Why Space Is Not Air-Gapped | Charles Bolden

Welcome to the Security Cocktail Hour. I'm Joe Patti

Thank

Just skip me, go right to Charlie.

And I'm Charlie Bolden and I'm and I'm having a cabernet.

Yes.

And I'm Adam Roth.

Well,

I've got Red. I've got a multiple channel, so...

Well, I

said it was Cabernet, but it may not be. That's all right, I won't even try to figure it out. But it's good to be with you all. The audience will never know what we've been through for the last hour, but it was great. It was great time.

It's... It's okay, it's g-

I'm gonna tell them.

Well, let

me give you the metaphor for what we have now. For anyone who doesn't know and everyone should know, Charlie is a distinguished pilot, an astronaut. And, you know, we've been talking about space and drones a lot. know, Adam's big into drones, so I'm trying to get into it too. And so I bought a drone. And on my third flight, this is what I did to my drone.

Ugh.

Ugh.

That is a bit of a metaphor for the difficulty we've had setting up this recording session.

It is, it is.

Well, Charlie,

let me ask you this. If he was in the space program and he did that, what would have happened?

Well, know, failure, contrary to what people say, failure is not an option when we have people's lives at stake, but we have another saying that is fail early, fail smart. So since this was Joe's early flight and it didn't work right, that's okay. Because the next time around, he's gonna have a sterling flight.

and well you know what

⁓ yes, well I learned an expensive lesson that I won't have to learn again. But I may learn a different expensive lesson, but not the same one again.

yeah, yeah. But that's okay.

just want

to tell the audience, we're a little bit punch drunk. We were going through some technical issues for a little bit of time. And now we're just straight into let's have this podcast and enjoy ourselves.

That's good.

Yes,

yes, well fortunately we're not, we are not running the space program. Some more capable people than us are, at least when it comes to aviation and aerospace.

But, failure

was not an option here, Joe. We made it through. All three of us were successful.

We did. We did.

We refused to quit.

That's right. it's great to not only finally get going, but to have you on, Charlie. We've been talking a lot about space. Adam kept telling me, goes, I'm going to get an astronaut. I'm going to get an astronaut. And he not only got an astronaut, he got an astronaut. And you were the head of NASA too. I'm like, wow.

Yeah

You

He outdid himself, but a long time ago.

Long time ago, long time ago.

Once an astronaut always an astronaut and once ⁓ a NASA administrator always a NASA administrator

⁓

That's true.

Well, I imagine your life is a little more, a quieter now after that.

Mine is a lot

quieter than Jared Isaacman's for sure.

Oh, he's been busy. I've been watching. I've been watching a lot of space stuff. I watched the Artemis 2. I actually ended up watching a lot of it. one thing that struck me that was surprising, especially for me coming from a corporate background to being into information security, it's like they have the feed in the

He's been very busy.

in the spacecraft that they're streaming back. I'm like, okay. And, you know, they have the events that like at this time we're going to do this. We're going to be talking to this show at this time and everything. But it seemed like they didn't turn it off. They always had it on. mean, they even did one thing where they're like, okay, we got this other thing coming up later. So we're going to have our prep meeting now. And they did it on the air, basically streaming. And I was like,

Yeah.

I'm like, no company would do that. Put a, put a meeting on, you know?

Well, you guys, you know that Joe gives you an example of when if you remember when Artemis 2 went behind the moon for the 50 or so minutes. I forget who I was working with where there was the BBC or somebody, but they said boy are they worried. I said trust me, they are probably the happiest people in the world right now because the ground cannot talk to them. I'd say, you know, they will now have 50 minutes to relax and enjoy the view and talk to each other about.

what phenomenal things they're seeing that no human being has ever seen before. So they are really enjoying this 50 minutes because it'll pick back up when they come out from behind the moon and the ground will be talking to them all the time. that's what's happened since we went to, you know, the system that we use today is called the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. And it's a constellation of three satellites around the globe that allows the ground to talk to us almost continuously throughout a mission. And we'll have

you know, eight to 10 minute ⁓ breaks in communications every orbit, but that's about it. Back in the earlier days, and I think, I'm not sure whether the Russians have come along yet, but it used to be when you were on a Soyuz spacecraft, you talked to the ground for maybe 10 or 15 minutes every orbit, and the rest of the time you were out of contact.

So to

Really?

⁓ wow.

So yeah, two things I want to add to that. I told you, Charlie, I watch a lot of movies like The Martian and Apollo 13. And I remember that they had their biosensors on there and they were getting pissed because like, like tell them to relax a little bit. He's like, oh, really? Rip the sensor out, throw it like, oh, we lost him. He goes, it's a little bit of humor, medical humor. So the point I'm making is telemetry and everything else is always being monitored. And then the other thing I was saying to Joe was

You

I've been a ham radio guy, not a great guy, but a ham radio guy for a while, and I know that at one point they were constantly communicating with some ham radios for periods of time back and forth, and that was an amazing thing. said, Joe, the next podcast we got to do is directly with somebody on the International Space Station. So that's our next thing.

Yep.

Well, I'm old enough since I'm one of the ancient astronauts now. ⁓ When I was flying, we didn't have ⁓ everything like we do now. There was no no WhatsApp, no email, no FaceTime like there is on the International Space Station. And when we wanted to talk to families, unless they brought him into the mission control and put him on console, that's exactly what we did. We there's a program called Sarex. It's the shuttle amateur radio experiment.

and it was coordinated with the Ham Radio Operators Association. And at a specific time when you were scheduled to talk with your family, you'd get five minutes because you could talk to them as long as you were in line of sight to the Ham Radio Operator. The operator would get your fa... And it didn't make any difference where the operator was in the world, but the operator would get your family on the line on the telephone and then put you through his Ham Radio except it...

half the time was going over and all that jargon. But that's the way we used to do it, Adam. You're right.

Mm-hmm. ⁓

Well, you know, I wonder. I didn't realize they had that much because I know up there they've got like WhatsApp and they have text. So we know they have email because it wasn't working, their Outlook. But I was going to say they can do FaceTime. They can actually talk to the family at home, make a phone call. Wow.

They do everything they they can be FaceTime, I think. Yeah. yeah. They just

go in. They just go into their cubicle into their you know their little box, which is their sleeping their sleep station and they can do emails. They can they can call the family and they can talk so it's ⁓ you know it's pretty good nowadays.

Imagine this like you're getting ready to do a whatsapp and all of you get the spam call and it says hey we can save you $50 on your auto insurance or you qualify for a loan. You're calling me on the the Artemis to tell me about this? Come on.

That's amazing.

That would be wild if they got that. ⁓

No! ⁓

I think I'm not certain because

I've never had this capability, but I'm certain that even even now it all goes through mission control before it gets up to the vehicle because they I've talked to crew members who say, you know, we don't have high speed Internet. We've got Internet, but it's like the old days of if you remember the AOL days. Yeah.

Dial up modem

Yeah.

You know, that just brings a whole new dimension because, you know, we've talked about, security in space. We've, talked to, Renee Winn. We talked to Che Bolden, your son. And it never occurred to me though, that, you know, when we're talking about the manned program and the astronauts, they're using consumer stuff. I mean, they...

Yep.

Which puts, I mean, you we, yeah, before we, we've, we talked a little bit and I think you may have talked to Renee about cybersecurity. That's the, that's the challenge for NASA's communications guys nowadays is because so much data goes to them, but anything that goes into the vehicle, you know, if it's got a bug or something like that, you wipe out the whole system. So.

Well, how? They gotta protect against everything we do for everything. God.

Yes.

Right.

everything still goes through mission control. Nothing goes directly to the vehicle because a lot of people used to think that we have this 250 mile air gap. So there is no possibility that anybody's going to hack anything or anything like that. Yeah. I mean, that was, that was in the old days. People like me who used to think that you had to have a wire or something, you know, to, hack somebody or to, or to get into someone's

my god!

We didn't completely understand the way that radio telephone communications goes where air is a vehicle. ⁓ so, Renee may have talked about this a lot more because she knows what she's talking about.

so that makes me wonder right so if you have an import detection and response and some of the equipment like you know some kind of like anti-virus like hmm i want to make sure i protect that device and i'm getting good telemetry i want to make sure nobody's trying to infiltrate or do where you know zero-day attack on my phone that can compromise it because it's still a consumer device and here's the other irony to it to to a joe ⁓

Not only we were concerned about consumer devices and people moving lateral and threats, but we also have these other concerns now that ⁓ and I about like we were talking about Charlie, he's gonna kill me now, Joe. But I started getting into software defined radio. No, no, software defined radio. SDR, SDR, that allows you to communicate on every single like almost, not every single, I'm embellishing it, but wavelengths.

Is it the lemon tree again?

So if you have SDR, software defined radio, you can do so much in communicating back to any of these aircraft, spacecraft. Think about

Yeah.

well I find it so interesting because ⁓ you know, we had talked about the threats of you know, we've talked about, know, trying to get into satellites and obviously, you know, I'm sure it would be the Holy Grail hack to get through mission control and get them to everything. But you know, that's still, you know, specialized esoteric stuff. It's not what everyone has, even the software-defined radio. I mean, that's not something everyone has in their house. when they're using, and I heard they did have their iPhones, I think,

in.

But, know, when they've got phones and laptops and they're using that stuff, it expands the attack surface, as we say. I don't know if you use that too in the military, but we do. ⁓ But yeah, someone could try to send them spam or try to send an attack through email. They obviously have protections for it, but the stakes are pretty high.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, you're this is way out of my league now, but so people understand we're not doing astronauts are not doing direct to device communications with anybody. You know, it's not it's not going directly from the International Space Station or their spacecraft down to their family's house. And everything goes from the spacecraft to mission control. And I think it still goes through Goddard, but I'm not sure.

⁓ So, you know, it all gets scrubbed and checked for viruses and everything. And then it goes into mission control and same thing going the other way. Like if I send an email to somebody on the Artemis II crew, I have it, they have a special address because that address sends it to mission control and then mission control checks it for viruses and the like, and then relays it up to the vehicle over a secure communications channel. So that's how we protect it.

So it's gotta be a nice, it's

gotta be insane incredible proxy. That's what it basically is.

Yeah, because the stuff that we have commercially, I mean, you know, get spam and corporations, stuff gets through it all the time. I've got to think they must have one of the best in the world. now I want to see that. That's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

Joe, if they're in the Artemis, like, hey, oh, I'm having a problem. Hold on a second. Yeah, how you doing? Help desk? I'm on the Artemis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, on the Artemis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. My IP address? I can't give it to you. It's obfuscated. But I need you to open up the proxy a little bit. I need to send my wife a video. Okay, good, we'll take care of it.

Ask.

Do you think you can get a copy of that proxy Joe? Maybe we

I'm saying it must be a really good one. It must be one of the best.

I

I'm gonna get fact checked on this, it's fine, I'll get hate mail. But I think if I understand correctly, Apollo 13, look where we came from, had a 4K computer, and then it had like enough power to run a vacuum cleaner the most. And look where we are today.

Yeah.

There is more computing power in my Apple Watch than was on any of the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo flights. Way more.

Yeah, that's wild.

Meanwhile these these these brave incredible astronauts went into space on a vehicle the size of my ⁓ my Hyundai But I mean I'm kind of being funny but and with less technology than the Hyundai and they were just brave brave people to set ⁓ Set that course that that that that that escalation into what we have today

and where are we gonna be in 10 years?

⁓ I don't I I think it's gonna be flabbergasting We we won't recognize it you you and I

Well, let's get to something that is new but kind of retro too. Now, I've been inspired lately with all of this. And so I've been watching the NASA stuff on YouTube. I catch it. And the other night, I was watching the progress, the cargo module. It was docking with the space station, which was fascinating how they do it. ⁓ But after I was watching it for a little bit,

Yes.

I realized they've got the live feed, the camera that they're actually using on that spacecraft with the targeting. And then I realized all the symbols on there, it's in Russian. And I later saw that it was actually the Russians doing that mission.

And we had spoken with Renee about the thing of working with Russians, working with other nations, exposing with all of our most advanced technology. from my thought as a cybersecurity guy, there must be a lot of integration there.

Yeah.

operationally, but also in terms of the infrastructure and, you know, with a government that we're a little ticked off at the moment. They're ticked off at us.

Yeah.

Charlie's got a good Russian family story when he went out to dinner. You should tell her that.

⁓ well,

it was my last, when I was assigned to my last mission, I was actually detailed to Washington, D.C., to NASA headquarters. And I was hating every day there, wishing to get back home to Houston for anything. And Dan Golden, who was the NASA administrator at the time, called me in one day and said, hey, I want you to go back to Houston. We've got another flight we'd like for you to command. we had not, they had not made public the crew for the.

haha

the first Hubble servicing mission. And since I had left Hubble, my crew and I had left Hubble less than perfect when we deployed it, I was really hopeful that I would be assigned as the commander for the first Hubble mission so I could go and save the day. And I asked him, he said, no, we've already assigned a crew to that. And he told me who it was gonna be. And I said, okay, well, what do you have in mind? And he said, well, we've got two Russian cosmonauts. I said, stop. I said, I'm a Marine.

I am a Marine. I've trained all my life to kill those guys and they've trained all their life to kill me and I don't want to fly with any damn Russian. And then just, I mean, it was just like that. the guy who hired me, Mr. George Abbey, the late George Abbey now, George was a special assistant to the administrator. He had come up from being the director of flight cooperations and George put his hand on my shoulder. He said, calm down. He said, look, the two guys were already here in town. They're going to have dinner.

You

out and Reston with your friends, John David Bartow and his wife, Donna. So why don't you just go out and enjoy the meal, get to know them, and then come back in and let us know what you think in the morning. And so said, okay, begrudgingly, I said, I'll go do this. And I went out and knocked on the door and the door opened and the guy that greeted me was this sort of tall Russian named Sergei Krikulov, who spoke fluent English.

He was a civilian cosmonaut, not a military cosmonaut, so he was very unusual, but he was also one of the most experienced cosmonauts because he had been on the Russian space station Mir when the Berlin Wall fell and when the Soviet Union disintegrated. So he's the last Soviet cosmonaut because he left Earth as a Soviet cosmonaut and he was supposed to be there for a couple of months, four months, something like that. He spent 10 months

Ow.

While the new nation of Russia negotiated, they now had to negotiate with the Ukrainians for a launch vehicle, with ⁓ the Kazakhstanis for a launch site. So the Soviet Union was no longer, so all these individual nations had to coordinate it. It took him 10 months to get him back to Earth. so he, I mean, he was just an incredible guy.

I remember that he got stuck. Yeah

His, ⁓ his, his, guy that ended up being the backup was Vladimir Titov, who was a make 20, you know, Russian air force and MIG-21 pilot who probably did do what I said, but Vladimir couldn't, couldn't speak a word of English. So Sergey was the interpreter for the evening. The evening went incredibly well because immediately we turned our families. I don't, I'm not sure how we did it, but we asked, we each asked about our families and we all had young kids. had.

I had a boy and a girl. Sergey had one girl who was daughter who was four years old. Vladimir had a son Yuri who was eight and his daughter Marina was like 18 and she was already gone ahead of them to Houston and had enrolled in San Jacinto Junior College and started studying to become a business major. So she and Sergey were the only two in the two families who spoke English. But after that evening I went back in the next morning and I said, okay, you got me.

because all we talked about was the world that we wanted to make, we wanted to leave behind for our kids. so we found that common bond in one night. And that's kind of what we tell people all the time, those of us who have had an opportunity to look at this planet from that vantage point that we're just one people. ⁓ We're not all these different people like some would have us believe, particularly in this time.

where we're struggling among ourselves here in the United States. Our focus is to try to get people to understand that we are all one people and we all want to protect this planet because it is, as the Artemis II crew said, boy, you look out and see Earth dangling out there in the blackness of space. They were the only ones who have ever seen Earth, you know, like that from as far away. They were on the 3,200 miles on the other side of the moon. And they said it was just

Mm-hmm.

indescribable what that looked like, but it made them feel like they were a part of the universe and no longer just a member of, you know, of the United States or something like that. So that's the way I came away that night, realizing that together we could do really good things.

it's very

it's very emotional and what what it goes to show you is we have more commonalities then we have differences and and i i i it's so it's such a easy concept accept once you start thinking about it and it takes it if we start if we start looking at it more like that i'd be willing to bet you a lot of us would be getting along a lot easier ⁓ then we're not

yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think for those people who watch those missions, who realize you're looking not at the United States, not at Russia, not at China, not at all these different nations, you're looking at the world and then looking at the universe to very different perceptions.

Well, you're looking at this teeny weeny little, the crew of Artemis II was looking at this teeny weeny little dot and it was not lost on them that that's, to our knowledge, that's all there is of humanity. That is, that's my home. That's where all humanity lives and we're in a hostile universe maybe, but we've got to come together to preserve and protect.

this planet on which we live. I'm a part of a group now called Astronauts for America. And there are about 100 of us out of the 200 or so now retired American astronauts who all raised our right hand when we came in either into the military or into the astronaut corps that we swore to support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And we have all been concerned over decades now about the deterioration in our

you know, adherence to the Constitution, to this body, this document that captures the whole idea of the Founding Fathers about this incredible country in which we're blessed to live. And so we decided that we were going to come together and try to help people understand that we have got to begin to pay attention to the guiding principles in the Constitution, know, individual liberties, ⁓ freedom of the press.

⁓ freedom of religion, all kinds of things like that, and adherence to the rule of law and civility in the way that we deal with each other so that we use science, we use data to make decisions, and that's what we should let our elected officials know, that we're not gonna accept it if they don't wanna live together and work together for the benefit of all humans.

I was at a security meeting a year or so ago where you're sitting at a table, they start bringing out the wine and everything, things can get a little spicy and we made a mistake and delved into politics. you know, I'm like, oh God. And so there was one person who was a little adamant, but you know, but it was okay. It was funny though, but

Afterwards, he came up to me and he goes, I'm sorry if I was out of line or anything. And I said, look, first of all, you are not out of line. I go, and you know what? Part of the problem we have today is that we can't have civil discussions and have even civil disagreements

We're not going to get very far being that far apart where we can't even talk. So I think that's a very good thing. It sounds like you're doing.

and Charlie's taken that all for think twice now at least

I've taken it a whole bunch of, every time

you get promoted, ⁓ you know, and every time you go into a new position. I, ⁓ man, ⁓ I've probably taken the oath 20 times. And then, but the other thing is I recite the oath quite frequently because I'll do things like Marine Corps birthday balls or Navy birthday balls. And I always make a point in my remarks to the Marines and sailors or anybody I'm talking to.

really? I didn't know that. ⁓ that's interesting.

wow.

Yeah, yeah.

to remind them in all of the other stuff we're doing, I always stop and remind them to keep in mind and probably stand in the mirror and say to themselves with some frequency, raise their right hand and repeat the oath of office that they took so that they always remember that. it's, up until recently, we didn't understand the concept of a domestic enemy. ⁓

wow.

Hmm.

yeah.

You know, we now we now have clear domestic enemies and that's that's what we're sworn to protect the Constitution against. But we've got to be able to talk to like you all said, we've got to be able to talk to each other and disagree civilly. ⁓ You know, I mean, it's like a marriage, the marriage that survives. You know, my wife and I have been married for will be married for 58 years on the on the on the.

Yeah.

⁓ congratulations. That's

Wow.

great. Wow.

on the 8th

of June. And let me tell you, we probably have had some knockdown dragouts for 58 years, but we always managed to, you know, to come back together and say, okay, what, why were we, what were we are going to pop?

And that's why we have the Constitution, so we can have these discussions, but have them, I want to say, because it's not necessarily the right word professionally, but civilly. The whole idea of a general conversation is to provoke thought, to make you think about things. And then sometimes when that thought is provoked, and you have that discussion, and people have a civil discussion, it starts allowing multiple people

Exactly. Civilly. Yeah.

Yeah,

civilly

Yeah.

to understand where everybody's coming from to get that one path. let's be honest, not everybody's gonna agree on everything, but eventually, and this is part of management, right? Part of management is you realize not everybody's gonna agree, but eventually a decision has to be made. And some people won't agree with it, some people will agree with it, but whatever that agreement is,

whatever and sometimes it's by a democracy or people voting on that decision. If you didn't agree, that's fine. It's kind of like voting. If you elect somebody and you don't like them, that's okay. But at the end of the day, that's an office, that's an institution. And whether you're on one party or another party, we still gotta forge forward. We still gotta move forward. We still gotta, we have important things to do.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I you know, I I always give not always, but recently I have started as I get older. ⁓ You know, that's maybe I'll say more mature, I hope. ⁓ But I now because of what we're doing with Astronauts for America, I think a lot back to my growing up in the segregated South and what it was like then and and how much like it is becoming again.

very much like where I grew up. But the thing that I always have to remind myself, my father was a civics teacher and my mom was a librarian. So I grew up in a family of educators, as did my wife. And they never let us give up on anything. They always said, look, we understand things are difficult, but we understand the constitution and understand the way our government works and be strident, but be patient.

And things will change. They'll change. They won't change in the at the rate that you want them to do, but you've got to stay at it. If everybody gets involved, we can make the right things happen. And that's I think it's time for all of us. You know, you all with this dialogue that you do every week. And yeah, but I mean, you you cover all kinds of subjects. And because you're talking about nationals, because you're talking about security, you probably get to cover a lot of stuff where

We try.

where people ⁓ have grossly differing opinions about how you protect this country and how you guard our security. But frequently, some of people go overboard and they think that you can deny people their rights ⁓ on behalf of protecting national security. If we grant people their rights and we work with them, our national security is strengthened.

It's a yet.

You it is much stronger when we come together with our differences. I always go back to the Artemis II crew. They always emphasized the fact that they were different. You know, whether it was race or gender or country, they were all different. And they said that's what made them so strong, that they all brought their differing ideas and different cultures, but they put them together over conversation and decided what's the best course of action for us to take for this particular time.

And that's what we need to do as a country.

A lot of companies specifically go out of their way to say we want diversity. and I don't want people to go to the wrong place with this. What I mean by diversity is that one culture, one place will bring a different set of eyes, a different lens, and that helps to give a stronger ⁓ bond and communication.

No, no, no, no, I'm with you.

Because when people see things from different standpoints and different views and different lenses, it helps to give a really informed decision and opinions. And I don't want to mention all the company's names, but a lot of them are out there and it's a good thing. And the funny thing is, I'm going to plug myself, which I shouldn't do, but I'm doing a dissertation on... I know, I know. So I'm doing a dissertation. It's gonna come...

That sounded awful, Adam, but anyway.

When

you unplug, do it gently.

Yes sir, yes sir. I'm doing a dissertation on ethical cyber warfare. We all know that cyber warfare is never gonna end until the next thing comes out. And at the end of the day, and people are looking at like, how can you have ethical cyber warfare? ⁓ And that's what I'm talking about. All these different countries, I'm doing this specifically with NATO though. All these different countries, you gotta think it to yourself.

Seriously.

Just because you can destroy a country's infrastructure doesn't mean you should. And what I'm getting at is you gotta think about the people that need electricity, the people that need food. You don't wanna do things in such a way that is gonna destroy mankind or humankind. You wanna do just enough to accomplish your goal if you're gonna do it, but even if it's an adversary,

It doesn't mean you should kill people or hurt people. It means accomplish your goals with a minimal amount of force to reach that and then do what you gotta do.

Yeah.

We gotta think of us as humans, not as adversaries all the time. Yes, there are adversaries, I'm not saying no, but civilians at the end of the day should be protected.

Exactly.

I made my plug, I hope I unplugged gently.

It's.

⁓ come on.

it is interesting to hear that, you know, having seen the earth and see these things, ⁓ it gives you a different perspective because

having never experienced that and you know, the closest I get to it is the view on the big screen TV that's about it. But having never been there, it's hard to feel it, but it seems like it is something that comes from just about every astronaut seems to say the same thing. Even the people, the civilians who go up on the millionaire flights and stuff.

Yeah.

It seems like everybody comes back with that and that is really interesting.

⁓ I think when I came back from my first flight and every flight after that, people ask frequently, what does it feel like

And I, and my, one of my responses is, you know, I felt very insignificant. I looked down on, this planet ⁓ and there is no sign that we are here. You know, that it's a beautiful, mean, an incredibly beautiful planet, but you can see long linear features, roads, bridges, runways, stuff like that. But there are no buildings. There are no people.

At least you can't detect us down here. And I can remember telling myself a couple of times, know, if I were a Martian coming to visit this planet and I got to this altitude, I'd turn around and go back and I'd say, OK, there's nothing down there. ⁓ You know, we've come to the wrong place. Let's just go back. But I felt very insignificant as a part of this grand

Yeah.

a planet on which all of humanity, as we know it, exists. And I think several of the Artemis II crew members said something similar about how small and insignificant they felt in the presence of this incredible planet that houses ⁓ eight billion people or whatever it is today.

I would have to believe like in my mind especially and obviously I've never been in space but looking down at earth and be and realizing how insignificant we are that would make me feel like there's got to be other existence beyond us because

no question. I am very quick to, I get asked a lot about, do you believe that there is life elsewhere in the universe? And I just say immediately, yes, I do. I have zero, I repeat that, zero evidence that there is. But for a number of reasons, one because of the opportunity I had to view the planet and the rest of our universe from that perspective.

Of course.

but also because of my faith. ⁓ You know, I happen to be a practicing Christian and the supreme being for my religion is this person we call God and some people call Allah and people call Yahweh and all other kinds of things. the commonality among all faiths who have a belief in a supreme being is that that supreme being is everywhere and is all powerful. And I just have a really hard time believing

that if my belief is true, that that thing would have decided to take one tiny, really tiny little planet, and that's the only place that he or she would have put something in its likeness.

Yeah, yeah, I guess if not,

he built a pretty big universe to leave it empty. Yeah.

Oh, huge, huge.

so there's and we now know that there are what we call exoplanets. There are these planets that are sort of the same relative distance from their suns as we are from our son. And so they are planets that that science tells us if there is life there, it can be sustained because it's not too hot, not too cold. You know, does it have the necessary ingredients to sustain life?

which one of the reasons we really would like to go to some of these places, starting with Mars, is so that we can determine, you know, was life ever there? Or is there life still there? Every indication, every scientific indication says that life once existed on Mars. And we even have indications that there could be life in the oceans of big icy moons like Europa around Jupiter or Titan around Saturn. ⁓

It's interesting.

Well, I find that really interesting because, you know, at least I guess I never really had much of an opinion. said, you know, we don't know until the exoplanet started to be discovered and we realized that solar systems like ours are, you know, the rule rather than the exception. And you say, even if life is incredibly ridiculously rare, the universe is so big, there must be a lot of it. You know, and

Yeah.

Exactly. mean, billions of them.

Yeah.

But the

idea also, like you say, with Mars or with some of the other planets in our solar system, if it ends up that even with that it's very close, boy, there must be a ton of it. Maybe it is like Star Trek. I don't know.

So Charlie put up, yeah.

Or like, or like,

uh, Hail Mary.

I haven't seen it yet, so please don't tell me.

I'm not gonna tell you, I'm not gonna tell you. This is not a spoiler alert. I am not spoiling anything.

So Charlie, you brought up a good point. If I may ask you, what are your thoughts about, it looks like we want to colonize the moon. And what do you think, if you don't mind me asking.

Yeah.

Now,

I'm gonna give, this is any, remember everything I tell you is an opinion of one. And I don't mind sharing my opinion, but I don't want people to chop me up because I disagree. ⁓ Colonizing anything like the moon or Mars or places that we know, they're incapable of sustaining human life as we know it. So like you and me, we know that if we're gonna go and spend any time on the lunar surface, we're gonna be in a suit.

Yeah, yeah, you're too slow.

Of

Yes.

And if we're going to go to Mars and spend any time on the surface, we're going to be in a suit that's going to be extra protective for the radiation that you're going to be exposed to on Mars. So I think when we send people to Mars, we're going to live for periods of time, maybe three months, maybe six months, maybe we'll get to a year. And I think we're going to live underground where we're protected from the Martian soil from radiation. And we're not coming out a lot except to go do like we do in Antarctica.

We're gonna come out to do an expedition and then we're gonna go back into our habitat, but we're not gonna live there. Civilizations are not gonna be started, I don't think, on the moon. And that's why I don't exactly support people who try to hype space exploration up by saying that we're gonna colonize these places and we're gonna get away from Earth and all of our troubles and we're gonna go to these new places. This is it.

So we're not gonna have a beer.

Yeah, I...

I...

Or we're gonna bring our troubles to new planets. That's what we're doing. Yeah, let's... yeah.

This is it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we

need to go farther because, it's interesting. It's like you say, I'm sure we'll go to these places for like, you know, exploration and industrial purposes. know, but when you're talking about this solar system, we're already on the best real estate there is, you know, I mean, to live, right? The only real estate.

Yeah? yeah.

We're on the only, I think we're on the only

real estate that humans can pleasantly engage in enjoyment and fun and stuff. You can't have a pet because you're not gonna spend the money for a spacesuit for a pet, you know, on Mars. So forget that. And, you know, I don't know.

Sorry, I was trying to bring out some bad things, but I was, yeah.

No, no, no, no, no,

I am not. I don't think we're ever gonna load a starship up with a thousand people at a time and send them to Mars to begin colonizing Mars or the moon. I don't happen to be a person who believes that.

you want to be able to go to a beach, sit in a chair, have a beer, and enjoy yourself and maybe go for a dip.

Yep, now we

may. We may find that all that is. We can figure out a way to return Mars to its its billion year ago state where we believe it was fertile and very much like Earth. And that's why we think there was life there at one time. But but how do you get it back there from its cold? know? State there. Yeah, yeah.

I don't want to play with Mother Nature. don't want to...

Well, yeah.

Yeah, you know, I've said for years, I'm like, you know, like we're to go to Mars. like, I'll go to Mars when there's a nice hotel and a bar

That's gonna be a while.

You should send people

like people like me to Mars who are interested in the exploration and and the research and who want to come back and talk about it. I mean people who talk about it well, but it's going to be a one way trip. I said that's worthless. Why send somebody to another planet when we can't bring them back here and have them explain to the rest of humanity? You know what it was like. What was that experience like? What did they learn? What did they observe?

Yeah, for scientific, yes.

You know, I don't want to hear it from a recording that they made. I want to hear it from a human being who's standing in front of me who has had that experience.

Some people want to send their ex-wives and ex-husbands there, so it's all good. Whoa! Whoa, let me get, let me get, some people want to send their husbands and their wives there. One-way trip, see you later, bye!

I've heard a lot of people come up with a lot of different people they want to see.

yeah.

You

Yeah,

yeah, I'm not a big one-way trip guy.

I can't blame, well, you know, it's interesting you mentioned Antarctica too. It's like, know, Antarctica makes Mars, you know, it's like paradise compared to Mars and nobody lives there.

You know more, but more and more people are going to Antarctica on these expeditions, but no expedition stays longer than days. ⁓ Scientists go down. Christina Koch, for example, who was on the Artemis II crew, if I'm not mistaken, Christina spent a year in Antarctica because she was, her PhD was spent, I think, studying emperor penguins. So yeah, so she lived with emperor penguins for a year.

Yeah, it's a yes, scientist.

Wow.

Well, I'd like to go there, you know, this bucket list item and to see it, but ⁓ I'm not getting off the boat for very long. Put it that way. I'm not staying.

No, no.

I wouldn't mind hanging out with those managascar penguins, they were pretty cool.

Charlie, this has been so much fun. I know we had a rocky time technically getting it together, getting this together, but this has just been great. Oh, I meant to tell you too, I have one other thing. In your honor, I am wearing my genuine replica NASA Velcro watch band. And you know what? I had saved it for the Artemis mission and I wore it that week. And I'm like, wait, I gotta wear it for Charlie too. So there we go. I'm trying.

Alright.

You brought us luck. First time off,

mean, know, right on time and everything else, so great. That was really good. Dana, as you all mentioned, when we were troubleshooting everything, I need to get up there to, you know, so we can get together in New York or Connecticut or wherever you all are and get there in studio, bring the two of you in the same room. So have a good day.

I bet you have

we'd love

to get on the trip with you. Yeah.

Yeah, we'd love to do this on the Intrepid. We'd love the Intrepid and we know you're into that. That would be fantastic.

That would be awesome. And trust me,

the Intrepid would love to have you there. ⁓ If you're serious, let me know because I'm the chairman of the Education and Exhibits Committee for the Intrepid Museum. ⁓ Seriously, don't, all right, look, I'm gonna count on you guys reminding me of this and I will approach it in my next committee meeting.

that's awesome.

At for me,

it would be an honor. I mean, I would feel special. ⁓ We're serious.

We will.

bring up the idea about having my national security friends on the intrepid to do their show.

Perfect. Yes, sir. Thank you so much

Excellent. Great. That's awesome. That would be so much

fun. Yes.

You'll probably

pack the flight deck or the hanger deck or something like

I already showed you a picture of us on the Intrepid together already. was like faith.

Well, it's...

Well, if you're really interested on the 7th of July, this is for you and your audiences, they will celebrate ⁓ Salute to Freedom. You know, they do something every year around the 4th of July, but the Salute to Freedom. And I think this year, ⁓ Admiral Caudill, the CNO, the Chief of Naval Operations, is the honoree. So they try to honor some military person.

on that particular day, it's, I think it's a black tie event, I'm not sure, but it's called Salute to Freedom. So go to the website, look it up, and ⁓ you guys can afford it.

Yeah.

Well, I think I can splurge for a... It's not gonna be a purchase, it's gonna be like a rental, but I'll do it.

That's all right. That's all right. Yeah.

That works. All right.

Well, we'll drop that in the description and everything. And Charlie, thanks again. This has a lot of fun. We've learned a lot.

It's been amazing, amazing.

No, thank

you all very much and thank you for being ⁓ persistent and hanging in there while I tried to figure out what the heck was going on with my phone and iPad. So yeah, it was good. It was very well worth the time.

Perfect. Yeah.

No problem.

Yes, sir.

Okay, great. Thanks a lot and thanks everyone for listening. Take care.

Thank you.