#205: Carl Walz (NASA Astronaut) — 230+ Days In Outer Space

Carl Walz [00:00:00]:
When I was on the space station half a year long, just looking at the Earth, seeing the the changes of seasons, seeing probably 80% of the Earth at different times of the year, it's just a a remarkable thing to see the beauty of the Earth, the amazing things not only on the Earth, but above the Earth. For example, we would look down on thunderstorms, and you could see the tops of the thunderstorms illuminated by the lightning. We have these glowing orbs of thunder clouds. And you're looking down and you see the tops of those. It was phenomenal. We would look down and see meteors. It was wild. And then the other thing was the aurora, and aurora was just amazing too.

Carl Walz [00:00:40]:
Out of this world, I guess.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:42]:
Welcome to the Light of the Land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the absolute privilege of speaking with Karl Waltz, an astronaut, a pioneer of space exploration, and a Clevelander. As an astronaut, Karl is a veteran of four space flights, logging a total of 231 in outer space and performing three spacewalks over that time. A physicist by training with degrees from Kent State and John Carroll University, Carl made his way to NASA by way of the Air Force where he served as a flight test engineer and managed all engineering activities related to the f sixteen avionics and armaments. At NASA, he was a mission specialist on STS fifty one in 1993, an orbiter flight engineer on STS sixty sixty five in 1994, a mission specialist on STS seventy nine in 1996, and then ultimately served one hundred ninety six days in outer space as a flight engineer on ISS expedition four in 02/2001 and 02/2002. Carl also later served as the director for the advanced capabilities division in the exploration systems mission directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington DC, where he was responsible for a broad range of activities including human research, technology development, nuclear power and propulsion, and the lunar robotic exploration programs to support the vision for space exploration. He retired from NASA in February to pursue work as a leader in the private sector at Orbital ATK and Oceaneering Space Systems.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:27]:
To say this was an awesome conversation for me would be the understatement of this whole podcast. Carl and I got to unpack the rigorous path to becoming an astronaut, the unique experience of living and working in outer space, the rare perspective gained by seeing our fragile planet from above, and the sense of awe and interconnectedness that only a handful of people on Earth have ever experienced in the history of humanity. We talk about the challenges faced during his missions, transitioning back to life on Earth, the private sector and the business of outer space, international collaboration, being in the only astronaut band, and a whole lot more reflecting on his remarkable career and experience. So please enjoy this wonderful conversation with Carl Waltz. Lay of the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Roundstone Insurance. Headquartered in Rocky River, Ohio, Roundstone shares Lay of the Land's same passion for bold ideas and lasting impact from our communities, entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders. Since 02/2005, Roundstone has pioneered a self funded captive health insurance model that delivers robust savings for small and medium sized businesses. They are part of the solution to rising health care costs, helping employers offer affordable, high quality care while driving job creation and economic growth throughout Northeast Ohio.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:50]:
Like many of the voices featured on lay of the land, including Roundstone's founder and CEO, Mike Schroeder, Roundstone believes entrepreneurship, innovation, and community are the cornerstones of progress. To learn more about how Roundstone is transforming employee health benefits by empowering employers to save thousands in per employee per year health care costs, please visit roundstoneinsurance.com. Round stone insurance, built for entrepreneurs, backed by innovation, committed to Cleveland. So I I have to say I I am incredibly grateful to have you on the the podcast today. I have, personally, a deep admiration for for astronauts and and your cadre of of peers and and what you represent, which to me, I think is is kind of the the best of humanity. I think there's a good reason why so many children would answer the question, what do you wanna be when you grow up with astronaut? Although maybe today, unfortunately, it skews more towards influencers. Yes. But, but that aside, you know, listening to astronauts describe the nature of your work, I'm always amazed how humble, intelligent, multifaceted, interdisciplinary you all are and just the the courage that it takes to explore the the unknown and literally the the frontier of science and and what we know.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:08]:
So I just wanted to start expressing that. I'm very excited to have the opportunity to speak with you and and learn more about your perspective and and reflections on the the whole experience.

Carl Walz [00:05:19]:
Well, thanks. Yeah. I'm happy to happy to share my perspective because it it's interesting. I've seen the human spaceflight business change significantly over the years. And and Yep. It really in some ways, it's kinda scary, but in other ways, it's exciting to see private astronaut missions doing some really cool things. And, yeah, it's very it's a very exciting time right now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:42]:
Yeah. We'll we'll certainly unpack the the business behind all of it. But I wanted to to start with when you were a a a kid, were were you one of those children growing up in in Cleveland hoping one day to to be an astronaut?

Carl Walz [00:05:56]:
Absolutely. That was the thing. When I was growing up, it was the sweet spot for kids seeing heroic astronauts doing some crazy stuff on rockets that would blow up on a on a on the launch pad. And so I remember seeing Alan Shepard, John Glenn, the whole Gemini program. And then, of course, into the Apollo program, I was already in high school watching these things happen on the East Side Of Cleveland. So it was it was really cool and and it really made an impression, on me as far as, wow, this would be something to to really aspire to if I could just figure it out. And so I started working on that. I was very fortunate.

Carl Walz [00:06:39]:
Probably the the baseline requirement for astronauts are being good at science, being good at math. I was those things, and so it allowed me to kinda work my way toward that goal, not knowing really whether I would be successful or not, but it it it certainly gave me at least a few things to shoot for. Most, you know, those early astronauts were military veterans. I kinda worked my way toward, a commission in the Air Force is what I selected. And, and then from there, working my way meeting people who had applied to become space shuttle astronauts and doing what they did, following their footsteps. That was then the closest I had to a path to get to where I wanted to go. So that was it was amazing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:26]:
When you and I first met, you you mentioned this kind of remarkable lineage and and concentration of astronauts and, aerospace leaders from Ohio, Don Thomas, Ron Sega, Mike Foreman, Gene Gene Kranz. You mentioned John Glenn, Daniel Armstrong. What is going on in Ohio that that we have so many astronauts here?

Carl Walz [00:07:46]:
I don't know. It must be in that Lake Erie water, and we didn't even know it. But, yes, a lot of lot of astronauts from the local area, especially in those early days. And I I think maybe the population was bigger in Ohio, and I think the schools were just really, really good, and it just worked out that way. Don Don Thomas, he he went to Cleveland Heights High. I went to Brush. We are basically neighbors, graduate the same year from high school. He went to Case.

Carl Walz [00:08:19]:
I graduated from Kent, and I ended up with John Carroll for a while too. So so we were basically local guys growing up at the same time. We were both selected to become astronauts at the same time. So it was really, really interesting. And then Ron Sager, he was a little bit ahead of us, but, basically, he graduated, from Nordonia High School. So it was really it was really kind of a cool thing. We all showed up at the same time with a couple other couple other folks from Ohio in our class. So we had a pretty good concentration just in our group 13.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:50]:
Yep. But you mentioned it was kind of a matter of of figuring out how to do it and what it might take. What is it like to to become an astronaut? What what does it actually take?

Carl Walz [00:09:00]:
Well, it it's a funny thing. So I graduated from Rush High. I had a great teacher, mister Ike. He was my physics teacher. And so he got me hooked on physics. I was a physics major, started at John Carroll, went to Kent State to be able to not only get the degree, but also to join the ROTC program and to get that, commission in the Air Force. So it was two dual tracks, one to get the technical degree, one to get the commission in the Air Force, and and I was successful. And then the other thing was most astronauts had advanced degrees.

Carl Walz [00:09:34]:
So then, I'm back to John Carroll to get my master's degree, all the while sort of looking forward to, a job in the Air Force that would help me to be competitive to apply to become an astronaut. So I expected when I was going to be going on active duty that I would be assigned to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, all the laboratories there, and then start working my way toward being astronaut competitive. They sent me to Sacramento, California to a laboratory there in the middle of middle of, Northern California. And it's like, okay. Well, that's kinda weird. But what happened was I, I met people there at, McClellan Air Force Plut who had applied to become astronauts. And I said, what did you guys do? And they said, you need to go to Air Force Test Pilot School as a flight test engineer, not as test pilot, but as a flight test engineer. That'll make you competitive because that's what we all did.

Carl Walz [00:10:34]:
And so that's what I did. You know, I was I was there in Sacramento for about three years. I applied to attend Air Force Test Pilot School and I was selected. My wife is not happy because we're going we're going to the to the middle of nowhere, California, at that point. Edwards Air Force Base is literally in the middle of nowhere. If you've seen the right stuff, we oddly, the the movie came out when I was at at, test pilot school, and it was it was very much like the movie. The housing was old and but we all at the school lived on the same street. So, you know, everybody had the same problems, allowed us to work together, and and those kinds of things.

Carl Walz [00:11:14]:
But once we graduated, we started applying to become astronauts. Took me a little bit longer than some of my, colleagues, but, it took me four shots, but I was finally finally selected in 1990, and that was the astronaut group thirteen.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:29]:
That's a certain persistence for shots.

Carl Walz [00:11:32]:
It's it's probably one of the basic things that I learned is just you have to be persistent in this in this world no matter what what you're, you know, aiming for.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:41]:
Absolutely.

Carl Walz [00:11:42]:
Yeah. You just have to have to keep working toward it. So

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:45]:
So what was the experience like? Ultimately, you I believe you've done four missions, spent almost a year in outer space, a few spacewalks. What what what was the nature of of what you're doing out there?

Carl Walz [00:11:56]:
Every mission that I flew, on the space shuttle, because the space shuttle was, you know, going really strong when I when I flew. Everyone had a domestic payload, but it also had an international component. And that was one of the things that really struck me. First mission, I deployed a satellite that was developed at Glenn Research Center. Well, at the time, Lewis. So it was really cool. I became the expert on that satellite. I deployed it and, it was called the Advanced Communication Technology satellite, and it it operated really, really well.

Carl Walz [00:12:32]:
I think way exceeded its, design life and, I think, basically, they just ran out of propellant. So that was the end of the mission. So that was part of that first mission, and then next part was deploying a German space agency space telescope, sort of a smaller version of a a Hubble. And it was basically retrieved by the shuttle robotic arm, and then and then we captured it, brought it back. So that that was cool. In addition to the satellite, it had an IMAX camera on satellite, so it could take pictures of us while we took pictures of it in IMAX format. So that was pretty cool. And then we were in the run up for the Hubble repair the first Hubble repair mission.

Carl Walz [00:13:19]:
No one had ever used those some of those Hubble tools in outer space. And so I did my first spacewalk testing those tools. It was really a lot of fun.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:30]:
What is it like doing a a spacewalk?

Carl Walz [00:13:33]:
It's just amazing because you're in the shuttle, but when you go outside, you're in your own private spaceship. Your hands, as you move around, become your propulsion, but you have your own life support pack and you have this fabulous view from the, and perspective from the spacesuit that's much better, less impeded by structure than looking out windows from inside. So it was it was just mind blowing to be outside doing that first space walk and just the just the fabulous colors of the Earth. It was just striking. We were busy, but we would we would take time to look, and and it's like, wow. Look at that. Just just beautiful. The beautiful Earth down below.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:18]:
Yeah. In the context of that view, I I have heard people reflect on it with this sort of profound sense of awe and humility and just, like, interconnectedness of what it's like to view Earth from from outer space and, like, almost as a formative transition in perspective, the the sort of effect that it can have?

Carl Walz [00:14:39]:
It is remarkable because you have this vantage point, especially when I when I was on the space station, half a year long, just looking at the Earth, seeing the the changes of seasons, seeing the Earth, probably 80% of the Earth at different times of the year. And it just yeah. It's just a a remarkable thing to see just the beauty of the Earth, the amazing things not only on the Earth, but above the Earth. Like, for example, we would look down on thunderstorms in the evening, and you could see the tops of the thunderstorms illuminated by the lightning. So we have these, like, these these glowing orbs of thunder clouds. And you're looking down and you see the tops of those. It was phenomenal. We would look down and see meteors because they're Yep.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:28]:
Yep.

Carl Walz [00:15:28]:
Yeah. It was wild. The other thing, was the aurora, and aurora was just just amazing too. Just out of this world, I guess.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:37]:
Out of this world. Yeah. So I I was really curious about people have a certain tendency very adaptable. We were able to just kinda normalize very, even sometimes, adverse circumstances. Yeah. Did it ever feel normal? Or every day, is it, like, the experience of of awe and and focus? Obviously, you're up there to do work as well, but, like Yeah. Was there ever a sense of, like, where's up here now?

Carl Walz [00:16:04]:
On the space station, absolutely. We basically we moved to space. And now I had a family on Earth, so I was all I had I had one foot in in the Earth and one foot in space, but I remember saying to myself, I don't know if I'll be able to walk normally anymore when I go back to Earth because I've been just floating for six and a half months. And you get really good at it. You can control your center of gravity, you move around fluidly, and it's it's remarkable just how one you become with that weightless environment. I didn't feel that on the shorter space flights but Yeah. But, it well, you stay for a long period of time and you get really good at it. I had a a friend, a colleague, Susan Helms, and, she was single.

Carl Walz [00:16:52]:
She basically just moved out of her house and and, put her her stuff in storage, cut up her credit cards. She was just she moved to space. Yep. Yep. Yeah. It was I mean, it's a remarkable thing. These so we've been the International Space Station has been up there now continuously occupied with humans since November, let's see, 02/2001. So, February.

Carl Walz [00:17:20]:
Excuse me. Yeah. February. So it's it's been a good long time up there. Easily the longest flying certainly the largest, space complex up there. So it's just just remarkable.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:34]:
It it really is remarkable. In, in a similar vein to that, you know, kind of the experiential part of what it is to be up there. One of the things I was curious about here on Earth, people I I myself am kind of a day person. My my brothers are morning and and night people. There are parts on Earth where there's extreme light all the time, or it's night all the

Carl Walz [00:17:54]:
time. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:55]:
But up there, there's a day every ninety minutes or so, like, the the time cycle of it. What is that like?

Carl Walz [00:18:01]:
So it's it's pretty cool because when when you're looking down, we sort of have a moving map that shows us where we're at over the Earth. And so sometimes you want to see the Earth in darkness, especially if you're flying over, like, Cleveland, for example. Because instead of just seeing the land, you can see all the lights, which basically show you the Interstate 80. It's just it's just really cool because you it just gives you a different perspective, night versus day. No matter where you fly, you see some really cool things. And depending upon the cycle of the moon, you can get some fabulous pictures, say, of the moon illuminated Italy. You can see the whole Oh, yeah. Whole of the boot of Italy with lights down below.

Carl Walz [00:18:45]:
So you could see Rome, but it's at night, but you can still see the shape because of the the moonlight. It's just a fabulous, just

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:55]:
Yeah. That that's incredible.

Carl Walz [00:18:57]:
And then and then those other places, you're flying over Central Africa, and there's nothing. There's a few lights. It's just really dark. I mean, it's it's yeah. It's just just amazing to see the the difference in the locations on the Earth.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:10]:
When you think about the work that that you were actually doing, the the science, the experiments, are there certain exercises that you conducted in space that that stand out to you as, you know, particularly interesting or fascinating?

Carl Walz [00:19:22]:
So we did have some experiments where we were the subjects, and so those were always interesting because you are inflicting pain on yourself or or just inconveniencing yourself. We had one experiment where we were when you when you go to the doctor and they give you a tube and you blow into the tube, see how your lungs are functioning. So we we did that multiple times, multiple trials each time. I'm not sure what the outcome was. I think they were looking to see if being in space and microgravity affected your lungs. We did it before and after EVAs because when you're doing a spacewalk, you're at a a lower pressure and then surrounded by the vacuum of space. So so there are some physiological effects there and and so that that experiment gave some insight to the doctors. So those those experiments are are pretty interesting because, obviously, we have to, we provide our bodies for that.

Carl Walz [00:20:17]:
But then we I had, an experiment where we were growing cancer cells. And you grow cells on Earth, they set up in a plainer matter because of gravity. In space, without gravity, they differentiate, and they actually grow like a tumor would grow in your gut. So three-dimensional. So I had this experiment. Wow. Took about it was about a four week long experiment. I would feed the cells.

Carl Walz [00:20:43]:
I would take away the the waste. And then at the end of the four weeks, I put what's called a fixative to stop the cell growth. And then I put the whole all the experiments into, into a freezer. So but then the freezer started to have problems. So I spent literally the next four months doing daily defrost So trying to keep this freezer operating and keeping these samples frozen. So it was was unexpected part of the experiment, but we kept cells alive and and then they eventually were able to go down. We had a space shuttle visit right in the middle of our mission, s t s one ten, and so we were able to transfer the, the samples and get them back down to Earth. And they're still doing that those experiments in space, and they're doing remarkable things with with the the results.

Carl Walz [00:21:35]:
So I spoke with one of the scientists that work on that program, and he said, you were the first. It's like, wow. I had no idea. But in, in hindsight, wow. It was it was just amazing. And they've made so many so much progress in cancer research since then, and a lot of it, fortunately, from work that I was able to participate in. Yeah. It's just it's remarkable stuff.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:58]:
Yeah. Well, and what's what's really kinda crazy about it, just listening to you explain it, is, like, it we're still human. Things are still gonna go wrong. The the freezer is gonna break. How do you deal with adversity generally up there, and what what did you find was the greatest adversity that that you experienced in space? Things not going well.

Carl Walz [00:22:17]:
I flew early on the space station, and so we had our share of infant infant mortality on systems. So we had an oxygen generator break. You have to, you know, generate oxygen to live. So Yeah. It was a little bit sporty, you know, to get the new oxygen generator out, get it hooked in, and it didn't work right away. So there were several days of troubleshooting to get the darn thing going. And a big spacecraft that's permanently out in space uses a combination of chemical propulsion and gyroscopic systems to help keep you in in your attitude in space. And we had one of those, gyroscopes die on us.

Carl Walz [00:22:58]:
And these are big things and it sounded like we had a, a washer that was out of balance just going crazy in the in, you know, in the middle of this, what's usually a pretty quiet space station. It's going bang bang bang bang bang, and we're and it's above us. We're working below and and we call the ground and we think yeah. Houston, we think we have a problem. It's a stand up. None nothing. And, fortunately, they came back and said no action in your part. Oh, you lost CMG, I don't know, number four.

Carl Walz [00:23:30]:
No action. But it really it was it was a crazy, crazy sound. But probably the the thing that really was the oddest thing that happened was we lost complete attitude control. And the and the space station rolled 90 degrees. We couldn't control it. What's worse, the ground couldn't control it. And so Oh my god. So we so we worked together with mission control using a combination of the Russian system and our our own system to be able to basically reboot the navigation and guidance systems to to get all that back online.

Carl Walz [00:24:07]:
Meanwhile, we had to direct the, the solar panels because, originally, the solar panels were all automatically driven. And, with without that, navigation system, we became the navigation system. So we had to manually drive those things to keep the batteries charged. So Yeah. Because if we couldn't keep the batteries charged, the batteries would die and then it was game over at that time for the space station. So that was that was probably the sort of the scariest thing. It took pretty much all day to get everything back up and running.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:41]:
Wow. Incredible. What do you find was the most fulfilling part of the the whole experience?

Carl Walz [00:24:48]:
I think what was what was really cool, that characteristic of working with lots of different countries and cultures. Yeah. And so on that as the long mission, I had a Russian crew member. We operated a space station with which at the time was 50% US and 50% Russian. And that was learning how to operate not only with the, you know, with the NASA mission control, but also with the Russian mission control. And that was really something. I had to learn the Russian language, had to learn how to operate their systems. One of my spacewalks was in a Russian space suit.

Carl Walz [00:25:28]:
So I'm doing this hazardous operation in a second language. So that was that was a, you know, sort of a sporty thing. So I think really getting to operate simultaneously in The US system and the Russian system was, I I think, something that I never thought I would do, but I'm really glad that I was able to to have that experience. The Russians had a very different approach to a lot of things, and and so there was always sometimes this dissonance between The US and the Russian approach, and we had to figure out how to how to make that work.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:04]:
Yeah. So as a way to transition to ultimately your transition to the private sector, the work you did at at Orbital and the building of of Cygnus, and what is it like returning to to Earth?

Carl Walz [00:26:17]:
It was on the shuttle. Our missions were a couple of weeks long, and you you didn't have the sort of the the changes to your body that you do with a long duration mission. So we were able, after a short period of time, to get out of the shuttle. We would walk around the shuttle, take pictures of each other, joke around. We were careful because we weren't exactly a % steady, but it was something that transitioned from space to short visit in space to Earth was not that that significant. Coming back from a long duration mission, your body has changed the ability to balance internally as basically it's gotta relearn how to walk. Your circulatory system needs to figure out how to operate in this gravity field that it hasn't had to worry about. I've found myself constantly laying down on the ground to let my my blood supply settle in my body because just having come back from space, the system of veins, and and the little valves in your veins, they weren't working.

Carl Walz [00:27:23]:
They they had to work. And so, basically, the blood would pool in your lower extremities and and you'd start to feel faint. So I would lie down and just prevent fainting until everything lined up again, and and then I could get up, walk around. I would lay down. I'd be good for a couple hours and then lay down again. So and eventually, the next day, your body figures it out. Just the amazing capabilities within your brain to be able to make that adaptation. It's not instantaneous, but it's pretty amazing the way it does that.

Carl Walz [00:27:57]:
So

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:57]:
Yeah. The overall just adaptability. Yeah. And as your body is going through those physiological transitions, I would imagine your your mind and spirit almost has to go through a similar one as you ultimately end up with a a job in normal society.

Carl Walz [00:28:12]:
Yeah. I I mean, it's definitely it was it was, a significant transition coming back from the space station, I think, from a, you know, mental point of view. Our first out of our first group of astronauts that trained for the space station, I think we all left the astronaut office within a year. So some people fasted. It was like, you know, just get me out of here. Going through the training for the first time, the stress that we had on ourselves, on families, it was a lot. And so when when I got back from space, the NASA administrator said, hey, I'd love to give you a job at NASA headquarters. And I said, I'll take it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:56]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Carl Walz [00:28:57]:
After about a year of sort of finishing my re adaptation, my wife and I moved to Washington DC and I worked NASA headquarters for five years, worked on the constellation program, and and then from there transitioned to orbital sciences. That while they basically canceled the constellation program. So Okay. I I get the hit. So Yep. Yep. One of the things, so Mike Griffin was one of the administrators, and he started the commercial orbital transportation system program. You know, he said, I'm gonna give money to commercial operators to build this resupply system for the space station.

Carl Walz [00:29:36]:
And so Orbital initially didn't get the award. It was SpaceX and a company called Kistler rocket plane. So SpaceX obviously was able to persist, and they were successful. Kistler rocket plane just couldn't make it work. So they used a lot of money, but Orbital Sciences then competed for what was left, and they won that. And, so as they were ramping up, that's when I joined Orbital. But we were building a a robotics, spacecraft from scratch. Wow.

Carl Walz [00:30:11]:
Now orbital was had been building commercial satellites, but to take this basic satellite design and then turn it into something that would go to these human occupied space destinations was it was a tall order. And NASA was learning as we were learning, and it was it was really exciting.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:34]:
It seems all like a a tall order to me.

Carl Walz [00:30:36]:
It was at the time. Now, in a way, the the Russians had been doing it for years with their Progress spacecraft. And so, obviously, it can be done. You just have to, be able to remotely manage your rendezvous and docking or, in our case, a birthing using the robotic arm to do the blast connection. So you didn't have to you didn't have to worry so much about closing rates and, you know, eventually, now all the vehicles do lock in. So but at the time, it was new and NASA wanted to manage their risk. And so we basically got close and stopped, and then the robotic arm did the rest. But it was, I mean, it was really cool to to put that capability together.

Carl Walz [00:31:15]:
It was not without difficulties both spacecraft side, and then we had to build a rocket, a spacecraft, and a launch infrastructure. And so we had partnerships, orbital launches, right now north of Grumman launches out of Wallops Island. Well, I guess, actually, they launch at The Cape now. But at the time, we were launching out of Wallops Island in Virginia, but we needed a liquid fueling capability, which the, Commonwealth of of Virginia developed. And then we, developed a rocket, developed Cygnus. And I was primarily a Cygnus guy, but but it was really it was really interesting. And we had partners in Japan, partners in Italy. So it was another one of these international activities, and that was and that was really cool.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:01]:
As you made that transition to the the private sector, what was surprising to you about the way the commercial space industry works and just kind of the business of of space writ large?

Carl Walz [00:32:13]:
There were a lot of interesting things about that. In the commercial sector, you you need money. You need capital. We were developing a new capability that had to meet NASA requirements, and it was not inexpensive. And so Dave Thompson, who was the head of orbital sciences, really supported us. He was not happy that it took so much capital, but he really did support us to develop this capability. But it was it was painful because we were constantly reminded every month of how much it was costing the company. And we were getting NASA funding too, but NASA funding was not enough to cover the development costs.

Carl Walz [00:32:52]:
And that's, that's the number one. The other thing is we had to go out to the insurance markets to ensure these missions. So it was common practice in in, commercial communication satellites. But this was a human rated vehicle, and and so the risks were pretty much kinda unknown where, hey. We're building this, robotic spacecraft that's gonna go and and fly itself to the vicinity of the International Space Station. Well, you would assure us. And I remember going to Lloyd's of London, going to Geneva, Switzerland to talk to the the reinsurers Swiss RE and then, also Munich to talk to Munich RE to be able to find people that would ensure the part of the mission. That was really cool, but those are the kinds of things, capital and, and and then the the ability to have insurance to to back you up so you don't lose your shirt if something goes bad, like your rocket blows up on a launch pad.

Carl Walz [00:33:51]:
We have happened.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:53]:
Yeah. I never I never even thought about underwriting the the risk of what this entails. Yeah. That's fascinating.

Carl Walz [00:34:00]:
The insurance industry really enabled capitalism because it it it backed up your ability to protect your capital investment. So, anyway, so that's though those were the things that really stood out to me and I was fortunate because I I was not so much capital part, but the trying to trying to explain to these guys who were space guys, but they were commercial communication satellite guys. They really didn't know very much about human space flight. I mean, the good the good news is because NASA was so demanding in in their requirements, it helped to ensure that that we would be successful. And I think, ultimately, that helped when we were going to those, to those insurance markets.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:44]:
Yeah. You you've highlighted the, the international collaboration aspect a a few times. There's this other collaboration between the public and and private sector, and I'm I'm curious just how you've seen the relationship between government organizations like NASA and and private companies like Orbital and SpaceX and and others evolve in the industry and just how you envision, you know, the the future of the business of space and and how it should and and might look like?

Carl Walz [00:35:18]:
That's a good, transition point because it it's it's a challenge. In the case of the Cygnus, there was a demand signal from the government saying that we need this service, and we think you can you can make money providing this service to the government. As that's expanded to commercial crew, to space suits, to lunar landers, you get a little bit farther away from there's a big market here. And so trying to really understand the market, what you can do, say, if your anchor customer decides to go a different way, it it's it's it's really it's challenging. And because it's commercial, you have to come up with capital. Elon seems to be able to to find capital and, and he's been wildly successful. But it it does take a lot of money. It takes billions and you you have to be able to to find those, you know, find those people that have the access to that kind of capital.

Carl Walz [00:36:17]:
But it can provide you with the ability to to bring in some some different thinking too from the private sector. And and you could see that the chopsticks Yeah. Yeah. Landing, if you will. Incredible. Who would've thought? Who would've thought? It blew me away. And, and SpaceX willingness to to take chances that last, the last Starship had had an issue somewhere. I'm sure they'll figure it out and fix it.

Carl Walz [00:36:42]:
But, you know, it was a it was a very rough second stage, shutdown. But there's, you know, there's opportunities there, but it it's different. And recently, one of the, one of the companies that was bidding to build a new spacesuit pulled out. They made a corporate decision. This has cost us too much. And on one side, it's good. But on the other side, if for some reason, from a, you know, a business decision where the expenditure is too great, then companies can say, well, you know, I'm gonna walk away. And that's and that's unfortunate, but it does happen.

Carl Walz [00:37:17]:
So it's it's it's a new business with the government. So NASA is kinda leading the fleet on this, but, other government agencies are saying, we don't want we don't want to provide that capital for development anymore. You guys bring us, you know, bring us the the system. And so companies are gonna have to be able to go tap those, capital markets then. Or or take what they have and and adapt them cleverly. So it's a it's an exciting time, but it's also a time where it's a difficult the legacy contractors have to figure out how to how to deal with that. Obviously, the entrepreneurial ones have, have figured out they they need to raise a lot of cash. So a lot of them are successful.

Carl Walz [00:37:59]:
Jeff Bezos, you know, had his, his new Glenn rocket. He's very successful, one. Yeah. But, you know, he had to step in. He became the the face of, Blue Origin. So we'll see. In a in a way, we kinda have a space race. We have a multifaceted space race where we have these entrepreneurial companies.

Carl Walz [00:38:23]:
We have the legacy comp companies, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, And then and then we have this, space way race with China. So it's really, I think, unprecedented. So

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's just One and it

Carl Walz [00:38:39]:
Yeah. It's just amazing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:41]:
Yeah. And even just that in the in the scope of the conversation, we are actually literally talking about going to Mars.

Carl Walz [00:38:49]:
Yes. Yeah. So that yeah. That was, like, out of the blue. Hey. We're going to Mars. Really? Oh, okay. So so that going back to the moon's hard enough.

Carl Walz [00:38:59]:
Right. It really is. You know, going to Mars, I remember hearing Buzz Aldrin. He's big goat. Get your butt to Mars. He said, we have to get used to having one way trips to Mars. So where typically, our focus is getting astronauts there and back, Buzz was like, you're going, you're staying. There's gonna be graveyards on the moon.

Carl Walz [00:39:22]:
I I remember him saying that. I was like, really? Okay. Well, it's but if you if you look at pioneers back in the day, they went and they stayed. They didn't go back. Some did, but you're you're investing in this long trip. A lot of people that they're gonna settle now that the problem is can't really can't really live easily on Mars. And so there's a this huge challenge for life support, habitat. I mean, it's an aspiration.

Carl Walz [00:39:50]:
I think it's gonna take

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:51]:
courageous and ambitious.

Carl Walz [00:39:52]:
Yeah. But it's gonna take a lot of investment, a lot of careful thought into how you architect the mission to get out there and back. I don't think we have all the technology we need to do this job. The prime example is the propulsion that we have for our, for our rocket engines right now. We have basically the same chemical propulsion that we have had since the Saturn program back in the mid sixties. So here we are, sixty years later, basically, the same chemical propulsion. What we need is something like nuclear propulsion. Nuclear thermal is the one that NASA's and the Department of Defense are working on.

Carl Walz [00:40:37]:
There's a program called DRACO and demonstrate that system. NASA and the Department of Energy or, I guess, it was the Atomic Energy Commission at the time, worked on the NERVA program in the nineteen sixties. So we have these nuclear engines almost running in the in the nineteen seventies. We've we've learned a lot about metallurgy, about nuclear propulsion, but it basically doubles your miles per gallon by doing that. So it makes a Mars mission much more doable. You could get there faster, you can get back, and you can, reduce the amount of mass that you have to accumulate in space to be able to to launch a mission like that. So so I think that the propulsion part is gonna be, I think, the leader to

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:20]:
The leader.

Carl Walz [00:41:21]:
Permit astronauts to safely go and come back, at least until we can really build an infrastructural foothold there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:28]:
When you think about TRACO and other technologies, call it at the frontier of space, and that might allow for us to traverse further, Which are the most exciting and interesting to you that that we're exploring?

Carl Walz [00:41:39]:
The technology, I think, the the nuclear propulsion when I was was at when I was at NASA headquarters, we started to do some investment in that area. I'm excited to see that it has continued to move forward. It used to be based, at Glenn, the the nuclear the NERV program. It has since transitioned to Marshall Space Flight Center, but they've done a lot of work, in the thermodynamics part. The DOE has started working reactor designs. And then, at Glenn, they're also working surface nuclear power systems. They recently Yeah. Yeah.

Carl Walz [00:42:12]:
Had an experiment called Kilopower. That and that was a very successful collaboration with the Department of Energy too. So I'm really excited about that. It's better propulsion, better, more plentiful energy. If you have more energy, if you have good propulsion systems, it'll make this these long journeys much more safe and reduce the risk. So that that's really what I'm excited about. Power and power and propulsion, I think we can figure out the rest. You know, the life support system, you have backup systems.

Carl Walz [00:42:46]:
If one system goes down, you have another one to back you up, and and you could you could make your way through. If you can three d print, replacement parts, that might be a good thing too, but then you have to have a big auger printer maybe. So I don't know. We'll see on that. But it's it's really those basic powered propulsion that I think will really help us as we as we move forward farther into space. And that'll go for robotic systems too. And when we go and we send our robotic systems to Saturn, for example, you wanna go to, Titan, which is a really cool place to go, you're using these radioisotopes, these tiny little a hundred watt power generator. They're minuscule.

Carl Walz [00:43:26]:
If you had a fission reactor, you'd have kilowatts of power. So that enables propulsion capabilities with electric propulsion, much better communication redundancy. Yeah. It just really enables a lot. So, yeah, fission power, that's the way to go.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:44]:
That is incredible. I I would be remiss if I didn't ask about this topic, the topic being extraterrestrial life and and UFOs.

Carl Walz [00:43:54]:
Uh-huh. What

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:56]:
what is what's your perspective on on all that?

Carl Walz [00:44:00]:
So, I mean, that's a good question. I remember our first mission, we deployed this advanced communication technology satellite. We had an issue Yeah. And we had some extra debris that was liberated during the deployment process so that it was a miss miswiring in the payload bay. But we had this aluminum debris kinda go everywhere. We're getting toward the end of the mission, and we had maneuvered all over. And we so Bill Reedy and I, we were looking out the window and we saw what looked like a little beacon of light. It blink on, it blink off, blink on, blink off.

Carl Walz [00:44:35]:
And we're looking at it, it's like, somebody following us?

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:39]:
Oh, wow.

Carl Walz [00:44:40]:
Well, it turned out it was it was basically some of that debris that was catching light. We were just coming from being in darkness, to being in in sunlight. And and that altitude was just a little bit different. So as it was turning, that this little piece of debris, it was doing this beacon thing that looked suspiciously like an extraterrestrial. I think we'll see. It's it's hard to think that in a universe so big and, you know, if you believe that there are multiverses, something even bigger, that there would be no other civilizations. But I don't think I don't think we've been visited in a way that that we can conventionally expect how we would be visited with something something like the day the earth stood still or anything. I don't think we've been, visited like that, but we'll see.

Carl Walz [00:45:34]:
It's it's just I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:36]:
What what was it like being in the only all astronaut band?

Carl Walz [00:45:40]:
It was kinda fun. We ended up playing a lot of unique, a lot of unique venues. But in the end, we were we were musicians. So if we Yeah. Yeah. If we went to Kennedy Space Center or we played in Cleveland several times, people came because we were astronauts. We talked to people, we played music, and, my brother I saw it when I was in in high school and college, we had a little band called the the fabulous blue moons. And so when we came to Cleveland to play, we did some stuff at, Cleveland State, and then we set up and played at a local bar.

Carl Walz [00:46:13]:
And so the blue moon's equipment showed up to provide the sound systems. So my my brother sat in on on a couple of the songs, so it was kinda cool. But, you know, we did another gig, and this was it was a classic jet airplane group. And they hired us to play music at their event and, now these folks are pretty rich folks. They had Chuck Yeager as a guest speaker. So it's kinda interesting because we were all test pilots or flight test engineers listening to Chuck Yeager spin his stories. And then we went to play, and everybody left. So here we are.

Carl Walz [00:46:50]:
We had driven from Houston to San Antonio, set up the band, and and they the people that were there is like, well, we don't wanna hear these guys. We wanna go on Riverwalk. And it was it was the most inflating experience. And I'm sure people in bands have that experience all the time. But you took to have an astronaut band to have everybody kind of walk out on you, it's like, okay. We are we are chopped liver.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:17]:
So It's it's humbling. It's humbling.

Carl Walz [00:47:19]:
That that was humbling. Like, we would go to Kennedy Space Center. We played, we played in Canada, and and people loved it because they were space they were space geeks. The classic jet airplane guys had other interests. So, anyway, that was just it just really it was a long it was a long, road trip, but it was still fun. We enjoyed it, and it gave us a chance to to hear Chuck Yeager, which was kinda cool.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:42]:
Yeah. So there's there's truly a universe more worth of questions that that I could ask, but I would pose as we work to book in the conversation here. If there's anything you feel is left unsaid that that is feels particularly important reflecting on on the whole experience and journey of everything you've done?

Carl Walz [00:47:59]:
So I think what really stands out is just the international nature of human spaceflight. We have an organization called the Association of Space Explorers, and it was formed back in the Apollo Soyuz day by Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts. It has since expanded to include the Chinese, to, to include Europeans, pretty much every country that sends astronauts into space. And I think that the international nature of human space flight is just it goes across all the political divisions. It's just just a really cool thing to see. And no matter whether you're a Chinese or a Russian, there's still that awe of seeing people flying in space, doing really cool science things. We recently had an experience where we went to Holland, and we're in Amsterdam. Actually, we're in Neuwijk.

Carl Walz [00:48:57]:
There's the European research, base there. And, we had a team's connection with the International Space Station. And so Mike Barrett is the one of the astronauts up there. He's floating this laptop around showing us what's going on real time on the space station, which we've never seen before. And there was a group, a delegation from China, and they were just awestruck that where everything they show is always very, very cleaned up and already approved. And here's Mike. He's just, yeah. Here's this guy exercising, and this guy's fixing something, and he's taking pictures.

Carl Walz [00:49:41]:
And it was just so free form and so and so American. It was just really cool. So, anyway, that that but, you know, the fact is that the Chinese thought this was cool. I think everybody thought it was cool. Yeah. It does team It

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:54]:
is cool.

Carl Walz [00:49:56]:
I mean, amazing. But that was the kind of capabilities that we've developed. And, yeah, I'm hoping that we can sort of get back to where we can collaborate more openly in space. So that's I think we can get past some of these conflicts. They're horrible. Don't get me wrong. But, we've been able to continue to work with the Russians, but it's we have to be very careful. It's it's very challenging, and we still don't really collaborate with the Chinese.

Carl Walz [00:50:24]:
We collaborate more with the Soviet Union than we do with the Chinese. Yeah. So so I think at some point, maybe we'll be able to to sort of make bridges there as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:35]:
I share your aspiration for that. Yeah. Certainly. I'll ask you then our our traditional closing question Okay. Which is for a hidden gem in Cleveland. Something something other people should know about that maybe they don't.

Carl Walz [00:50:48]:
Oh, it's the zoo. The

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:49]:
That's a great

Carl Walz [00:50:50]:
one. Cleveland Zoo is just fabulous. And we were living at Air Force Museum spaces, and when we came to Cleveland, that's one of the things that we did. We'd go back to the zoo because there was always something cool there. It's such a it's such a gem. I mean, the whole the Emerald necklace, the the metro parks was so fabulous, but that zoo is just really out of this world.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:13]:
Well, I mean, it's literally on this world.

Carl Walz [00:51:14]:
But Yeah. I mean

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:15]:
compared to every compared to everything else you're doing.

Carl Walz [00:51:17]:
Very good.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:18]:
Well, Carl, I just wanted to thank you for for taking the time sharing your your thoughts. It's it's really it's fascinating and incredible to hear about.

Carl Walz [00:51:27]:
Oh, well, thank thank you for the opportunity, Jeffrey. It brought back a lot of a lot of good memories.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:31]:
Awesome. Well, I'm glad to hear that. If people had, you know, anything they wanted to to follow-up with you about, where where would you where would you direct them?

Carl Walz [00:51:38]:
On LinkedIn, if they wanted to reach out on LinkedIn, that's probably the the best way, and then we can start a conversation that way. Perfect.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:46]:
Well, thank you again, Carl.

Carl Walz [00:51:48]:
You bet, Jeffrey. Thank you, and have have a great day.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:53]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to Jeffrey@layoftheland.fm, or find us on Twitter at pod lay of the land or at stern f a, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland Founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:31]:
The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration with the Up Company LLC. At the time of this recording, unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on the show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.