Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
retired US Marine Corps aviator Randy Bresnik. He is now a NASA astronaut and
a veteran of multiple missions to the International Space Station. And Colonel, thanks
so much for being with us. How did you be with you? Greg?
Where were you born and raised? Sir? I was born in Fort
Knox, Kentucky, and about two weeks after I was born, my parents
hopped in the car and drove me and my older sister to southern California so
that my mom could be there with my dad's parents as he ateed off to
Vietnam. And that leads right into your history, your family's history of service.
Tellus a little bit about your dad's service in Vietnam. He was with
the first Air CAF flying UH one bs. He went over initially in the
initial build up in sixty four, then came home, had me went over
for a second tour. He UH was actually the UH recipient of the first
battlefield promotion of the Vietnam War. He had been a warrant officer and UH
got a battlefield comission to become a second lieutenant and then eventually uh uh left
after his second tour in Vietnam as a as a first lieutenant. Your family
history of aviation goes back even further though. Your grandfather had a connection to
Amelia Earhart. Tell me about that. Yeah, he was her personal photographer
for five years, and so she uh he was pretty young at the time,
but uh had shown his skills a photographer, and she was tired of
all the Hollywood glamour and you know, big name photographers, and so she
hired him on. And so he uh uh used to drive cross country from
Santa Monica to Charleston, South Carolina, where I went to college with me
as I you know, drove back for my uh last few years of school.
And so one of the stories he told was how he was actually supposed
to be with her on that mission photograph photo documenting the the mission around the
world, and his photographic equipment and he were a bit too heavy, and
she decided to trade them for fuel on her aircraft instead. And so only
because of that is why I'm here today, Otherwise I would not be amazing.
What did you have to say about her as a person? He was
wonderful. I mean, he felt that she was like a big sister and
she called him little brother. And after she disappeared, he took all the
pictures that he had taken of her and put him in his negative vault.
And it's where they sat for fifty years. And it's when they're coming up
with the fiftieth anniversary. He's like, I think I've got some photos and
negatives in there, and so he went in and republished him and then,
you know, spent the rest of his life traveling around the world, you
know, telling the story of Amelia. You know, five decades later,
well, as you mentioned, you went to school in South Carolina, specifically
at the Citadel. You did Navy ROTC but commissioned in the Marine Corps.
Giving your dad's service in the army. Why did you decide to go in
a different brand? I simply figure every generation has to improve the previous one.
He was a helicopter I became a jet pilot. Okay, you know,
he was the Army. I went in the Marine Corps. That was
fun. He might actually served in the Navy also previous to go into the
Army. So we've got everything encountered except for the Air Force. And I've
got a nephew in the Air Force right now. Fantastic Any particular reason you
went that route because they gave me a scholarship. So I was a you
know, skinny high school kid in southern California. I didn't, you know,
know the difference in the services that much. You know, I was
a teenager. I applied for whatever could allow me to go to college.
And very fortunate that the Marine Corps, you know, was the one that
gave me the scholarship, because when I got to the Citadel and I saw
the other services and how they conducted themselves and how they were what their mission
was. How did the Citadel prepare you well for what would come after?
Uh? Amazingly? Well, I mean it was you know, I was
against, skinny kid, but at least I had the foresight to go,
Okay, I know, I'm going in the military when I graduate, so
let me do something to prepare myself. And so I took the challenge of
going to the Citadel. And at that time, in the mid eighties,
nobody in South California had heard of the Citadel, you know, and so
but I had heard about it, and fortunately got accepted and made that call.
I had never been east of the Mississippi. I'd never you know,
visited the campus and met anyone that had gone there. It was blind faith
that, you know, that was the right place for me, and looking
back, it could not have prepared me better for where I am right now.
Did you know you wanted to be an aviator from the beginning? I
did, But that was certainly the there's a lot of there's a few wickets
you got to go through to get there. You know, first I had
to you know, finish school. At that point, you still had to
have perfect vision. There's no laser surgery to fix that, uh, and
certainly have the aptitude. And that was one of my you know, biggest
concerns was that here I am, I you know, want to be an
aviator, but what if I go to flight school, I'm no good.
You know, it doesn't doesn't matter how much desire you have if you can't
fly. And so, you know, even all through my She'll start in
the Marine Corps Vietnam flight school, I was you know, what if I
go down there and wash out, you know, that's a real possibility.
And so fortunately I didn't, and you know, I ended up having the
skill that skills that I've got, you know, somewhat matched the desire and
so here I am. So do you feel like it came naturally to you
or was it a tough slog I have to say I thought that I grew
up running motorcycles, and I think that that was one thing that made it
somewhat natural. Where the concept of the bank angle and the power and the
speed depends on whether you're not your stand upright or making the turn in two
dimensions of a motorcycle, all I do was translate that to to the flying
realm, and certainly the the joy of flying was another part that made it
really a good fit and just seemed to be right up right up my alley
as a as a pilot. From what I've rid, you flown eighty one
different aircraft, but the one that keeps popping up is the Fa eighteen.
So I assume that's your favorite, or maybe it's just the one they gave
you. But what did you love most about that? Yeah, we're up
to eighty six now, and yeah that was my chosen well platform and record
shows for me, But the one that I would have chosen, you know,
if I had had a say in the matter, And so I've got
where I've got the most of my flight time, and you know what,
I went and did test work as a test pilot on so certainly having flown
the fourteen fifteen, sixteen F eighteen and experienced all those of that era,
definitely the F eighteen, you know, stands out above, but having gotten
to fly other airplanes from other services and other countries as well, it definitely,
you know, gave me insight to the fact that it is, you
know, of that era, you know, the finest flying airplane, multi
use airplane we've we've we've ever had in that in that timeframe, in that
fourth generation fighter, you also had the amazing opportunity to go to top So
I assume shortly after the movie came out that was pretty exciting and probably would
have been even without the movie. But what was that experience Like that was
another you know, fortunate opportunity I had because in the Marine Corps you go
to the Weapons and Taxis Instructor Course WTI that we have in you Arizona,
and then to become a fully fledged pilot training officer in the fighter community,
you go to top Gun as well, and so you've get the best of
all the most intense, highest fidelity, you know, training with ground systems,
early warning radar, multiplane, all the different munitions. And your job
is to go to the school, learn all these things and then come back
to the squadron and then teach all those things to the rest of the pilots,
because we can't send entire squadrons of people of these schools. And so
to me that was just here I am, I'm an fat pilot loving what
I'm doing, and I get to go to the school to get even better
at it and then come back and teach it to the other the other pilots.
And so that was a real, real blessing, and it just begged
the question then it was going to finish that tour first four and a half
years in the fleet, what next? I assume they sent you because you're
already really, really good. So what's it like to know that you're among
the very very best. It's neat because you know, iron sharpens iron,
and so here you are with the other students who are at the same you
know, high, highly proficient tactical level, learning from instructors who are you
know, even a level beyond that, and having that opportunity to get better
when you're already you know, pretty pretty high level of your game. It's
just it's it's thrilling, it's exciting, but you're also realized that you're there
to learn it all and then you go back and teach it and pass it
on. So that's why it's still such a successful school and program and still
allowing us to maintain the proficiency tactical proficiency that we enjoy with the US military.
What kind of assignments did you have following? So I got to my
first squadn in Connieway Bay and we did a short time there and then Deplotae
Japan, and then we came back to El Toro for a year and then
we deplotged Japan. Then we went back to Miramar, which is down Marine
Corps base into Potsge, Japan. This time I was there for a year.
So after that I left and went to the Amphibious Warfare School down in
Quantico, Virginia for a year, so our captain level professional military education.
And then from there I was selected to go to Test Pot School or Protection
River, Maryland, And so that was nineteen ninety nine a chance to go
to test Pot School where they cram about two years of education into one year
and the party that they have about the month end of is that you'll be
sorry party. And they're not kidding because you're not only doing the academics and
all of that, you're flying while you're there. And so that's where you
get exposed to the concept of going out and evaluating aircraft you've never flown before
to see how they fly, have the benefit of, you know, months
of classroom instruction and simulators and things like that. And you know, my
final project for the graduation exercise, called d T two Developmental Test two was
I've got to be the first Americans to fly the French two thousand and d
and so we went over to France and flew out of Strasbourg with a French
tactical squadron. I got two flights in it and had to write a one
hundred page report on everything from the way the cockpit was designed to how the
lateral stability was and the dynamics and the performance of the engine and things like
that. So that's the culmination of the one year of education test possible.
How similar are the controls arranged? Are they in some places completely different than
what you expect The controls as far as the stick in the throttles are pretty
much standard around the world, especially for fighters. You know, the sticks
in the right hand throttles are over the left. I was like, Man,
I am left handed. What if they put the throttles over here.
Imagine how much better of a pilot I could have been, you know,
if I was flying with my dominant hand. But as far as the way
they organize the engines and the displays for whether it's the attitude instruments or the
systems displays of the raid, are those things very per aircraft. And that's
what I've loved about being a test pike and to fly all these different aircraft,
protocraft, you know, Goodyear blimp, seeing how at that time,
with what technology we had, what experience we had in flying, how things
developed over the years. So it's been really neat to see that some better
than others, certainly for example, the British Jaguar. It is I described
the cockpit as you take all the things you need in the cockpit with the
instruments and controls, put them in a shotgun shell and just blasted at the
cockpit and it was there was no rhyme or reason some guys put a switch
here and engauge there, and you're doing this to do startup rather than you
know, simple you know in line, you know type of thing that you
find in you know, modern aircraft. So it was, like I said,
really very fun, very interesting. That's US Marine Corps colonel and NASA
astronaut Randy Bresnik. When we come back nine to eleven and combat in Iraq.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is US Marine Corps aviator and
Colonel Randy Bresnik. He's now a NASA astronaut. But up next, Bresnik
shares how he learned of the nine to eleven terrorist attacks in two thousand and
one and discusses his role in the early months of the Iraq War. So
I was at the test plot school and talk to River Maryland. I was
an instructor there two thousand and one, and it was actually my birthday,
and so I was in my office when the first plane hit and uh we
had a TV out of the hallway that uh was showing it, and uh,
you know, it was one of those things where oh, hey,
the you know tower's on fire, and then was actually sitting there watching as
the second one went to the other tower, and uh that's when you knew,
you know, there was no accident. And so I was uh instructor
test plot school, but had just come off of the out of the test
squadron, and so that's where we had our fifteens, and so I went
down to the flight equipment office, grab my flight air in my helmet,
knowing that things were gonna change, and went over to the test squadron.
It's one of the few native you know, F eighteen guys. And sure
enough, the uh, the Langley had all the air force at fifteens and
remember right they had the you know, uh Chesapeake Bay and North uh immediate
air defense sector, and the Navy out of Oceania had you know, basically
Norfolk and South. And so we actually had packs river F eighteens with test
pilots up there on cap those f that initial day or two, you know,
in case there was you know, something else that we didn't know,
you know, the world had changed, and so we were doing that for
a few days till things settled down more. And that was not the best
birthday I've had. Did you have any standing orders if you had confronted something
else? Yeah, there was certainly are we that we had and it would
have been the same that we had from everybody else. But you know,
it's a test community, and so it was we had UH and we had
a couple of fourteen folks around, but you know, s three folks and
other people who were in the test on and who were flying the F eighteen
but did not have a thousands of hours in it and background did tactically employ
it. They could fly and do test points, but it wasn't something they
knew how to employ the missiles and things like that. Now you had had
some experience in Iraq patrolling the no fly zones correct Southern Watch. So after
I finished up my tour in Packs River in two thousand and two, i
UH went out to Bank eleven out in San Diego at h MCS Mearrimar and
joined the UH the group staff from AG eleven as the future operations Officer and
we deployed over in January to Al Jabber Base in Kuwait. And so from
February to March I flew the Southern Watch cap and so here I am a
major at the time, and I just come off of four years of packs
River as a test pilot back into the fleet, you know, back into
my you know, talk gun WTI qualls as a Michigan commander. And here
I am, you know, leading F you know, F fourteen's or F
fifteen's over here in marlttle F eighteen cap and I'm coordinating all that as a
mission commander for Southern Watch, going wow, this is very different from the
test community now back in the fleet. And then then the war kicked off
and we were flying missions out of Al Jabra for the for the war from
uh pretty much March till the initial hostilities ended in may describe the type of
missions you were running. For the most part, uh, we were flying
u we call arm WRECKI where you know, the Marines and the the army
you know, left the line of departure and we were out doing all the
battlefield interdiction stuff that was beyond, so that by the time they got somewhere,
we had taken out the majority of the threat. And that's certainly what
allowed the first Marine Division over on the eastern side to pretty much go to
Baghdad and get through I think it was some like twelve Iraqi divisions along the
way, because we were out there doing the battlefield in addiction ahead of time,
and so we would you know, be leaving Al Jabber and flying areas
you know, like to Kurt and Bagdad and things north just a few days
into the war, well before you know they had a chance for any of
those forces to move south to counteract our archives moving north. We would fly
close air support from time to time when they needed and certainly that was something
we've trained for in our bread and butter as marines because we uh train the
same way that our infantry guys do. You know, we're the only service
where when a Marine goes into the service, your marine officer you go to
the basic school in Quantico, Virginia. Every single marine officer does it.
What you're gonna fly, you know, airplanes, or you're gonna drive tanks,
you're gonna be an infantry or if you're gonna be the admin officer,
and so we all start there, and so every Marine has that rifle and
mentality understanding. And so when we do close air support, we know,
you know, not all exactly what they're doing, but you know, the
people, and I had time to do a close air support where the ford
air controller was a voice I recognized before I heard the call sign, you
know. And so that's what makes Marine Corps special is we are very small.
We were very tight knit. We know everybody, and that's why we're
that much more invested than you know, uh, ensuring that we deliver the
weapons on time onto our because we know the people that are down there doing
it. Let's talk about each of those different missions. First of all,
close air support. What's your altitude when you're running those missions? How close
to the ground are you. We had a when we're doing our interdiction stuff.
I think it was like about a five thousand foot hard deck. They
didn't want us down below that for the most part unless we're doing close air
support, and then it's whatever it takes. How much resistance did you face
in either of those close air supports? We would take small arms fire.
Had one point when we were just just east of Bagdads, So it was
the last couple of days before the first Marining Division went into Bagdad where we
had it was a pretty big I think it was tank battle that was just
to the east of the city and so we were called in and so it
was employing our twenty millimeters cannon. We had rockets maybe perhaps at that time,
and that's where we had some man pads or Sam's serfstair missiles shot at
us. And so it's one of those things that do all this training for
years and then have someone called hey, missiles in the air and you're popping
flares and breaking a plane to try and you know, have the missile glomb
off onto your flares and you just all that training you do, you're training
that you're gonna fight becomes instinct you know, or you know, that's that's
what we hope for everybody becomes instinctual, and that allows us to be survival
and and you know, be successful in the battlefield. Was it what you
expected after all that training or was it a little different? Yeah, that
was you know, it's certainly I remember the first time crossing the line,
you know, into the hostile territory, and it did feel different. You
know, it's kind of the bloodbelt was constricting. You realize that, Okay,
if something happens, I'm not friendly territory and you're you don't normally carry
a side arm, you know when you're on your flight gear. We have
pockets for it, but you don't carry it normally in training. And so
now it's very very real, and certainly the uh the intensities up a little
bit. You know, the first time you get shot at. You know,
you're always wondering in training, well, how am I going to respond?
And I think everybody you know would love to be the heroes you see
in movies and just respond with no fear and charge the machine gun nests.
But and certainly you have that level of commitment to the r you know,
marine to your left and right, but you don't know that there's always that
wonder wh when the bulls start coming the other way, how am I gonna
respond? And you know, the first time I remember seeing it was UH
like c second day of the war and we were up on a night mission
using our forward looking infrared to to hit targets, and UH we dropped some
UH ordnance on the on some tanks. And then as I'm pulling off target,
I look back, I see these you know, blinking little white lights,
go, hey, what's that? Well? I was flying with a
uh A whizzo who had UH had already seen that. Oh yeah, that's
small arms fire. Oh okay, alright, and so you know it's there's
always a little bit of uh, the humor when you try and when you're
in you know, stressful or intense situations. And so he said, oh,
I think they've given us MOSE code. They want some lead. So
we turned around and gave him some lead. I think it's five hundred pounders.
At that point, I was just going to ask you what kind of
lead? So they have the five hundred pounders, what else were you using?
We had the canon on the gun. I don't remember strafing at that
point because it was night so we weren't going down super low and so that's
not as effective from higher altitude, but yeah, it was. You had
five hundred thousand pounders. And so when you're doing close air support, any
particular maneuvers you need to do when you're taking on small arms fire to protect
your more vulnerable parts of the plane. Certainly close air support we try and
come in at an angle. You know, the FOD air controller you know,
knows where the bad guys are, where they can see where the artillery
is coming in to suppress them. And so he gives us a running heading
that should protect for the most part until we'd started, you know, lower
out to come in relatively fast, and then we do what's called you know
pop maneuver, where we're pulling up to get eyes on the target and then
drop in, you know, to level out, employ the weapons, and
then pull off target and break away from the plane that we were in.
So if they're shooting at us as we pull off target, we're dropping flat
or shaff to decoy missiles and then pulling off target to be able to then
clear the clear the air space. So there are you know, tack maneuvers
breaking out of plane that allows us to go ahead and hopefully defeat anything they're
shooting at it. I assume you've trained for this moment in many, many
different ways, but obviously precision is key here. You don't want to hurt
any of our own people and you need to be on target. How difficult
is that when you actually have to do it, I mean, it's challenging.
I mean, but that's why we have, you know, for the
Marine Corps, we've got the twenty nine Palms area that's out in the desert
east of Los Angeles that we go out there and do combined armed exercises where
it's our marines on the ground they are going against real targets. We are
doing FULLIP as if we were doing you know, real time cast. We
drop you know, sometimes it's practice weapons and sometimes it's it's full of ordinance.
And so we get used to, you know, listening to the nine
line brief, having the target, you know, a lot long for the
target we can put into our systems that give us a designation in our HUD
to show, hey, this is what the coordinate says. We visually confirm
that, and then we can drop ordance based on that, and if it's
you know, it needs to be a just then we can certainly adjust,
uh, where that target point is. And so doing it for real,
there was just a lot more. You know, when you're in the in
the desert and training area, there's the target and and desert you know here
where there's buildings or you know, other other stuff going on or other parts
of the fight going on. Uh. It's one of those things where the
the training and be able to compartmentalize and focus allows you to not be distracted
by it by the other stuff. Any particular days or moments or missions that
that stay with you from your service in the Iraq War. Certainly the the
day that uh we rolled into Bagdad after having been you know, pretty intense
you know, every day all day prior to that, and you know,
knowing that uh the Marine Corps uh half of the ao R we rolled through
those all those Iraqi divisions and still got the bag dead before the army did
that. That uh was an enjoyable moment. And then be able to fly
over Bagdad without being shot at, you know, that was s kind of
surreal. One of the most memorable times was there was I mean it was
like the first week or so of the war where we had an army group
I forget the name Nazaria maybe where they had a couple of them had been
ambushed in and taken prisoner, and we were t they were trying to uh
uh take out the guys, take out the group that had you know,
taken them prisoner. And so normally we always fly as a section, you
know, two planes or or or more together, you know, with that
have eighteens for mutual support. And so we had you know kind of a
had planes that on alert in case we found out where the group was a
ad intel and more you know, take'em out. And so that particular
night, huge thunderstorms all over you know, Kuwait and Ironraq, southern Iraq,
and we get the call, hey, here's the coordinates they found that
the bad guys would go or go get them and drop you know, GPS
guided weapons nine number two plane brakes. They say launch anyway. I mean,
I've never heard anything where we are launching single ship into a bad guy
country, but it was that high priority of emission. So we'd take off
and or climbing out. The thunderstorms are so bad, we're getting sand almost
fire all over the airplane as the the lightning's not striking it, but it's
there's so much electricity in the the clouds, seeing stuff light up, and
it was just very intent. And so we were getting set up literally to
come back in to uh the pattern to be able to drop drop the weapon.
And as we're you know, maybe ten fifteen seconds before hitting the pick
a button to release it, they call it off and so come on back
having not dropped it. But have I gotten through that to get there?
And the decision process for them to go you're launching solo into bad guy country
was it was just pretty amazing and something that you know, that's something we
don't train to do. US Marine Corps Colonel and NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik,
when we come back shifting from the Marine Corps to NASA and the family drama
that played out while he was on his first mission to space. That's next.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Colonel Randy Bresnik, a
US Marine Corps aviator who is now a NASA astronaut. Even while serving in
Iraq, Bresnik was also pursuing a dream, one that would take him higher
than he'd ever flown before becoming a US astronaut. He tells us now how
all of that came about and how his first mission brought more drama than he
could have imagined. So the actual applicant announcement for applications came out while we
were over there, and I filled it out over there on the sandbox and
sent it in and it was something that you know, had certainly interested me
and one of my Marine Corps at eighteen buddies from all those deployments before becoming
a test pilot. He got select in two thousand. So it was like,
wow, they take chunks, maybe I've got a shot, you know.
But it was one of those things that it's just it so seemed so
impossible. It doesn't seem really all that realistic, you know, and so
you put your application in. But you know, I looked around and there's
so many other test pilots are you know, more experienced, more senior,
you know, but you know, you can't say, they can't tell,
you know, if you don't apply. I was fortunate to get the opportunity
to be asked down for a interview, which to me, you know,
would have been was I was honored enough. You know, they interviewed one
hundred and twenty people for what ended up being, you know, ten slots.
But uh, after I got back from Iraq in May, I ended
up getting engaged that fourth of July, and so that was at that point
where uh after my wife, uh then soon to be wife, Rebecca said
yes, I said, hey, we're driving to a friend's house for for
dinner. And I said, hey, I've gotta let you know now that
we're engaged, that I I kind of applied for this you know, this
job. It'll never happened, but just so you know, you have applied
for this job down in Houston. You're like, oh, that's nice,
honey. You know you want me an astronaut? Great, you know,
and then uh, that fall got the uh call to come down for the
first first interview, and then uh the rest is history. Did they ever
tell you exactly what they're looking for? Yeah, good question, cause you
never n you know, I think every astronaut, no one knows why they
got selected over over someone house. You know, I know what we look
for now, you know. We're looking for people that obviously meet the basic
qualifications as far as a science, math, technology degree, heart sciences certain
you know, for pilots, flying experience, and being an expert in your
field, whether it's a pilot or an engineer, a geologist or anything like
that. And then it's the intangibles where you know, a lot of the
military people we look kind of the same on paper. You know, we've
been here, we've deployed, we've gone to this school, we wear similar
ribbons. But what makes you different and outside of just that cookie cutter mold
that you've been in and so We've had people that have climbed Mount Everest.
We have people that are concert pianists. For me, you know, I've
ridden motorcycles and worked on cars and rebuilt an old house down a protection river
from Maryland down down Solomon's Island, and so those were things that were different.
And it's amazing how much the working on cars and fixing old houses applies
to spaceflight, especially when you the spacewalks, So that mechanical understanding and all
that has been really helpful to me. But they also do an interview where
you come down and you've got Chief of the Astronaut and Office, a couple
of astronauts, some HR folks, people from the Johnson Space Center, and
people from engineering that are sitting on a board and you've got one hour where
they interview you and you know, make the termination what type of person you
are versus what you look like on paper and so all these there's a wide
variety of people within NASA that are at the board because you're not just coming
into be an astronaut. You're coming in to be you know, the face
of NASA. I represent NASA. You're there to work and with the engineering
teams, you're there to work with the public affairs teams and all that,
and so they want to have an understanding of what type of person you are,
because flying in space is you know, this much of your time as
an astronaut. The rest of the time you're doing you know, training,
you're doing development of new space vehicles, You're doing the work that needs to
be done for the people that are on orbit at that time, whether it's
capcom and so one of those things where they want to make sure they have
a well rounded person who's not there just for themselves. Character, team player,
those sorts of things. Now, the Iraq War was two thousand and
three. Of course, the beginning of it, the beginning of two thousand
and three is the Columbia disaster. How would you describe what NASA was like
just a few months after that disaster? I still remember exactly. It was
during Challenger and so I had actually we were on our way to Iraq.
We left the Marine Corrais Station Beaufort with the whole Marine Air Group, and
then we had one of the airplanes have a problem. So actually three of
our airplanes diverted into nas Brunswick up in Maine, and we landed there I
parked the airplane outside base ops. I walk inside and I see the TV
with these you know, cascading flaming pieces of wreckage. I thought, oh,
it must be like the anniversary of Challenger. And so you take a
flight year off, set down, and you know, we're getting set cause
we had not planned to go there, but we had to divert and talk
to the guys and back and see still seeing footage's found out. It was
Columbia and so Challenger, I was, you know, a college student.
I didn't you know, know anyone, but now I there were people I
know that got selected in two thousand and they were there, and so it
was a lot more real to me. And so then you know, we
then fixed the plane head over, you know a couple days later, and
then get over to the war, come back and apply and and then when
we uh, you know, it was August of two thousand and four where
we actually started at NASA, and uh, my first day working for NASA
was uh in late July where I came to DC because they were having the
UH thirty fifth anniversary of Apollo eleven, and so uh there were three of
us UH Army pilots kimbro and Jim Dutton air Force pilot, where the three
of us were part of this new class and we were the dubbed the Exploration
Class first Exploration Class, and so we were called it to DC because they're
having the big anniversary at the Air and Space Museum. And so I walk
up to the hotel, I meet my two classmates for the first time,
and right inside the door is I lean Collins in the sets one fourteen returned
to flight Crew and so here I am, I, you know, not
started at NASA. I'm looking the return to flight crew. Wow, you
know, I'm amazed, and I leaned, Hey, comrade, come on
over. You know, I want to introduce you to my crew. And
okay, I know you have your first st at NASA. We're gonna have
Wendy Lawrence, you know, walk you through and watch over you as you
do the interviews and help out. And immediately just felt like family. And
that was pretty pretty good start. And so then we get changed. We
go to the Air and Space Museum. We're down the green room and I
walk in and there's Jean certain and Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong and Dallan Bean
and Jack Schmidt, and I'm sitting there going I'm talking to them, and
you know, here's my first chance to talk to people who have been to
the moon. You know, something I've just you know, it's always,
you know, been such a guiding interest of mine and just a source of
amazement. And they were just as insant to talk to me fresh out of
the fleet and the war and what's going on with the F eighteen and how
we do as I was to talk to them about their experiences, and so
that again was just something that showed me what a neat place NASA was and
what the opportunity to become, you know, one of our nation's astronauts was,
but also the opportunity to see the mantle with which they carried you know,
all these years, and how I had some pretty big shoes to fill.
You mentioned Eileen Collins calling you by your call sign, comrade. How'd
you get that? So typically, you know, people get call signs in
the fighter community, doesn't matter what service for, either something to do with
your name or because you've done something stupid. And so once we can stay
in public. You know, a guy who was on the catapult and had
his forgot to take his feet off the brakes and so the catapult takes off
and then obviously when you go from zero to about one hundred and you know,
forty knots in two seconds, breaks aren't going to holt. And he
knew schedule tires and so he blew both tires immediately, you know, the
cat shot. So I got the call sign bam bam. You know.
So that's the way cal signs go. Well for me, I had not
done anything stupid that far in flight school, so I tried got winged.
I went to Jacksonville and heyes, Jacksonville for the F eighteen training Squadron,
and my very first flight in the FA team was with a Marine Corps captain.
The call sign was Yoda and he'said, well, what's your call sign?
I said, I don't have one. You know, they tried this,
they tried that, and he's like, ah, those all stand all
by time we land, I'll think of something. So we go flying for
the end the FA teams playing. I dreamed about, you know, flying
in my first flight, and it was just awesome. One quick sidebar is
you know the whole time I'd flown airplanes, the you know, the T
thirty four the T two, the A four, none of them had a
hut. So I'm playing an instruments down here and everything. So we're in
the landing pattern in the fat and on my first flight, I had this
hut up there and I was kind of all over the place, and He's
like, hey, turn the hut off, turn it off. Rock solid.
It was just interesting how after allthough I training so far, the hud
was a distraction, you know, when you first start flying with it,
and then you know, certain the rest of my time in the Fateen training
squad of learned how to use it, become then you know, rock solid
on the hut. But anyway, we get back in the debrief and Yoda
go's Bresnik. That sounds like bridge nev. We're gonna call you, comrade.
And so in the now thirty one years since I haven't done something stupid
to get a new one. I love that. I love that. But
you can imagine, you know, I'm on my first space flight, get
up there, docked with space for Atlantis to the space station, crossed the
hatch and meeting the space station crew that's up there, hugs all around like
long lost family. One one was an su twenty seven. POT one was
a big twenty nine pot. I never met the guys before, and my
whole training in the Marine Corps and top gun area everything else that taught me
to you know, those those guys are the enemy. And here I am
lower thor Abit turned fifty miles up, going seventeen thousand miles an hour getting
greeted, you know with these you know, Russian pilots like I was,
you know, a long lost cousin and just kind of goes to show that
human beings. When were you know, of the same mind on the same
mission. It all that stuff doesn't matter. Didn't expect to have a good
feeling with a bunch of Russians calling you comrade when you first joined the service,
right, yeah, it's and so you know, here my call,
my shuttle crews going hey, comrade, the Russian guys like you know.
So you were assigned to STS one twenty nine. Tell me what the goal
of the mission was and how you prepared for it. So it was end
of the summer two thousand and eight when I hit the call from the chief
of the Ashlant office saying, hey, comrade, I've got a spacelight for
you. And it's like, Wow, that's what I've been waiting for.
You know, it's two thousand and eight. We'd been in Hasse four years
and so when uh, we as you talked about earlier, got hired right
after Columbia accident, and there were folks that thought, oh fh, you
guys will never fly on shuttle. You know, there's just too many people
who haven't flown yet. And here we are, our classes getting asigned,
you know, with him, four four years after being there, and so
uh but within twenty four hours of that, my wife and I get the
phone call saying, hey, your application to uh come adopt in Ukraine has
been approved. You need to be here in thirty days. So I have
to go to the Chief of the office say a, Sir, I appreciate
the fly assignment and I'd still love to do it, but we just got
this call to go, you know, do it international adoption and can I
go do it? And uh Fortunately chief of the office was a member of
the same church we go to. He said, look, if you're back
by Christmas, we're good. So my wife and I I had about four
weeks of tense training. Some of my qualifications and training done and then we
left on I think about Halloween, and we're over in Ukraine for forty days
and forty nights and adopted our son, who was two years nine months at
the time. We get back early December, right into training. Come January,
my wife, who's was leading international offer now so Johnson's spaceset at the
time, goes over to Japan for a trip. She comes back up feeling
well and turns out she's pregnant with our daughter. And so back in January
after the holidays, I'd said to her, Hey, look, I am
way behind on training for this flight. Really need you to help pick up
the slack and you know, take care of our son Wyat, because i'd
better, you know, get caught up for getting ready for the space Light
at the end of the year. So she gets she's pregnant, and by
February she's like, hey, I'm delivering this baby and you know another seven
months. I need you to pick up the slack with our son Wyat and
take care of him because I'm going to deliver this baby. So tables turned,
and so we went through being new parents to our you know, two
year old and now then three year old, my wife being pregnant and training
for my first base flight at the same time. It was a busy time
and you know, I never got good sleep until I went into quarantine before
the flight. But you know, originally our daughter was supposed to be born
after the flight. That was that was all good, and then the doctors
said, hey, we need to induce and have you deliver early. So
that kind of muddied the waters. And then something happened with the launch window
when actually slid to where the flight was right over where my daughter was supposed
to be, you know, deliver. And so go out there and go
to the the H. Kennedy Space Center for all the preparations for launch,
and we're out there touring the launch pad with you know, landis in the
vertical and all our spouses and my wife nine months pregnant, and it was
just kind of God gave us a piece that Okay, well, if he
launches, then you know that you're not going to be there for the birth
of your daughter. And so we launched on the sixteenth of November. My
wife's sitting there with our son, you know, a few miles away at
Banana Creek, watching and she knows that if there's about six seconds from when
the Shuttle Maine engines lide off, and we check them out and throttle them
up to make sure that they're good before we light the solids. Because you
can turn off the shuttle main engine, you can't turn off the solids.
And she when so solids lit, She's like, Okay, I'm on my
own. And so I launching the space for my first mission, knowing that
I'm leaving her behind. So people a lot of times go, hey,
well you're scared or anything on that launch, I'm like, no, number
one, people don't. We was shooting at US number two. You know,
the six million parts between the tanks and the rocket engines and the shuttle,
all that that were working in a concert had been put together by people
that were doing the absolute best that they could for our space program, and
they had done it successfully so many times before. I didn't have a concern
about that. I was concerned that here is my wife, you know,
gonna you know, I have to go back to Houston deliver our daughter without
me there to support her. But like any good soldier, marine, or
sailor or airman, you compartmentalize, and so here I am, you know,
doing the mission, and on day three we dock to the space station.
Day four, Bobby Satcher and Mike Foreman, we're heading out the door
for our first spacewalk because we we're going up there to finish the construction of
this of the space station. And we brought up to especiallygistics carriers with a
lot of pieces of equipment that we were going to attach onto the space station
so they'd have storage and stuff that we were going to actually install in our
spacewalks. And I'm inside, I'm the choreographer what we call the IV for
the EVY extra vehicular crew members, you know, running them through the paces
because you know, we trained for these spacewalks. The next day, my
h they were supposed to introduce my wife live our daughter, and then the
next day I was supposed to go up for my first spacewalk. So they
induce Rebecca and our daughter did not come, and so I go to sleep
that night for my first spacewalk with my wife and labor wake up the next
morning and expecting me to hear that my daughter had been born and put on
my spacewalk, had can go off for my first space walk. She's still
in labor. So that it was once we started doing the prep for and
started getting into the space suits, it was that at that point there was
you know, everything had to be spacewalk only. So whatever happened, I
wouldn't hear about till after we got out of the spacewalk and uh get sued
up, go do my first space walk, you know, and uh come
back in after it was about six half hours expecting once we repressurized and they
opened the hatch and came back and put my helmet, I'll say, hey,
congrats, you're your father again. And she's still in labor. To
that point, I know I'm in trouble. Okay, I missed the birth.
And oh, by the way, she's been in a labor for you
know, day and a half. And uh so we finish up, eat
dinner, go to sleep. That night. I woke up the middle of
the night to use the facilities, and when we had a a satellite pass,
I called down to her cell phone and her sister picks up cell phone
and my wife's still in labor, and so she kind of set the phone
down on the table next to the delivery room. I heard the sights and
sounds of the delivery room about three in the morning, my time for the
rest of the satellite pass and then Sally passed, you know, ended lost
the phone call. I went back to sleep, and then the next morning
over the radio from Houston, they played Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlyle, and
that was the signal that our daughter been born. So that was kind of
special. So later that day I finally get pictures sent up, get to
see her for the first time. I got a video conference with my wife
to see her, talk to her here and see my daughter for the first
time. And as I'm finishing that up, I'm in the Japanese module and
in No. Two over here outside the hatch was my commander going finish it
literally float down from Japanese module down the US segment into the airlock, closed
the hatch. Bobby satur and I depressed the air lockdown to ten point two
PSI to get it so we can called campouts. Were circing nitrogen out of
our bodies for our spacewalk. The next day, US Marine Corps Colonel and
NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, when we come back, returning his focus to the
space mission and Bresnik takes us along on a spacewalk to describe that amazing experience
in detail. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans
Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Colonel Randy Bresnik,
a US Marine Corps aviator who is now a NASA astronaut. Following the
dramatic birth of his daughter many miles below him. Bresnik quickly had to focus
on the mission at hand and what was required for a successful spacewalk. It
certainly it is the most physically and madly demanding aspect of spaceflight because you're wearing
what is a three hundred pound suit, obviously your own space. You're floating
but has mass, so you kind of know, like when you're floating in
the water. You know, if you have a canoe, you know,
you can pull a canoe along and it has a certain amount of mass weight,
but it's floating as well. But if you're trying to pull an eighteen
foot you know, ski boat a little different. It still floats, but
it you know, takes more energy to get it moving and more energy to
make it stop. So you're in your own personal spacecraft. In the spacesuit,
you have everything tethered to you because if you let go, it's gonna
float off as well as yourself. So we have safety tethers that are attached
to the space station all times. We have one that's safety toether. It's
about eighty five foot long cable that's on a reel that you know, my
reels in and out, and then we have other shorter tethers so when you
get to a work site, you can put down in the tethers and let
go and not float off, and you can sit there and do work with
both hands. And so that's certainly the safety aspect of it. But when
you're coming out of that air lock for the first time, and it's the
airlocks on the bottom of the space station and you look out. Fortunately for
me on our first spacewalk was it was night time and so it's just dark,
and so if to me, it's like training in a neutral buoyancy lab,
the big swimming pool that we have down at the Johnson Space Center.
We have a whole space station underwater that we train on so that it's trained
like you fight, you know, same thing with NASA and every piece of
equipment, every handrail, every cable, everything's like it is on a spacewalk.
It's just here underwater and looking at a concrete you know, twenty feet
below you instead of Earth two hundred and fifty miles below you. And so
first blacewalk come out, it's dark. I'm supposed to go over to the
back of the payload bay of the Space Shuttle to get some equipment and things
and go out install it on the Columbus module. And it wasn't until I
left the shuttle payload ban was coming over top of the Columbus module when the
sun came up. And so now for the first time outside I am seeing
the Earth. And they said I said something like, oh Lord, what
a heavenly sight, because you know, all of a sudden, now I'm
holding on a little tighter because I realized that two hundred and fifty miles up
going seventeen thousand, five hundred miles an hour, and I've got it.
Now go you know, this Columbus module. There's Japanese module, the US
segment and the Columbus module over here, and I've got to go out on
the very end and attach this antenna on the very bottom of it. So
imagine you get cars flying and you're attaching something to the very bottom of the
right front wheel, and so I'm hanging out there and there's just nothing underneath
me anymore. And I'd been in space for you know, I think five
days or so at that point. But you're inside, be on the inside
of an airplane. You know, you can look out the window and go,
yeah, I'm high up, but you still have this in case in
the safety of the fuselage. Well, same thing inside me. We had
windows. I was looking outside and see it everything. But until you're outside
and you look down, there's nothing between your boots, you know, between
you and the earth except for your boots. That's a whole different feeling.
And so you can imagine if you'll say we all went up to the top
of the Washington Monument and went over and put our toes on the edge and
all leaned over, you can imagine that physical sensation that you'd have, you
know, your body seeing backup. You know, Grandma is something to say.
Imagine that times ten thousand. When you're out there, you know,
where there's nothing around you and you just have turned in front feed you,
I mean, your natural instant, your whole life, your whole body has
taught you if I let go, I'm going to fall. And so that
causes people to really grab onto things really tightly and waste a lot of energy.
And so fortunately we've had some really good instructors and astronauts that have been
there before, and Rex Walheim was the one that passed on to me.
And when you get outside the first time, put your waistethers on and push
off, it's like really, He's like yeah, And sure enough, you
put your waist tethers down and they give you about three feet of tether.
You push off, and you realize, oh, I'm floating at the same
space and rate that the space station is, so nothing's changed there, even
though it was inside is flowing. I'm outside and floating. I'm not falling.
You know, you get away from the station, the teathers reach their
end, they kind of pull you back in. Then they pull you back
in towards structure and you realize, okay, my teather's work. I'm out
here. I'm just fine. I'm not following, And that instantly just totally
relaxed physically, and so now I'm back to moving around, which is fingertip
pressure on these things, you know, moving around and saving all my energy
for the work that I had to do. And it made it really work
out really well, just that one thing. And so you can imagine,
you know, the veterans when they, you know, the combat veterans,
are able to pass on to those people who are going into combat for the
first time, those little things and the ways to calm down. Here's how
you hold your you know, just all the little things that allowed them and
their compatriots from previous experiences to stay safe and be most effective. You know,
that stuff you know still works in space flight too. You later and
more recently went back to the space station on a soilu's craft. How different
was that experience? So space shuttled. You know, we had a flight
deck with four seats and we had windows in the back of robotox workstation.
Down we had mid deck. We had lockers and room to sleep, and
two people down there on the way up and three on the way back.
It was a Cadillac. It was like you know the airport limo. It
was awesome. So you use a little smaller and it's the same basic design.
The Russian has been used, you know, since you know, the
original days of their space porker, and they just continue to upgrade it and
improve it. But it is imagining, you know. I think a lot
of folks will understand, you know what folks I can Beetle is right,
you know. Small imagine're putting three grown adults in spacesuits in the front seat
of a Folkswagen Beetle. You are in your little bed that is kind of
a seat back that's molded to you to fit you, and you have three
of them lined up right next to each other. You're basically touching elbows to
the person next year. You kind of lined up like pieces of pie where
the heads are on the outer shell and the feed all go towards the center
of the vehicle, and so you're you're you're in a heel cup that's at
the bottom of the seat, so your heels are right here, and so
your neees are always bent and compressed so that you have these straps that hold
them together so they don't flail around. And your legs are touching the legs
and they got it next to you and touching the legs they got next to
you. So that the smallness is certainly a big change. The fact that
everything's in Russian is a big change. The fact that all the radio calls
are in Russian and you're you know, reading off the procedures and technical in
Russian is it is a challenge. But as far as the ride goes,
we call it economy minus and and it's one of those things where you'd never
complain about seeing at the back of the plane any anymore, no matter how
small the plane, because at least you can, you know, do this
and move your legs instead of being strapped in with your your knees, you
know, pretty much almost in your in your chin as you're you're flying up
yelling. So that's why you see astronauts and cosmonauts so excited and happy the
day they launch, you, you know, isn't the fact they're launching.
It's that I get strapped in that seat one more time for launch, and
then I have to get it back one more time to come back for landing.
I never have to get that seat. Last question. Unfortunately, we're
just about out of time, but the United States Space program now looking forward
to hopefully going back to the Moon and possibly to Mars. You're still very
active and NASA. How excited are you about those plans? It is an
amazing time to be part of the space program. I mean we've had talked
about you know, going to the Moon, for back to the Moon for
a very long time and finally, you know, we're doing it. We're
not just a country of PowerPoint vehicles anymore. And so for the past five
years I've been fortunate to lead the astrant offices efforts and we'll call it exploration,
everything that leaves lower to orbit. You know I've been it'll be the
kind of the lead person and use that test pot experience that I've got into
helping new spacecraft. And so first it was just the the SLS rocket,
you know, the Space Launch System, you know, proven that the world's
most powerful rocket that carries humans so far. It launched a last November and
carried the Orion spacecraft on Artemus one. And so having worked in these vehicles
for years to see them actually launch and do their mission and do them as
well as they did, the point where now we could assign just you know,
yes, still last month, them's two crew and putting humans on the
next flight. I mean that's huge step forward. And the fact that We're
now got production contracts to build these as lessons and Orion's so we can do
follow up missions basically one a year is the goal. And then you know,
being involved with the Gateway space station that's going to be around the Moon
in a seven day orbit around the Moon, so we can launch from there
down to the lunar surface that we can build and try out elements that'll be
on Mars class transfer vehicles to go from Earth to Mars. They'll you know,
and then the lunar landers, which would call the the HLS, the
Human Landing System where we selected SpaceX was the first company. Now we just
selected Blue Origin it's the second company. And working with those companies and being
with SpaceX out in Hawthorne down in Boca Chica as they're fabricating and building these
things. It's not just you know, science fiction anymore. I mean multiple
companies are building you know, multiple vehicles that we are going to go ahead
and take and get us to the Moon as the stepping stone to proving out
how humans live and work on another celestial body, so that by twenty thirties
we are going to Mars, we will proven out the technologies on the Moon
to be able to take us to Mars and not just stopping at the Moon
and you know, stopping with our nearest heavenly partner and neighbor. So it
is an amazing time. I mean, just look at Laura Orbit too.
I mean, space station has been up there for twenty three years, a
continuous human presence. We've got, you know, this Boeing Starline are getting
ready to launch this summer. We've had this SpaceX True Dragon going up there
for years. We've got multiple companies that want to build space stations, commercial
ones. You know, it's like aviation in the twenties where we've learned to
fly and then all of a sudden out everybody's building airplanes and suddenly look at
where we are with aviation just one hundred you know, a level one hundred
years later. Imagine where we're going to be if we're on Mars in the
twenty thirties, what lowers orbit, the Moon and now Mars are going to
look like. And so to be a part of that and contribute is certainly
a very satisfying and enjoyable and be able to use my experience from the Marine
Corps and as a test pot to bring that to fruition, is you know,
just very fortunate opportunity. Well, it's an incredible legacy already, and
I look forward to seeing that all unfold and to see your role as it
does unfold. So, Colonel, thank you very much for your time today.
It's been a thrill to speak with you. And best of luck as
you continue forward in our new Artemis missions. Thank you. Great Colonel Randy
bresnik Us, Marine Corps, retired Marine Corps aviator and still a NASA astronaut
who served on the STS one twenty nine mission and was also back on the
Space station and with Expedition fifty two to fifty three and the Soyuz spacecraft as
well. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is Veteran's Chronicles. Hi, this is
Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the
American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org.
You can also follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter. We're
at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube channel for full oral
histories and special features, and of course, please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles
podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join
us next time for Veterans Chronicles