Navy SEAL Astronauts - Smarter Every Day 243

Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day! Today on Smarter Every Day, we are going to learn about the top, like, top, top, top people that exist. Um, you've heard of astronauts and how big of a deal it is to become an astronaut. You've heard of Navy SEALs and how big of a deal it is to become a Navy SEAL. We're going to look at Navy SEAL astronauts today. On Smarter Every Day, we're going to meet these people, we're going to understand what makes them tick.

I'm going to start here at the U.S. Navy Underwater Demolitions Team Navy SEAL Museum, and we're going to go in, and we're going to just see what's going on, what a Navy SEAL is, how they work, and then we're gonna go meet some of these people.

All right, walking into the museum here, this is the first time in my life I've ever seen a legitimate grappling hook like you see in G.I. Joe. That's wild! So this museum, which is located in Fort Pierce, Florida, by the way, is fascinating and really cool. It helped me get a sense of how and why special warfare units evolved in the first place. But it gave me more than just a sense of SEAL Team history; it gave me a sense of SEAL ideals and operating principles, which it's clear is at the heart of SEAL Team excellence.

We're going to come back and explore some of these things, but first I want to stop at this exhibit. It's on three SEALs who are the reason for this video. So here's an entire exhibit about NASA's space program. Here, you've got Bill Shepard, Chris Cassidy, Johnny Kim.

Okay, I'm at Johnson Space Center NASA facility, and we have a rare opportunity to talk to Chris Cassidy. You're about to go up, right?

"Yeah, I am."

Okay, so are you excited about that?

"Oh, how can you not be? Yeah, it's a pretty big deal. But you're different, and it has to do with that right there."

I got a little too close there. Don’t hurt me, the trident. Can you tell me a little bit about that, about the trident itself?

"Well, it represents a whole lot of hard work and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get it, and I'm very proud to be wearing it. Having the trident, you see another trident walk in the room, that has to mean well for us. On the inside, it's a bond. Like, right away, there's a brotherhood amongst all of us. That's all I think about it. He's part of my brotherhood, and I can trust that guy implicitly."

Okay, this is interesting. I just learned about the trident and what this means. There's a lot to it. According to this plaque right here, the flintlock here, which is cocked and ready to go—it doesn't seem to be cocked here—but it says here in this signal here that it's ready to go. This is a symbol of a Navy SEAL's abilities on land. SEAL is an acronym for Sea, Air, and Land.

Also, you've got the trident here which symbolizes the SEALs' connection to the sea—the hardest element for any warrior to operate in. It's the one where the SEAL finds themselves the most comfortable. The interesting thing here is, look at the eagle. According to this plaque, on most SEALs that you see with the United States, the eagle has their head held high. But right there, built into the trident, it says that on the seal check this out—in the insignia, the eagle's head is lowered to remind each of us that humility is the true measure of a warrior's strength.

That's awesome! I'm going to be honest: when I grew up in the 90s, a Navy SEAL was like this meathead, big muscles, you know, really good with guns, can just beat people up or whatever. But that's not what it is, is it? Like, it seems to be an intelligent person that, like, picked a path and did some. I mean, where'd you go to school? What'd you do?

"Yeah, so I went to normal high school, and then I went to the Naval Academy. Got a masters in MIT later on in my—once I was in the SEAL Team."

So, what was the master's in?

"Ocean engineering."

Okay, and what was your undergrad in?

"Math."

Okay, mathematics. You cannot pick a stereotypical SEAL. In fact, you show up—I remember showing up on my first day of BUD/S training, and there's 120 guys lined up, and tall, short, thick, skinny. I mean, and of that variety, you couldn't pick who was going to be successful and who wasn't. Really, all in the head and the heart."

What do you mean?

"Well, there's like this fire in the gut that you have to have that you have to realize that you can't get through it by yourself. You have to realize that no matter how tough and strong you are, the instructors will find that edge and push you to that limit and make sure that they test your metal kind of and see if you've got the 'don't quit' type attitude that we need. And that can come in any package."

What type of people would you hope would continue to try to get that trident?

"At the core, what is a good SEAL? A good SEAL is someone that has all those intangibles that we already talked about: never quit, just innate fire in the gut to get the mission done, reliable to the end. We have a SEAL ethos, and I won't recite it here, but you can reference it, and the SEAL ethos is exactly who the men—and soon women, too—are. If you speak to an ABC, you hear a lot about the ethos and some of the qualities in this long creed that you can read for yourself. My word is my bond. I will not fail. I am never out of the fight. It's a very interesting read. I highly recommend it, and these are things that you can apply to your life, even if you're not a warrior, not a trigger puller. It's something to aspire to, essentially. It's trying to communicate that the SEAL, the individual wearing this trident, is the person that represents all of our core values. At the end of every paragraph, 'I am that man. I am that warrior.'"

So, you've done crazy things. You've done things you'll never tell anybody, I'm sure. But the things that are most interesting to me are the times when you've been in a vehicle of some sort, and then you got out of that vehicle. Like, for example, I'm assuming you've jumped out of a helicopter.

"I've jumped out of a helicopter."

I'm assuming you've jumped out of an airplane.

"I have."

I'm assuming you've got out of a boat.

"I have."

But the coolest vehicle that I've ever gotten out of is a SEAL Delivery Vehicle. Have you ever seen those?

"Yes, those things were amazing. That was my first job in the SEAL Teams."

So, do you get out of a submarine?

"So it's like a series of nesting Russian dolls. You've got the SEAL Delivery Vehicle inside of a dry deck shelter, which is mounted to the full-size submarine."

Okay, so you're eating your chow and doing all your mission prep inside the submarine. You transfer up into the dry deck shelter, close some hatches—again very similar to what we do on a spacewalk—and then open some valves to flood water into this hanger. Then you can equalize pressure, open this giant door, and then push the SEAL Delivery Vehicle out.

"There it is! Look at that! Let's go check this thing!"

Oh, we can actually look inside this one. Okay, I'm pretty pumped about this. It's a wet sub, so they have all different types of gear, whatever they need to do their job, but they have their own breathing devices, and this is amazing. We have the bow planes up front; this is the rudder. It's basically flying through the water, so that would be an elevator on an airplane, I'm assuming. It's the same here—control here, and you have control there, propulsion there. I'm only assuming that's batteries. Oh, I can get in. Okay, I'm doing it!

If you were a SEAL in this, you're guiding yourself to the target with math. The whole idea of this thing is the submarine can't go all the way up to shore because it's too shallow. So, the SEALs get in this, and you've got to guide yourself there. So obviously you've got, you know, a magnetic compass to guide you there, but let's read here. So, we've got altitude. So they say altitude; they don't say depth. So it does feel like flying, doesn't it?

Okay, so distance in yards, bearing. Oh, there's also a range, so you think in spherical coordinates when you're in this thing. That tells me that, uh, yards left, yards right. Okay, so they have some way of knowing where a target is and going to that.

Okay, there we go, Doppler. So we have Doppler reset navigation test. I'm learning a lot of things. Let's say that. So, okay, we have two different types of communication. Okay, we've got radio; I'm assuming we have underwater communication. Um, we have pressure, so that's our overall pressure. I'm looking back behind me on my shoulder here, and I'm seeing these big tanks. Can you see that? It's kind of hard to see, so I've got a manifold here I can open and close or they lock.

Whoa! There's pressure in that. Oh, just because of heat. Oh, that's neat! That means there'll be pressure in this one, too, yeah, because it's the heat of the day, so all that's going to my manifold here, which is going around here to—okay, that right there is just a normal scuba DIN connector, so I could put my breathing device on that.

So, yeah, look at that! Scuba divers know what I'm pointing at right here. This is how you fly this thing. Just figured that out! So check this out; we have a—this reminds me of trim in a Cessna 172. This right here is a left and right stick. Does this button push down?

"No, not with my hand. It doesn't."

So that goes left and right. So, this is kind of the person that's flying this thing. I'm going to call him the pilot. Of course, I don't know what this person is called, but, um, it looks like, yeah, look at that. Nose down. Oh, okay, so that wasn't bearing to target; that was just nose down or nose up. Okay, I understand now. Oh, that's cool! This is how you would fly this thing. You would sit in this location. Um, you would probably be negatively buoyant inside here. If I was a SEAL, that's what I would want. I would want to be able to sit my booty down here, and then I would just grab this stick, and I would go left and right like that, and then I would go up and down with that, and I would try to match the needles with where I wanted to go.

This is amazing! This looks like the coolest thing ever!

"It is one of the coolest missions in the Navy, I think. I absolutely loved it!"

What I loved about it so much was that when myself and my buddy back in the day—my buddy was Travis—when Travis and I would submerge, it was just the two of us figuring out problems.

Yeah, you don't have—nowadays on missions, you're tied to a radio back; there's overhead coverage and infrared video, and everybody is watching and part of your decision-making process. In a SEAL Delivery Vehicle submerge, you've got all the intel you had when you submerged, and now you're just dealing with data and problems and what the environment hands you, what the equipment hands you, and what the enemy hands you. And, uh, and just with your knowledge of what the overall intent of the mission is, figure that out.

So you're literally, as a Navy SEAL, you are a deployable asset which can be launched from any moving vehicle at any time, and you can be given an objective, and you can use what you have in your brain to figure out that objective. And I think that's a really critical point: use what you have in your brain.

We—you can train a lot of people in the military in the United States or any part—any country in the world to be a great shooter, to run fast, do lots of pull-ups, jump out of airplanes, and do all those things. But really, what I think makes special operators special is the ability to do all that and think through problems creatively and get the job done if the situation is dealt with them where it's completely out of the box.

So, the ultimate vehicle to get out of the International Space Station is, at this point in our space flight history, that's the place—that's where we do spacewalks from, and hopefully I'll get to do one coming up here.

Your face changed when I said this because I love it.

"Yeah, it's a passion of mine to put a spacesuit on. There are a few things that we do as an astronaut that you don't feel like an astronaut when you do them. Here at work, it's normal emails and meetings and that—you don't have to be an astronaut to do that kind of stuff. And when you're busy on the space station and you're running around carrying bags, it's easy to forget after you've adjusted to the floating. And you don't actually think about the floating part sometimes; it's easy to forget where you are. And when that happened to me, maybe every couple of days, I’d float by the window and stop and look and go, 'Oh yeah, oh, by the way, I’m right—I’m in space, and how lucky are you to be here?'

But putting a spacesuit on, closing that gold visor, exiting out to the vastness in the vacuum of space, it's unlike anything else we do as astronauts."

Is that your happy place, hanging out there on the outside of the space station?

"Yeah, I just really like it. I like the sense of accomplishment. I like the sense of teamwork—the broader teamwork, the whole ground team that's there that provides the equipment, the procedures, and all the preparation. We work together to get it done."

So, you are planning to do an EVA this time?

"So, I'm launching April 9th. It's looking like there—we're going to have a spacewalk with Drew Morgan and myself somewhere around the 11th, 12th, 13th of April."

So are you excited?

"Oh, hell yeah! That's awesome! What do you know about—what are you going to do? Do you know what the mission is of the EVA?"

"We do. In fact, the procedures are being put together right now. Haven't actually seen the procedures yet, and I assume in the next couple of weeks they'll send it to me here on the ground and Drew in space, and we'll review them independently, and then we'll have a day or so to look at them together when we get there."

So you're gonna—so the way it works is, you and Drew are about to be teamed up. You're going to exit the space—you'll exit the airlock interlock, okay? And then you're going to go out there and do whatever it is—and then you're going to come back. And then at the moment the airlock closes behind you, are you going to be happy or sad?

"Well, so earlier in my career, when I just assumed I would have more space flights, I was always happy when I got back inside. You know, it represented a lot of hard work; you're tired, you're hungry, it’s been a long day. Spacewalks are a long day of putting out effort. This time, however, I don't know if this is my last space flight. I'm 50 years old; this will be my third mission. It's quite conceivable that this might be the end of my space flight career. I don't necessarily want that to be the case, but you just never know, and I'm mature enough in my thinking that I appreciate every day and trying to get smarter every day."

Thank you! And, um, I don't know if it's the last one, so there will be this certain feeling of, 'Wow, will I ever get out there again? I don’t know.' So it might be some different feelings this time coming back in.

I'm going to be watching when you do your spacewalk.

"Cool, yeah, I'll be watching too from a different perspective. Thank you very much for your time."

Thanks a lot! I had this conversation with Chris Cassidy at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, which is basically a big pool where astronauts can get in the spacesuit, and divers help them get neutrally buoyant, which means they don't go up or down or spin anyway. While I was waiting on Chris that morning, I got to meet some of the safety divers, and a couple of them were actually Navy SEALs.

So after the discussion with Chris, we walked outside to the pool, and one of those divers was there.

"So you know this place like the back of your hand? This is your playground."

"This is a playground. This is where we hang out, and this is where we—you can't go to space to train for it; you got to do all the preparation here. That's one thing that's different with the SEAL Teams. We can create some pretty good combat scenarios in the SEAL Teams and, oh yeah—and train for combat towns and whatever with role players and the whole nine yards. Here, in a first for space, it's somewhat different, so we have to use different facilities. We have a building where we have the mock-ups of the spacecraft where we do the inside training. Here in the pool, we do all the outside training, and we have computers for virtual reality and that kind of thing."

So is this like home to you?

"This is absolutely home to me. And, uh, when I—I feel like the divers are a part of the family. You know, I know all of them really well, and, uh, it's just a cool place to be."

That's sweet! So this guy over here is a SEAL. When was your BUD/S class?

"My BUD/S class was in 2004, Class 253."

2004? And you were, uh…

"1994."

Okay, 1992. So there's a difference here; it's like—I mean, this hair is amazing! [Laughter] But there's like a—like, the trident matters, and you know you're obviously an astronaut; you know you're a diver, but there's a bond there that could not be created any other way.

"That's what we were talking about earlier—that brotherhood that exists. You meet a guy that went through training, doesn't matter what year, right? Like, doesn't matter what the BUD/S class really; it all falls back on that base of suffering that we all had to endure. You know, and I know this guy; I know what he's capable of. I know how, for the most part, he’s going to react under stressful conditions, so I can rely on that. I don't even have to question it."

It's funny, he's saying the same thing, the same conversation we had down there.

"That’s because it’s a universal feeling, really."

It’s basically—can’t even rehearse that answer, yeah, but it's a baseline thing.

Baseline through pain.

These are Apollo capsules. Why are they at the museum?

"The model was a training device used by Underwater Demolition Team recovery teams during the Apollo space missions to prepare for the actual splashdowns. The frogmen connected a flotation collar around the capsule to prevent it from sinking. Look at that; they opened the hatch. Ensured astronauts were loaded safely aboard!"

Wow! UDTs played a vital role in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space missions? Did not know that!

So the connection between space and underwater demolitions/Navy SEALs goes a long way back apparently. The latest Navy SEAL to be selected for NASA's astronaut corps is Dr. Johnny Kim. Right out of high school, at 18 years old, Johnny enlisted in the Navy and then made it through BUD/S to become a SEAL. He completed over 100 combat operations and received the Silver Star and the Bronze Star with the Combat V for valor. He studied math and later attended Harvard Medical School where he earned his medical degree in 2016.

So, Johnny, you are several things. I mean, medical doctor, Navy SEAL, astronaut—you've done a lot, and, um, you're also very humble about it, and that's amazing! I really appreciate your reputation in that regard. I just wanted to ask right off the bat, what's it like to be a member of these communities?

"You know, I've been very humbled by working with amazing people who have sacrificed a lot, and I find that everywhere I go. It was certainly in the SEAL Teams, working alongside other SEALs, soldiers, Marines, who bled, who gave their lives for their duty. I saw that in medicine; you see that now today, especially with the coronavirus situation that we're in. You see front-line first responders who sacrifice a lot in the line of duty for other people. That kind of service to other people has always stuck with me— from the military, stuck with me in medicine, and is also present in the astronaut corps. So, I guess if I had to choose a word, I would say that I feel very blessed to have had these opportunities."

So, the way you operate, you're a very other-centered type person, I guess?

"I never thought of it that way, but I like that! I like the way that sounds."

I want to talk to you a little bit about what it's like to enter the astronaut corps behind Chris Cassidy. You know, even something as simple as going through the Neutral Buoyancy Lab—like he has a reputation in the lab amongst the divers, and I can only imagine that you're watching that.

"He does have a reputation in the NBL, deservedly so! You know, even before Chris, Chris had quite big shoes to fill before he entered the astronaut corps. The first Navy SEAL to become an astronaut was Bill Shepard. Captain Bill Shepard is also well known for being the first ISS Commander, Expedition One. The commonality, the common thread I find in all SEALs is that we love hard things. Chris has filled those shoes quite well left by Bill Shepard, and he also leaves quite big shoes for a young tadpole like myself. It's a great opportunity."

It's my understanding that when Bill Shepard interviewed to be an astronaut, that he was asked what he was good at. I don't remember exactly what his answer was. Was it killing people with a knife or something?

"It was along those lines! Along those lines. And so that was a very different thing to hear in the astronaut interview process, I'm sure."

So let me ask you this—what have you learned from Chris that you can tell us about?

"I've learned a lot of things from Chris. I have hit him up for some NBL tips because he's quite good working in the spacesuit. One of the most important things that he told me—you know Chris is a strong, he's a big strong guy. You know, one big thing he told me is to not fight the suit and to make the suit work for you. The suit’s a pressurized vessel, right? You can fight it all you want, and it's going to win at the end of the day. After six hours, it's going to win. So you need to learn to leverage the joints, the range of motion, just the mechanism of movement of the suit to make it do what you want. Watching Chris work in the suit and taking that advice to heart was really helpful for me in my training."

Okay, I want to make it very clear that this section of the video is not endorsed by the Navy or NASA; this is me, Destin, from Smarter Every Day talking because Smarter Every Day is sponsored by Audible. If you want to get an audiobook of your choice, you can go to audible.com/smarter or text the word smarter to 500-500.

I'm going to recommend this book; it's called "Men in Green Faces" by Jean Wentz—a novel of U.S. Navy SEALs. The reason I'm recommending this is because it is an educational trip for me. The Navy SEALs were pretty much started in the Vietnam War; you can see why they got the name "Men in Green Faces." But this section of the museum here is all about Vietnam. You know, you've got all the different diving apparatuses they had to use—all this stuff. It's very interesting. So I just listened to an entire mission that happened in this book, so it's a good way to learn where all of this culture came from. The thing about it, though, this is war; this isn't like a pretty thing. It deals with very difficult, challenging issues, so I only recommend this book for adults.

You get your first audiobook and access to a huge selection of Audible Originals for free when you try Audible for 30 days. I do this to make myself smarter and reclaim my time when I'm doing things like mowing the yard, driving, things like that. They also have tons of podcasts, theatrical performances, and comedy you can choose from as well.

So if you'd like to check this out, please consider going to audible.com/smarter or texting the word smarter to 500-500, and a little link will pop up on your phone, and you can just click that link and go download any audiobook you want. It doesn't have to be this one. Big thanks to Audible for sponsoring Smarter Every Day; I'm grateful!

So let's go learn some more stuff about Navy SEALs and see if we can learn more from Chris and Johnny. Here we go!

So if there was a young person that was thinking about joining the SEALs or something like this, what would your advice be?

"Do some soul searching and look deep inside and come up with the reasons why you're doing it. I think it's so important that you do things for the right reason and that they're not superficial, especially not being used to leg yourself up in the future. And I'm not saying that trying to get experience to go to a further job is a bad thing, but especially when it comes to the SEAL Teams, people who join are all in. They put all their chips in the table, and that's how I was. And I think people in that kind of work deserve to be fighting alongside other people who are all in and there for the right reasons."

So let me ask you, what are the right reasons?

"Absolutely, it should be service for others. I mean, that is—if you don't believe in that, then it's just not going to work out in the SEAL Teams. There has to be an intrinsic desire in your heart to want to do that, not to fulfill some type of preconceived notion that becoming a Navy SEAL would impress your parents or society or other people."

That's awesome, man. Yeah, that gets back to the Johnny Kim way, which is, uh, service to others, huh?

"I think it's a sustainable way of living. Service to others is a sustainable way of living; that's very close to my philosophy on life as well."

Chris Cassidy launched to the International Space Station on April 9th as one of the last remaining American astronauts currently scheduled to fly on a Russian Soyuz vehicle. He joined his crewmates in Expedition 62 on the ISS, and what is a very strange moment for America's space program as we transition to commercial crew vehicles. These vehicles are coming online and getting tested out. What that means is we need to have a persistent American presence on the ISS at this moment, and Chris Cassidy is fulfilling that role as commander of Expedition 63.

As part of this mission, when astronauts Bob and Doug arrived at the International Space Station in the Dragon capsule, which was propelled by a Falcon 9 rocket, that paved the way for Chris to do what Chris does best—get stuff done in space.

Oh, Chris, who is well-suited for adapting in very strange situations, is currently the only American astronaut in orbit. Given the fact that it's almost 20 years after Bill Shepard commanded ISS Expedition 1 and the fact that Chris is alone currently on the American side of the space station holding down the fort, I thought it would be a really interesting time to ask him a few questions about what it means to do an EVA and what it means to be a SEAL.

"All right, Dustin, welcome aboard the Space Station! Here’s got the questions on an iPad right here next to Anatoly's spacesuit."

So preparing for a mission in the SEALs and preparing for an EVA are actually very similar. In both instances, we're preparing to mitigate the risks against knowns and unknowns. And, with the military mission and the SEAL Teams specifically, you've got intelligence—you’ve got information about the target, you've got information about the area around, and the enemy forces, and you compile all that to put together a plan. And you have resources available to you—other units who can support or help, or that you're helping—vehicles you can use, helicopters you can use, other airplanes in the area that can continue to provide intelligence. And you piece all that together to make a plan, and then you rehearse that plan, and then you go execute it.

Inevitably something is going to deviate from the plan, and the level of your preparation kind of sets the tone for how adaptive you can become because everybody just sort of rolls right with the next phase. You’ve already thought through that problem, and you’re ready to deal with it. Spacewalks are exactly the same thing; the enemy is the environment. We've got resources available to us—the suit, all the tools—which you can kind of see some tethers and things here. So we've got the suit, we've got tools, we've got equipment on the outside of the Space Station, and then all the while the environment is the thing that's trying to kill us or harm us, or the unknowns that we can encounter are mechanical things that aren't behaving the way we expected.

All of that is put together by a team of folks on the ground. I'm talking spacewalks, and in the NBL—in the pool—we’ll pull all that data together, run through a plan that we think is pretty good, run through it in the water with different astronauts a few times, flush out the details, turn happy to glad—in some cases, drastically change the plan after you execute it in the pool and realize it doesn’t work—and then you fine-tune the plan. Now you get outside, and it's time to execute. And that's where, again, your level of preparation—you've thought with the what-ifs—you have contingency plans, and in both a SEAL mission and an EVA, those concepts are exactly the same.

During an EVA, to what extent are you making decisions in the moment, and to what extent are you just doing exactly what you have already planned?

"We are, to a large extent, executing the plan that has been put together by the ground team. We, on board, receive that plan, we talk about it; we know very well the details, and then we go outside and execute. Now, there are—I’ve been on one spacewalk where nothing deviated at all. In my the most extreme case was the spacewalk that I was on with Luca, where he had a leak in his leaking water into his spacesuit, and we were making real-time decisions."

It's hard to tell, but it feels like a lot of water, I see it now—legally?

"Can you see? It's over here, right? Yeah, but I have about the same amount of when I took the helmet down last time, Chris."

Really?

"Yeah, I can feel it in the back of my head. It's sweat or urine, I guess."

Mummy's weapon.

"Yeah, how much can I sweat, though? My head is really wet, and I have a feeling that it's increasing, and I'm thinking that it may—I don't know if it's possible, but I'm thinking, 'They may be'—they are—'CVG.' That's me."

"Do you think that's a possibility?"

"Just a demand or the cooling? You know, I haven't touched everything. The leak would remain, and they would see data, but where's the weed coming from? There’s too much.”

All right, Chris and Luca just for you guys based on what we heard with Luca saying that water is in his eyes now and it seems to be increasing, we think we're going to terminate EVA, case for EV2 on a more regular basis.

The type of things on a spacewalk that happens are the mechanical parts and equipment that you're working with don't function or work properly, and that's where the real-time decision-making kind of comes in with the actual spacewalker. You are the ones with your hands on the hardware; you are the ones that are feeling the forces; you are the ones that can kind of tell where the bolt starts to stick, for instance. And that's where experience and a little mechanical sense come in to be very helpful on a spacewalk because you can then make a good sound judgment on what to do.

In general, we don't make decisions independently on a spacewalk. We converse with our buddy out there, the other EVA crew member, and in parallel to that, with the ground team and the engineers who are on the ground supporting who know the ins and outs and have the technical diagrams in front of them with the specs and all the details. And so that's how we're making real-time decisions as a team, once things start to not go as planned.

So those are the real-time decisions that the team has to make, and then individuals can make real-time decisions like—as your finger is on the cordless drill, which is right here actually. This is called the PGT, Pistol Grip Tool, and this big old monster is what's applying the forces to the bolt. And you can—even though this is a big thing, you can feel through through the tool how the bolt is performing, and that's key data for you to make a real-time decision on—is this something I shouldn't put more force into, or should I back off, or do I need to stop altogether and talk to the subject matter experts?

So I hope that answers the question, but we strive to make no real-time decisions and just have the plan execute as written. But we’re armed with the details and the technical knowledge to make real-time decisions as they are needed on the fly.

All right, question three: as a SEAL, you're trained in military operations, armed conflict. How does that compare, and what does it mean to be part of the International Space Station?

"The International Space Station is exactly that; it's a program pulled together by multiple nations to build this unbelievable structure that we have in low Earth orbit called the International Space Station. And this concept of international collaboration was not new to me when I got to NASA. In the SEAL Teams, in the military and special operations command, we're working together with all other nations and their military forces all the time. And so, it has always been something that I've known, appreciated, and comprehended the value in pulling together multiple countries, multiple cultures, and multiple points of view into a military mission, or technical problem, or anything that you're trying to solve.

It just makes the solution better, more robust, and well thought through. To me, I feel I have a great deal of pride in being part of the International Space Station. I have a great deal of pride in being part of multinational military missions in different countries around the world, and I think that it's something that will—and should—continue as we move from the Space Station on beyond low Earth orbit and ultimately on to Mars together. Multiple nations pulling together to make it happen."

When I first started this video, my goal was to understand how Navy SEALs tick and what makes them good astronauts. At first, I thought it would have to do with their toughness and the ability to overcome challenges and obstacles. But now I have a different opinion. I mean, yeah, they're good at that stuff, but the more important attributes seem to be things that I didn't expect. For example, humility, service to others, teamwork.

This year marks 20 years of continuous human research onboard the International Space Station. Five space agencies and 15 nations serving research programs for over a hundred countries. In my opinion, this collaboration is by far the most peaceful venture ever undertaken by humans, and it's worthy of the highest praise. But the ISS has never won the Nobel Peace Prize; why? I think it should! Space has a unique way of bringing people together—even people who were trained to fight each other. There's something really cool to me about seeing Chris Cassidy's name written in Cyrillic on his spacesuit on his Navy SEAL trident. Just that alone seems like a major international accomplishment.

As we move forward to the moon and beyond, it's encouraging for me to think about what we humans can accomplish if we continue to work together. I'm Destin; you're getting smarter every day. Have a good one!