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