an unbelievable marriage (literally)

what's up everybody welcome back to couple things with Sean and Andrew a podcast all about couples and the things they go through uh these might be my two new favorite people in the world most inspirational most amazing Geniuses how did we get an interview with these guys I don't know and at the end they're like we listen to your podcast I was like why so ridiculous today we have Anna and Anil Menan who are actual astronauts like like real ones Act active astronauts we we asked them and looked this up too there are 42 active astronauts right now yeah and we sat down with two of them they're married what are the odds of that but Anil is spacex's first flight surgeon and his wife Anna is a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX and Anil was just announced and named as a NASA astronaut which is even crazier and Anna is going on Polaris Dawn space mission yeah she tells the story can you what I don't happened I don't know um Anil is also a pilot like a really good one um anyway let's just say that this couple is super smart and they had a lot of interesting things to share we talked about space yes we talked about how they got to where they are but also there's a lot of carryover into parenting yes and we talked about their physical fitness uh achievements and routines it was great I think some of the my biggest takeaways too with them was just just their philosophy and outlook on parenting in taking risks and fostering interests and passions with themselves and with their kids and exposing their kids to so much it was I loved it I did too let's just say this interview was out of this world okay anyway enil Anna thank you so much for your time we hope you listening enjoy if we want to find out more about what these two are up to we'll link their information down below would highly recommend it yeah would highly recommend it and we got the approval to call them friends so thank you guys we hope you enjoy this one with Anna and Anil Min Anil and Anna it is so nice to meet you this interview has been months in the making I am I am extremely nervous I'm also super excited I feel like you are every child's hero you're every yeah you're every adult's hero even you're my hero I'm literally being Anna's costume for Halloween and it's pretty awesome but how are you guys today we are great and we are just so grateful to get to be here so happy to get to talk to you both thanks for having us oh man yes Super S super I also want to correct my husband for calling Anna's uniform a costume oh shoot we just started already yours is Andrew yours is a costume her actually a professionally earned uniform I am so sorry the other point of clarification was the intent to be scary on Halloween or oh man what is there a difference between the blue and the green there is a difference so NASA astronauts traditionally wear the blue flight suits for our mission we have traditionally I'm playing with the plis dawn mission to space and we have traditionally worn black flight suits they're more SpaceX colors right yes I think it's like football okay yeah I feel like we've interviewed like musicians and athletes and stuff and to me I'm like oh yeah yeah that makes sense I feel like when you're in kindergarten and people are like what do you want to be when you grow up we all say astronauts how did you guys actually get there you pulled it off yeah oh man yeah I I was the kid who wanted to do it super early on I can remember being five and seeing this IMAX movie where it was called the dream is alive and there was this astronaut going down a slide wire one working in space and I thought that's the kind of job I want it's full of Adventure people actually do that and that job just transforms over your life at times it seems Out Of Reach at times it seems like something that's a Guiding Light carrying me forward like I really want to get into stem and Science and do things that help me be better prepared have an opportunity to do it and I just stuck with it for a very very long time and um and I just kept thinking space was cool so when I graduated from college I knew I wanted to do medicine but I also knew I wanted to do space and so I just tried to figure out how do you do those two things turns out there's doctors that work at Nasa and so I I I did it learn more and stayed with it and finally had an opportunity uh to fly I didn't didn't think uh like I thought it was little probability but it just kind of followed my love and passion that's honestly the most inspirational message I feel like you could give where it's you know it seems like it's far off this massive big goal but you keep putting one foot in front of the other I feel like and you know one act or getting involved in one way leads you to the next thing and you slowly chip away I mean from start to finish in your career how long has it taken you to get to this point like with this as the focus 45 years when I got selected I suppose if you counted I started at six maybe 39 years but I think uh I think that actually that's a true story for most of the folks that I work with and most of the astronauts because the age of selection is in the 30s in general um it you know it varies people are under 30 people are over 40 I was over 40 um but they definitely just put in um followed their dream for a long long time and and grew in that and what they were good at so I would say for me during the medical pathway that's four years of medical school three years of emergency medicine A wilderness fellowship and Aerospace Fellowship is another three years and then um and then just working within the the field and working at some commercial companies working at Nasa as a flight surgeon um was was the rest of the time but it was never it was just a joy to do a lot of that because it's just it's so cool and I think it's such an important uh field for society dude I'm so glad that humans like this exist this gives me hope for the whole race it's like go if things go south I want to kneel in my corner he's gonna know all the he's goingon to know how to fly me out of the situation how to he he knows go Wilderness what is a Wilderness Fellowship I want to do that right now oh man you totally should if you like that yeah there you go you can d it's doing medicine without all the resources that you normally have so working in the Himalayas if someone gets hurt there you don't have a CT scan you gotta figure out how to improvise make a splint out of some handkerchiefs kind of like uh those things and you could totally do it they have uh Wilderness first aid courses anyone can take and they teach those kind of skills nolles is another example of a leadership course that's in the wilderness that you learn those kind of things it's it's a lot of fun now Anna how did you find yourself here I also have a story of following my passion for a long time so I first fell in love with space when I was in about fourth grade I grew up in Houston and so was exposed to NASA and human space flight from a very young age I had the chance to go on a field trip to experience a day in the life of an astronaut and a flight controller and spend half the day as one and half the day as the other and so served in Michigan Troll and then served in the spaceship and for me that Lit a fire in me to contribute to this industry and want to be a part of it with my career and so I just followed that love for years so as I went along in school I pursued industries that I was interested in so I got a a degree in college and math and then I got a master's degree in biomedical engineering and I loved math and I loved medicine and I loved engineering but I also carried with me this love of space and so that whole time I was trying to figure out how to meld all of these interests together and I was then so excited to get a job at Nasa coming out of grad school where I got to be a biomedical flight controller for the International Space Station and what that did was the it was this wonderful blend of all of these interests and I was so thrilled to get to work there for seven years and and be a part of the industry and I was just so happy to get to to contribute um and after that I moved over to SpaceX where I've now been an engineer for about five years and the whole time getting to contribute to human space flight work in mission control as a mission director there develop operations that our astronauts do in our capsules and the whole time just pinching myself because I just love this industry so much and feel so grateful to get to be a part of it and um you know carried with me this childhood dream of of flying to space but also just so grateful to get to be a part of the industry and one day um I went into a meeting and out of the blue they asked me to fly to space on the PlayOn mission to space and what as one of the the first times the first time that SpaceX will ever fly its own people its own Engineers as a part of a mission um and I was just floored shocked and but just so grateful and it it it reignited that that childhood dream in me and I have just been so shocked at the you know the turn of events over time but forever grateful to get to be a part of this in industry in any way shape and form all along the way you walked into this meeting not knowing what it's about and you walked out going to space can you tell us more about this like what did they say was there confetti was there GI bag was there like a hype video I even know more well they put a meeting on my calendar um I had I had contributed to a mission previously at as a part of SpaceX as a engineer at SpaceX called inspiration 4 which was the first all civilian mission to space under the commander uh Jared isaacman and I've been a part of that mission and um they put a meeting on my calendar saying hey we want to debrief some lessons learned from that meeting and talk about some future future thoughts and I walked into this meeting and Jared was sitting there and my boss was sitting there and a number of other people and we are you know chatting for a few minutes and actually just three days prior Anil had been announced as a NASA astronaut and so we talked a little bit about that and then very quickly they said hey would H would you like to fly to space on the play Dawn Mission and I I remember my heart just started beating so fast and I was so shocked um so grateful obviously and um you know so many emotions all at once told them thank you went home talked to my family about it and very quickly thereafter said yes okay I have so many questions oh my okay so first forgive me for being for not knowing this but well have you have either of you been to space yet not yet okay oh okay even better so the dynamic between you two you're married you have two children correct you walk into a meeting and you're told you're going how does that register for you guys being parents spouses how like how do you digest that information from being excited all of it yeah you know I think we we are really thoughtful about this um we have a a really big philosophy in our family of open communication so you know first and foremost we took it back home and talked about it we talked about it with our family talked about it a lot with each other and we continue to to this day um and I think that one of the things that has been a really strong aspect of these decisions for us is that we have a tremendous amount of trust we have both spent years working at Nasa and years working at SpaceX and so we have seen how people develop Hardware software operations fly missions we have great faith in the processes that are used and so that allows us to move forward carrying a tremendous amount of trust but I think you know on the personal emotional side I think there is a universal change that happens in you when you become a parent I think you become much more aware of your mortality your legacy the fact that it's not just you in the world or even you and your partner but you have kids you have the little people in their Futures and so I think we carry that and take that responsibility really seriously um and you know at the same time I think hand inand we recognize that there are some passions that are worth pursuing and it's important to show our kids what it looks like to follow your passion and so you know one way we have done that is we've integrated our kids into this experience we have shared it with them as we are navigating the journey I got to bring them to some training where I was flying in fighter jets with my team learning you know fast-paced decision-making communication skills and Nils brought our kids to um some spacewalk training where he's been in a space suit in the Giant pool at Nasa moving through the operations and there's kind of two goals for this one is for the present it's a way that we are able to help them wrap their heads around what's going on and learn the wise the what's but then we are also always thinking about their Futures and in trying to introduce them to all sorts of different aspects of the world around them so that hopefully along that Journey Sparks get lit in them just like one did for me as a little girl that helps them figure out what their passion is in this world so that they can follow that with their lives anel are you aware of how many astronauts there are total like lifetime or I think 600 people have flown to space um total uh right now in our astronaut group there's around a little over 40 total astronauts that are called active astronauts working at Nasa some some of the retired ones are doing different things in management at NASA or industry and how many are there at SpaceX Anna so current there are there have been two SpaceX Engineers who have been chosen to go to space and it's myself and uh my my colleague named Sarah and we are both flying on this FL St Mission so so two so so you're telling me what are you trying to say I'm I'm I'm I'm doing the mental math right now so there's 42 active astronauts in this country of four call it 400 million people the odds of that I I I also needed calculator help but um the odds of becoming an astronaut are 00000000 z975 that's what I was thinking about that but yeah and then the odds of two of them ending up married is just astounding did you guys meet within the program no we you want to tell them we met sure enough we we worked at Nasa at one point both of us together at the same time in Houston um but we met somewhere else at a Oscars party that not the actual Oscars but a party someone was throwing that was kind of like the Oscars we were the pseudo people so picture me oddly enough we were talking about blue but I was wearing a powder blue tuxedo two gold chains that cost $14 from Amazon some Run DMC glasses and a purple Kango that I had from maybe like my 90s rap era um wow and I was pretending to be a rapper at this Oscars thing and talking to someone and Anna walked in and they were doing these fake interviews as people walked in and I walked up to her because she was this amazing uh wonderful woman and threw my arm around her invited her to my rap concert that was gonna happen at the Toyota Center and she just rolled with it which really surprised me and when I figured out that she worked at Nasa the deal was sealed I was like this amazing person also shared some interest and we really got along and so um I remember there was this Call Me Maybe song out then and I I you know oh yeah Carly Ray Rebecca Black I forget so I sent her a text right afterwards because I was like this is it I'm sure this is it and uh three days later and we had been at NASA never met each other they put us at a space station simulation where you're trying to fix space station as it's flying out of the sky we were sitting side by side at work so clearly we were meant to meet um and so I I thought to myself why resist it and luckily she agreed and uh and we that was kind of the start of everything how Wild of a coincidence is that though well how Wild of a party does that s two it sounds like I want to go to a party with a nail be a good time um it is uh what I'm curious as athletes there's a lot of kind of tangible feedback that we got along our careers at each checkpoint kind of like Middle School to high school high school like vars even within high school you go JV to to varsity varsity to college you either go in D1 two or three in football and then like it slow the my point in saying this is the the realization of if my goal is the NFL the realization of that coming true really kind of starts to take shape pretty early and you kind of have a path laid in front of you is it similar in um in your line of work is there is there like a crystallization process that happens of like hey this could be a real shot or is it literally you know you get a calendar uh notification and you're like oh bang bam and like you're I'm curious about that it's stab um so I think there is some general similarities a really broad level but um but largely I think Anna story is a good example of you just follow your passion to some degree and you can't predict some of these outcomes but if you put yourself there um things pan out I think it was Louis pasture maybe or I could be misquoting but um Chance favors the prepared on some level but the Bro broad similarity is that that I've always held on to is just improving each day and finding a way to be a better version of myself in that work that I'm doing and so so I've always been one to just as you did as an athlete continue to grow continue to figure out what that feedback chain is and where you need to go but just do that within medicine then do that within space medicine and then do that um in terms of developing say the the approach um to flying people to space in a commercial space company um and that was just a daily process of trying to do better and there was tons of feedback out there there was manag mentors people willing to help and and help guide that way but it wasn't as clearcut of a reassurance that this end outcome would be there but I think it's more applicable to General everyday life everyone can find a pathway to really improve in their direction and you just don't know what will happen at the end of that I have kind of a two-part question and I want to be gentle in navigating this so I don't want to spark arguments here okay um you guys usually like Opposites Attract right but you guys are are very similar in the sense that you you're in very similar Fields going after a very similar dreams is there any hardship in navigating that with each other and trying to support each other and it not being a competition of who's going to get there first and do you find conversations at home being difficult because you basically are coming home from the same workday it it seems like we're ve we're in similar Fields but I think we're very different in terms of personalities and that's very complimentary and it helps us a lot um what we do value is shared time together we think it's super important for our relationship so um just spending that time really helps us build our relationship and helps us be there for our kids and spend time with them so the things we do are very are very similar whether it's work or outside of work but um we're just really different um and we find a way to bring that together for example Anna is a great salsa dancer and loves doing it but I was always incredibly intimidated because she was on a professional team at Duke and super awesome at it um but I went and I learned to dance on a daily basis like once a week or twice week and finally got to the point where we actually had our wedding dance in front of 200 people doing salsa and it wasn't embarrassing as I thought initially it would be I think it went pretty well and then um she'll do things like I love doing um endurance exercises and I somehow convinced her on an anniversary to do a g Ruck with me which was 12 hours of suffering in California and it was cold that day and we had to do burpees in the on the beach and get wet and Sandy and uh um I looked over her and I could tell she was on the fence about that decision on an anniversary but she she did it and it's just kind of an example of her willingness to dive in there and and find something that we both love and do together but I think in terms of you want to handle the second part in terms of I think to me all of that just speaks to like we actually really value having shared interest and so for us it has always been incredibly additive whether it was you know at work and we were getting to be just a couple cubicles apart it just it has continued to give us ways to an opportunities to support each other have shared friends have shared challenges speak the same language um and so it has just given us a lot of opportunities for support to give an example um we're no longer at the exact same workplace anymore but um I'm the medical officer on the Polaris on Mission and he obviously has a background in medicine and so it has given us this way of even at home um you talked about you know our evening conversations like I come home and I have this little ultrasound handheld device that I will need to use in space and so he is able to like teach me how to use it better teach me the anatomy um help me improve and so it's just a way that we have been able to continue to support each other and really grow together over the course of the years that's wow I love that I I I've been thinking um recently about how fortunate I feel to have Shan I mean we pretty much spend every second of every day together and we kind of know what each other's capabilities are what each other's weaknesses are as a result and the idea of in a partnership like this and it seems like you guys have a similar Dynamic where there's a depth of knowledge that you each have and a platform in marriage that you can give like the truest most honest feedback the benefits of that is are phenomenal where it's like she can the the stronger I can um take her feedback the better I can take it um means the better feedback I can give her and like the more input I can have which then it's like a virtuous cycle of of now we're just really making each other better and stronger and it's like responsibility and it can be very fragile but when you are able to execute that well I mean look maybe you'll end up as one of the 42 two of the 42 you guys have a monopoly on that whole business that's great that's insane I can't believe oh man anyway wait out of curiosity are there any rules around like I know you guys are technically in different companies is that how I would say that okay um but would they ever send like Mom and Dad or husband and wife at the same time typically no not historically um and I think just the way it will work out for the two of us it it even though we're in different places um it will we will not fly at the same time I'm slated to fly within months from now and he is his will probably be your down the road so yeah and if that that were an option I would take a a serious pause and think about it U yeah right now my initial knee-jerk reaction would be to not do that myself just from a personal family standpoint yeah I'm a big fan of uh of reading biographies and history and I've been reading about the founding fathers and like reading Benjamin Franklin and it's interesting a lot of these guys when they do pivotal things they'll you know they have these journals and letters that they'll write almost with the perspective that they know future Generations will read them because what they're doing is so cool do you guys ever have those moments of reflection of like we're going to be in history books this is You Know Your Role Anna as a female astronaut is is incredible and so impressive and your your family will go down in history books between just the gravity of the situation and then also having kids and what Sean was talking about earlier like that that responsibility and just having moments of pause to think about whether you want to accept the mission or not do how often how do you guys embed reflection in your in your life that's a great question um I think that for both of us we both do a lot of journaling and you know not I think a lot of it is is solely for the sake of capturing memories um and really like trying to learn from them but you know I think that as I have been you know on that journey of reflection you know some of the themes that stand out to me are that you know many people came before me before us that were like kicking down doors to enable this door that allows me to get to do work that I love to even be open and so this reflection has driven me to recognize that I work for a future in which our kids don't even know doors exist what about you and now I don't think about the future in that from that perspective in terms of uh being notable or anything like that I'm just trying to get the kids to bed and stay calm but uh uh but I do do certainly reflection um in terms of journaling like Anna said but it's been really helpful for me just to it unlocks some intuitive component of my self and when I write about what I'm doing on a daily basis and a lot of that astronauts and I think people do in general um it helps me align my intent with um with that intuitive aspect of myself so that I feel like you know I say things wrong all the time or make mistakes but at least my intent was always aligned you know in the right direction to help people to to support those around me and so I I try to stay true to that and that's that's where that reflection things help that's beautiful so moving on because you both are the most fascinating people in the world and I've never felt more under qualified my entire life I don't even know how to ask questions usually when we do Sports I'm like I know all of the things but now I'm like yeah I know none of but I know you're also a pilot yeah and a phenomenal one who logged over a thousand hours this guy just started I think you're 80 hours I got 80 hours so how close am I to being in like a you know like a fighter fighter jet oh you're right there just just a few more or we could just give it a shot tomorrow was that something that you pursued to add to your resume going into like NASA and your astronaut life or is that a completely separate hobby that you just fell in love with I it it it I fell in love with it when I was a kid my dad took me on one flying Discovery lesson in Minneapolis where I grew up but he didn't have the money to support the rest of it and at that one flight was frozen into my brain and I always wanted to do it there's this thing about flying you either have the money but no time or you have the time but no money and so I was just trying to figure out how to do it and I in medical school started kind of scaming together and paying my way through getting a a pilot's license and um it was just pure pure love in that that respect and uh it's been it's been a lot of fun um and now I get to fly in t-38s which is really cool and learn from some of what I consider the best pilots in the world and NASA's so good about training how to do that um that the the growth acceleration super high in terms of flying and just working as a teammate in a two-seater aircraft so it's really cool um you should come I don't want to flex my my my uh personal speed record is 210 knots what would you say yours is I'm not kidding uh Mack 1.2 but holy crap holy crap so ridiculous oh my is that like the combine the combine applying or something yeah pretty much he goes faster you know those video you know I'm thinking of like the you know the the videos they see of people experiencing G forces and it's like 10 G's and like the face like this you guys have done that I have done that I've I've done nine G's um and what's really important is what access the G is happening in because if it's through your chest to your spine it you can handle a lot of it it just feels like a lot of pressure but it's from your head um to your feet you get really lightheaded because it's starting to suck blood out of your head and that's when it gets it gets tricky I remember in that g thing it sucked enough blood out of my brain and my eyes that I saw a checkerboard for a little while it was black and white and everything went black and white so I think I was pretty close to what they call a g-lock or a gloss of Consciousness yeah but I know that from Top Gun yeah yeah um this is silly but anecdotally like when Andrew signed up to get his pilot's license yeah I remember being surrounded by so many people who were like me like myself people would say you are crazy as a wife to allow like your husband to do something so risky with children and like we jump out of planes we love adrenaline we haven't you haven't gotten mocked whatever I don't even like being compared yeah conversation but I am curious like your your relationship and your Dynamics like philosophy in life I feel like you guys do very risky but very rewarding things not just in your career but in your hobbies which is teaching your kids amazing lessons how do you guys navigate when risk is too much and how do you teach your kids how to kind of like find that balance because you guys are doing death defying things that have such purpose in the world um well you know I think that that it's always a conversation for us we we have a really open line of communication and so we talk about these decisions a lot um I will say that we also believe that some passions are worth pursuing and so there is there is good that comes from choices and um the world is full of risk and and so you know if you are thoughtful and you are intentional and careful about the decisions you're making and go into them understanding the the technical background behind it for example like the trust that I talked about with um our you know SpaceX and NASA we have so much trust in the the technical details behind it it enables us and empowers us to make decision decisions incredibly well informed um and move forward with uh a lot of thoughtfulness in those decisions and I I kind of the only thing I would add is I think about that JFK speech at Rice when he was going to the moon and he said we do these things not because they're easy but because they're hard and I think there are some things that are really worth doing no matter what and for me and Anna it's it's this it's it's important to us and it's important to society we think and it is it is worth the risk yeah I it's almost an Insider Outsider uh like fallacy or difference I I was just thinking about the stats of what the odds of becoming an astronaut and then the odds of you guys being married and it's like yeah they're they're minuscule but the pool I guess as you guys sat next to each other in NASA if you look at it from The Insider perspective there it's like you know how many people work in NASA that pool goes from 400 million people in the US to however many and it's like I think it's the same thing with my experience flying where it's like it's not that crazy I'm sure you guys know like there's certain procedures you got to follow the checklist you got to do XYZ and anyway it's it's like two different perspectives almost two of my favorite moments with Andrew flying is his mom is adorable but she about had a heart attack when she found out he was flying through rain and she about had a heart attack when she found out that you don't really have headlights when you fly in the dark I just thought it was so sweet and so cute but I was like Mom but but I think you get it a certain a super great great aspect of it is preparedness you know we in everything that I imagine you're doing as a pilot there's a tremendous amount of preparedness that is an aspect of it that that's on the front end it's the reflection on the back end it's the learning and the constant growth and I think we apply that same thing in the things that we're doing we train a tremendous amount to go to space to prepare not just for the normal but for the contingencies um and so I think you know that preparedness is a is a huge aspect of it which leads to risk mitigation because Andrew if you lost an engine you would know how to land it in a a grass field and probably imagine feel pretty comfortable doing that so um yeah I think we can work towards that end do not not a t38 my little no one's going to land a t38 in the grass H okay so speaking of training I want to talk about the physicality of it because I'm always super curious about that Sean and I did this kind of a joke of a YouTube video where we trained like astronauts and love that I am I I know that anil's done Iron Man you've done a full Iron Man is that right I have yeah mhm mhm and you're talking about the G rucks obviously you did that with Anna um what is the physical component to I want to know two things one like the genetic aspect so with the g-lock is is there anything that you feel like you're genetically advantaged with in regards to dealing with things like that but then also with your training to go into space what is that regimen look like what are you guys preparing for uh from like a muscular skeleton standpoint as well as nutrition yeah um so I think the biggest aspect of the physical training for me is actually the mental toughness aspect of it it's it's that I choose to do those things because they put me in uncomfortable position and exercise and training is a good way to get there really fast you can get uncomfortable um in a day or in in an hour depending on how you're pushing yourself and then you can apply some skills that are critical for the training and those are mental toughness things like is this positive selft talk is it reframing the situation or breathing to to counteract stress uh an astronaut told us that when you make a mistake in space you have three seconds to have an emotional response and then you got to get over it and you got to solve the problem and move on because it's that time critical and important and that kind of physical training trains the mental training that allows me to feel comfortable that I can do those things um there is a huge aspect of space that's totally different than gravity and just transforms people's uh physiology um and that we could talk for days on that but some of the some of the things in terms of um you're losing 10% of your muscle mass your V2 Max is going down 10% you're getting bone loss it could could be 3% uh a month if you're not counteracting it with exercise and space every single system of your body is altered by space and and we're doing so much research on it so that when we go to the Moon we go to Mars for three three years or a long period of time we can figure out how to do that better and actually perform in those environments what about you Anna in terms of the physical preparation we have done all sorts of training for space flight so for example um they put us through a centrifuge a centrifuge on the ground to teach your body those g-forces that we were talking about earlier what those will feel like on the ascent and the re-entry profiles that we would experience in a spacecraft so that you adapt and get ready um for that environment but I I would second a nil in that a huge aspect of the training is the mental side and so the teaching of your brain to be ready to execute and focus under high stress High consequence environments and so um for example one of the things that we have done as a part of our training has been to skydive we went skydiving with the US Air Force Academy and it's um the only place in the world where you jump out of an airplane on the first time solo and so they but they enable this by putting you through rigorous ground training and you drill and memorize um normal and contingency procedures and then you're put to the test to make sure that you are ready before you go up in that airplane but then you get up in that airplane and you certainly feel all of the you know the normal feelings that you would feel when you're about to jump out which is a stress response and and nerves and but then you train your body by letting go and then you just move into execution Mo mode and you you know go through the motions pull your parachute navigate back to the Drop Zone land safely and I would say that experiences like that really have drilled in US firsthand how to stay calm and cool under pressure and focus and execute procedures in that those sort of high stress scenarios that one might encounter in space does that carry over into home life like you know during bedtime when the kids are screaming are you are you able to separate emotions that's way harder you know that [Laughter] yeah we're in the phase with our four-year-old where bedtime is like a 30 minute negotiation oh my God and it's just like by the end of it I'm like I I don't know how to talk to you anymore it's time I think that's when teamwork comes in tap out next next person I will also say at the very most beginner level one of the coolest things we've ever done which makes me respect you guys a million percent even more was we got to do the anti-gravity jet oh yeah the zero that was so cool I was just up there doing flips I think you almost puked your brain go it's normal it was so sick yeah it was really fun I'm so glad yall got to do that I think that's just one of the coolest things on earth and for what it's worth 70% of people that so in the ballpark a 60 to 70 that fly to space get nauseous so it it's totally normal normal don't worry wow well it also didn't help he was looking through a camera the whole time yeah the frame rate it's a bad strategy you even have a tougher stomach that you were able to do that probably I I have I love that and I've never connected these two feelings before but uh reflecting on you know I was a Long Snapper which is we get it's like a kicker you get very few plays but each one is high pressure and just that feeling of your palms are sweaty you got you got like that anxiety in your chest or whatever and it kind of feels tight but then breathing through it and like dealing through I actually feel that as a parent as well where you know our son is doing something risky but it's it's not dangerous it's just you know it could in with him bumping his head or whatever and you feel that sweaty Palms tight chest and separating the emotions from the feeling is um I don't know if it's I I I think it's good thing to to be able to have a grasp on that but on that note do you guys have counselors or therapy like for the mental aspect of things at Nasa we have a pretty robust we call it behavioral health support team and they're doing a couple things they're both helping do research um on psychological aspects of space um and there's just a lot of that ground to break and things to learn about but they're also available to help us um think through situations and one of the things we is super important is just great teamwork at at Nasa so you have this team of people and you're going to be in the same small space station for six months to a year with the with your two other teammates maybe seven other people um and so you got to make things work it's it's like a relationship and how do you make things work you already um talked about some of those things but it's really to have a good communication pathway even when things um even when they're small things it's worth bringing them up talking about them figuring out how to resolve the micro conflicts because it builds skills in that team for the bigger conflicts and helps avoid those because you don't want those in a small environment and the BHP people um Can can be there to help you think through how to um how to approach those conversations be better at them they go to a lot of our team training with us and they help us use a feedback mechanism and provide a structure that we can use in those kind of situations this F this feels like it would help at home as well yeah absolutely I would say a lot of the lessons we have learned at work we apply at home uhuh and vice versa yeah write a book I want to learn more honestly yes well it just seems like it seems like there's such an amazing like h IC approach to what your guys are do which I feel like is lacking in so many other fields but it it makes sense like you would want to make sure every aspect of your life is in control and a healthy situation before you are sent off to space um one more little tidbit that I find absolutely fascinating and I have a hypothetical question that is probably ridiculous and out of some sci-fi movie but an you're the first flight surgeon is that correct first flight surgeon at SpaceX um okay yes how do you do surgery in space good question it's a Mis term uh the the short answer is that it's it's worth noting that flight surgeons are doctors in the military or Aviation so it's a misnomer it just means so it's like okay but how do you do surgery in space people have thought about this a lot and it it's it's really tricky um mainly because it's gonna go all blood's gonna go all over the place and how you contain the scalpel and all that stuff you talked about or how do you do it when you don't have an expert out there so one of the more interesting things I've seen is if someone gets appendicitis 1% chance on your way to Mars let's say it's six months there 18 months down and six months back how do you with a 15sec 15 minute delay talk someone through doing an exercise like that um you can do it in stages um so they have NASA has a great tele medicine team you can go up to the point of incision opening someone up and have a hold point there you need to deal with the blood and the floating um and and then you move to the next step and you get feedback and pictures and then you move to the next step you do it in a stepwise fashion uh when you do that wow let's hope nobody gets appendicitis there was one guy in Antarctica in 1960 who got appendicitis and he took out his own appendix he was a Russian surgeon yeah that's crazy that's nice forever wow wow um what are you each most excited about right now I think I am you know I am most excited about I grew up the daughter of a geologist and a paleontologist and I um they took us on trips to explore the world around us by like licking rocks to identify them and things like that and but what they taught in me is a love of science that inspired me to go into science and so I think what I am most excited about is um getting to share that love of Science and our world our universe with the Next Generation and you know as we were talking about there have only been about 600 people to go to space less than a hundred of those have been women so the opportunity to the responsibility of doing it right and really helping to share that with the Next Generation so that they can can explore further and not have any doors holding them back and just you know carry our future forward I think is is one of the things I'm really excited about yeah I'm I'm also really excited about the future the cool thing about being in space is you can see that science fiction unfolding and you're really close to it so NASA's going to the Moon very shortly with the Artemis 2 mission and sending women and men to the moon and then they're going to go to Mars and that's not too far away and there's this commercial program that's exploding with different companies and there's more and more opportunities for different people um to fly to space so that I think in our kids uh era when they get to the point they'll have so many opportunities to do cool things and as a doctor the the best part is with all these different people flying to space that's more medicine more understanding of medicine and microgravity of surgeries in space of things things like that that need to be developed researched and done so the opportunities for the future Doctors medical students residents nurses um EMTs just it's going to be unbelievable and so I think that really gets me fired up it it might be overlapping answers but why is space exploration specifically important to each of you like what benefit can non asron not you know my feet will probably always be on Earth's crust and what what does it do for the average person yeah for the average person it has a huge impact NASA helped cultivate the commercial crew program and what is that led to it's led to Telecom in space that soon you'll be able to contact people and and have internet access in any part of the world which is going to affect people's lives and health you can do tele medicine anywhere um to underserved communities in different places it's lowered the cost of ultimately launch to space so there's more um satellites of knowledge of the earth and knowledge about the climate um one of the huge thing that NASA does that a lot of people aren't aware of is study study the climate and give us data so that we can make informed decisions about it most of the data you see or have is from those NASA programs and I think one of the biggest things is just inspiration I don't know it's so hard to predict what pathway I would be on if I wasn't drawn forward by um Space and Science as a kid and I know there's there's millions of kids with the same dreams that are getting into things that are just going to benefit Society so I think it just pays forward there's a huge return on investment it that's probably hard to calculate if you just looked at the raw numbers it's probably like three to one in terms of dollars spent but it's pretty incredible I I agree I I I um just Anna's response earlier about the realization that other people have opened doors for her and her goal is to do the same for future Generations I think there is something about pushing the limits of what we're aware of or capable of um um as individuals you know like with your fitness and health routine but also as a society with technology and all of these different issues you just realized and it's you know it's I'm I'm kind of into racing I grew up in Indianapolis with the n500 and you look at the race cars you're like oh that's cool but why like how does that impact my daily life and it's like well yeah but in in the art and process of preparing a car to go 230 miles an hour for three hours that that pushing of the boundary informs the less intense um daily life of of me was that a good analogy Sean Sean a good analogy I worked at Indie 500 as a doctor once of course you did it I mean like why wouldn't you I'm not surprised at all but it was great Wilderness and like extreme medicine training the number of G's that those people undergo and the science that is implemented behind it to understand that makes the Auto industry safer makes healthc career there's a lot of tentacles that you don't actually see from those things so I think it's a great analogy I'm I'm just fascinated you guys are the most fascinating amazing talented couple we have had on the show and it has truly been an honor to talk to you guys and I just keep thinking about our four-year-old daughter wakes up every single morning and coming from two athletes this is just different for us and we're trying to Foster it as much as we can but she wakes up every single morning asking to do science experiments that's all she wants to do that's so cool we have gone through two boxes of 75 experiments from National Geographic already and we're on round five of them and it's just amazing to see you guys and to see how a Fascination and a passion of science can truly change the world so truly thank you I mean you are role models to us to our babies and to everybody so it's truly an honor yeah well thank you so much for having us I think we look up to you just as much so it has been such our honor to get to talk to you and and have this conversation so thank you yeah I agree we like to listen to your show and so I think it's important to have these kind of conversations with different people and we can learn from each other so it's awesome thank you so much wow well whether you guys are on board or not I'm gonna call you friends I'm gonna brag about having you guys as [Laughter] friends but thanks for the time I am so excited to follow each of you and um we'll be in touch maybe we'll have to have a follow on show but thank