How To Be Successful in a World That Wasn’t Built for You (ft. Astronaut Cady Coleman)

About five years ago, I was backstage at a conference I was speaking at when I casually got into a conversation with one of the other speakers. It turned out she was an astronaut. She had flown multiple missions to space and had spent six months on the International Space Station. Upon finding this out, I immediately said, "I apologize in advance for the barrage of questions about space that I'm going to ask you. Feel free to change the subject at any time." And for the next two hours, I bombarded her with questions about space. Space missions, spaceflight, living in space, zero gravity. I mean, like, how do you eat? How do you poop? How do you do anything? She never tired. She never changed the subject. And we've been friends ever since. Katie Coleman is a scientist, an astronaut, and an Air Force veteran. She built her incredible career in the 80s and 90s, an era where there were few to no women in the rooms that Katie was in, and she managed to excel through all of them. If I had to describe Katie in a word, I would say tenacity. She has a single mind in this about her that is very rare, a way of pressing ahead through adversity without accumulating the resentment or pity parades that most of us do, or she puts it cheerfully showing up even when you weren't invited. A few weeks ago, she released her first book. It's called Sharing Space. And I had her on the show to talk about the importance of mission, the value of role models and support systems, how to persevere in an environment that is not hospitable to you, and of course, many, many questions about space. This is Katie Coleman. Let's get into it. The podcast that's saving the world. One fewer fuck at a dime. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. Katie, it's great to see you again. It's awesome to see you. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Why don't we start? When was the moment you decided you wanted to become an astronaut and how long did it take from that moment to actually making it happen? I was something around 21 and I met Sally Ride. She came to speak at MIT where I was a junior. We actually have a certain resemblance, you know, kind of wavy dark hair and not incredibly tall. And I just thought, wow, maybe I could try to do that. Just the fact that she was so real just made me think this could be me. It made the possibility feel real. Exactly. Yeah. And so that was in 1983. I knew I was getting a bachelor's studying science was something I really loved. So I went on to get a doctorate and the Air Force had paid for school for me for my undergrad. And so I had a four-year commitment to them. When you met Sally Ride, did you decide on the spot or was it more of a process over the ensuing years of being like, okay, this is my dream, this is my vision. What did that process look like? It's definitely a process that involves homework. Yeah. And I realized that they want people who have a solid career and me just finishing grad school meant that I still had. And also that I needed to finish grad. Well, at the time I was an undergrad. In my field, no question getting a doctorate was part of being a part of that field. So it was going on to get a doctorate in a field that really meant something to me, which was chemistry, but I like to apply chemistry. I liked it when you made things that made people's lives better or changed them. But I really do love that you can make materials that make a difference in people's lives. And for the Air Force, I worked on new materials for airplanes. Kind of bigger, better, different cabalars, kinds of things. So grad school, I'm like, I'm here. I'm ready to apply. And the answer was, but you're not qualified. Because through the Air Force, you have to apply through the Air Force, which makes sense. They need to decide when you could go. And you needed to have four years of active duty. Because they were very used to having pilots who had had a long flight career, including test pilot school. And I looked and felt I think different than those folks. And so for me, I needed a waiver because I had already had that professional time. It just wasn't during my Air Force time. And I said, you know, but if I was, you know, a civilian, I'd be really well qualified. And the answer was, but you are not a civilian. And they were right. Yeah. And I think it's an important story because I think when you don't quite exactly fit, but you know that you're supposed to be part of that mission, you have to find a way to to do that and to understand what you need to do that might be different. By being a little pesky, but at the same time, acknowledging that like for me, I worked in the military and you serve at the pleasure of your country. And it is about what they need, not what you need. And so finding that balance between asking questions that should be asked because they just hasn't really come up before that people got their qualifications before they got to the military. There's an interesting relationship that I think most people don't think about, you know, you hear a lot about persistence. It's like, oh, you have a dream, like be persistent. Don't give up. Well, a huge part of persistence is adaptability and understanding that the original plan is almost never going to work out the way you expected. And there's going to be setbacks and obstacles and detours. And you need to have a certain amount of personal flexibility and willingness to adapt to the circumstances. Like that is part of persistence. It's not just brute forcing your way, you know, my way or the highway. Exactly. And it didn't, on each of those terms, you didn't expect to have to take. Yeah. There's things you could learn. And if you spend your time thinking, how come I have to be here? It's you're missing part of the path. Yeah. Were there times that you felt compelled to speak out and, you know, kind of insert yourself a little bit more aggressively into into an issue? Well, I would say probably the clearest situation there is that at a certain point, right after I got there, somebody, one of the other astronauts said to me, came to me like, I was in the mail room. He's like, Katie, you know, I have been watching and you are doing really well in space walking. And I think you have the head of a space walker. I think you have the skills. But you need to know that the small spacesuits are going away. So we're flying on the shuttle right now. When we get to the space station, there will be no small spacesuits. And they also say no extra large spacesuits. But I bet those are going to come back. And I'm like, you mean the ones that fit most of the women? Yeah. And he said, yes. And I was also assigned with Kathy Thornton to a flight at the time. And she's like, Katie, when this happens, you call me. And we're going to figure out how to help you function in a medium space suit. And it was a huge deal. And the sentence that really comes to stood off to me was, I mean, they had a meeting. And I didn't actually speak up in this meeting. We have a Monday morning meeting every Monday. And one of the announcements was really a couple of years later was so we're eliminating the small suits and the extra largest. And we think that's going to work out because we've looked ahead at the manifest. And we have all of the spacewalkers that we need. I mean, there couldn't be a more clear way to say, I mean, because it affected at least a third of the women, some of the guys, but and probably more in that, and yet here you are, you know, you're me. Do you stand up and say, wait a minute, you knew how big I was when I got here, you measured everything. You know, how can this be? It's not right. Do you really not think that you need to have women up there on that space station? Because this really meant you could go and be on a mission as a woman or as a person who didn't fit in the medium. I couldn't make the medium work. You could be a person on the shuttle going up, doing robotics, whatever, but you couldn't be somebody who lived on the space station and had a mission up there, unless you qualified in the medium suit. And people would say to me, and so I mean, the medium suit was a reality. I worked hard. It got a lot of help, really a lot of help from people figuring out, how could I function best in that suit? Yeah. And I qualified in that suit, which, you know, and it's the kind of thing where I would show up to meetings or you know, spacewalk meetings, and they kind of look at you like, why are you here? And I just wanted to go, do you really not know that I have like above average grades in spacewalking? You know, in everything, but speed because I have short arms, right? And, you know, sort of like you should care. Right? Yeah. And so it was not an easy thing. And I need to have to say that it's, it's something that people do the best they can. I mean, I probably loved everyone in that room, loved working with them. You know, all those things, but people kind of have blinders on. And I think that, I think it's still, I understand I do hear from people who are still there today that it still happens. And this is something that can happen to all of us. But there's, let's say, there's two people on the pool deck, because we practice in these 300-pound suits in a swimming pool to so that we can be weightless, so to speak. And you have a new guy and a new woman, both in spacesuits. And chances are somebody is looking and judging and looking at the guy going, I wonder how he'll do and looking at the woman astronaut and saying, I wonder if she can do this. And there's a different, it's a different way of thinking, right? And of not recognizing. And I think that it happens in a lot of different fields still. And that's really one of the biggest reasons I wanted to write the book was if this kind of thing can happen at NASA where we're accomplishing these great missions. And in, you know, this is a smaller part of NASA within the astronaut office and choosing missions, it's more complicated. But if we can actually not see people in this context, it means it's happening. It could happen anywhere. Everywhere. And it does. Of course. And so I'm really proud of my efforts. I mean, I think when you're trying to make change, you could either be saying what you mean, change this, it's not exactly my way. But and more in the way of finding a way to communicate with people in a way they can understand. Yeah. It involves performing in that suit and also recruiting them to be part of the team that helps you be successful in that suit. And so for me qualifying in that space suit and then getting assigned to a space mission or a space station mission was like the pinnacle of my career. Amazing. Comes back to that adaptability as well, right? It does. It does. Understanding that there's going to be unforeseen obstacles. And I think you've talked a lot about mission and I think that that adaptability, like you can either just go, but I can be fretting about the fact that this is so hard, this is so unfair. Why do I have to be in this medium space suit? Yeah. It is difficult for me, but it is hard. And if you don't have 100% of your focus on succeeding and making the things work and part of you is just wasting some, you know, just being angry and if you mean a lot of time. You can be mad about a lot of things, I mean, in your everyday life and injustice and politics and there's, I mean, you can have a really big circle and I don't enjoy existing like that. I like it just feel better focusing on what I can do right now to make things be the way I think they should be, whether that's in my community or where I'm trying to go. Yeah. From science to the Air Force to NASA, you are not what most people expect in those environments. Like, is that a motivating factor for you of like, kind of showing people? I think I have that little competitive part of me. Yeah. I do. I mean, I'm wanting to show people, but also also a sort of like naive, just I call it cheerfully showing up. Yeah. Where I'm like, okay, so they didn't invite me to the spacewalking meeting. It wasn't like they were like, no, let's not invite Katie. But I just realized it never occurred to them. They don't know I'm supposed to be there, but I know. So I'm going. And I don't show up, you know, like, I'm here. How can we do it? I mean, because it's just not the way, you know, I'm more about sort of like, what do I have and what can I do with it as opposed to, how come I don't have this? Yeah. Were you always that way? Do you think or was it something you learned? I think I'm a very optimistic person and I love like connecting people and figuring out and I love doing unusual things. I don't know. I think so much of that comes down to the attitude behind it because there's a very fine line between that kind of cheerful optimism of like, well, I could do this and I'm just going to go and show them that I can do it versus an entitlement of like, well, fuck them. I'm going to, like, I should be there, I'm going to show them, et cetera, et cetera. Well, there's a little bit. I mean, I think there's a scale, right, in between and sometime and I'm not a very good arguer. Yeah. I wish I was, but I'm not like one thing I could never be. I decided was a lawyer. Yeah. Right? But, um, and so I choose a little more naturally partly because I am, I don't know. I'm a blender. Right. Because of bias towards action, it sounds like I would say yes, it's just like, let's stop talking. I'll just go do it. But also, I think being open to help and even, you know, the people who think that you shouldn't be there or just never, they're like, why is she here when they realize that you're really working hard and planning to be there and it actually, they like to help. Yeah. And I certainly got a lot of help in my career from people who are guys, from people who are women that, you know, had skills that I didn't have that would say, you know, Katie, you need to think about this. You know, you're, you're just barging ahead and you're forgetting that you need to show this as well. And here's a way that I think you could do it even though it's challenging for you. Yeah. Have you ever struggled with? No. Okay. Yes. Everything is easy. Uh, they'll be the title of this podcast, Katie Coleman on how everything is easy and I've never struggled at anything at all. Have you ever struggled with, you know, when you have such a big consequential mission, something that is driving you, motivating you for years and years and years, is it hard to care about, say, the small missions, the small things? Like, is there a come down from that? Is that something that you've struggled with at all? I'm asking for a friend. I know I struggle with that. I'm going to say, um, I definitely struggle with the fact that everything can seem important to me. Interesting. And that, and how to, you know, maybe chunk things together, how, how do I, at the end of the day, feel successful? That, you know, um, I don't know, whether it's, you know, on the space station, I would say, even though I loved it there and I would go back, it was a very, uh, it was so clear that everything you did was important and got us one step closer to understanding how to design an environmental system that will take us to Mars and, you know, in moon as a first step, right? So it's so clear that everything is important, but it's also important to talk to your family at the right time when, you know, and, and they can't call you. You can call that. Only you can call them. And so making all that kind of stuff work and, and doing some of the things that I wanted to do as a human, I mean, so the range of things they all seemed like important missions. And if I went back, I would be a little bit more cutthroat about, okay, I've given 12 or 14 hours to most of the mission, I'm going to take some of these hours for myself to do the things that are really important to me. So you spent six months on the space station, you said you miss it, you loved it, you would totally go back. I'm curious. Well, like, let's remove the mission from it. Okay. But I imagine, you know, so much again, the mission imbues every action with so much meaning and purpose and significance, that that has a real psychological effect. I'm curious. What is the actual objective experience of living on the space station? Is it difficult? Is it maddening? Is it, is it comfortable? Is it uncomfortable? Is it stressful? Like, how are you sleeping? Like, do you strap yourself to a wall or something? Like, how does all of this stuff work? Um, we're going to get NASA and all the other new space companies in trouble here because everyone will want to go. Okay. It is magical. Is it? It is. What's magical about it? First of all, people think about floating around, you know, my hair floats around, right, and we float around. But once you want to go somewhere, you are flying and you are not in an airplane or a glider or anything. One of the demonstrations that I like, it's actually on the internet, like, splitting hairs and gravities. I could take one hair from my head, so could you and push it against like this microphone and I would push myself all the way across the space station or until I run into something else, right? And because it takes that little force to move, I mean, if you push real hard with that hair, you're going to break it. But just given it like this, that's how, so it's a whole new way of life and it's a little bit like underwater and you, and if you look and see, you can see people who spent some months up there there. You're just sort of like liquid people and you give, I call it tending, you know, you give yourself a push and you get better at giving that push real direction, but then you're sort of tending. Yeah. So that, I mean, there's that that just reminds you every day when there are some things that are miserable. Right. I mean, the food, nobody goes for the food, right? Okay. I mean, it is, I mean, big up some flying thumbs down on the food. I mean, but I had a, well, I was going to joke around and say that I have a full, I had a full time job because I flew with an Italian and I never understood because I hadn't been to Italy why he was so sad about the food. Okay. Cause he was like, like, lasagna, wow, all about that. But I was in charge of, I mean, the package is a food and half the food is free-stried, half of it is like meals ready to eat with lots of preservatives in them. Yeah. And there's stuff that you like. And I mean, I'm like, okay, we have this food and I would have favorites and you know, and it just was, um, sounds like it sounds like it's like microwaveable meals, well, we didn't have a microwave, um, but actually we have a, looks like a suitcase, like a briefcase. And there's a panel in the middle that gets hot and you strap, you put a stuff, everything has to stick under like bungee cords or whatever sticks on there and you strap the shut and it heats up your food. I mean, you can, we have a little, our faucet is like a, a, a meal with either hot or cold, dilap好的 cold water. You put hot water into your scrambled eggs or your chicken soup or whatever beef stroganoff. And then we'd put it in the suitcase to get it just all kind of warmed up and nice. So, and then there's also, I don't know, they send up fresh food when a new supply ship comes up, but on the first supply ship that actually ended up coming, um, the Russians had specified lemons and onions, raw onions and pickles and pickles. But sleeping and sleeping is like delightful. Is it? Or you can, we have a little sleeping bag. It's like you slither into it like a snake and we have a. a cabin, and I think it's nice. It's really soundproof. You could have a screaming yelling fight with your husband knowing who know. But if you actually go to leave, there's some magnetic lock that you could never defeat. And so soon if you wake up in the middle of the night and decide to go to the bathroom, you know, thank you, big noise. I would change that. Okay. Next mission. But sleeping is. I don't know. I would sleep like crulled up in a little ball. And when I woke up, I might be like under my, looking up at the bottom of my desk or did you feel like you slept better? Because like now that I'm thinking about it, a lot of discomfort while sleeping comes from the pressure with the mattress, like the weight of gravity, like just kind of makes your arm uncomfortable, your leg falls to sleep or something. So like, is it more comfortable? I would say it's more comfortable, but takes a long time to learn to relax and not be kind of like a little bit tense, a little bit. Our natural posture is kind of like crulled up a little bit. Yeah. Knees up a little bit. How is that view? Does it ever get old? No. No, I imagine. No. And I was not somebody that would be always looking out the window when I was a kid, you know, and you'd sit in the station wagon and look out the back window. I kind of like that. But it, it wasn't like I was so much like that, but it's, it never gets old. Yeah. Even a place you see a lot, like I would always, I just have my watch to know when we're going to go over Massachusetts. And then you see it at sunset and sunrise because we're also seeing, you know, if you're the sun and you're, you know, sunrise sunset, we're seeing 16 sunrises and suntats a day. And so we're seeing the earth looking like that too. Yeah. And, and one of the things I put in the book, because I think it's so important is that space station is still up there. There's six people or seven people on it right now. And you can see them. Yeah. If you, if you live between 51 or 52 degrees latitude and, um, and down below, I mean, you, that part of the earth except for the really far north and really far south, you can see the space station crossing the sky looking like the brightest star. And, and, and, and, and you just go to this website, spot the station or if you just go to the internet and say, I want to, where is this space station? Sure. It will show you. It'll tell you. And it'll say, you know, look in this direction at this time. And you'll be seeing probably stars. And you're kind of looking as is that one moving, is that one moving? But then suddenly you realize one of them is just moving. And it's not as big across the sky. It's just sailing across the sky. Yeah. And I saw it just, I don't know, I'm the kind of person that I run down to the diner down at the bottom of the hill. I'm like, in five minutes, everybody outside. There's something I'm thrilled to see it. But people, it makes it real. And I think that's actually part of what the book is about is, I didn't love everything about my job and some parts of it were hard. But it's, um, real people get to do this job. And at the same time, they have some struggles. Yeah. Just like real people. And I think it's, makes people realize they could be that person. What do you do for fun and do run out of things to do for fun? Because I imagine you can only take so many books. I don't know if you take like movies or anything up there. If you get TV, like I don't know, what do you do for fun up there? They do, um, depends whether it's fun or it depends on the crew. Okay. I mean, um, we, they will send, they have a agreement with all the studios. They'll send movies. They'll send TV shows and finding TV shows that six people who speak different languages can appreciate, right? You know. And we all, so on space station, we all speak Russian to a reasonable degree. And we all speak English to a reasonable degree. Okay. So it's hard on like the people who are not from the US, or should I have to learn a lot? Right? But, um, a lot of them involved, like physical comedy, easy, easy things to follow. One of the crew members said to me, they think, you're going to figure it out anyway. You know, I like American Idol. Okay. So it's a really good show. It's nice to watch these people. You know, and, um, and, and, and, and, and that was the kind of thing where we could all watch and we'd have an opinion and, and it's kind of like on demand, like where they've sent it up, we can watch it any time. And I was on a crew that kind of like to watch TV during, um, during dinner. And we've watched the news, which we would get 24 hours late. Oh, I am proudly responsible for being the first person to request nicely, but firmly that NPR be sent up. Oh, yeah. And they're like, how often I'm like every day, I mean, it's like a tiny file compared to, like, I just want the news. Um, and we listen to it exercising and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. You were asking what we did for fun. Yeah. I mean, how much stuff is there to do run out of stuff? If you run out of stuff on the ground and you're like, ah, I'm bored, you know, it's just not my way. Yeah. Kind of never. I imagine there's an endless amount of work to do to do. There's endless work, but there's also projects that each of us have, whether it's to run around and, I don't know, at my, my son's little stuff, Tiger, and I would do various little videos with him, you know, trouble some places. Yeah. You know, just, I mean, but, but also videos for, um, videos that were unofficial, but official. You know, I did the introduction to Ted from Space. Oh, wow. In 2011. That's very fun. That's cool. Um, and, uh, I mean, so if there's quite, you know, I don't know, a local NPR, um, station, TV station had, we got, we had an event to answer questions. And clearly, there were a lot of questions that I answered. And I said, just send me the list and I made a little video. So everybody has their own kind of interesting projects. And I also love music. Yeah. And I'm not the most amazing flute player, but I love to play. And one of the ways to bring other people with you is to bring their flutes. Yeah. So I brought flutes for the Chieftains, the Irish band. I'm like a quarter Irish on each side. It makes way more than a half, right? Of course. Yeah. We'll count it. And, um, I'm sure Ireland will take you anyway. So I brought, I brought an Irish flute and a tin whistle and, um, pretty much learned to play them up there. I guess it was on my, it was on my list. I better learn to get better at that Irish flute. I play more silver flute. Yeah. But I brought my own flute from Massachusetts company that made it. And, um, and I brought one for Ian Anderson of Jess Rotall. Oh, cool. He's the person that brought the flute to rock music. Yeah, he is. And improvisation. And if you told me to name a flutist, he's probably the only one I would come up with. Well, you know, I think you get help with your bravery from other people. There is a Houston very well known Houston DJ Dana Steele married to one of our NASA pilots. And so, you know, I was like Dana, you know, I have very little time. Can you help me find this guy? And she's like, ah, I think so, Katie. I am a rock and roll DJ. And, uh, anyways, he wrote him a letter and said, you know, Katie doesn't have much time. She'd like to take your flute. She needs a single point of contact. And he wrote this very funny letter back that just said, or email that said, well, I think I myself am a pretty reliable source of contact. And I take a shower most days and presentable. I'm mostly nice to people. And he's very funny. And we, and we actually only talked on the phone before we left. And then I don't know if you've seen the little duet thing. We, we, um, we tried to figure out something we could do because you do this to kind of broaden, like you got to go, but what else can you make happen? Right. And, um, we tried to figure something out. Um, we asked the lawyers. They never answered. And, well, and so I mean, you wanted to be for the power of good, so to speak. And looking at his schedule and our schedule, um, he was playing a concert in Russia in the city of Perm on April 12th, 2011. And that is a special day because it's the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight. The first time a human left the planet. Oh, wow. And it's, it's celebrated as your ex night. Yeah. Cause it's, when you think about it, and especially if you're somebody who's looking down at the whole earth, like, it's not that they're from a certain place. It's, we're all from earth. Do you get that sense? Cause I, I was a John Glenn or, so I don't know, I've heard astronauts have come back saying that when they're up there, it's like that their sense of nationality, ethnicity, all that stuff just kind of goes away. But I think it's different for everyone, you know, for some people, it's more religious. For me, it's about, um, realizing that I, I thought I was going to go to space and be gone, but I felt very connected to the planet. And also just looking down, realizing like if only these people understood how connected they could be, right, we could get a lot further on some of these big challenges that we have, you know, cause, I don't know, I mean, coming from MIT and being a material science and, and being an astronaut, you get exposed to some of the bigger questions and bigger things to solve. And they're all interdisciplinary. It's not just chemistry or physics or engineering or, you know, how to help people who don't have enough. Right. Um, there's just so many aspects to it. And you need a lot of experts and yeah, that they could be connected. So I think it's different for everyone. They call it the overview. That's right. The overview effect. Yep. So I just thought it was, I mean, we go to Mars. Okay. I mean, we are on Mars, because there's rovers on Mars. But if people were driving those, those rovers and they had bumper stickers, I don't think they're going to say some country. They're going to have an e for earth. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's where I, I realized that Ian was going to be playing this concert. Mm hmm. I was going to be on the space station. And he suggested that we play this duet called Bure. Mm hmm. It's It's kind of a song that is really, you know, that it unites a box piece and. And he sent it to me, and I had really so little time to figure it out. And I finally actually had to write him a note, and I just said, you said, do this, this, this. And I just actually don't understand anything that you said. And I entitled the note lost in space. And a funny story as he wrote back, he goes, we don't know each other. And so I just figured that this was, you know, I'm just going to share that my computer was kind of dirty when you, I mean, had a little crap on the screen. And so the, oh, had a little space on it. And so it actually looked like the title of your email was lust in space. And I just thought, I don't think she meant to write to me. Well, email address, but then it was indeed lost in space. He explained it to me. And we put this to do it together, and if you look up space, do it, you'll find it. But I think it's the, it's just this wonderful thing about being from the whole planet where I play. He plays. I'm clearly in space. And I don't know, I just, I really love it. I think it's a great example of collaboration of, I had to be brave to ask. Yeah. He had to be open to really just going, who is this person? Well, I'd be forced to listen to this terrible song my whole life, right? And it's actually part of the audiobook now. You mentioned living with other astronauts. I mean, you, you, you essentially have five roommates and co-workers in a relatively small space. How does that play out while you're up there? Like is there internal divisions? Is there cabin fever? Do, do people start beefs with each other? I would say there's good news here. I mean, the answer is anyway, I mean, they're human. You want to. People are human, right? We also, we don't all get to spend so much time together, the six of us, but the three of us, Paula Dimitri and I spent a lot of time together and and we came from really different backgrounds and Dimitri had never worked with women before and so it was really new for him. And he had a specific job. He's a astonishing technical guy where he is that he is the commander of the Soyuz. It's what a certain point up on the station, he became the commander of the station and he is really great at that technical stuff. And in his world, he has been taught to do that. And you know, except help from the people whose job it is to help them. And I was the third person in that space craft who doesn't have as many assigned pushing buttons, duties, right? But I was also the most experienced person on that space craft in terms of going to space, not in the Soyuz. But and so how to blend my suggestions was someone who didn't understand that their job was to hear them, right? And so we figured that out and it doesn't mean it was always simple, right? And I got a lot of advice from from cosmonauts, from astronauts and and I think he looked for advice as well because he's like, you know, she keeps saying these things. Why? I mean, it's like, I mean, I can't speak for Dimitri, right? But it was different and and one of the things we figured out was that Palo and I pretty much had the same questions, Palo asked the questions and it worked and I wouldn't suggest this mechanism of figuring out how come everybody on the team is it heard in the way they'd like to be? I mean, me wanting to be heard in a different way, maybe speaking my own questions, was not the way to get the mission done. But if I was the, you know, vice president of a company and people were not listening to me and it worked for me, we would have different discussions than that. And so I think the idea that you have to, you brought it up, you have to adapt, you have to be flexible, especially when you're in a limited time window, right? Like it's like, if you and in Dimitri are going to be working together for the next 10 years or whatever, then yeah, maybe you, you pick a couple fights and try to change something, but it's, you've got six months, you've got an endless list of things that need to get done. So at a certain point, you have to be like pragmatic about it. I'm curious how much the cultural differences factored into. In that particular case, not so much, you know, and then I had, I was very, very close with relationships with the younger cosmonauts, you know, who would be like on survival training when we each barely spoke English or Russian together and they'd be like, "God, you're idea again," you know, kind of thing, right? And we were known as the crew that laughed, and we did really well, but I think that we got, we were a crew that, because we were all really different, I think we surprised people. Interesting. In that despite some large differences in the way we each worked, we figured out ways to really optimize, and I do think that, you know, one of the biggest lessons is that if you have somebody, I mean, we made sure I was hurt, it may not have been the way I chose to be, right? Or that I, not that I did choose, but the way that I would have rather, but to have somebody on your team that, I mean, I'm the person that on a team is kind of like, sees all the people and tries to figure out, you know, who needs what and who's, who has questions that they are not asking and things like that. And to have somebody that either has needs help or has a suggestion that they, they just figure, you know, they never look at me, they never think I've got something to say. At a certain point, that person just goes, you know, maybe I'll be on a team someday that really wants to hear that stuff. Yeah. And you lose. Yeah. And it's the hardest thing you can do, especially at home. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, we all have these teams that we don't, we don't choose our teams. Yeah. And the, the importance of what people bring and knowing, understanding what that is. And I was up there with Scott Kellyanne. He knows that I tell these stories because we're, we're pretty different. I mean, he's a person of few words and I'm a person of many, right? And I don't think either one of us in any way expected that we would be like, I am so glad I'm with that person, right? And it was, I think, really surprising to both of us that with those few words, he was the king of non-judgmental feedback. And to tell them, you know, for me to, you know, have him say, I've been watching. He's the commander in charge. It's his job to critique people. He goes, I've been watching you for a while, Katie, and you are slow to start a task. You are fast in the middle, and you are slow to finish. I think it all has to do with packing and unpacking the experiment. You're looking for the perfect place, one, and, and then you have to find everything and make sure you don't lose anything, which is paramount, right? And he said, so what if, I mean, you know, you'll figure out what works for you. One suggestion I have is, what if you just say it's Wednesday? Everything goes on the left. And you, I mean, you just know that it's there. It may not be optimum, maybe you protect it a little, make sure nobody kicks stuff, but, you know, try that. And if he had just said to me, Coleman, why do you take so long to do things? Yeah. It's not like I didn't know. And actually we're all slower up there than we would like, but I'm the kind of person that would be like, oh, I'm so slow, you know, and so, you know, it would have just, I just would have been, I know, I know, and it wouldn't have been helpful. So when it came time for him to leave, Palo and I, and we were saying goodbye to him. And, uh, and he kind of looked at us and, and I was like, I'm going to miss you. Mm-hmm. And he was like, I'm going to miss you too. And when Palo and I got home, uh, he was like the first person at the bottom of the stairs. He goes, he just had to make sure you got home. He's, he is a wonderful guy. Yeah. So let's talk about coming down. Were you sad to come down? Or did you not want to come? I was sad. Yeah. I didn't really want to come home. Because that was it like you weren't going to go back or, um, I still haven't actually quite given up. I mean, they're going to need a shepherds on one of these flights, right? And, you know, some of the space companies do have, um, you know, do have experienced astronauts going. Um, I, I think, uh, I knew, I knew, I was hoping to go again. And at the same time, literally once you hit the ground, you are back in line and there's certain boxes you have to check. You have to have had emergency training a certain number of times and all, and the boxes are hundreds. Right. And so basically you have to kind of check all those boxes again before you're ready to go when I just, I, I mostly wanted to stay because it takes a long time to get good at things up there. Yeah. Like even a month or two to really, you, you did ask before about how long it takes to be really good and microgravity. And I would say moving around and flying, you know, just, you know, a couple of days. And after a month, you're like amazing. But to actually do experiments, not lose things, multitasking that environment, um, I would say takes a good month to get good and you're only up there for me almost six. And I just felt like I was so good at things. I just wanted to get more done. When you came down, was there for lack with better term kind of a calm down in terms of it, like this incredible once in a lifetime experience just happened. As you said, everything you did, every small action was imbued with all this significance and importance. And then now you're back on earth and it's like, you got to go pick up the, the take out and stop by the dry cleaners and, ah, shit, I have a flat tire. Like was there any sort of kind of, what I haven't had one. Was there any sort of kind of psychological, like refractory period or hangover? I think hangover is a good word for it. Ooh, I don't know if I would say hangover, but the coming home part I think is the part that the spouse is like the least. And like for a shuttle mission, you know, you're training for a year or two. So and then you and everything is focused on that mission then you get home and it's going to be another year or two or so before you're on another one And and that's sort of like what is my purpose now is hard on the person. I think it's also hard on the family Yes, and especially I think it's easy to just think you're going to step right in and do the things you always were doing right and you know And I did learn I learned a lot of lessons about letting go That's right. Yeah, because you you're inserting yourself back into a life like I mean while you Have been gone your husband and your kids like they've developed new routines your kids are in a new grade They've they've got new hobbies. They have new friends like it's exactly and they've gotten along actually just fine Yeah, without you There's that I would say in my case it got qualified in a couple different ways where In a personal way just me I really just so much wanted to stay a little longer. Yeah, you know, and for some different reasons It was actually a possibility for a bit and I was like yes And then I was like, but of course I will call home and we'll talk about this as a family, but you could think yes I mean, so it was a little bit real but not really I mean I was just in denial about coming home, right? Yeah, but when I came home I mean, there's a certain grief. Yeah, and not being there. I don't want to sit by a window in an airplane Because I just didn't want to look out Because I the view is different from open space, but there's a similarity of just being above and seeing so much and yeah And so I didn't really want to I mean there's a certain grief, but in my case I am pretty mission oriented and the mission of family was really big and they they give you a couple months to do your debrief kinds of stuff, but then you know have an easier job for a couple months Yeah, and in my case it was nicer to spread that out like people would take like X number of months off and I was like I could do with just having a little more time at home over a longer period, and I would say that's the You know thing that I I wish we had prepared our kid a little bit better in that I came home to Houston With weeks of medical tests to do and our 10-year-old new as mom was coming home. Yeah, but you know We we committed between Massachusetts and Houston and you know after a couple days they went home and I got special dispensation to go home like a week later my flight surgeon actually put me You know took me to the airport walked me out of the plane saw that I only had now not like my usual He's like you are allowed to have a purse that has our wallet And it and that is it yeah But I did get to go home. So wanting that home mission and then In my case as well when I was up on the mission one of the big things that we did was to capture a supply ship a Japanese Couple supply ship, which now is really commonplace. You see the robotic arm reaching out and and now you see those ships approaching with people Yeah, but what we were doing was the second time ever that we'd use the robotic arm to capture this supply ship, but it's you could picture a factory giant factory and a truck pulling up to make a delivery and You're gonna reach out and sort of bring it into the factory If something goes wrong, you can't move the factory. It's too big. Yeah, space station is too big So you have to do everything to stride and everybody's nervous and and Eat as you're talking to mission controls around the world, and so when I came home This was still an evolving process and my job back in NASA was to be in charge of those supply ships and Actually to join together those teams like in Japan for the mission control on mission control in Houston SpaceX the company or Northrop Cromon and So we had to have happy hours Right, I mean happy hours are important. Yeah, I mean because there is really I mean I'm kind of making a joke, but we really I really did like have you know happy hours where I Said, you know, okay, come to the happy hour everyone working on this there will be astronauts there And they're gonna tell you what it was like when they did this on the space station. Yeah, and my crew mates and people would say You know, I did that and I was nervous. I mean people things the whole team needs to know right so I had this mission to You know help this really critical point of working with all these new companies To bring them together to make sort of one team. Yeah, so that felt very mission oriented as well So the mission confused which I think I got to I think it I think it gave me a reason not to be Morning that I wasn't going again quite yet. Yeah, the other question I have about coming back I don't know what term to use other than like culture shock like you know if you When you go abroad for six months and then you come back to the States There's there's a little bit of culture shock for reverse culture shock for a few days of just like oh, yeah I'm back home. I'm in an airport. I'm everybody speaks English. It's did you have anything like that of just like I'm Absolutely. I'm in a car again. I'm I'm carrying my suitcase again I'd say it wasn't about that part of it. It's For me, and I think you're you're sort of going abroad I was an exchange student and you come back and you've like lived this entire different life than anybody that you're looking at Understands and that means your family your friends or going off to college, you know for me pretty quickly After I got home. I was in Norway and That the fact that you're sort of like Part of you is like from a different world. You feel like you're from a different planet and people don't quite get it And I would say the the reality part of just I'm a really People person but it took me longer to be able to want to be with a lot of people It just was so overwhelming and and in fact we so we we stay in a quarantine place Not to be quarantine, but it's the most convenient place to do all those nasty medical tests Yeah, yeah But then our building that we work in and the astronauts have like the top floor that building when you walk in that building There's going to be all these like pictures and posters and captions that are your training teams celebrating the mission Often in a pretty funny way, right? And so I mean, I I love to I would always love you know walking down the hall Seeing those things and so I really wanted to go see that but I waited till nighttime Because I just wasn't ready to see so many people and when I was up there we got email synced four times a day So that's that's it takes like literally a day, you know You send a note to me send a note and it takes a day to have a decision, you know I won't tell you the decisions But it But you only had a hundred people on your email list mm-hmm and everybody from work counted as one so you had a 99 friends on that And then to have email from everywhere. That's what was overwhelming was the communication. Yeah the quantity of interaction Yeah, I imagine too that that feeling of alienation I imagine the the community of astronauts is very tight knit Like is there a kind of a sense of? Family, you know, there's so much is yeah, yeah, and and even even though there were all different and I mean There's a lot of stories in the book about not feeling seen and and you could hopefully hopefully it's written in a way that You would realize that I love the people that I worked with literally every one of them and that That's really almost the lesson is that sometimes you know these people sometimes people are so well-meaning Mm-hmm, and they really do genuinely like you. They just don't necessarily See you in that role, right? I mean and and so despite the fact that I some of those things still happen and that's That's part of the reason that I wrote the book is that I think in our world. It's so easy. We all have biases and stereotypes and I myself have them, you know, and hopefully learn, you know with with everyone, but I forgot your question Just a sense of family around astronauts. I mean what I mean what I'm hearing from you to me It's it's another testament to the power of mission, right like you can be in a space station with People who I imagine here on earth you would never find yourself in the same room with them ever You have cultural differences personality differences language differences Yet that mission brings you together in a such a it honestly, it's it's similar The it's similar to the way that war veterans talk about going to war, right? Like it's it's almost it becomes they talk about the soldiers and their platoon as like brothers Even though they're just completely different people that they have nothing to come in with other than serving in the war I agree. It's a It's a really it's a testament to how powerful that that overarching mission in purpose is Last question for you. Did you think or hope that we would be further along in regards to space by now like I like you Apply for NASA in 92 you got in I guess you started 92 93 right Back then when you thought about 30 years from now 40 years from now. Did you think we'd be further along? Or did you have any sort of expectations about it. It didn't really have Expectations I think being in the thick of it, um, I just wanted, I wanted to be part of it, right? And if I, I mean, to me, I add up those years, I'm like, Oh, is that that many years, you know, and I'm something that doesn't mind their birthday or being the age they are or whatever, but, you know, almost 64, well, in six months or so. But, um, but it, it seems, if I look back, I'm like, wow, we haven't really, you know, we aren't where we were hoping to be. And at the same time, being in the reality of it, I, I would tell people, I mean, I came back to the space station, 2011, I was like, there's a reason we haven't gone to Mars yet, and it's because we're not ready. Yeah. I mean, the toilet and the systems that recirculate air and water on the space station break more than you want them to break when you are on your way to a, you're on a six month journey to Mars because we're even just finding out the thing that we thought we'd never replace in the, in the environmental system. That's the thing we're replacing the most or that's the thing we actually have to open up and replace some of the guts inside, which was never planned. So we're learning really big lessons. So I, I do think it's, I think it takes a while. Um, I think it's complicated. I think that having these commercial companies be part of this environment and this world is really wonderful because they can, I mean, there's something about, you know, being with the government where, I mean, they, in our case for NASA, I mean, this is tax dollars, they have to be sent, spent well, every question that people have literally has to be answered. And so if something, if we say, let's, let's try this in no people on board, people on board is always different. Yeah. No one is going to take human life casually and, you know, NASA is always part of that process with humans. But, um, or at least the, the ones that we missions that NASA does, but hardware, even if we have something not work, launch it and it doesn't work, there's a huge investigation. Yeah. And so, and you look at actually the Boeing flight, you know, right now, you know, the first launch, they discovered some unexpected things about the way the computer thought about timing and then, you know, had a long road to realize there's a lot of implications, a lot of things to fix, right? But these companies can have something, can fail and fail often easier than a government agency, and it's, I think, inspirational to see. I would tell people, you know, SpaceX, sometimes they actually make a decision and they don't even have a meeting. I would say that to the people that I worked with in robotics, right? And, and it's, you know, it's just, it's, but it's inspirational. Like the next time you're at a meeting and you realize that we're all kind of going, yeah, this is hard. Why not figure out what can we do right now? What's the next step? So I think it's great to have them in the mix. I think it's important to have the NASA's and the Japanese and European and Canadian space agencies in the Russian space agencies and that makes as well. Right. Cool. Awesome. Well, the book is sharing space. Katie was great seeing you again. It was wonderful. Oh, there he goes. That's okay. I should have written a, I should have written a longer book. I know. If you had more pages, thanks for coming to life. Thank you. The subtle art of not giving a podcast is produced by Drew Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.