{"id":18963,"date":"2017-05-13T18:11:05","date_gmt":"2017-05-13T10:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/interview-astronaut-mike-massimino-looks-back-at-hubble-and-looks-ahead-to-space-tourism\/"},"modified":"2017-05-13T18:11:05","modified_gmt":"2017-05-13T10:11:05","slug":"interview-astronaut-mike-massimino-looks-back-at-hubble-and-looks-ahead-to-space-tourism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/interview-astronaut-mike-massimino-looks-back-at-hubble-and-looks-ahead-to-space-tourism\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Astronaut Mike Massimino looks back at Hubble \u2013 and looks ahead to space tourism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Astronaut Mike Massimino, who was on the final Space Shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, marvels at what Hubble has accomplished. (GeekWire Photo \/ Geof Wheelwright)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW ORLEANS \u2013 It\u2019s apparently not enough that Mike Massimino is a former NASA astronaut, a best-selling author and an engineering professor. He\u2019s also raring to go back into space, this time as a tourist.<\/p>\n

In an hourlong interview with GeekWire at the Collision media and technology conference in New Orleans last week, the 54-year-old Massimino talked about his yen for spaceflight as well as his views on commercial space exploration and the legacy of the Hubble Space Telescope, which he helped repair on two different space shuttle missions.<\/p>\n

Massimino, a down-to-earth New Yorker, started with his observations on the state of the commercial space race. He said the students in his classes at Columbia University are deeply enthused over the idea of working at any one of several space companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe top students in the country want to go to work for these places,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m talking about SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic. The cool thing about them is that they\u2019re run by these entrepreneurs, who are some of the best entrepreneurs of our time: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, for example. They\u2019re interested in space travel \u2013 they see that as being the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Massimino
NASA astronaut Mike Massimino mugs for the camera with the Hubble Space Telescope in the background during a spacewalk in 2009. (NASA Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Massimino is happily surprised at how much commercial space ventures have achieved. \u201cI always wondered if the technology was ready to be sort of handed over \u2013 or was it just too expensive or too complicated for any company to do \u2013 to actually launch things, and particularly people,\u201d he said. \u201cI was afraid that it might be a little early and that it might not work, but they have had some amazing accomplishments.\u201d<\/p>\n

He cited recent achievements such as SpaceX\u2019s launch and landing of its Falcon 9 booster as strong examples. And he wondered how many people realize the magnitude of the accomplishments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not easy getting off the planet,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople talk about it like they\u2019re going around the corner \u2026 \u2018Oh, we\u2019re going to go to here and then we\u2019re going to pick this up and then we\u2019re going to sell you this\u2019\u2026 You know, our country, which went to the moon, we have not launched astronauts into space [from U.S. soil] since 2011. It\u2019s not just that you get the keys to the car and go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Massimino said astronauts need to have confidence in the organization and team that puts them into space \u2013 and brings them back to Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven when I was space, floating above the planet, I remember looking down and thinking to myself, \u2018Wow, I\u2019m pretty far away from home.\u2019 Traveling really fast around the planet, it was like \u2018I gotta get back there.\u2019 You know, there\u2019s a lot of possibilities about where you might end up,\u201d he said. \u201cThe thought went through my mind after my spacewalk, when I was looking back at the planet, \u2018I\u2019m glad someone smarter than me is figuring out how to get [us] home.’\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QHkibCZQl3s<\/p>\n

Looking forward to being a tourist<\/h3>\n

Massimino says he would love to go back into space, as long as he\u2019s off duty.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really want to go as a tourist someday. I want to go and I want to complain. I want to complain about the drinks, I want to complain about everything,\u201d Massimino said with a grin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re flying in space as an astronaut, you think, \u2018I\u2019m going to get to go into space,\u2019 but really you have like a million things to worry about. You gotta fly the spaceship, you gotta make sure everything\u2019s working, and there\u2019s a lot on your mind,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a big responsibility \u2026 and stress and the danger and all that. Then there\u2019s the euphoria of being there, being able to travel and look at the window and experience all of it, which outweighs anything you have to do to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Massimino was happy to contrast that experience with what he thinks space tourism could be like.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think going as a tourist would be the way to go,\u201d he said wistfully. \u201cYou just hang out. You know, it\u2019s \u2018hey, don\u2019t bother me, I\u2019m not flying the spaceship. We have an emergency? Why don\u2019t you take care of it?\u2019 Although if you had an emergency, I think I\u2019d probably jump to it and do something. So I hope I get a chance to go back as a tourist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Space has to be international<\/h3>\n

Looking beyond the commercial side of the space effort, Massimino says America needs to work with other countries to push the frontier of exploration outward into the solar system. He recalled the time in 1993 when Congress was one vote away from cutting off funding for the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we can explore space at the level we want to without international cooperation. Maybe the private companies will figure out how we can go to the moon and Mars without the government\u2019s help, but I don\u2019t think even that\u2019s possible,\u201d he says. \u201cWith the International Space Station, the key word there, I think, is \u2018international.\u2019 The way we were able to get that going \u2013 and the way it was saved when it almost got killed \u2013 was our commitment to our international partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the United States has to continue its leading role in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur international partners \u2013 the countries of Europe, Japan, Canada and Russia as well \u2013 they look to the United States for that leadership,\u201d Massimino said. \u201cThey\u2019re dependent on us. They want to participate, and they can\u2019t do it without us, and we can\u2019t do it without them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean every space project taken on by NASA, or by commercial ventures, will bear fruit.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven when I was an astronaut, we would often get projects started and then canceled,\u201d he recalled. \u201cWe had these follow-ons to the space shuttle \u2026 the orbital space plane and the X-38 and all these other things. And they would get canned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Crab
A newly released image, based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments, shows the Crab Nebula in an assortment of wavelengths. (NASA \/ ESA \/ G. Dubner \u2013 IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires, et al. \/ A. Loll et al. \/ T. Temim et al. \/ F. Seward et al. \/ VLA \/ NRAO \/ AUI \/ NSF \/ Chandra \/ CXC \/ Spitzer \/ JPL-Caltech \/ XMM-Newton \/ ESA \/ Hubble \/ STScI)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Humbled by Hubble<\/h3>\n

There was an interesting moment during the interview when Massimino, who served as a spacewalking repairman for Hubble during two sets of spacewalks in 2002 and 2009, asked to see the latest images from the space telescope on my smartphone.<\/p>\n

Massimino was as excited and impressed as any parent would be at their child\u2019s college graduation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazing, that\u2019s incredible,\u201d he said, looking at the pictures. \u201cHubble was, in my opinion, the best flight you could be on. All spaceflights are great, and getting a chance to go anywhere would have been great, but there\u2019s something special about Hubble.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say the missions were easy. \u201cYou go up there, you rendezvous, you grab the telescope so there\u2019s so robot stuff there, and that\u2019s cool,\u201d he said. \u201cYou rendezvous with this free flier, this giant free flier that\u2019s about the size of a school bus, and then you spacewalk for five days straight \u2013 no days off in between from the spacewalks. It\u2019s complicated, interesting stuff, but that\u2019s what you want to do. So I always felt like anyone who was on that flight would be very lucky indeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Social media pioneer<\/h3>\n

Massimino made history during his 2009 shuttle mission as the first astronaut to send a tweet from space. Since then, social media has made a big difference in how astronauts and space travel are perceived.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon when I was 6, and wanted to grow up to be an astronaut,\u201d he said. \u201cBy the time I was 8 or 9, I realized that was going to be impossible. I wasn\u2019t Neil Armstrong. I mean, who are these guys? They\u2019re fearless test pilots. I was afraid of heights. And these guys go to the academies and they\u2019re tough guys and they fly these really fast airplanes, and they\u2019re fearless. And I was scared of my own shadow. So I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t think this astronaut thing is going to work.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Thankfully for Massimino and the space program, the astronaut thing ended up working after all, despite his qualms. Today, there\u2019s a new dynamic at work in the interaction between astronauts and the public at large.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was the first guy to tweet, but now every astronaut tweets and sends Instagram and all that stuff. People can engage with it and they can see the astronauts and humans, as kind of regular people, and share the experience,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s so accessible \u2013 and even the internet now. When I was a kid, I used to have to go to the library and see what books were on the shelf. Good luck there. Now, here we are, Googling a picture of the Hubble image right here. So it\u2019s just the accessibility of information. I think the social media, the interaction with the people that are doing it, it just gives us a sense that we\u2019re all traveling.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Astronaut Mike Massimino, who was on the final Space Shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, marvels at what Hubble has accomplished. (GeekWire Photo \/ Geof Wheelwright) NEW ORLEANS \u2013 It\u2019s apparently not enough that Mike Massimino is a former NASA astronaut, a best-selling author and an engineering professor. He\u2019s also raring to go back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5414,4259,717,5415,1390],"class_list":["post-18963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-collision","tag-hubble","tag-international-space-station","tag-massimino","tag-space-shuttle"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}