Capturing the New Space Age | Kevin Curran

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But just being around, as you know, the more inspiring groups you get around, there's always people that inspire you to do greater things.

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Welcome to A Heart for Space.

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I am your host, Dr. Imojohangir.

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Join me as we uncover what it takes to reach beyond the limits of what we think is possible and turn the biggest dreams into tangible reality.

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Well, I am excited to have you here today, Kevin.

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I just watched your documentary this week, which we'll talk about here, Beyond Blue Sky, a little bit as we go along, but I'll plug it in right now.

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For anyone who hasn't seen it, who's interested in either space...

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or a human story, or what we talk about here, which is trying to achieve things that people say aren't possible, then that is a movie slash documentary for you.

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It's definitely worth seeing.

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But I guess let's have you just kind of introduce yourself.

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For someone who has never heard of you, who are you?

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How would you describe yourself?

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Wow, that's a big question.

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Well, thanks for having me, Yaman.

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It's incredible.

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We share a lot of history, although this is the first time we're actually meeting eye to eye, which we'll get into.

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But yeah, my name is Kevin Curran.

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I have been a professional cinematographer for about 30 years, living in Los Angeles.

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I have a unique skill set.

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So I actually started as an editor before that, and I just didn't like working in a dark room.

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And I'd see all these incredible documentaries coming from

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the biggest of the big names that you can imagine in high definition.

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And so it got me interested in just getting out there and exploring the world and, uh, and just becoming a cinematographer.

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So I worked as an engineer first doing video, uh, and then just started shooting and just never looked back.

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So, um, I worked for pretty much shoot growing up.

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You weren't like holding onto a camera when you were younger, huh?

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A little bit.

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We did have VHSs when I was a kid and some camcorders and stuff like that.

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But not really.

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No, I pursued electrical engineering first.

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And then I just didn't have people to show me the creative outlet of that, which for me now, having age, would have been aerospace.

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But I didn't have anybody do that.

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So I just got into that.

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I went to University of Illinois in Champaign.

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and nobody showed me that.

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So I started interning, and there was no creative outlet.

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And so I just switched and kind of never looked back.

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Were you creative growing up?

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I mean, because...

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I think creativity can be manifest in different ways.

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Like if you take me and I don't know, my brother, my creativity, it's definitely manifested in a very different way than his, but it wasn't something I pursued much like you.

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I mean, it sounds like you went engineering, which, you know, is numbers, math, very detail oriented work.

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So yeah, what, what was your outlet as a kid?

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Did you have one?

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Yeah, I used to just, they used to be kind of related.

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I was always interested in how things kind of came to be.

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So I had both left brain and right brain.

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So I'd always like take things apart, sometimes put them back together, if I can remember how to do it.

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But it was always just like, why is this this way?

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So that was kind of the creative spark.

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But I also drew and painted and sculpted and all kinds of stuff.

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So my brain was just everywhere as a child.

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That's awesome.

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And then you obviously left engineering and became a cinematographer.

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How did you end up in the space industry?

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Because it's not only that you did this documentary, which is awesome, but you also like, and we'll talk about this more later, you've filmed a lot of the major kind of like modern day space events from Artemis to SpaceX launches to a lot of Blue Origin New Shepard launches.

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Yeah.

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So what happened was I pretty much worked consistently.

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I started my own company from like 2003 to 2007 here in Los Angeles.

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So we saw the digital wave coming and we just jumped on it.

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So start to finish was then called High Definition.

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And we worked for pretty much everybody.

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So Lucasfilm was like an early client on episode three.

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And we had some other giant clients.

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far too many partners.

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There was five of us.

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Uh, so eventually we dissolved that company cause we all wanted to go different ways.

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And then I pursued cinematography for full time.

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Uh, in 2020, it finally slowed me down.

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It slowed the world down and there was so much pain.

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I mean, you saw it front row doing what you do.

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Um, there was just so much pain in the world that

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It got me to really take stock of the one life that we know that we have and to recenter and to figure out what I wanted to do with that one life.

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And for better or worse, I had read aerospace since I was a kid.

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I'd always been fascinated by sci-fi movies, much like yourself, you know, getting into early rocketry and the history of that.

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Oh yeah.

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I just absolutely was like, okay, for what remains of my career, I can't go back and become an aerospace engineer, but I'm going to celebrate engineering milestones for the rest of my career as much as I possibly can to encourage the next generation to, uh, to follow in their footsteps.

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So I worked for, like you said, blue origin.

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I was the closest camera to the new shepherd capsule on NS16, which was the first human space flight with Jeff Bezos.

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And,

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Roy Funk and Damien and his brother and then I did Shatner's so I was 5 feet away from that live streaming to the world NS19, NS20 Everyone's seen that video I feel like the one with the champagne and so that was you That was me I don't think anyone knows that that video is very famous Yeah, a lot of them are iconic I mean

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Sometimes I just have to pinch myself afterwards, you know, and I've shot a lot of incredible stuff over my career.

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But just having the love for aerospace that I do, that was probably going to be the biggest honor.

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Even though I went on to do like Artemis, Bloor's is just a company that can do anything.

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And I did all the morning shows for like NS-16 and NS-18 as a camera operator.

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So I get to see Jeff Bezos and William Shatner speak.

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And Jeff in particular, just, you know, the way he speaks about space, I mean, you know, you can see that love since he was a kid.

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I mean, he was president of SEDS at Princeton and he gets it.

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And I remember I saw him when his fiancee, now wife, launched.

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I was supporting that mission when I went back.

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And the first time I met him, I'm like, hey, how are you doing?

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Iman Jahangir.

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And I flew on NS-26.

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And he was like, what did you think?

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I was like, it was amazing.

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He was like, yeah, it was awesome, wasn't it?

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I mean, just the pure joy in that man when he talks about space is something

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I agree.

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And I will say it's interesting because you said, you know, you're an electrical engineer.

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And when kind of you were deciding to go to the space field, you're like, well, I can't become an aerospace engineer.

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Like that seems not that you couldn't, but kind of that moment in life has passed.

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And I felt the same way as far as medicine.

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You know, I kind of went through and became a cardiologist.

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But as I was getting reinvigorated with this passion for space, really the smart thing may have been to go back and become a flight surgeon or an aerospace medicine doctor.

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But I was like, I'm not going back to do that training.

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I like what I do professionally, so let's find another way to do this.

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And I imagine there's a lot of people that feel that way, at least if they're in their 30s, 40s, or maybe 50s.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I don't think it's ever too late.

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We could have gone back.

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You and I could have done shows, but we just decided to find, find our own way.

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Well, I think it's interesting because like in any field, including mine, it's like you figure out you want to tell stories, right?

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For me.

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And then you figure out what you want to do within that field.

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It's like, okay, I want to be a cinematographer.

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I love,

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meeting people.

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I love capturing beautiful imagery.

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Okay.

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Well now what kind of cinematography do I want to capture and what kind of stories do I want to radiate to the world?

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So I just had a certain vested skillset for 30 years that yes, I could go back and pursue aerospace engineering, but what, what is the greater good here?

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You know, uh, the greater good is to use my skillset

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to celebrate this unique time in human history, uh, to capture as many of these stories before they disappear forever.

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Because as long as we become spacefaring and continue to do this, these stories are going to be huge.

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Um, so like the documentary that I just did,

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That was with the first two private astronauts, you know, and Burt Rutan, who built the first private space program from scratch.

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And now, unfortunately, it's like the first two private astronauts passed away in the last few years.

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And I feel honored and blessed to have captured their stories before it was too late.

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I was going to say, can you describe, so I know the story of Spaceship One because I'm a space nut, but there are audience members here who are probably listeners who aren't.

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So, yeah.

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You say first commercial private astronaut.

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Can you give us a brief history of the X-Prize, and sorry, X-Prize, Spaceship One, and kind of like what that is?

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Yeah, absolutely.

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It's a fascinating story.

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So basically, there was only three governments that had ever taken humans to space.

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So it was Russia, China, United States.

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And Bert Rutan is this aerospace designer genius who has designed hundreds of aircraft.

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At the time, he had produced and gone into manufacturing on, I think, 30-something of those planes.

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Um, and he always wanted to go to space.

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He just kept on building strange craft, doing interesting things in aviation, um,

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And so he wanted to go to space.

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Paul Allen, who was the co-founder of Microsoft, had a deep love of space his entire life.

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And they connected on this other project called the Proteus, which was a high altitude aircraft.

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And they were talking about doing last mile broadband together and distributing to the public before.

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what you see in the modern day internet.

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So they would just have Proteus circle and just distribute broadband.

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So they started talking and they realized that they both shared this love.

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And ultimately they figured out a way for Paul Allen to finance the entire first man private space program, which is,

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Sounds like an extraordinary amount of money, but it ended up being a fixed price contract for 19 million.

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They broke that fixed price.

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It ended up rising to 28.

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But even so, they built a mothership, a spaceship, avionics, experimental rocket.

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All of it was experimental and it was a test flight program, just like Blue Origin, testing and modifying along the way.

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So that's what they did.

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And then the XPRIZE was kind of on top of that.

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They started talking about like doing the space program and then the XPRIZE was in the middle of that.

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And they're like, well, let's fly to space first, prove the concept, prove that you can do this.

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And then we'll go on to win or hopefully win the Ansari XPRIZE.

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Well, and that's what's become the Virgin spaceship, the Virgin Galactic spaceship, which I think is pretty cool because at the end of your movie you do have, I don't know, was it their second flight they had a Virgin logo on the spaceship one already or no?

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Yeah, it was the second one.

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So they basically flew to space with single pilot, no ballast, no 600 pounds, just single pilot, proved the concept.

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And then Virgin started getting involved and talking about –

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Buying the program at that point, but the deal that they worked out was like a sponsorship so they could get their logo on it.

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And there might, it might be much more complicated than that, but that's my understanding of where it went.

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And then they sold all the IP after the second XPRIZE flight to Virgin Galactic and it became what it is today.

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Yeah, it would sense people up.

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Hopefully again soon, because right now, I mean, the world of suborbital spaceflight was really a short period in our space history, unless we re-bring these out.

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Because it was 2021 to 2020, I guess it was Blue Origin's last flight, was it January of 26 or was it December of 25?

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But really about five years.

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Awesome, yeah.

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four and a half years, which is nuts.

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And we're hoping Virgin comes back.

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They're building a ship.

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We're hoping Blue Origin's New Shepard program is just a pause.

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But who knows?

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Two years is a long, long pause.

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Yeah, a lot of these resources, I mean, they're looking at much bigger things, you know?

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I mean, look at the history of any company, whether it's like OpenAI scuttling Sora to focus on this moment in time.

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I think Blue Origin, without having direct access to those conversations, and you might more than I do, but it seems like that.

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It's like just a resource allocation to New Glenn and much bigger projects at this point in time.

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Well, to me, it made sense.

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And I wasn't working at Blue Origin when they announced it.

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I remember I'd just had foot surgery.

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And there was an ice storm here in Nashville.

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And I was sitting on my couch, kind of drugged up postoperatively.

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It was maybe like two hours after my surgery, I'd come home.

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And I saw it on my phone.

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And I was like, whoa.

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And to me, it made sense because it's like you got to focus resources.

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There are 500 employees that they were able to reallocate to lunar and orbital.

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And honestly, like...

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New Shepard, as amazing of a system as it is, is a liability.

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If there's one tragic accident, I think it pauses everything, or at least it hurts the whole program.

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So they used it as testing ground.

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They got what they needed, and now it's time to move to Orbital, which they're doing with New Glenn.

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Yeah, that was the point.

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Yeah, go ahead.

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Oh, that was the funny thing while I was working there too, was like, you could hear the messaging in the media and even being inside that media for so long, I'd been accustomed to that.

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But just being inside that bubble and working at Blue Origin on those early flights, you'd hear everybody talk about like suborbital and just kind of their little media talking points.

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And you're like, wow, no, they're talking about so many bigger things.

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This is just a stepping stone to those bigger things.

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Yeah.

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I don't know, shortcut to journalism, I guess, or something.

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I mean, we're going to see the bigger things, I think, this decade.

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There's a lot cooking over at Blue Origin.

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What does it, because you've been at, I mean, you mentioned some of this, Artemis 1, you were there with Shatner, you were there with Bezos on his flight.

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You were there for some of the SpaceX launches.

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The Starship, which I think is launching today, because today is May 21st, we're recording this.

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They're supposed to launch another Starship today.

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But what is it like from your side of the camera?

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You know, as someone who's like, you're experiencing it and you're really having to focus and absorb and get the human piece of that story.

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Like, how is that?

213
00:15:43.332 --> 00:15:53.774
It's funny being like a camera operator or a director of photography, but I do a lot of like ENG work, which means like electronic news gathering.

214
00:15:54.194 --> 00:15:58.215
And I'm in those locker rooms or high pressure situations, you know.

215
00:15:59.390 --> 00:16:04.672
It's very different from doing like a sit down interview and lighting something beautifully and stuff like that.

216
00:16:05.132 --> 00:16:08.914
It's a 360 world and everybody has their own problems.

217
00:16:08.974 --> 00:16:14.416
And as much as you talk about or rehearse, like where everybody's going to be, people lose their minds.

218
00:16:14.956 --> 00:16:17.697
So it's always like, what's this person doing to my right?

219
00:16:17.937 --> 00:16:19.498
Why are they crossing at this time?

220
00:16:20.318 --> 00:16:25.200
This cable is snagged in some bushes, you know, like I got to wait for these guys to get it out.

221
00:16:25.837 --> 00:16:27.398
Am I capturing the story?

222
00:16:28.179 --> 00:16:28.939
Don't fall.

223
00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:31.021
It's the number one goal.

224
00:16:31.602 --> 00:16:32.742
Don't trip over anything.

225
00:16:33.803 --> 00:16:39.728
But it's just extraordinary because you realize that you get one shot, one shot.

226
00:16:39.748 --> 00:16:44.191
They're not going to have a second take at meaningful human history forever.

227
00:16:45.552 --> 00:16:48.795
And it's an honor to capture those moments.

228
00:16:50.016 --> 00:16:55.120
I mean, it sounds like it still moves you, being there and capturing these things.

229
00:16:55.909 --> 00:17:25.330
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what your reaction was going up, but I had seen rocket launches from afar and like Intelligent before, but I've seen some in Vanderburg up close on base, and I've seen the Blue Origin ones and then Artemis, and I didn't expect this to happen to me, but it just vibrates through my entire soul when they go up.

230
00:17:26.163 --> 00:17:28.447
And, uh, and I get emotional.

231
00:17:28.467 --> 00:17:29.328
I'll shed a tear.

232
00:17:29.589 --> 00:17:37.323
Like it just gives you faith in what I've seen incredibly strong team of humans can do when they're working together as one.

233
00:17:38.626 --> 00:17:44.108
Well, you know, they said aliens made pyramids, which I don't agree with.

234
00:17:44.628 --> 00:17:48.790
I always say that our spaceships and our space stations are our modern day pyramids.

235
00:17:49.310 --> 00:17:56.533
And so one day, maybe when we show up on another planet, if there's life, they'll say, those aliens built these spaceships.

236
00:17:57.874 --> 00:18:03.156
And they'll be talking about us, as opposed to now where we always, our conspiracy theorists say it the other way.

237
00:18:03.196 --> 00:18:04.977
Because I agree, it's so,

238
00:18:06.635 --> 00:18:08.918
It's awe-inspiring, you know, just to be at a launch.

239
00:18:09.419 --> 00:18:14.685
Whether it's a single-stage New Shepard or a orbital, much bigger rocket.

240
00:18:14.705 --> 00:18:16.888
I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing Starship one day.

241
00:18:17.289 --> 00:18:20.373
I've been down there, but not haven't been able to catch a launch.

242
00:18:21.094 --> 00:18:21.454
Yeah.

243
00:18:21.474 --> 00:18:22.516
I mean, that's...

244
00:18:23.357 --> 00:18:24.298
Okay, go ahead.

245
00:18:25.744 --> 00:18:34.648
No, I was going to say, going back to, because talking about the human story, like, why did you decide that, like, Spaceship One and that, you know, in your documentary, like, that was the story you had to tell?

246
00:18:34.688 --> 00:18:38.830
Because you're right, there's so many great stories, and you're like, this story has to be told.

247
00:18:39.970 --> 00:18:43.432
And I'm going to be the one who does it, which is, it's no small feat.

248
00:18:44.792 --> 00:18:46.053
No, I was...

249
00:18:48.151 --> 00:18:52.034
What happened was I'm pitching a much bigger series on aerospace.

250
00:18:52.094 --> 00:18:57.357
So it's, again, the idea is to capture as many of these stories as possible before they disappear forever.

251
00:18:58.177 --> 00:18:59.598
And so I was pitching this series.

252
00:18:59.638 --> 00:19:00.278
I still am.

253
00:19:01.219 --> 00:19:06.802
And it was going to some really high levels, but it was never getting like the financing that it needed.

254
00:19:07.502 --> 00:19:12.045
And so one of the episodes within that was the story of Spaceship One.

255
00:19:12.910 --> 00:19:17.313
Um, so I find all these untold nuanced stories that are fascinating.

256
00:19:17.394 --> 00:19:17.634
Right.

257
00:19:18.474 --> 00:19:24.719
And, uh, Mojave, uh, where this all took place, uh, is right over the hill from me.

258
00:19:24.839 --> 00:19:26.020
So it's like an hour away.

259
00:19:26.080 --> 00:19:28.121
So I'm like, I'm going to hit pocket that episode.

260
00:19:28.662 --> 00:19:30.143
These people are still all out there.

261
00:19:30.703 --> 00:19:32.024
It's exotic landscape.

262
00:19:32.885 --> 00:19:35.287
Um, there's footage, you know?

263
00:19:35.787 --> 00:19:38.029
Um, so this is the first story I'm going to tell.

264
00:19:38.049 --> 00:19:39.710
It took way longer than I thought it would.

265
00:19:40.170 --> 00:19:42.490
because I was working and doing other things.

266
00:19:43.751 --> 00:19:45.871
Like five and a half years, roughly.

267
00:19:46.411 --> 00:19:46.891
Oh, wow.

268
00:19:46.931 --> 00:19:48.131
Yeah, labor of love.

269
00:19:48.612 --> 00:19:48.872
Yeah.

270
00:19:49.072 --> 00:19:56.753
So you've sat across the camera from some very cool people through New Shepard, obviously, people that everyone knows.

271
00:19:56.813 --> 00:20:05.114
But I would argue that the guys at Spaceship One were like true legends, you know, like Burt Rutan, Brian Binney, Mike Melville.

272
00:20:05.134 --> 00:20:07.755
I mean, this was completely uncharted ground.

273
00:20:09.748 --> 00:20:17.492
A ship that it looks like, you know, I mean, like you described, they were getting pieces from wherever they could get it because they needed to be cost efficient.

274
00:20:17.992 --> 00:20:22.514
What was it like sitting across from these guys and hearing their stories, their actual words?

275
00:20:23.294 --> 00:20:26.676
Well, like yourself, I've always loved people, you know.

276
00:20:26.696 --> 00:20:30.558
The human mind is the most fascinating thing that I know of.

277
00:20:31.327 --> 00:20:34.689
And when you find that connection with people, there's nothing better in this world.

278
00:20:34.769 --> 00:20:38.792
You find incredible friends, romantic relationships, business partners.

279
00:20:39.693 --> 00:20:40.733
It's amazing, right?

280
00:20:41.193 --> 00:20:44.556
So being in the room with those people is an honor.

281
00:20:44.936 --> 00:20:47.958
I mean, Brian Binney brought me into that entire circle of people.

282
00:20:49.539 --> 00:20:55.843
He had found his story first and it mutated, you know, like,

283
00:20:56.977 --> 00:21:01.382
It's like any good story, the more you start pulling on the thread, the weirder and stranger it gets.

284
00:21:03.124 --> 00:21:04.806
But he brought me into that whole circle.

285
00:21:05.066 --> 00:21:09.431
And just sitting across from all of them is an honor.

286
00:21:09.491 --> 00:21:11.954
I mean, I went out to Bert's house in Coeur d'Alene.

287
00:21:12.455 --> 00:21:13.876
We did an interview in his basement.

288
00:21:13.896 --> 00:21:15.278
So all the interviews are green screened.

289
00:21:16.023 --> 00:21:16.724
That's wild.

290
00:21:17.324 --> 00:21:18.726
And it was just him and I.

291
00:21:19.186 --> 00:21:22.209
And we're just sitting there having a conversation for hours.

292
00:21:22.990 --> 00:21:24.952
And I'm like, this is Bert Rutan.

293
00:21:24.972 --> 00:21:27.434
I'm just like getting into his mind.

294
00:21:27.454 --> 00:21:34.141
He was so generous with his time and just sharing his entire experience in Spaceship One and beyond.

295
00:21:34.221 --> 00:21:40.507
But like Jeff or Elon or any of these people, just to have the vision of...

296
00:21:41.597 --> 00:21:45.378
and the Capitol to move on something is incredible.

297
00:21:45.398 --> 00:21:58.940
I mean, because they're all geniuses at Blue Origin, but it's like having that one that can orchestrate and organize all of those geniuses to drive for something much bigger than any of them is a true gift.

298
00:21:59.180 --> 00:22:03.641
And so sitting in the rooms and meeting most of the people like that, as you know, is just an honor.

299
00:22:04.801 --> 00:22:07.361
Well, and the passion that he probably brings, I imagine.

300
00:22:08.102 --> 00:22:08.382
Yeah.

301
00:22:09.582 --> 00:22:09.882
Yep.

302
00:22:10.042 --> 00:22:10.602
I mean, Bert.

303
00:22:11.225 --> 00:22:12.525
Yes, completely.

304
00:22:13.786 --> 00:22:20.268
Even in times of, and you can see in the film a bit, when there's failures, he'll encourage people.

305
00:22:21.009 --> 00:22:21.449
Yeah.

306
00:22:21.609 --> 00:22:22.689
When they're the hardest on themselves.

307
00:22:22.729 --> 00:22:23.550
He seems like a true leader.

308
00:22:24.410 --> 00:22:25.430
Yeah.

309
00:22:25.450 --> 00:22:26.971
He's like, oh, it's okay.

310
00:22:26.991 --> 00:22:28.191
This won't take long to fix.

311
00:22:28.271 --> 00:22:29.732
Or, oh, don't worry about it.

312
00:22:29.772 --> 00:22:30.932
Why'd you make this choice, though?

313
00:22:30.952 --> 00:22:31.052
Yeah.

314
00:22:31.072 --> 00:22:31.172
Yeah.

315
00:22:33.770 --> 00:22:34.030
Yeah.

316
00:22:34.490 --> 00:22:35.291
So, yeah.

317
00:22:35.311 --> 00:22:41.553
Well, I think the story that you put in about, there's a story about how are we going to get 600 pounds on the ship?

318
00:22:42.814 --> 00:22:46.095
Um, which was part of the XPRIZE rules.

319
00:22:46.976 --> 00:22:52.078
And he wanted to add more fuel and get rid of the, you know, like the, um, the,

320
00:22:53.987 --> 00:23:16.660
air gas part of the rocket yeah and then they're like he he was a good enough leader to where he listened to the other people who said no we can just change the flight profile look we figure this out and we'll make it work i mean that's a sign of a good leader because he was willing to listen even if it wasn't his idea yeah it's a little it's a it's to your point uh yes that's definitely the case the um

321
00:23:17.404 --> 00:23:28.914
The exact case was Burt wanted to strap Sidewinder missile rocket motors to the eight of them to the side of Spaceship One to get the extra boost.

322
00:23:29.515 --> 00:23:36.601
Because on the first spaceflight with one pilot, essentially 200 pounds, they had made it to space by a little over 400 feet.

323
00:23:37.933 --> 00:23:41.956
And so in order to win the XPRIZE, they had to do it with 600 pounds.

324
00:23:42.557 --> 00:23:50.002
So they just spent their rocket motor fuel going up and getting to pass the Karman line by 400 feet.

325
00:23:50.403 --> 00:23:55.827
How are they going to do it for the next flight with 400 more pounds of ballast?

326
00:23:55.887 --> 00:23:58.629
So they vetted all kinds of engineering ideas.

327
00:23:58.829 --> 00:24:06.715
Burt wanted to, again, strap eight Sidewinder missiles to the sides in a test flight program to,

328
00:24:07.175 --> 00:24:31.424
to get the extra boost to go to space and everybody on the program collectively was like what you know and you saw it you know i think pete it caused a lot of issues probably with his health you know and um so he had removed himself as a pilot um but thankfully they came up with the team came up with a much better solution which was to essentially

329
00:24:32.215 --> 00:24:38.638
Fill the nitrous tank with a little bit more nitrous because nitrous at temperature expands.

330
00:24:39.338 --> 00:24:43.880
And so if you have it too full and it expands, you don't carefully control the temperature.

331
00:24:44.240 --> 00:24:45.160
It becomes a bomb.

332
00:24:45.441 --> 00:24:45.741
Yeah.

333
00:24:45.941 --> 00:24:51.263
And so it's just going to blow up in midair and bye bye program, you know, bye bye pilot, bye bye program.

334
00:24:54.132 --> 00:25:05.042
So what they did was they just carefully added a little bit more nitrous and then really controlled the temperature of that essential bomb to get the extra boost they needed to get to space.

335
00:25:05.402 --> 00:25:05.963
And that worked.

336
00:25:07.644 --> 00:25:08.185
That's wild.

337
00:25:08.665 --> 00:25:14.831
And Mike Melville was, correct me if I'm wrong, he was like in his 60s, like 64, 65 when he became a private astronaut.

338
00:25:14.851 --> 00:25:16.072
The first private astronaut?

339
00:25:16.092 --> 00:25:16.452
Yeah.

340
00:25:16.796 --> 00:25:19.239
He was the first private astronaut, the very first.

341
00:25:19.339 --> 00:25:22.102
And yes, he was 64 when he did it.

342
00:25:22.202 --> 00:25:25.505
So him and Bert went way back.

343
00:25:25.685 --> 00:25:28.028
Mike had never graduated high school.

344
00:25:28.878 --> 00:25:33.720
Uh, he met Bert because he was in, he was living in Indiana at the time.

345
00:25:34.180 --> 00:25:40.902
And Bert used to have this company where he'd, uh, make home builder design kits, which is all full of legal issues.

346
00:25:40.942 --> 00:25:41.142
Right.

347
00:25:41.662 --> 00:25:46.644
And just give these, and people would buy these kits and then build these things in their garages.

348
00:25:47.144 --> 00:25:50.085
So he was the first person to build this plane called the very big and.

349
00:25:50.693 --> 00:25:52.214
And there was nobody to certify it.

350
00:25:52.374 --> 00:25:57.836
So he flew it out to Mojave and showed it to Bert Rutan in order to certify it.

351
00:25:58.016 --> 00:25:58.356
Wow.

352
00:25:58.536 --> 00:26:14.262
And, and Bert was so impressed that he made Mike his first employee of that previous company to scale composites, which was Rutan aircraft factory and his wife, the second, and they worked with him for like 30 years.

353
00:26:15.062 --> 00:26:16.003
And so, um,

354
00:26:16.923 --> 00:26:23.990
So Mike, he was like the go-to test pilot on multiple research airplanes because that's what they would do.

355
00:26:24.311 --> 00:26:33.320
They would always have clients, whether they're government or private, to test fly a craft that somebody was interested in building, modify it to figure out how it worked.

356
00:26:33.860 --> 00:26:37.602
And then they would take that prototype and give it back to the company.

357
00:26:38.042 --> 00:26:40.463
And then the company would go into mass production if they wanted.

358
00:26:41.023 --> 00:26:45.305
So for spaceship one, yes, he was 64 years old, uh, when he flew it.

359
00:26:45.525 --> 00:26:50.887
And you got to remember, again, they were cutting corners everywhere to show that this was possible.

360
00:26:51.307 --> 00:26:52.928
So this was stick and rudder.

361
00:26:53.388 --> 00:26:58.790
I mean, like just controlling a supersonic aircraft, stick and rudder going to space.

362
00:26:58.810 --> 00:26:59.611
That's crazy.

363
00:26:59.811 --> 00:27:00.091
Yeah.

364
00:27:00.251 --> 00:27:00.911
You've seen it.

365
00:27:01.191 --> 00:27:02.452
A lot of things go wrong.

366
00:27:02.472 --> 00:27:02.572
Yeah.

367
00:27:03.192 --> 00:27:06.634
And at 64 years old, how are you dealing with those things?

368
00:27:06.975 --> 00:27:09.376
Well, if you're not Mike Melville, you're probably in trouble.

369
00:27:09.556 --> 00:27:10.797
But you use Mike Melville.

370
00:27:10.817 --> 00:27:11.198
That's right.

371
00:27:11.258 --> 00:27:12.438
You're probably passing out.

372
00:27:13.699 --> 00:27:14.620
Yeah.

373
00:27:14.960 --> 00:27:19.723
I mean, what do you think that says about age, courage, and, I mean, the human capacity to do anything?

374
00:27:19.823 --> 00:27:22.025
We're sitting here saying, well, we couldn't go back and do this.

375
00:27:22.065 --> 00:27:28.149
But, like, this guy at 64 is like, I'm going to fly to space on a ship no one's ever seen before.

376
00:27:29.230 --> 00:27:30.050
You got it, Iman.

377
00:27:30.170 --> 00:27:31.892
Like, I mean, it's so funny –

378
00:27:32.983 --> 00:27:36.385
like I always considered myself a perseverant driven individual, you know?

379
00:27:36.726 --> 00:27:44.471
Um, but just being around, as you know, the more inspiring groups you get around, there's always people that inspire you even to do greater things.

380
00:27:45.051 --> 00:27:47.693
And to your point that that was absolutely one of them.

381
00:27:48.093 --> 00:27:52.596
I was just like, this guy was absolutely amazing human being.

382
00:27:53.136 --> 00:27:53.857
I miss him a lot.

383
00:27:53.957 --> 00:28:01.462
He was like, you see on camera, just kind and had a good lap and super generous, uh, humble, you know, you,

384
00:28:02.683 --> 00:28:04.865
You stayed in touch with him for a while?

385
00:28:04.885 --> 00:28:05.065
Yeah.

386
00:28:05.665 --> 00:28:06.346
Yeah.

387
00:28:06.706 --> 00:28:07.226
That's nice.

388
00:28:07.667 --> 00:28:16.694
And then Brian Binney, I thought the interesting thing, and I didn't know this part of the story, and not to give up too much, but there's descriptions of unidentified, anomalous characters.

389
00:28:17.550 --> 00:28:19.271
anomalous phenomena, right?

390
00:28:20.212 --> 00:28:20.552
Yeah.

391
00:28:20.813 --> 00:28:31.741
I don't know if you want to describe what he saw or maybe we should have people, people should watch your documentary to hear about it, especially now I think with a lot of these things that the government's releasing.

392
00:28:31.761 --> 00:28:46.413
But like, I guess my question for you is like, not so much the story, because I think people should go watch it and hear it from the man who experienced it, but why did you decide to include that part in the human story?

393
00:28:47.188 --> 00:28:55.775
I mean, I, cause I could see myself watching it, what I thought about it, how it made me feel about his journey, but, uh, to becoming the second private astronaut.

394
00:28:55.855 --> 00:28:56.075
Right.

395
00:28:56.615 --> 00:28:58.497
But why did you decide to include that piece?

396
00:28:59.458 --> 00:29:00.699
Yeah, it's a fantastic question.

397
00:29:00.719 --> 00:29:04.261
I haven't, I've done a lot of interviews so far and I have never been asked that question.

398
00:29:04.402 --> 00:29:07.384
And that's a fantastic, like introspective question.

399
00:29:07.904 --> 00:29:08.745
And I struggled with it.

400
00:29:08.785 --> 00:29:09.005
Right.

401
00:29:09.525 --> 00:29:11.267
So what happened was, um,

402
00:29:12.687 --> 00:29:25.318
I intended on doing this simple redemption perseverance story because I knew enough about reading aerospace history to know that Brian had crashed the first rocket powered flight of spaceship one, the first test flight.

403
00:29:25.919 --> 00:29:29.342
And there were three test pilots on the program.

404
00:29:30.142 --> 00:29:38.570
And so I knew if it wasn't for this very weird set of circumstances that he never would have gotten back in the cockpit.

405
00:29:39.585 --> 00:29:43.008
on the, because there's like five rocket powered flights after that.

406
00:29:43.869 --> 00:29:49.033
And so I knew he would never have gotten back in the cockpit to fly the final flight.

407
00:29:49.653 --> 00:29:56.298
If it wasn't for these extraordinarily strange set of circumstances, I had no idea about the UAPs and what they played.

408
00:29:56.318 --> 00:29:58.680
I never read anything about that story.

409
00:29:58.700 --> 00:29:59.661
So,

410
00:30:01.638 --> 00:30:10.307
That was my story going in was like, it's a simple redemption, perseverance, stay in the pocket, fight for what your dreams are kind of story.

411
00:30:11.769 --> 00:30:15.893
I'm shooting that in like six weeks in with Brian over dinner.

412
00:30:15.913 --> 00:30:19.037
It was the only time I've ever seen him nervous.

413
00:30:20.010 --> 00:30:22.112
And he's like, I have to tell you something.

414
00:30:22.152 --> 00:30:26.896
And I thought like the documentary was going to be over or something or something bad.

415
00:30:27.477 --> 00:30:28.297
He was going to tell me.

416
00:30:29.158 --> 00:30:30.779
And so I was prepared for that.

417
00:30:31.240 --> 00:30:38.566
And he prepared to tell me his UAP story within the, that he experienced within the first private man space program.

418
00:30:39.107 --> 00:30:40.548
So it happened during it.

419
00:30:41.449 --> 00:30:45.492
And he told me that story over, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes.

420
00:30:45.532 --> 00:30:47.714
I asked all kinds of connection or questions.

421
00:30:48.756 --> 00:30:54.400
I drove home an hour to come home and I'm just like, what just happened?

422
00:30:54.501 --> 00:30:56.602
Like, what did he just tell me?

423
00:30:57.243 --> 00:31:00.925
And you got to remember, this is a person with advanced degrees.

424
00:31:01.165 --> 00:31:11.533
This is a person who went to Princeton, went to Brown, a 20 year Navy pilot, 33 combat missions, ended up winning the Ansari X prize.

425
00:31:12.113 --> 00:31:14.495
First plane to ever go supersonic privately.

426
00:31:16.016 --> 00:31:16.877
Call your trophy.

427
00:31:16.897 --> 00:31:17.037
Yeah.

428
00:31:17.941 --> 00:31:39.298
buttoned up human being right and he just told me this up close encounter with a dozen uaps uh two within an arm's length uh that he observed the whole thing for over a minute uh it's all in the film in his own words um yeah no it was incredible i had to make a decision like at that point yeah

429
00:31:40.179 --> 00:31:41.220
What am I doing here?

430
00:31:41.581 --> 00:31:48.228
And so I decided shortly after that to record it, still not knowing if it would be in the final documentary or not.

431
00:31:49.109 --> 00:31:58.039
And the more I got to know Brian and the more I edited, the more I realized that it was core to who he was and what he...

432
00:32:00.434 --> 00:32:07.477
experienced in that moment defined the rest of his journey within the Spatial Blend program.

433
00:32:08.177 --> 00:32:11.639
And this was in 2020 when he disclosed this to me.

434
00:32:11.739 --> 00:32:15.760
So this is before congressional oversight committees.

435
00:32:15.820 --> 00:32:19.642
This is long before Pentagon's direction to release any kind of UAP material.

436
00:32:20.442 --> 00:32:21.803
Um, it was courageous.

437
00:32:22.643 --> 00:32:26.624
Um, but it was still full of stigma and I, Oh yeah.

438
00:32:26.644 --> 00:32:27.785
A hundred percent.

439
00:32:27.845 --> 00:32:29.265
I love that you included it.

440
00:32:29.645 --> 00:32:29.925
Yeah.

441
00:32:30.305 --> 00:32:30.586
Yeah.

442
00:32:30.966 --> 00:32:36.007
I mean, he describes it very vividly, very vivid, very vivid description.

443
00:32:36.868 --> 00:32:42.309
Um, and you wonder how that changed his, his mind, you know, about what to do next.

444
00:32:43.670 --> 00:32:43.990
Yeah.

445
00:32:44.070 --> 00:32:48.512
For him, for him, it gave him hope because he felt there was something much bigger than him,

446
00:32:50.075 --> 00:33:13.335
that's amazing observing essentially you know i mean you wonder because we have all these people going up and not everyone's describing uaps i mean i didn't have such set experience so if these beings are out there they're definitely not touching base with everyone who goes to space no it's interesting because like um

447
00:33:14.125 --> 00:33:17.668
You know, Brian's Brian was the program manager of the entire spaceship one program.

448
00:33:17.828 --> 00:33:19.029
I mean, he wasn't using the test pilot.

449
00:33:19.489 --> 00:33:21.150
Again, he's a super buttoned up engineer.

450
00:33:21.310 --> 00:33:24.172
He was he was organizing that program.

451
00:33:24.212 --> 00:33:28.335
So this is somebody who goes through checklists fastidiously.

452
00:33:28.395 --> 00:33:33.579
So after he had this experience, he's just like, what did I just experience?

453
00:33:33.659 --> 00:33:36.101
So, yeah, he would just go through the checklist.

454
00:33:36.181 --> 00:33:36.721
Could it be this?

455
00:33:36.741 --> 00:33:37.161
Could be that?

456
00:33:37.181 --> 00:33:37.642
Could be that?

457
00:33:37.702 --> 00:33:37.962
Yeah.

458
00:33:38.688 --> 00:33:44.773
And ultimately he came to that it was some form of entity that was allowing him to perceive it.

459
00:33:45.914 --> 00:33:46.135
Yeah.

460
00:33:47.015 --> 00:33:49.377
And what's fascinating about that too is

461
00:33:50.348 --> 00:33:52.549
Again, he disclosed it in 2020 to me.

462
00:33:52.989 --> 00:33:58.793
But since then, there's been congressional hearings with, and one is Jeff Nucitelli.

463
00:33:58.813 --> 00:34:00.293
I think I'm pronouncing his name correctly.

464
00:34:00.814 --> 00:34:10.159
But he was a 16-year Air Force veteran who served nine of those at Vandenberg and ultimately became the head of security.

465
00:34:10.339 --> 00:34:12.020
And he testified to three people.

466
00:34:13.176 --> 00:34:33.821
giant incursions of ufos over vandenberg in um october of 2003 two months later is when brian had his experience yeah 190 miles away so i don't know if they're related but same rough time frame and same rough geography yeah

467
00:34:34.602 --> 00:34:34.922
Yeah.

468
00:34:35.843 --> 00:34:36.323
Interesting.

469
00:34:36.724 --> 00:34:37.504
It is interesting.

470
00:34:38.165 --> 00:34:51.755
I mean, I'm always hopeful, much like in Star Trek, once we figure out how to get past a certain velocity and figure out warp speed, that the aliens will come and be like, hey, all right, welcome to the club.

471
00:34:51.975 --> 00:34:53.096
You've got the technology.

472
00:34:53.716 --> 00:34:54.537
You passed the test.

473
00:34:55.137 --> 00:34:56.218
Maybe that was their first thing.

474
00:34:56.238 --> 00:34:58.179
They're like, okay, how fast can this rocket go?

475
00:34:58.219 --> 00:34:59.060
What are you guys doing?

476
00:35:00.160 --> 00:35:00.400
Yeah.

477
00:35:01.101 --> 00:35:02.863
Or maybe they're just already in the area.

478
00:35:03.123 --> 00:35:03.704
You know what I mean?

479
00:35:03.724 --> 00:35:10.730
Because like in the Vandenberg case, they were over the silos, you know, like on the north and south base, one touchdown on the flight line.

480
00:35:10.831 --> 00:35:18.438
But I don't know if they're interested in our technology or if there's any kind of nuclear anything out there.

481
00:35:20.527 --> 00:35:27.772
Well, they're like, oh, we already have a deal with the government, but man, if these private people are coming up, we got to renegotiate.

482
00:35:27.792 --> 00:35:32.014
We got to take that one-page friendly document and make it a 20-page contract.

483
00:35:32.815 --> 00:35:35.957
What are these guys doing over here?

484
00:35:36.077 --> 00:35:36.958
We didn't expect this.

485
00:35:38.419 --> 00:35:43.862
Now, how do you think all of those guys felt about, because did they all live to see Virgin fly in 21?

486
00:35:43.882 --> 00:35:44.322
Well, I mean...

487
00:35:48.997 --> 00:35:58.301
Brian and Mike did when I first started interviewing, I remember Mike laughing that nobody had, um, or just being more curious that nobody had flied.

488
00:35:58.361 --> 00:36:00.181
And it was 2021.

489
00:36:00.201 --> 00:36:00.942
I interviewed him.

490
00:36:00.962 --> 00:36:06.504
So 16 years, because they basically handed it with Tom and they didn't go to space again.

491
00:36:06.544 --> 00:36:06.764
Right.

492
00:36:07.604 --> 00:36:15.707
Um, so when I first started the film, nobody had done it, but yes, both of the first two private astronauts lived to see, um, you know, both the blue origin.

493
00:36:15.727 --> 00:36:18.148
I would talk to Brian all the time while I was there shooting, um,

494
00:36:19.805 --> 00:36:23.667
Jeff and the gang getting off of NS-16.

495
00:36:25.407 --> 00:36:31.169
But yeah, they all lived to see at least a baton get passed.

496
00:36:31.769 --> 00:36:32.549
That's very cool.

497
00:36:35.070 --> 00:36:37.771
What do you think we lose if people aren't telling these stories?

498
00:36:37.791 --> 00:36:42.853
So you said that Spaceship One was part of a larger project that you'd like to...

499
00:36:43.673 --> 00:36:45.593
where you'd like to tell these stories that haven't been told.

500
00:36:45.634 --> 00:36:55.876
What do you think as humans and as our, both as a human history, as a, as a U S history, because a lot of these stories are in the United States, what are, what do we lose if these breakthrough through moments aren't shared?

501
00:36:57.276 --> 00:37:06.619
Well, I mean, I think, um, if you kind of get out your outside yourself and you have a much bigger, uh, like universal perspective, that's kind of where I start.

502
00:37:06.819 --> 00:37:07.059
So,

503
00:37:08.528 --> 00:37:16.290
If there's life, an intelligent life that's capable of spacefaring on other planets and moons, which there are trillions of, right?

504
00:37:17.211 --> 00:37:18.411
And we're not an anomaly.

505
00:37:18.471 --> 00:37:19.371
We're not special.

506
00:37:20.072 --> 00:37:28.574
It is a special time for any species to escape their atmosphere or the gravitational pull of their celestial object, right?

507
00:37:28.994 --> 00:37:32.315
We are in the shadow of that experience.

508
00:37:32.515 --> 00:37:34.856
I mean, we just started sending people up in space.

509
00:37:35.658 --> 00:37:36.778
you know, in the 1950s.

510
00:37:37.578 --> 00:37:37.878
Right.

511
00:37:38.018 --> 00:37:41.099
And, uh, yeah, they're now 19th.

512
00:37:41.299 --> 00:37:41.979
Well, 61.

513
00:37:42.079 --> 00:37:42.399
Yeah.

514
00:37:42.419 --> 00:37:42.959
For shepherd.

515
00:37:43.179 --> 00:37:44.240
It hasn't been that long.

516
00:37:44.340 --> 00:37:44.640
Yeah.

517
00:37:44.680 --> 00:37:45.400
Yeah.

518
00:37:45.420 --> 00:37:45.920
So 61.

519
00:37:45.980 --> 00:37:51.781
So, uh, that's relatively recent human history and a lot of these people are passing away.

520
00:37:52.541 --> 00:38:00.962
And I think as long as we become, continue to become spacefaring, uh, these stories are going to be so precious.

521
00:38:02.203 --> 00:38:04.403
And I think to not, um,

522
00:38:05.121 --> 00:38:11.644
preserve them is a disservice to future generations and to this remarkable time in human history.

523
00:38:13.825 --> 00:38:25.309
Out of all the people you've seen and the stories you've told and the moments, what quality do you see over and over again that pushes people beyond their limits?

524
00:38:25.349 --> 00:38:31.752
Because, I mean, for instance, the Spaceship One, you know, it's like a $25 million program sent someone to space.

525
00:38:31.792 --> 00:38:31.812
I

526
00:38:33.310 --> 00:38:33.950
That's incredible.

527
00:38:33.990 --> 00:38:39.411
So like, what do you think is that quality that lets these people excel and persevere?

528
00:38:40.691 --> 00:38:42.112
That's a fantastic question too.

529
00:38:43.812 --> 00:38:45.752
I think it's, and I've thought a lot about this too.

530
00:38:46.873 --> 00:38:51.313
It always, for me, pretty much every single time comes down to parents.

531
00:38:52.314 --> 00:38:56.614
Like there's so much early influence, like the power of parenting.

532
00:38:57.595 --> 00:38:59.295
Bernie Tan, Brian Binney.

533
00:39:00.268 --> 00:39:02.830
I didn't talk really to Mike too much about his parents.

534
00:39:03.110 --> 00:39:04.291
It might just have been in him.

535
00:39:05.671 --> 00:39:10.574
But Bert was doing things from the time he was very young because he was a seventh day at Venice.

536
00:39:10.694 --> 00:39:13.336
So he wasn't playing sports, even though he was huge.

537
00:39:13.736 --> 00:39:14.677
He was a big kid.

538
00:39:15.557 --> 00:39:23.282
So he put his competitive streak into building wood model airplanes and entering competitions.

539
00:39:24.127 --> 00:39:27.468
And for him, that was early test flight.

540
00:39:27.548 --> 00:39:31.109
You know, it was early what works, what's aerodynamic, what fails.

541
00:39:31.629 --> 00:39:33.829
And he never looked back.

542
00:39:33.889 --> 00:39:35.110
It kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

543
00:39:35.710 --> 00:39:40.931
For Brian, his dad was a professor of physics at Purdue.

544
00:39:41.251 --> 00:39:49.393
And he used to take these things called plane james, which were like little wooden airplanes, shoot them up with a giant rubber band, the wings would pop out, and then it would go

545
00:39:49.753 --> 00:40:14.162
fly back down so he just became obsessed with that as a kid and like how these things fly he was like three or four years old and yeah in both those cases it was parenting that sparked something in these children yeah but maybe it was endemic in the children itself maybe it required both components um but obviously people spark on their own all the time you know um

546
00:40:15.758 --> 00:40:20.401
But yeah, like I've heard Jeff story to same thing with his grandfather, you know?

547
00:40:20.461 --> 00:40:20.701
Yeah.

548
00:40:21.682 --> 00:40:23.183
It's just these sparks, right?

549
00:40:23.203 --> 00:40:25.544
These early sparks that just drive people.

550
00:40:27.025 --> 00:40:28.306
I think that's the common component.

551
00:40:28.706 --> 00:40:28.946
Yeah.

552
00:40:29.367 --> 00:40:33.789
And what would you say for someone who like today wants to start something right there?

553
00:40:33.889 --> 00:40:35.630
Maybe they're in a rut.

554
00:40:35.730 --> 00:40:39.553
Maybe they want to start like a film, a book, change careers.

555
00:40:40.574 --> 00:40:40.874
What would,

556
00:40:41.991 --> 00:40:45.213
what would you say to them for like to keep going when it's hard?

557
00:40:45.253 --> 00:40:49.155
Like how, how did you, one, how did you switch kind of where you were at?

558
00:40:49.215 --> 00:40:54.339
And then like in your stories and storytelling, how did you see these guys persevere?

559
00:40:54.379 --> 00:41:05.786
I mean, particularly like you said, after the crash landing of spaceship one, um, for Brian to just jump back in is, you know, it took him a while, but like he got back and he did it right.

560
00:41:07.987 --> 00:41:08.267
Yeah.

561
00:41:08.347 --> 00:41:11.069
I think, I think the big thing is just, um,

562
00:41:11.694 --> 00:41:12.994
identify your passion.

563
00:41:14.175 --> 00:41:23.958
If you know what you want to do in this life and you can live life backwards a little bit, like what do you want to see happen before you die or on your deathbed?

564
00:41:24.038 --> 00:41:25.258
What would you have been proud to do?

565
00:41:25.738 --> 00:41:31.040
If you can identify that you're most of the way there because that,

566
00:41:32.291 --> 00:41:38.216
That vision for the future and your future self is the key thing to identify.

567
00:41:38.236 --> 00:41:41.999
And everybody has some form of gift or passion inside of them.

568
00:41:42.799 --> 00:41:44.040
It's identifying that thing.

569
00:41:44.581 --> 00:41:48.744
And then the world is full of distraction, full of it.

570
00:41:48.924 --> 00:41:49.605
It's everywhere.

571
00:41:50.285 --> 00:41:53.608
So identify your passion and protect that passion.

572
00:41:53.648 --> 00:41:56.390
Eliminate the distractions as much as possible.

573
00:41:56.610 --> 00:41:58.532
Pay attention to what's going on around the world.

574
00:41:59.345 --> 00:42:02.808
But wake up and breathe that thing that you're passionate about.

575
00:42:03.148 --> 00:42:05.190
And honestly, it's like climbing a mountain.

576
00:42:05.530 --> 00:42:08.493
So it's like you look at the mountain and you can get it.

577
00:42:08.693 --> 00:42:09.834
There's two types of people.

578
00:42:10.034 --> 00:42:12.276
Either they quit and they're like, man, I'm on stall.

579
00:42:12.836 --> 00:42:16.239
Or there's people who take that first step and like, I'm going to take the next step.

580
00:42:16.279 --> 00:42:17.260
I'm going to take the next step.

581
00:42:17.780 --> 00:42:22.404
And if you do that every day, if you breathe it, you'll reach the top of that mountain.

582
00:42:23.905 --> 00:42:24.566
That's beautiful.

583
00:42:24.766 --> 00:42:25.267
I like that.

584
00:42:26.047 --> 00:42:26.768
It's a good advice.

585
00:42:28.860 --> 00:42:35.283
Of all the things you've seen in the last 30 years, which one has stuck with you the most?

586
00:42:35.323 --> 00:42:38.525
Like, which image is someone who takes images?

587
00:42:40.066 --> 00:42:49.230
Yeah, I mean, I've done everything from wildlife and, you know, aerospace to, you know, sci-fi and Star Wars, all kinds of crazy stuff.

588
00:42:49.930 --> 00:42:50.611
Yeah, yeah.

589
00:42:51.358 --> 00:42:58.783
I talked about it a little bit earlier, but it's got to be NS-16, the first human spaceflight of Blue Origin.

590
00:42:58.803 --> 00:43:00.444
That's cool.

591
00:43:01.145 --> 00:43:13.974
It's a company that as soon as you start to understand and have a longer perspective on things, and again, coming from a love of aerospace and understanding this unique time in human history,

592
00:43:14.871 --> 00:43:19.533
I know from my limited time around Jeff and doing all the morning shows that he gets it.

593
00:43:19.953 --> 00:43:24.634
And he understands that he's a part of that history and living in that history too.

594
00:43:24.754 --> 00:43:30.216
So he's trying to build a bridge for the future, for beyond him, right?

595
00:43:30.296 --> 00:43:37.219
For the next generation, which is amazing to have somebody with that kind of capital and that kind of...

596
00:43:38.324 --> 00:43:41.428
similar vision, uh, to be able to execute it.

597
00:43:42.149 --> 00:43:54.904
And so for me, that had to be the biggest honor and privilege and coolest moment in my life, because as long as there's good stewards for it, that company can go on to become anything, anything.

598
00:43:54.964 --> 00:43:55.224
Yeah.

599
00:43:55.625 --> 00:43:56.506
Through the centuries.

600
00:43:56.846 --> 00:43:57.107
Yeah.

601
00:43:58.258 --> 00:44:19.806
I do think, I'm glad that he has put in his, you know, his hat in that ring and for 20 years now, I mean, it's, he's been doing it for a long time because you're right, having him and Blue Origin and SpaceX, I think those two companies will change how our children and our grandchildren view the solar system at least, if not, you know, beyond.

602
00:44:23.060 --> 00:44:24.141
So, yeah, I think that's great.

603
00:44:24.161 --> 00:44:24.922
Lots to explore out there, my friend.

604
00:44:24.942 --> 00:44:26.102
You know?

605
00:44:26.363 --> 00:44:27.163
Lots to explore.

606
00:44:27.223 --> 00:44:33.168
Hard to explore, but I'm hoping this nuclear-powered rocket that NASA is going to explore really does well.

607
00:44:33.208 --> 00:44:38.392
I think that that, if we can improve propulsion, then we're going to be able to expand quicker.

608
00:44:39.193 --> 00:44:40.013
What's next for you?

609
00:44:40.134 --> 00:44:47.319
What's, I mean, we've kind of talked about it, but, like, what's the next story that you're hoping to tell that you haven't told yet?

610
00:44:47.840 --> 00:44:48.260
I don't know.

611
00:44:48.440 --> 00:44:49.361
It's a really good question.

612
00:44:49.381 --> 00:44:51.122
There's a plate of things here.

613
00:44:51.262 --> 00:44:51.963
I like it.

614
00:44:52.283 --> 00:44:54.426
all kinds of different projects.

615
00:44:54.547 --> 00:45:01.817
I'm just trying to radiate out right now the message of the late, great Brian Vinnie and Mike Melville to the world.

616
00:45:01.858 --> 00:45:06.224
And honestly, like the thing that I hope for is that it just sparks...

617
00:45:07.255 --> 00:45:36.482
ways brian and i would talk about it sometimes but i just hope it sparks minds in ways we could never imagine to get interested in aerospace and pursue careers in stem and the biggest reward would be being invited to some launch with alternative propulsion like 10 years from now because of some graduate student who watched this and was like i'm gonna double down on aerospace engineering and you know be the guy um yeah i think that's beautiful

618
00:45:37.098 --> 00:45:43.341
that's kind of where I am presently is just trying to radiate this, their message to the world, you know?

619
00:45:44.401 --> 00:45:47.082
And I mean, you're, you did a beautiful job with it.

620
00:45:47.243 --> 00:45:49.684
My wife was out, so I was watching it by myself.

621
00:45:49.704 --> 00:45:56.747
And then she came in right at the, like the, as they were getting the space, you know, like it was monumental moment.

622
00:45:56.827 --> 00:46:01.189
And I just, every single piece of that movie reminded me both like,

623
00:46:01.809 --> 00:46:03.530
of my pursuit to get to space.

624
00:46:03.871 --> 00:46:09.254
And then granted, I wasn't like test piloting or anything like that, but it took years and years of trying.

625
00:46:09.915 --> 00:46:16.880
And then just that feeling when you get up there, I mean, there was one comment, I think it was Mike and he's like, everything just turned black.

626
00:46:17.040 --> 00:46:19.442
And you're like, yeah, everything turns black.

627
00:46:19.542 --> 00:46:22.924
It's like shockingly quick beyond blue sky.

628
00:46:24.865 --> 00:46:25.286
Yeah.

629
00:46:25.826 --> 00:46:26.487
It's yeah.

630
00:46:26.587 --> 00:46:27.487
You did a good job.

631
00:46:27.527 --> 00:46:29.229
You did a good job demonstrating that.

632
00:46:30.129 --> 00:46:39.216
what it feels like to go on a suborbital ride, to go from being, you know, within this atmosphere to all of a sudden being in space.

633
00:46:39.476 --> 00:46:47.302
And yeah, I mean, I got emotional watching it, but because I, it brought back a lot of those, those feelings from a year and a half ago.

634
00:46:48.412 --> 00:46:48.733
Yeah.

635
00:46:48.773 --> 00:46:51.257
So, um, so it's interesting, right?

636
00:46:51.277 --> 00:47:00.411
Cause like, like I did the William Shatner, um, interview and like capturing, uh, I didn't get to do yours, unfortunately, cause their entire truck got replaced by the time that,

637
00:47:01.798 --> 00:47:02.398
You had flown.

638
00:47:03.539 --> 00:47:10.004
But to capture the reactions of the astronauts, having just gone, brought out a little bit of jealousy in me.

639
00:47:10.284 --> 00:47:16.369
But it was also an honor just to see what it could do to human after human after human.

640
00:47:16.429 --> 00:47:29.039
Some very wealthy, successful people, but reduce them to fundamentals was incredible to watch as a documentarian happening right before my lens.

641
00:47:29.059 --> 00:47:29.160
Yeah.

642
00:47:30.040 --> 00:47:31.621
Um, I want to ask you a question though.

643
00:47:31.661 --> 00:47:41.724
Second here, but yeah, Brian Binney, um, he was a buttoned up, uh, like Navy pilot, but when he spoke, he could speak as you saw very, very poetically.

644
00:47:42.084 --> 00:47:49.387
And one of those biggest pieces of poetry is when he goes into space, he was the last person to reach space by himself.

645
00:47:50.387 --> 00:47:53.848
Um, and he's there talking about the moment as we see it.

646
00:47:55.109 --> 00:47:56.009
And, um,

647
00:47:57.196 --> 00:48:00.839
he, everybody has that overview effect in some way.

648
00:48:00.859 --> 00:48:02.381
A lot of people can't express it.

649
00:48:02.441 --> 00:48:07.585
Some people say they should have brought a poet or, you know, they just fumbled through the words of the cry.

650
00:48:09.187 --> 00:48:13.731
You saw William Shatner's reaction, Brian Binney, I thought expressed it beautifully.

651
00:48:14.131 --> 00:48:23.560
I've heard you talk a little bit about the overview effect, but I mean, I'd love to hear your experience, you know,

652
00:48:25.392 --> 00:48:28.775
and what your thoughts and emotion were on looking down at it all.

653
00:48:29.996 --> 00:48:36.662
I mean, for me, I think I was expecting to see the earth be bright and beautiful, because we've seen those images, right?

654
00:48:37.402 --> 00:48:41.486
And I think you can get some of it just from when you look at beautiful images.

655
00:48:41.506 --> 00:48:50.293
I was more struck by looking into the expanse, because it makes you realize just,

656
00:48:51.940 --> 00:48:55.021
how little there is or how much, I guess how much space there is.

657
00:48:55.101 --> 00:48:56.902
Cause it's not that there's not much in space.

658
00:48:56.942 --> 00:49:13.830
It's just that we are so far from anything else that, that we are really privileged to be living on this earth because it doesn't make any sense, but here we are, um, by design or evolution or dumb luck or whatever you want to, whatever you want to call it.

659
00:49:13.910 --> 00:49:20.513
But humans exist and have an ability to think and, and live with all these amazing other creatures on this planet.

660
00:49:20.613 --> 00:49:20.733
And,

661
00:49:22.172 --> 00:49:29.334
It just was, it was just darker and deeper than I could have imagined.

662
00:49:30.475 --> 00:49:34.596
Was it like in a scary way or like an inspiring way?

663
00:49:34.616 --> 00:49:35.816
No, not scary.

664
00:49:36.056 --> 00:49:39.017
Just, you know, I mean, I was a religion major.

665
00:49:39.037 --> 00:49:40.418
I do a lot of like introspection.

666
00:49:40.438 --> 00:49:41.638
I think it was just like a...

667
00:49:43.040 --> 00:49:45.322
like in a peace way, you know?

668
00:49:45.682 --> 00:49:46.563
I wasn't scared.

669
00:49:47.624 --> 00:49:57.112
I think my job inspires me, you know, I deal with humans of all kind, of all health, bad luck, self-inflicted, all sorts of things, right?

670
00:49:57.593 --> 00:50:07.822
So my love for humanity is strong based just, I think, on my day-to-day work, and I really, I'm not removed from any type of person in this society.

671
00:50:08.262 --> 00:50:09.503
I interact with everyone, right?

672
00:50:10.444 --> 00:50:13.167
So I've always felt interconnected to each other.

673
00:50:13.187 --> 00:50:18.051
And I think a lot of these political things, unfortunately, you know, this is human nature is to fight.

674
00:50:18.692 --> 00:50:29.001
But to me, it was just like, wow, like we really are like, it really is this like we're not getting anywhere quick that could sustain us like this planet can.

675
00:50:29.041 --> 00:50:29.822
And we really should.

676
00:50:30.803 --> 00:50:32.844
protect each other and love each other.

677
00:50:32.864 --> 00:50:34.865
Sure, we should take care of the environment, all of this stuff.

678
00:50:34.885 --> 00:50:42.349
But honestly, like this idea of taking care of the environment is really just like a self-conscious need.

679
00:50:42.409 --> 00:50:46.371
Because if we screw this environment up too bad, then we're not going to be able to exist here.

680
00:50:47.031 --> 00:50:47.771
Earth will be fine.

681
00:50:47.811 --> 00:50:48.332
It'll be here.

682
00:50:48.612 --> 00:50:50.253
It'll be in whatever form, right?

683
00:50:50.333 --> 00:50:51.293
It's not going anywhere.

684
00:50:52.154 --> 00:50:54.815
But really, we should be working with each other to

685
00:50:56.403 --> 00:50:58.024
to care for each other, you know?

686
00:50:58.064 --> 00:51:04.950
And I think we've lost some of that in the modern era, uh, because we can all be isolated.

687
00:51:05.230 --> 00:51:08.673
I mean, here we're connecting with technology, but technology also isolates us, right?

688
00:51:08.713 --> 00:51:21.905
Because I can sit home and watch your documentary instead of having to go to a theater or I don't have to go down to the local club to, to hang out with my guy friends or my, you know, we just don't do as many things communally as we used to.

689
00:51:21.925 --> 00:51:23.406
And I think that, that that's, um,

690
00:51:24.332 --> 00:51:24.952
It's a problem.

691
00:51:25.052 --> 00:51:26.973
It's a problem in our modern day.

692
00:51:27.053 --> 00:51:29.133
So things like space bring us together.

693
00:51:29.153 --> 00:51:30.474
I think that's great.

694
00:51:30.614 --> 00:51:32.814
My space family continues to grow.

695
00:51:32.874 --> 00:51:33.995
Now you're part of it, Kevin.

696
00:51:35.335 --> 00:51:39.096
And oftentimes it grows online before I physically actually meet people.

697
00:51:39.216 --> 00:51:41.217
So, you know, I think...

698
00:51:42.290 --> 00:51:44.391
Yeah, it's an incredible experience.

699
00:51:44.511 --> 00:51:46.531
It was very peaceful for me.

700
00:51:47.011 --> 00:51:48.451
The Earth was beautiful and bright.

701
00:51:48.632 --> 00:51:53.753
I would love to spend days up there on an orbital flight.

702
00:51:53.993 --> 00:52:00.134
And maybe by the time I'm 64, maybe I'll get my orbital flight, right?

703
00:52:01.174 --> 00:52:01.835
Yeah.

704
00:52:01.875 --> 00:52:03.135
That's two decades from now.

705
00:52:04.109 --> 00:52:05.631
Yeah, it's funny.

706
00:52:05.851 --> 00:52:11.016
One of the shows that I shoot is House Hunters on HGTV.

707
00:52:11.096 --> 00:52:11.437
Oh, yeah.

708
00:52:12.498 --> 00:52:13.519
So I'll shoot that occasionally.

709
00:52:14.200 --> 00:52:17.063
And so I got a chance to meet Cyan Proctor through it.

710
00:52:17.223 --> 00:52:19.205
So she was buying a house and was on an episode.

711
00:52:19.852 --> 00:52:24.234
And she had been part of Inspiration4 while I was doing the Blue Origin stuff.

712
00:52:24.254 --> 00:52:29.336
So we shot together for five days on that show, and we just became fast friends.

713
00:52:29.396 --> 00:52:30.597
I know you know her as well.

714
00:52:30.717 --> 00:52:31.778
Yeah.

715
00:52:32.178 --> 00:52:34.379
But yeah, talk about stories.

716
00:52:34.439 --> 00:52:39.121
For someone that's going orbital for several days, I think three days and...

717
00:52:40.453 --> 00:53:03.090
48 or I can't remember incredible like yeah but yeah just uh unbelievable stories you know talking about like plasma and during re-entry and oh yeah just seeing it from so far away is humbling and you know to be able to talk to people like yourself or cyan is the closest thing I'll come until I actually hopefully one day get to experience it

718
00:53:04.162 --> 00:53:30.158
that's right but I guess the other question I have too is the overview effect that's it's more of like like your senses are just overloaded at first just experiencing this thing and then it's more in the days after that just kind of processing the whole thing I imagine comes together and you kind of it doesn't strike you in the moment like the black you definitely have awe

719
00:53:32.416 --> 00:53:33.517
I mean, you have awe, right?

720
00:53:33.658 --> 00:53:35.980
Like, but it takes time to process.

721
00:53:36.020 --> 00:53:43.049
And I mean, this is why, like, Frank White, the gentleman who, you know, coined the overview effect, uh...

722
00:53:43.807 --> 00:53:46.530
He says that different astronauts process it differently.

723
00:53:46.570 --> 00:53:57.339
And I think you probably, if you talk to someone like Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space, his sense of it is probably very different than someone on a suborbital flight.

724
00:53:57.439 --> 00:54:02.964
And Frank actually initially said he was surprised to hear people on suborbital flights could experience it.

725
00:54:03.385 --> 00:54:05.527
Because he didn't think five minutes would be enough.

726
00:54:07.678 --> 00:54:12.059
But I would, and now he would agree that you can experience it in such a short time.

727
00:54:12.079 --> 00:54:13.119
Yeah.

728
00:54:13.139 --> 00:54:14.560
I mean, I'd see it time after time.

729
00:54:14.580 --> 00:54:16.620
But yeah, it definitely takes a long time to process.

730
00:54:17.040 --> 00:54:17.380
Yeah.

731
00:54:17.900 --> 00:54:18.501
I imagine.

732
00:54:18.761 --> 00:54:21.421
Well, I got one more question for you because I want to respect your time.

733
00:54:21.441 --> 00:54:24.262
I asked everyone this on A Heart for Space.

734
00:54:24.882 --> 00:54:29.983
So what is the space inside yourself or out in the world that you are still reaching for?

735
00:54:32.644 --> 00:54:35.325
It's, I think it really, another great question.

736
00:54:35.345 --> 00:54:36.965
You have some beautiful questions.

737
00:54:38.209 --> 00:54:49.912
Um, I think, um, kind of to the entire conversation that we've been having, it's about being humbled by it all.

738
00:54:50.132 --> 00:54:50.393
Right.

739
00:54:51.127 --> 00:54:54.390
because existence and consciousness is such a strange animal.

740
00:54:54.831 --> 00:54:57.353
There's core questions that nobody really knows the answer to.

741
00:54:58.794 --> 00:55:00.896
Maybe someday we will.

742
00:55:01.116 --> 00:55:06.681
But I mean, you're a doctor and you probably chase some of those answers, but the nature of all those things is fascinating.

743
00:55:08.362 --> 00:55:18.311
So for me, it's just, I know I'm guaranteed one life, and I'm going to live it with pursuing my passion to the very end, to my last breath.

744
00:55:19.165 --> 00:55:23.308
with balance in my life, hopefully a little bit more.

745
00:55:23.768 --> 00:55:38.939
But I just want to, again, celebrate as many of these engineers and people that take us beyond our atmosphere as possible, because I truly think as long as we continue to go the right way, that that's at least one possible course for human destiny.

746
00:55:39.119 --> 00:55:40.380
And that's what I want to see.

747
00:55:40.500 --> 00:55:43.982
I want to see us be an interplanetary and interplanetary,

748
00:55:44.584 --> 00:56:04.810
planetary live on moons everything like i just i want to see us radiate out there with hopefully more kindness than we've shown to each other here on earth um but we're neophytes we're still figuring it out but i think we can and um i want to leave the world with that messaging as much as i can

749
00:56:06.933 --> 00:56:07.233
Awesome.

750
00:56:07.273 --> 00:56:08.635
Well, thank you so much, Kevin.

751
00:56:08.955 --> 00:56:11.457
I truly appreciate you taking the time to be here today.

752
00:56:11.918 --> 00:56:13.239
For anyone out there, check it out.

753
00:56:13.259 --> 00:56:17.483
Beyond Blue Sky found on Apple TV and also on Amazon, I believe.

754
00:56:18.804 --> 00:56:21.466
So take a chance and take a look at it.

755
00:56:21.506 --> 00:56:23.709
We'll put a link to it down below.

756
00:56:23.829 --> 00:56:24.509
I think it's below.

757
00:56:24.689 --> 00:56:27.432
I don't know how this works, but yes, check it out.

758
00:56:28.833 --> 00:56:29.234
Thank you.

759
00:56:30.014 --> 00:56:30.655
Thank you so much.

760
00:56:32.098 --> 00:56:34.160
Thank you for listening to A Heart for Space.

761
00:56:34.820 --> 00:56:42.627
If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode and consider leaving us a review to let us know your thoughts.

762
00:56:43.328 --> 00:56:50.734
For more on my work in the pursuit of ambitious goals, visit AHeartForSpace.com and look out for my upcoming book, A Heart for Space.

763
00:56:50.995 --> 00:56:53.437
Until next time, I'm Dr. Iman Jahangir.

764
00:56:53.917 --> 00:56:59.222
And remember, sometimes the only obstacle to achieving an impossible dream is the courage to keep going.