space shuttle has done their very best and you’re going out there to fulfill a lifelong dream of flying in space and so, armed with that, you can kind of quell your nerves. You know that in the simulations before the flight, you’ve handled some really difficult situations and you’ve passed all the exams and you’re ready to go. It’s game day. It’s the fourth run in the Olympic bobsled…

DH: And the start is free, it’s time to go.

SP: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s it.

DH: Yes, I know that feeling well. So, talk to us a little bit because most of us have no idea what this feels like. Being strapped to a rocket and being blasted out of the atmosphere.

SP: Yeah, it’s crazy. You crawl in on your hands and knees about two hours before the launch and you get strapped in on your back.

DH: So you have all that time to change your mind, right?

SP: Yeah, you do. Yeah, it’s a lot of time to think. In fact, funny story. I remember the first time I was on the space shuttle and they had closed the hatch with this big, loud clang and we had to do a leak check to make sure that it was safe for us to leave the planet. And it’s just us in our intercom and then there’s the launch director and our flight surgeon that can kind of hear what the banter around the cockpit is. We’re telling bad and just kind of goofing around and it’s pretty carefree and easy until what we call the T-9 minute hold. After we come out of that T-9 minute hold, the clock doesn’t stop until you leave the planet or you screw up the launch or something so it gets really serious at that point. And I remember this…..all the banter stopped and we’re doing things for real. It was looking like we’re going to go into space and I thought to myself, what would happen if I were to just say over the com loop right now? Hey guys, I want to get the hell outta here. I changed my mind, but I never did that. I never said that.

DH: That’s what you call a serious sense of humor failure.

SP: Yeah, that’s right.

DH: One of the coolest T-shirts I’ve ever received, I was in Lake Placid January 1988 before the Olympics and there was someone there on the US bobsled team who was from the NASA program. I’m not sure what it is about bobsledding that attracts people from NASA, but they come in and train, and the T-shirt says “NASA, don’t leave earth without us” and I really liked that shirt. So, you get blasted out, describe weightlessness to us and describe a little bit of life on the spaceship.

SP: Yeah. So, the launch count has started and the butterflies are building. You’re wearing a 70-pound spacesuit with a big harness and a parachute on your back. And so, at T-zero you go from one G or your normal body weight to three times your normal body weight so, you’ve got all this force squeezing you back in your seat and a lot of noise and a lot of vibration. And by the time you clear the launch tower a hundred feet later, you’re already going a hundred miles an hour. It’s just an incredible sense of acceleration. Eight and a half minutes later, you’re going to be going 17,500 miles an hour. So it’s just this blinding speed.

DH: What are you feeling inside the spaceship at that time? Like your face is being peeled back? What’s going on?

SP: It’s not like some of the movies you may have seen that are nine, 10 G’s, changing the shape of your face, not that kind of acceleration. It’s three G’s, which is…

DH: Okay, bobsled…

SP: Yeah, it’s a fair amount of force, sustained force. So you have to inhale, you have to forcefully pull in air and then you just relax your chest to exhale. So, it’s a lot of work over that eight and a half minutes, but it’s not painful or blinding. But there’s a lot of noise and vibration as you leave the planet. And then what we call MECO or main engine cut-off, when we’ve attained our orbital velocity, everything starts to float around you. The cables around start to float around the cockpit and you feel like you’re floating out of your seat, even though your seat restraints are still really tight. You can look out the four windows of the shuttle and you can see the curvature of the earth and the blue planet below it’s just mind-blowingly beautiful, like a dream.

DH: Yeah. So when you’re in outer space, what is it like looking back on earth, how many of you are typically on a mission?

SP: Six or seven people would be on a space shuttle and then when we are docked to the space station, we’d have another three people. So about 10 people all together hanging out.

DH: Yes. So 10 of you are in outer space looking back on this, the third rock from the sun that has 7 million people, 6 million people, what is that like?

SP: It’s sort of an out of body experience. You realize that all of human history, all of humanity is there beneath you and you’re the only seven to 10 people who are up here in space sharing this amazing experience. You see the planet beneath you without boundaries, without lines that depict international boundaries or dots that depict cities but a confluence of humanity really. And so you really see the planet in this way in which you wish politicians could see it. You wonder, what would it be like if the leaders of Palestine and Israel were to the flyover their Homeland together? Could they even believe in the concept of war after having had that shared experience? The futility of it would become incredibly apparent. You see, unfortunately, the scars of humanity from that perspective too. So you see a bilge dumping in the ocean, you see jet contrails, you see soot across the Siberian plateau where the railway kind of leaves its deposit. You see a center pivot irrigation and the signature of human life on the planet is actually the ugliest thing that you can perceive from that vantage point. Cities are gray and kind of ugly, but the nature is just magnificent. The mountains, the coral reefs, the forest, it’s phenomenal. Life-changing.

DH: Over 47 hours doing a spacewalk to include this one particular one that is pretty historic. Did I read you were out for seven hours on this one particular spacewalk?

SP: On a couple of occasions I spent over seven hours outside but my last career spacewalk wasn’t epic, though it was really pretty extraordinary. We went out on an unplanned contingency spacewalk to repair a live solar panel. It was at the very tip of the space station further than we’d ever gone before and had to basically suture up the solar panel bringing it back to life. And it was really sort of an Apollo 13 sort of situation because we couldn’t go to the hardware store and get a solar ray repair kit. We had to build it with the supplies that we had aboard the space shell space station complex.

DH: So, I remember watching a video of you talking about the fact that it took you 45 minutes to get to the end of the shuttle, the…

SP: Space station.

DH: Right. That seems like that required a tremendous amount of physical strength and energy, am I correct?

SP: Well, so at that point, I was actually at the end of a 90-foot long robotic boom. So, my feet were actually installed on a boot plate, almost like a snowboarder would use. So I had to set up all this gear and get all my tools out there, but then it was up to the robotics drivers inside the space station to then fly me out to the tip of the space station. So that particular spacewalk was not as physical, but it was certainly, higher risk because we couldn’t turn off the solar panel when we’re working on it. So I had to be very, very careful not to have any direct contact for fear of electrocution.

DH: Talk to me about the level of innovation that you mentioned it’s kind of an Apollo 13 moment that you had an issue, you’re being MacGyver as it were, right? You had an issue in space and you had to kind of look around your space ship and I’m kind of imagining you’re digging into drawers. So you guys are digging into drawers and pulling stuff out and going, let’s see if we can make this work. Well, talk to me about the level of innovation and teamwork that’s required to pull something off like that.

SP: Teamwork with a capital T, that’s exactly what it was all about. So, we had a situation that no one had ever imagined before in a place that we had never thought we’d have to ever go to do work that was extremely dangerous but other than that, it was a typical day in space. So people worked around the clock for 72 hours, three days, with an understanding of the things that we had on board, the tools, and the personnel that we had on board, what can we do with this to affect a repair? So it involves several challenges. First off, we didn’t have a robotic arm system that could even reach out to that, that distance. So we had to cobble together an inspection boom that had never been planned to be used in this way before to be my perch. So to create this 90-foot long robotic boom, that was one challenge. Then we had to figure out a trajectory that it could be flown it. We had all these solar panels and other things on the outside of the space station. How can we even safely get a person there within the duration of a spacewalk? We have limited supplies in our backpack. That was very challenging. Then what do you do when you get out there? Well, okay, we have to kind of stabilize this unstable solar panel. So we had to fashion…..we called them cufflinks but pieces of wire about five feet in length with pieces of aluminum shim stock that we cut to size so that we could actually stabilize the rip in this solar panel. But all this stuff had to be kind of invented on the fly and people in mission control, Houston, in particular, came up with this crazy idea to get someone out there and do the work and I happened to be the lead space Walker and I got the honor to do that.

DH: Amazing. So you’re in outer space, talk to us a little bit about re-entry, what is it like coming back into the Earth’s atmosphere?

SP: It’s not quite as dynamic as the launch. The launch, it’s just kind of eye-watering and other-worldly. Landing is hard on the body though as well because even though we don’t have the high G’s, it’s about one and a half G’s forcing blood from our head down to our feet but you’ve been in space for a couple of weeks so your body is de-conditioned. Your heart hasn’t pumped against gravity and muscles and bones haven’t fought the force of gravity. So, your body is sort of atrophied even in just a couple of weeks. So we wear a G-suit that squeezes our legs and our abdomen, we take on extra fluid, we call it fluid loading, drink about 40 ounces of water with salt tablets to reconstitute our circulation and yeah, it’s quite uncomfortable, I guess I would say taking on the G’s again. I feel like a hundred-year-old man. I’m being squeezed down in my seat and I’ve got a 70 pounds backpack on plus my own body weight that I’m not used to carrying anymore. So the first you know, several minutes of G onset……when we start to feel the G’s, it’s a kind of a strange sensation. But yeah, for a  space shuttle astronaut who has been up in space for a couple of weeks, you get your legs back relatively quickly. For the longer duration astronauts like my friend Scott Kelly who spent 340 days up there, it could be several months before you get your balance and your strength back.

DH: Yeah, I can imagine. Having read that when you guys are on, let’s say the space station, you’re working out, you’re exercising, what does that entail?

SP: Yeah. So we have a variety of different things we can do. So on the space shuttle, we had a bicycle ergometer just to kind of keep our cardiovascular fitness but if you’re up for longer periods of time, months at a time, you need to do resistive exercise training. You can’t take a stack of barbells with you because it’s not going to have any volume. So we use a hydraulic system and so you can do squats and we reconfigure this rack to do all sorts of different exercises. It’s really important.

DH: I was thinking about that. I’m like, man, I could really be the World Heavyweight Power Lifting Champion in space.

SP: Absolutely.

DH: Look what I can do! Really interesting. What drives you, Scott?

SP: So, I’m driven by challenge. I like to press the boundaries of what’s possible, but also I think based on having been gifted this amazing opportunity to fly in space and to work with such great people as I did for those years at NASA, I feel like I really am compelled to pay it forward. So the things that I work on are not just about making money. It’s about, how can I make an impact with the things that I work on? So, my tech company has the ability to, right now we’re working on drone flight control, but the same tools can actually one day teller operate a surgery. So, we can have a surgeon here in Houston, Texas and maybe tele-operate in rural Senegal and develop that. You have the same kinds of outcomes there as we enjoy here in the United States. So, I think along those lines,

DH: Right. So you kind of touch on the subject of human potential I speak about the fact that all of us have unlimited abilities. I mean, we can’t fly like birds because we don’t have wings and feathers, but we have this ability through our mind to imagine and create a spaceship that takes us to outer space, much further than a bird can go. Where do you see the human potential? How do we, I guess, tap into it here on earth and where do you see it taking us beyond earth?

SP: 41:25 I’m really excited to be alive in this day and age. Obviously, we have a lot of things, not to bring it down, but there are a lot of things that are happening in our country and around the world that could get you down but I’m a glass is half to three-quarters full, kind of guy. And I think about innovation, all the things, wonderful things that are happening there. In space, you look at Virgin Galactic and Space X and Blue Origin and these companies that are going to be opening up the heavens for many, many more people. How A.I. and other capabilities will hopefully help us personalize medicine and to help us live longer healthier, more productive lives. So from that kind of vantage point, I think it’s really exciting to be alive as a technologist today. And the fact that there’s so much emphasis now on innovation and entrepreneurship and the fact that young people, in particular, are really excited about you’re pushing the boundaries of possibility. So, I don’t know if I’ve answered your question directly or not, but I think by always asking the question, how can I make things better? At my core, I’m an inventor or as I would paraphrase it I’m a motivated whiner. I notice things that are wrong in the world that I can apply technology to. I mull it over and then I invariably will come up with a solution to fix that problem in it. So I encourage everyone that I can talk to, to not just whine about problems, but okay, well that’s a problem. What are you going to do about it?

DH: Yeah. So as you’re talking earlier about the impact that space has on the human body and you mentioned Space X with, I’m drawing a blank, my man from…

SP: Elon Musk.

DH: Yes. And he has visions of colonizing Mars, how do you see the human body reacting on a journey that’s going to be that long and then figuring out how to survive that far away from the earth?

SP: 43:43 I do think it’s human destiny for us to colonize Mars, to explore Mars. I would hope to even colonize our moon, but there are some significant challenges there. Those planetary bodies don’t have a significant magnetic field, so they’re much more susceptible to radiation from our sun and from galactic cosmic radiation. Not to get too nerdy about it, but you could actually have a much higher incidence of radiation-induced cancers there. So, ultimately, living in those places, the habitats will probably have to be buried underneath the soil, the. So, there are challenges there. Getting to these places, especially Mars, is not insignificant. We’re seeing in our long-duration astronaut’s changes to their vision and also to their circulatory system just recently recorded where they’re developing clots inside their internal jugular vein, which could be a very significant issue. So, there are some health risks beyond radiation that we need to mitigate. But, I do think that the technology is almost there for us to set forth and do it and I know that there are hundreds of thousands of people that would love to go and do it.

DH: Yeah. I think I’ll stick to bobsledding, thank you very much.

SP: I’m not sure which is more dangerous.

DH: I tell you this, it’s really funny, well to me anyway, I was in New Zealand many years ago and I went for a hike and I was on the top of this cliff and the guy I was up there with points across the ocean and he goes, across the ocean is Antarctica and as soon as the words were uttered from his mouth, I took two steps backward. I like being where people are.

SP: No, thank you. Yeah.

DH: Yeah, exactly. I said it in case I slipped and fell in the ocean, nope. I like company, but Scott, I know you’ve been involved in other explorations as I mentioned. Talk to us about the work you’ve done with the volcanoes and trying to create early warning systems and so on.

SP: 46:01 Yeah. So again, being alive in this day and age, we can leverage the tools we have available to us. So big data analytics and A.I. and so I was really excited to be invited to join an expedition sponsored by GE, led by my friend Sam Cosman, to explore Messiah volcano, which is very close to Managua, Nicaragua, the capital city. It’s a place where 2 million people live in very close proximity to the youngest lava lake in the world. And so imagine if this thing were to erupt, 2 million people would be in harm’s way potentially. So if we could implant a sensor network around this lava lake as well as up around the crater rim, we could create an enormous dataset and maybe smart scientists could tease though this dataset and figure out predictive models of eruptive activity. We could create an early warning system for volcanic eruptions, for tsunamis, for earthquakes or other natural disasters, avalanches. And so I think, before too long, our whole planet is going to be online in some way. We’ll have this edge computing and sensor array around our planet, and we can save lives. We can protect human life and have more fulfilling lives. So, in any event, it was an extraordinary expedition to be a part of. I was able to, along with Sam Cosman set the first boot prints adjacent at this lava lake. It was crazy. It was molten rock, piping hot 2000 degrees and waves crashing upon this black lava lake, lava beach shore, and lava bombs going up and over, unlike anything I’d ever seen in my life. It’s actually nicknamed the mouth of hell. It’s a pretty good description.

DH: Yes, indeed. So you’ve been in a lava Lake, what’s the deepest that you have gone under the ocean?

SP: Well, I’ve been in different submersibles of about a thousand feet down, that’s the deepest I’ve been but yeah, there’s so much more that we have to learn and explore in our oceans and especially to protect our oceans. We aren’t being the best stewards of our planet right now. Our over-fishing, the coral bleaching, the trash jars that are accumulating, we need to really jump in and try and make a difference there in particular.

DH: Yeah, great point. I was about to ask you about global warming because you’ve been all over the planet and just outside. Taking a look back, do you think we’re at a point where we can reverse this? I mean, what role do you see human beings playing in this phenomenon called global warming and do you think it’s reversible?

SP: Well, we have to do all that we can to at least slow what’s happening. We have a large population and that’s not going to change unless there’s some horrible disaster of some sort. So, we need to be better stewards of our planet and we need to adapt as quickly as we can. I think that the planet has been talking to us for decades. This is not a surprise. Scientists have shown us that humanity is making this impact on our planet. What concerns me the most right now is the politicization of science for political gain, basically and so we have to get away from that. We need to listen to our scientists and we need to do the right thing. It’s not easy because some of these changes require lifestyle changes, they require investment, but unfortunately, I think some of our cities that are adjacent to the coastlines, they’re going to have to adapt. I mean, some places like Kiribati, it’s an island nation in the Pacific that may go away. The entire nation would have to repopulate some other place. It’s crazy.

DH: Yeah. It is crazy and it’s, I mean, mind-boggling to see, there’s a certain level of apathy, I think and it almost seems as if people are willing to put economics over security.

SP: It doesn’t involve me because I’ll be dead when that’s a problem, right?

DH: Yeah, but you’re going to have grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I mean, it’s befuddling, to say the least. So, talk to us, you mentioned fluidity earlier. Talk to us about what you’re working on now. I know you also have a bestselling memoir out. Talk to us about all the life after all those crazy adventures in space.

SP: 51:18 Well, yeah, I’m an adventure product developer, but yeah, the technology that I’m commercializing right now, my primary activity is a company called Fluidity Technologies that you mentioned. And it’s all about creating precise, intuitive easy ways to move about physical and virtual space. So we have a fancy joystick, think of it, but a way in which we can move a drone about the sky in much greater precision, getting better control of our cameras and to do really complex things in dynamic unscripted environments. Those same tools can be used in virtual and augmented reality for ROV’s under the ocean, helicopters, flying cars. Last week I was in the Philippines flying an electric man aero-vehicle that we’re going to actually have our controller at the controls for. Imagine having your own flying car and to be able to go out of your garage and go over the traffic and be at work or at dinner in five minutes instead of taking 45 minutes to get there. This technology is no longer science fiction, but the ultimate use of my technology I think is for medical applications. To be able to steer a catheter inside someone’s heart or a scope inside someone’s lungs or a surgical instrument inside someone’s abdomen and to have the tactile feedback such that you could actually tele-operate from a major medical center to a very remote, rural environment and to be able to have the same kind of quality outcomes in a remote environment as you have in a primary medical center. That’s what I’m really, really excited about for the future.

DH: That’s awesome. You touched on something, flying cars, and you said we already have the technology for that. Have you given any thought to how that would work in real life? So, I am thinking about our road and highway systems now that you’ll need traffic lights and so on, obviously, you can’t put traffic lights in the sky. How would you get around safely without hitting someone else?

SP: Well, two things. One, it’s creating corridors of travel and so there will be more and more automation as a part of this three-dimensional roadway system if you will, a grid system but also to have very intuitive tools for flight control. So, currently, the way you become a pilot of an aircraft, it’s very involved and it’s a significant skill that you have to acquire and you need to understand a lot of regulations and so on, as well as, systems of your craft. We’re making these systems a lot easier to manage and understand and I think ultimately what will happen is there will be wonderful human-machine interfaces like our fluidity FT aviator to control flying cars in the airspace. I think it’s going to start as sort of air-taxi services or maybe for search and rescue, in public safety kinds of applications. But ultimately, we’ll have them for recreation, we’ll have them for our commutes and the airspace will be controlled in different ways. Right now, it’s mostly for pilots of fixed-wing aircraft, but in the lower altitudes we’ll have the ability to fly these flying cars and it’s going to be wonderful. Having flown this thing last week, I just had this huge grin on my face. I mean, you can’t believe that you’re in this craft and you can zip along with ease. It’s wonderful.

DH: That’s awesome. All right, so, Scott, let’s talk about fluidity for a bit and the technology that you have, how do you apply that commercially today? How does Joe Smokes make use of that?

SP: Yeah, so, our control systems apply to any DJI drone. DJI is the largest drone manufacturer in the world. So you’re able to use our controller, essentially 80% of the drones in the world could use our drone controller. So it’s available on our website, at fluidity.tech. And then ultimately we’ll be compatible with the Parrots, which is the second-largest drone manufacturer in the world and others as well. So, that’s currently our marketplace but we’ll be in the not too distant future working with flying cars, with medical applications, with computer games and lots of different realms.

DH: Nice. So remind us of that website again, because I think as you’re saying it the connection went.

SP: Sure. Fluidity.Tech. F L U I D I T Y. T E C H.

DH: Awesome. And your book, tell us a little bit about your book.

SP: It’s called The Sky Below. And it’s not just about the adventures I’ve had in life, but also the adversities that I had overcome. It’s a very forthcoming book that I’m really proud of. It’s not like some books by explorers, how wonderful and perfect my career was or whatever. It’s like, well, no, it’s actually really hard work and there are failures along the way and you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and go after it again. And so, it’s about resilience. It’s about teamwork. It’s, I think, a book that many people would really enjoy, even if you’re not an Explorer, it’s something that would help you maybe set goals for yourself and then, see your pathway to success.

DH: So lessons that all of us can use in our everyday lives.

SP: Absolutely.

DH: Awesome. And where do we find this, find your book?

SP: It’s available on Amazon, just search under my name, Parazynski or The Sky Below and I’d love to have your viewership go check it out.

DH: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Scott, there’s so much to unpack here. We could really just take like one little sliver of your life and your experiences and talk about it for an hour. So I think we’re going to have to have a part two or maybe three and four after this but having said that, man, I’m so appreciative. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your experiences with us.

SP: It’s great hanging out with you. It’s great to talk to you guys. It’s been a while, so, thanks for inviting me.

DH: Yeah, man. Absolutely, and we’ve been trying to get it done for a while too. So, I’m glad we’re able to make it happen because I think you epitomize this whole business of Keep On Pushing….taking your game to the next, another level and always challenging yourself trying to see how far your potential will take you. So, once again, thank you, Scott, for spending time with us.