April 10, 2025 • 20 mins
Amy talks with NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Col. Nick Hague in his first interview after returning from the 6 month NASA SpaceX Crew-9 mission that returned astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have a very special treat. We'd like to say
good morning to NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Colonel
Nick Haig, the first Space Force Guardian ever on the
International Space Station, the commander of the Crew nine mission,
Colonel Haig, I'm guessing you hear this a lot, but
welcome home.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Thanks, Ami, it's great to be with you this morning.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So, you spent one hundred and seventy one days in space,
you did a space walk, you had a successful splashdown.
Obviously back down on Earth along with Alex and of
course Sonny Williams and Butch Willmore. It's been an exciting
six months. How are you and everybody doing?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, you know, it's hard to believe the six months
goes by really fast, and you know we're back on
the ground and just over three weeks back in gravity
and adjusting and everything's going pretty good.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Okay, So I want to ask you about that gravity
because we saw you when the capsules splashed down and
saw you come out of the capsule with a pretty
big smile on your face. Can you tell us what
you were feeling at that moment and what it feels
like to go from weightlessness to full on gravity.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Gravity in a matter of minutes.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, you know, the smile coming out of the capsule
is just the thrill of you've just re entered. You've
gone from seventeen five hundred miles an hour down to zero.
And we do that by writing in the center of
essentially a fireball. And then you know, the adrenaline rush
from that experience, and then watching your parachutes open and
(01:40):
landing safely, you're just ecstatic to be home. And so
there's a lot of that going on. But then you're
also starting to realize, hey, you know, gravity is real,
and I've been able to ignore it for the last
six months. You're strong, you know, you can stand up,
you can carry your own weight, but your sense of
balance is really not there. And so that's why they
(02:04):
pull us out. They put us on a gurney, They
wheel us around. You know, for the first day or so,
somebody is there making sure that when we're walking we
don't we don't stumble. But after a few days the
body snaps back. It is just truly amazing how adaptable
our bodies are.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Okay, so when you say that that it's hard because
your balance is off, do you have sort of like
a vertigo feeling, or just you're just not used to
having to balance.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You just not you haven't used that part of your brain,
you know, your inner ear you've kind of ignored for
the last six months while you've been in space. And
then when you get down on the ground, you know,
if I stand up and close my eyes, my mind
really doesn't know how to figure out which ways up
and which ways down, and so you get a little
bit off balance, and then gravity takes over. So you've
(02:51):
just got to be really careful. And but it, like
I said, it's amazing because you know, I'll take a nap,
wake up, and there's there's this just huge increase in
the amounts that my body has already adapted. And so
over the course of twenty four hours, you're you know,
you're pretty close to having your balance back. Even within
(03:13):
the first six hours or so, you go from needing
somebody to hold your arm everywhere you go to being
able to walk on your own, okay.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And then I was trying to figure out what that
might feel like, you know, like we were talking about
going from no gravity to having full gravity and having
to deal with that, and I was I was like,
would it be sort of like when they put those
weighted vests on you when you get X rays at
the dentist and then you have to walk around all
day with one on.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Does it do you have that heavy feeling or what
does it feel like?
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, you know, when you described it perfectly, it's like
you're wearing this body suit that adds just this excessive
amount of weight. Everything feels like it's twenty pounds heavier
than it should be. And so just lifting your arm
takes effort, or or moving your head takes effort. Uh,
And it feels strange because it, you know, for the
(04:08):
last six months it's taken no effort, and then slowly,
over the course of a couple of days, Uh, that
just becomes your new normal. And you know, I've been
back just over three weeks, and you know, after I
get off the off the call with you, I'm going
to go over and continue with my reconditioning and my
strength and conditioning coaches are going to have me, you know,
(04:30):
running and lifting and doing all the things that you
would expect somebody to be doing, you know, just trying
to stay in shape. And so we bounce back so fast.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Okay, And when you were up on the space station.
Weren't you exercising a couple hours a day?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yes, at two and a half hours a day every day. Yeah,
so you come you come back so much stronger. You know,
I came back stronger than when I launched because I
was lifting every day, and so the the big muscles,
the you know, my skeleton and remains you know strong.
My big muscles remain strong. The real challenge is all
(05:06):
of the little muscles that stabilize everything and keep all
my joints in the right position. Those are a little
bit you know, those are a little bit atrophied. And
so we spend a good forty five days after we
land getting all of those conditions so that my joints
go back to the right positions that they're supposed to
be in. And you've got to be really patient because
(05:27):
you're strong, so I can go and out you know,
outperform those and end up hurting myself. So's it's a
very regiment and program interesting.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Okay, And are you taller too? I've heard that some
astronauts come back taller.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
So I came back taller, and then I lost it all.
Gravity took it away, so it.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Was short lived. Okay, I want to go back up
into space for a second. I want to we'll talk
in a minute about like what you were doing on
the space station and stuff, But the whole journey is
so fascinating to me. We followed when you undocked from
the space station, when you were finally ready to go home,
and there's this pretty large lag time between when you
separate from the station and when you re enter the
(06:08):
Earth's atmosphere. How long was that and what do you
do during that time?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So it was seventeen hours for us. It varies depending.
The reason there's that delay is you're waiting essentially for
the alignment of your orbit and the position of your
capsule to line up with your target for your splash down,
and depending on where the station is when you undock,
that could change anywhere from seven hours to forty hours,
(06:37):
and that's just orbital dynamics, and so what do you
do during that time. We had a fairly long day
prior to undocking, and so as soon as we undocked,
we got our suits off and got into some comfortable
clothes and we all went to bed, and so we
slept the solid eight hours and then we got up
and we still had a lot of time, and so
(06:59):
we did what you might expect a crew coming home
from space would do. We were glued to the windows,
looking out, enjoying, you know, the last views we have,
you know, for the foreseeable future of the you know,
the night sky and all the stars and galaxies and
looking down on the Earth during the daytime and just
trying to soak it in as much as we could.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
That's so great.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And then for the re entry again we're talking to
Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haig, who just returned from
the International Space Station. For the re entry, I mean,
it's got to be nerve wracking because you're still going
thousands of miles an hour, and then when you do
the entry, you're super heated. You're basically, like you said,
a big fireball. Like, what does that feel like?
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Do you guys?
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Are you guys talking and joking during that time or
are you just kind of holding on? I mean, what
do you do during that time? And what does it
feel like?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, so, you know, the first when you're in the
space station, you're you're, you know, four hundred kilometers two
hundred and fifty miles above the surface of the Earth,
and so as the Earth goes by below, Because I mean,
you're really traveling over the Earth, but you see it
as the Earth going by below. You don't really realize
(08:12):
what five miles a second means in terms of speed.
But once you start to descend lower, we really don't
slow down until we start to get into the thick
part of the atmosphere, or a thicker part of the atmosphere.
So that's four hundred kilometers down to about eighty kilometers.
At that point, all those clouds that look really small
(08:32):
start to look really big and they are screaming by
the windows, and so you get this sense of we
are going really fast. And then the air starts to
impact our heat shield and that drag builds up and
you can kind of feel the rumble, the vibration. You know,
(08:52):
we've spent the time leading up to this kind of
turning the air conditioner on, if you will, to max
to try to get it as cool as we can inside,
because that that aerodynamic heat, that that friction from all
that drag is going to start to heat up all
the atmosphere around the capsule, heat up our each shield,
and essentially it creates a fireball around us. That's about
(09:16):
three thousand degrees and and we're in the center of that,
in the calm, the eye of the storm, and you
what we feel is essentially just G. So we get
squashed into our seat and it goes from six months
of not feeling anything and floating to all of a sudden,
the G meter reads point zero one g's or point
(09:39):
zero two. By the time it gets too point one
one tenth of the gravity everybody feels every day. It
feels like somebody's sitting on you because you just haven't
been used to feeling it, and you know, it's it's
surprising that you know, the first half a G, it's
like a man, I don't know if I'm going to
be able to handle this. And then your body kind
of gets used to it. And then by the time
(10:01):
we reach our maximum G, which is just under five g's,
you you're kind of comfortable. So I'm you know, looking
at the displays, I'm talking the crew through everything that's
going on, where we're at, what what to prepare for next,
getting ready for shoots to deploy, and so it's a
it's kind of a normal conversation. Uh, and you just
(10:22):
you know, you just get you get used to having
hav An Earth squashy.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
A little bit another day at the office.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
It sounds like, indeed, you know, it's like having a
conversation why while you're writing a roller coaster.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Okay, okay, nice, that's a great analogy.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
We are joined on wake up call this morning by
NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haigh. He's
the first Space Force Guardian ever on the International Space
Station and also the commander of the Crew nine mission.
Colonel Haig, thanks again for joining us. We so appreciate
you spending some time with us this morning.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Absolutely, it's it's fun to share the experience.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Well, I know that last time we talked to you,
Colonel Haig, we were well, I was kind of jumping
out of my skin thrilled we got to talk to
you live on the International Space Station. And that was
back that was about six months ago. It was pretty
early in your mission since you had gotten there, and
so we wanted to kind of check in and see
what it was like for the last six months. So
(11:23):
I know that one of the things that you guys
do is you do a lot of experiments. Are there
some of the experiments that you can tell us about that.
We're kind of notable to you.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, the reason we're up there on
the space station, the International Space Station to begin with,
is to conduct science experiments. You know, I talked about
all the things that being in weightlessness does to my body.
It does those same things to all of our experiments,
and it helps us learn a little bit more, a
(11:53):
little bit deeper about everything. And so there we in
the course of six months, I was part of one
hundred and fifty ke plus different types of experiment and
it's it's everything from looking at at our bodies. You know,
how being weightless affects my immune system, how it affects
my age of my vascular system. Uh, you know, being
(12:16):
in weightlessness can cause my arteries to accelerate in their
aging or mimic what it's like to have accelerated aging.
And so we we research what those what those changes are,
and then by better understanding those we can we can
help inform medicine on the ground for for people that
are experiencing aging of their vascular system or have you know,
(12:38):
suppressed immune systems. So that's a couple of examples, but
it spans the whole game. I grew lots of things
up there because we're trying to figure out how do
we sustain crews when we send them on missions beyond
Earth orbit? How do we grow the food that we're
going to need to take because we can't resupply them
all the time. So it's it's it's just a lot
(13:00):
of fun to be up there in the middle of
it all if you enjoy a if you're a curious person,
it's an amazing job.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Okay, and Colonel Hay were the experience that you did,
were those form NASA only or for they were they
also for Space Force because again there's this this symbiotic
relationship between the two. Even though NASA is a civilian organization,
of course Space Force is a military organization.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, and so you know, I'm a Space Force guardian
and and my job is to work for NASA conducting
the civil space mission, not the not the the you know,
the National Security Space mission. And it is a symbiotic relationship.
And so you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't
thank all of my fellow guardians that are stationed around
(13:47):
the globe that that provided all those essential things like
you know, keeping us clear of debris, up there and
helping us move the station to get out of the way,
or helping us launch and land. You know, they do
some fundamental things that make it possible for us to
even go up there and do those science experiments and there.
You know, it's just phenomenal to be associated with that
(14:09):
team and to be a representative of the Space Force.
But yeah, those experiments up there. It's an international space station,
and so I'm conducting experiments across you know, for for
universities across the nation, you know, the United States, but
I'm also conducting them for other governments, you know, whether
(14:30):
it's Japan or the European Space Agency and all of
the countries associated with that. It's a little you know, agnostic.
I don't necessarily care where the research is coming from,
because in principle, we're sharing that information with everyone, and
so the discoveries on the space station come back and
benefit the whole world.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Good to see that we all get along in space.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Okay, So when we talk to you when you're on
the space station, no space walks had been done.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
But as it turns out, you got to one. How
long was that and what did you do? And what
was it like?
Speaker 2 (15:07):
You know, a spacewalk is effectively eleven hours in a spacesuit.
It takes a while to put it on, and then
once you're in it, before you even step out of
the space station, you have to purge all of the
nitrogen that's naturally in your body because you go down
to a lower pressure when you start to work outside
(15:28):
in the vacuum of space. So after about four hours,
then we go out the hatch and you know, from
a thrill perspective, you open the hatch and you look
down and two hundred and fifty miles below there's the
Earth kind of just gliding by, and you can see
snow covered mountaintops and fan dunes and oceans and it's
(15:49):
just spectacular. You know, it's an office. It's the best
view you could have at work. And you go out
and you're you know, at some point the just kind
of melts away and you're just working outside with your
with your coworker. You know, Sonny was out there with
me and uh and uh we got to work. We
(16:09):
we were working on repairing a couple of things.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
You know, the station is old, it's been up there
for two and a half decades.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Uh, and and so we.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Repaired a couple of pieces of equipment that needed to
be replaced. Uh, and then I also got to work
on an X ray telescope, which we use to kind
of try to answer those deep questions about why are
we here and how did the universe? How did the
universe come into being? You know, it studies neutron stars
(16:37):
and the you know, the remnants of of of massive
explosions in space, and so I got to work on
that and help repair it.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
That's so cool.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Okay, So we only have a couple of minutes left,
so I got to ask you a couple of questions
about life on the space station.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
You were up there for Christmas. Did you get to
like did what is that like?
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I mean, did you get to take the day off?
Did you celebrate or was it just another day in
the office.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
You know, we still have to we still have to
make sure that the station goes and keeps running, and
so there's a little bit of work on every day.
But holidays, it's an international space station, so we celebrated.
We celebrated Christmas just like everybody else here in the
United States, but we also ended up celebrating Russian Orthodox Christmas,
(17:21):
and so we celebrate international holidays up there as well,
and so we find time to get together as a
crew of seven and have a meal, you know, make
a cake, put out, you know, a spreadshare our you
know us food, or partake in you know, the international
food that's there, and really just commune with each other
(17:43):
as people and and talk about you know, families and
everything that's going on in each other's lives, and share
our favorite music with each other and tell jokes and
and just be And those are really special times up there.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
And I would imagine for New Year's no one got
to pop champagne. I would think that might be a little.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Dangerous, a little bit dangerous.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
All right.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
I did see one of your videos and I noticed
that your hair was shorter than when we talked to you.
So you've got a haircut in space And I want
to know, this is important question stuff, How does that work?
Because I would imagine it would be very problematic to
have hair floating around the space station.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Absolutely anything floating around is if it floats around, it
can get in your eyes. Even worse, you could breathe
it in than it gets in your lungs. And so
we're always trying to scrub the air up there to
make sure that stuff that's floating around gets taken out
of it. So a haircut, essentially you're hooking a vacuum
cleaner hose to the hair trimmer. But an interesting fact
(18:44):
is we receive no training on how to give a haircut,
So the first one is a little you know, dicey,
but we learn as we go.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I love that, okay, and we're coming up at the
top of the hour.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
I know we got to go.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
You got to go in thirty seconds, Colonel Hag, what's
next for you?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
So the mission doesn't end when you land. Surprisingly, I'm
going to do rehab. But there's also those science experiments.
They're still collecting data on me for the next thirty days,
sixty days, some of them will collect data on me
up to two years after I land. That's the science aspect.
The other aspect is for the next four or five months,
my focus is going to be on going out and
(19:26):
engaging the public and sharing the story and so that
postflight tour I'm looking forward to.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Well, we hope that your.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Tour includes a stop in Los Angeles. We would love
to welcome you home in person, and again, Colonel Haig.
We can't thank you enough for all of your time
and everything that you're doing. It's been such a thrill
to get to talk to you and get a little
bit of insight into what it's like to be an astronaut.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
So we thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, no, my pleasure, Amy and I do look forward
to visiting.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
La all right again.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
That is Space Force Guardian NASA astronaut old Nick Hagu
fresh off his trip around the Earth six months in space.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Amazing stuff.
We have a very special treat. We'd like to say
good morning to NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Colonel
Nick Haig, the first Space Force Guardian ever on the
International Space Station, the commander of the Crew nine mission,
Colonel Haig, I'm guessing you hear this a lot, but
welcome home.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Thanks, Ami, it's great to be with you this morning.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So, you spent one hundred and seventy one days in space,
you did a space walk, you had a successful splashdown.
Obviously back down on Earth along with Alex and of
course Sonny Williams and Butch Willmore. It's been an exciting
six months. How are you and everybody doing?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, you know, it's hard to believe the six months
goes by really fast, and you know we're back on
the ground and just over three weeks back in gravity
and adjusting and everything's going pretty good.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Okay, So I want to ask you about that gravity
because we saw you when the capsules splashed down and
saw you come out of the capsule with a pretty
big smile on your face. Can you tell us what
you were feeling at that moment and what it feels
like to go from weightlessness to full on gravity.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Gravity in a matter of minutes.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, you know, the smile coming out of the capsule
is just the thrill of you've just re entered. You've
gone from seventeen five hundred miles an hour down to zero.
And we do that by writing in the center of
essentially a fireball. And then you know, the adrenaline rush
from that experience, and then watching your parachutes open and
(01:40):
landing safely, you're just ecstatic to be home. And so
there's a lot of that going on. But then you're
also starting to realize, hey, you know, gravity is real,
and I've been able to ignore it for the last
six months. You're strong, you know, you can stand up,
you can carry your own weight, but your sense of
balance is really not there. And so that's why they
(02:04):
pull us out. They put us on a gurney, They
wheel us around. You know, for the first day or so,
somebody is there making sure that when we're walking we
don't we don't stumble. But after a few days the
body snaps back. It is just truly amazing how adaptable
our bodies are.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Okay, so when you say that that it's hard because
your balance is off, do you have sort of like
a vertigo feeling, or just you're just not used to
having to balance.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You just not you haven't used that part of your brain,
you know, your inner ear you've kind of ignored for
the last six months while you've been in space. And
then when you get down on the ground, you know,
if I stand up and close my eyes, my mind
really doesn't know how to figure out which ways up
and which ways down, and so you get a little
bit off balance, and then gravity takes over. So you've
(02:51):
just got to be really careful. And but it, like
I said, it's amazing because you know, I'll take a nap,
wake up, and there's there's this just huge increase in
the amounts that my body has already adapted. And so
over the course of twenty four hours, you're you know,
you're pretty close to having your balance back. Even within
(03:13):
the first six hours or so, you go from needing
somebody to hold your arm everywhere you go to being
able to walk on your own, okay.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And then I was trying to figure out what that
might feel like, you know, like we were talking about
going from no gravity to having full gravity and having
to deal with that, and I was I was like,
would it be sort of like when they put those
weighted vests on you when you get X rays at
the dentist and then you have to walk around all
day with one on.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Does it do you have that heavy feeling or what
does it feel like?
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, you know, when you described it perfectly, it's like
you're wearing this body suit that adds just this excessive
amount of weight. Everything feels like it's twenty pounds heavier
than it should be. And so just lifting your arm
takes effort, or or moving your head takes effort. Uh,
And it feels strange because it, you know, for the
(04:08):
last six months it's taken no effort, and then slowly,
over the course of a couple of days, Uh, that
just becomes your new normal. And you know, I've been
back just over three weeks, and you know, after I
get off the off the call with you, I'm going
to go over and continue with my reconditioning and my
strength and conditioning coaches are going to have me, you know,
(04:30):
running and lifting and doing all the things that you
would expect somebody to be doing, you know, just trying
to stay in shape. And so we bounce back so fast.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Okay, And when you were up on the space station.
Weren't you exercising a couple hours a day?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yes, at two and a half hours a day every day. Yeah,
so you come you come back so much stronger. You know,
I came back stronger than when I launched because I
was lifting every day, and so the the big muscles,
the you know, my skeleton and remains you know strong.
My big muscles remain strong. The real challenge is all
(05:06):
of the little muscles that stabilize everything and keep all
my joints in the right position. Those are a little
bit you know, those are a little bit atrophied. And
so we spend a good forty five days after we
land getting all of those conditions so that my joints
go back to the right positions that they're supposed to
be in. And you've got to be really patient because
(05:27):
you're strong, so I can go and out you know,
outperform those and end up hurting myself. So's it's a
very regiment and program interesting.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Okay, And are you taller too? I've heard that some
astronauts come back taller.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
So I came back taller, and then I lost it all.
Gravity took it away, so it.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Was short lived. Okay, I want to go back up
into space for a second. I want to we'll talk
in a minute about like what you were doing on
the space station and stuff, But the whole journey is
so fascinating to me. We followed when you undocked from
the space station, when you were finally ready to go home,
and there's this pretty large lag time between when you
separate from the station and when you re enter the
(06:08):
Earth's atmosphere. How long was that and what do you
do during that time?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So it was seventeen hours for us. It varies depending.
The reason there's that delay is you're waiting essentially for
the alignment of your orbit and the position of your
capsule to line up with your target for your splash down,
and depending on where the station is when you undock,
that could change anywhere from seven hours to forty hours,
(06:37):
and that's just orbital dynamics, and so what do you
do during that time. We had a fairly long day
prior to undocking, and so as soon as we undocked,
we got our suits off and got into some comfortable
clothes and we all went to bed, and so we
slept the solid eight hours and then we got up
and we still had a lot of time, and so
(06:59):
we did what you might expect a crew coming home
from space would do. We were glued to the windows,
looking out, enjoying, you know, the last views we have,
you know, for the foreseeable future of the you know,
the night sky and all the stars and galaxies and
looking down on the Earth during the daytime and just
trying to soak it in as much as we could.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
That's so great.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And then for the re entry again we're talking to
Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haig, who just returned from
the International Space Station. For the re entry, I mean,
it's got to be nerve wracking because you're still going
thousands of miles an hour, and then when you do
the entry, you're super heated. You're basically, like you said,
a big fireball. Like, what does that feel like?
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Do you guys?
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Are you guys talking and joking during that time or
are you just kind of holding on? I mean, what
do you do during that time? And what does it
feel like?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, so, you know, the first when you're in the
space station, you're you're, you know, four hundred kilometers two
hundred and fifty miles above the surface of the Earth,
and so as the Earth goes by below, Because I mean,
you're really traveling over the Earth, but you see it
as the Earth going by below. You don't really realize
(08:12):
what five miles a second means in terms of speed.
But once you start to descend lower, we really don't
slow down until we start to get into the thick
part of the atmosphere, or a thicker part of the atmosphere.
So that's four hundred kilometers down to about eighty kilometers.
At that point, all those clouds that look really small
(08:32):
start to look really big and they are screaming by
the windows, and so you get this sense of we
are going really fast. And then the air starts to
impact our heat shield and that drag builds up and
you can kind of feel the rumble, the vibration. You know,
(08:52):
we've spent the time leading up to this kind of
turning the air conditioner on, if you will, to max
to try to get it as cool as we can inside,
because that that aerodynamic heat, that that friction from all
that drag is going to start to heat up all
the atmosphere around the capsule, heat up our each shield,
and essentially it creates a fireball around us. That's about
(09:16):
three thousand degrees and and we're in the center of that,
in the calm, the eye of the storm, and you
what we feel is essentially just G. So we get
squashed into our seat and it goes from six months
of not feeling anything and floating to all of a sudden,
the G meter reads point zero one g's or point
(09:39):
zero two. By the time it gets too point one
one tenth of the gravity everybody feels every day. It
feels like somebody's sitting on you because you just haven't
been used to feeling it, and you know, it's it's
surprising that you know, the first half a G, it's
like a man, I don't know if I'm going to
be able to handle this. And then your body kind
of gets used to it. And then by the time
(10:01):
we reach our maximum G, which is just under five g's,
you you're kind of comfortable. So I'm you know, looking
at the displays, I'm talking the crew through everything that's
going on, where we're at, what what to prepare for next,
getting ready for shoots to deploy, and so it's a
it's kind of a normal conversation. Uh, and you just
(10:22):
you know, you just get you get used to having
hav An Earth squashy.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
A little bit another day at the office.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
It sounds like, indeed, you know, it's like having a
conversation why while you're writing a roller coaster.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Okay, okay, nice, that's a great analogy.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
We are joined on wake up call this morning by
NASA astronaut and Space Force Guardian Colonel Nick Haigh. He's
the first Space Force Guardian ever on the International Space
Station and also the commander of the Crew nine mission.
Colonel Haig, thanks again for joining us. We so appreciate
you spending some time with us this morning.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Absolutely, it's it's fun to share the experience.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Well, I know that last time we talked to you,
Colonel Haig, we were well, I was kind of jumping
out of my skin thrilled we got to talk to
you live on the International Space Station. And that was
back that was about six months ago. It was pretty
early in your mission since you had gotten there, and
so we wanted to kind of check in and see
what it was like for the last six months. So
(11:23):
I know that one of the things that you guys
do is you do a lot of experiments. Are there
some of the experiments that you can tell us about that.
We're kind of notable to you.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, the reason we're up there on
the space station, the International Space Station to begin with,
is to conduct science experiments. You know, I talked about
all the things that being in weightlessness does to my body.
It does those same things to all of our experiments,
and it helps us learn a little bit more, a
(11:53):
little bit deeper about everything. And so there we in
the course of six months, I was part of one
hundred and fifty ke plus different types of experiment and
it's it's everything from looking at at our bodies. You know,
how being weightless affects my immune system, how it affects
my age of my vascular system. Uh, you know, being
(12:16):
in weightlessness can cause my arteries to accelerate in their
aging or mimic what it's like to have accelerated aging.
And so we we research what those what those changes are,
and then by better understanding those we can we can
help inform medicine on the ground for for people that
are experiencing aging of their vascular system or have you know,
(12:38):
suppressed immune systems. So that's a couple of examples, but
it spans the whole game. I grew lots of things
up there because we're trying to figure out how do
we sustain crews when we send them on missions beyond
Earth orbit? How do we grow the food that we're
going to need to take because we can't resupply them
all the time. So it's it's it's just a lot
(13:00):
of fun to be up there in the middle of
it all if you enjoy a if you're a curious person,
it's an amazing job.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Okay, and Colonel Hay were the experience that you did,
were those form NASA only or for they were they
also for Space Force because again there's this this symbiotic
relationship between the two. Even though NASA is a civilian organization,
of course Space Force is a military organization.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, and so you know, I'm a Space Force guardian
and and my job is to work for NASA conducting
the civil space mission, not the not the the you know,
the National Security Space mission. And it is a symbiotic relationship.
And so you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't
thank all of my fellow guardians that are stationed around
(13:47):
the globe that that provided all those essential things like
you know, keeping us clear of debris, up there and
helping us move the station to get out of the way,
or helping us launch and land. You know, they do
some fundamental things that make it possible for us to
even go up there and do those science experiments and there.
You know, it's just phenomenal to be associated with that
(14:09):
team and to be a representative of the Space Force.
But yeah, those experiments up there. It's an international space station,
and so I'm conducting experiments across you know, for for
universities across the nation, you know, the United States, but
I'm also conducting them for other governments, you know, whether
(14:30):
it's Japan or the European Space Agency and all of
the countries associated with that. It's a little you know, agnostic.
I don't necessarily care where the research is coming from,
because in principle, we're sharing that information with everyone, and
so the discoveries on the space station come back and
benefit the whole world.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Good to see that we all get along in space.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Okay, So when we talk to you when you're on
the space station, no space walks had been done.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
But as it turns out, you got to one. How
long was that and what did you do? And what
was it like?
Speaker 2 (15:07):
You know, a spacewalk is effectively eleven hours in a spacesuit.
It takes a while to put it on, and then
once you're in it, before you even step out of
the space station, you have to purge all of the
nitrogen that's naturally in your body because you go down
to a lower pressure when you start to work outside
(15:28):
in the vacuum of space. So after about four hours,
then we go out the hatch and you know, from
a thrill perspective, you open the hatch and you look
down and two hundred and fifty miles below there's the
Earth kind of just gliding by, and you can see
snow covered mountaintops and fan dunes and oceans and it's
(15:49):
just spectacular. You know, it's an office. It's the best
view you could have at work. And you go out
and you're you know, at some point the just kind
of melts away and you're just working outside with your
with your coworker. You know, Sonny was out there with
me and uh and uh we got to work. We
(16:09):
we were working on repairing a couple of things.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
You know, the station is old, it's been up there
for two and a half decades.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Uh, and and so we.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Repaired a couple of pieces of equipment that needed to
be replaced. Uh, and then I also got to work
on an X ray telescope, which we use to kind
of try to answer those deep questions about why are
we here and how did the universe? How did the
universe come into being? You know, it studies neutron stars
(16:37):
and the you know, the remnants of of of massive
explosions in space, and so I got to work on
that and help repair it.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
That's so cool.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Okay, So we only have a couple of minutes left,
so I got to ask you a couple of questions
about life on the space station.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
You were up there for Christmas. Did you get to
like did what is that like?
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I mean, did you get to take the day off?
Did you celebrate or was it just another day in
the office.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
You know, we still have to we still have to
make sure that the station goes and keeps running, and
so there's a little bit of work on every day.
But holidays, it's an international space station, so we celebrated.
We celebrated Christmas just like everybody else here in the
United States, but we also ended up celebrating Russian Orthodox Christmas,
(17:21):
and so we celebrate international holidays up there as well,
and so we find time to get together as a
crew of seven and have a meal, you know, make
a cake, put out, you know, a spreadshare our you
know us food, or partake in you know, the international
food that's there, and really just commune with each other
(17:43):
as people and and talk about you know, families and
everything that's going on in each other's lives, and share
our favorite music with each other and tell jokes and
and just be And those are really special times up there.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
And I would imagine for New Year's no one got
to pop champagne. I would think that might be a little.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Dangerous, a little bit dangerous.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
All right.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
I did see one of your videos and I noticed
that your hair was shorter than when we talked to you.
So you've got a haircut in space And I want
to know, this is important question stuff, How does that work?
Because I would imagine it would be very problematic to
have hair floating around the space station.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Absolutely anything floating around is if it floats around, it
can get in your eyes. Even worse, you could breathe
it in than it gets in your lungs. And so
we're always trying to scrub the air up there to
make sure that stuff that's floating around gets taken out
of it. So a haircut, essentially you're hooking a vacuum
cleaner hose to the hair trimmer. But an interesting fact
(18:44):
is we receive no training on how to give a haircut,
So the first one is a little you know, dicey,
but we learn as we go.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I love that, okay, and we're coming up at the
top of the hour.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
I know we got to go.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
You got to go in thirty seconds, Colonel Hag, what's
next for you?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
So the mission doesn't end when you land. Surprisingly, I'm
going to do rehab. But there's also those science experiments.
They're still collecting data on me for the next thirty days,
sixty days, some of them will collect data on me
up to two years after I land. That's the science aspect.
The other aspect is for the next four or five months,
my focus is going to be on going out and
(19:26):
engaging the public and sharing the story and so that
postflight tour I'm looking forward to.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Well, we hope that your.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Tour includes a stop in Los Angeles. We would love
to welcome you home in person, and again, Colonel Haig.
We can't thank you enough for all of your time
and everything that you're doing. It's been such a thrill
to get to talk to you and get a little
bit of insight into what it's like to be an astronaut.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
So we thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, no, my pleasure, Amy and I do look forward
to visiting.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
La all right again.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
That is Space Force Guardian NASA astronaut old Nick Hagu
fresh off his trip around the Earth six months in space.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Amazing stuff.
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