Episode Details

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Colonel Terry Virts has flown an F-16 over Iraq at night, laser-guiding bombs, with simulated MiG-29s on his tail and a wingman who nearly ran dry over enemy territory. He has sat in an Orion capsule on top of a rocket while a man with a red button could have blown him up. He has floated outside the International Space Station at five miles per second while watching the sun rise sixteen times a day — and nearly drowned inside his own helmet.

Two spaceflights. Three spacewalks. Commander of the ISS. 200 days in orbit. 300,000 photographs. And he learned to cut Italian women's hair before he was allowed to launch.

Chris sits down with Terry to go inside the life few humans have ever lived — from the single-seat, single-engine mentality of the F-16 cockpit to the profound silence of looking down at a border lit up in red at night and realising you're watching a war.

Chapters:

00:00 From fighter jets to the final frontier — who is Terry Virts?
01:33 F-16s, Korea, and the limits of human busyness
03:59 Low on fuel over Iraq — and a wingman who barely made it
05:49 A bird strike in Texas and 0.1 hours of flight time
07:52 The astronaut dream — applying when your classmates wouldn't
09:29 Sir Alex Ferguson at Harvard and a conversation about football
12:41 Shuttle vs. F-16 — Mach 2 to Mach 25
15:20 The STA — flying a Gulfstream like a space shuttle
18:00 Docking with the ISS and seeing Earth for the first time
20:12 The politics of the International Space Station
22:46 The view from space — borders, lights, and what wealth looks like from orbit
27:05 Squid boats and green fishing lights in the Andaman Sea
29:51 Daily life on the ISS — hair cuts, zero-gravity digestion and computer networks
36:28 Installing the Cupola — bats or moles?
44:15 Three spacewalks and nearly 20 hours outside
45:28 Seeing God's view of creation — between greasing the bolts
47:53 The water in the helmet and the near-drowning that changed spacewalking
50:01 Ammonia leak — when we thought the station was going to die
53:50 The Russians, the Duma and watching war from orbit
57:59 The future of space — Artemis, Starship and the road to Mars
01:04:40 One More Orbit — Guinness World Record and Hamish Harding
01:06:46 Books, Call to Adventure (sea kayaking in Alaska), and Pay It Forward

What You'll Learn:
• What it actually feels like to pilot a space shuttle — why pulling the nose up during landing first makes you descend, and why your brain has to stay several steps ahead of the vehicle
• The real story behind the ammonia leak that made NASA tell the crew the space station was going to die — and why it turned out to be a false alarm
• What Terry saw from orbit over eastern Ukraine in January 2015 — red flashes in the dark — and what became of the cosmonaut who was standing beside him
• Why the International Space Station is one of America's greatest foreign policy achievements, and how it passed Congress by a single vote
• The night Luca Parmitano almost drowned in his spacesuit — and the snorkel system NASA installed in response that Terry put to the test on his second spacewalk
• Why Terry believes the only path to Mars is a public-private partnership, what the real cost of SLS is per launch, and what Elon Musk's Starship lander has to do before humans walk on the Moon

TERRY VIRTS | NASA Astronaut, Author & Filmmaker
Website: terryvirts.com
Instagram: @astro_terry
Twitter/X: @AstroTerry
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/terry-virts-146a5939
Books: How to Astronaut; View From Above (National Geographic); An Astronaut's Guide to Leaving the Planet
Pay It Forward: Guide Dogs for the Blind — documentary Pick of the Litter tells the story; guidedogs.org

ABO