Michael Massimino - Swimming with Astronauts

 

A couple of weeks after I got my phone call from NASA, that I was selected to be an astronaut, my information packet came in the mail. And the cover letter had a paragraph at the beginning that said, “Congratulations.” And then, there was the second paragraph, and it said, “Practice your swimming. You will be required to pass a swim test in order to go to water survival training with the United States Navy in Pensacola.” I could not believe this, because after years of applications and interviews and medical examinations from head to toe, and an extensive background check, never once did anyone ever think to ask, “Do you know how to swim?” [audience laughter] And if they did, my answer would have been, “Not really.” [audience laughter] 

 

Although I grew up on Long Island and was surrounded by water my entire life, I didn't like swimming and I completely hated the water. I was a skinny little kid who was always freezing when I got wet. I didn't like having my head under the water. I couldn't breathe. I didn't like having chlorine in my eyes. When I would go to a pool party, I would go on my tippy toes, just so my head was exposed and pretend like I was having a good time. [audience laughter] 

 

And now, the one thing that I hated and avoided my entire life had now become the one thing that I had to do well, and the one thing that was going to stand between me and my dream of flying in space. I wasn't going to let that stop me. I had the summer to get ready. I took my kids to the pool every day, and I swam, and I practiced and I practiced and I practiced. At the end of that summer, I reported for duty at the Johnson Space Center. A much better swimmer, but still very, very nervous about what I was going to have to do there. I reported there with 43 other new astronauts, but we weren't really astronauts yet. We were astronaut candidates, or as our senior astronauts called us, “Ass cans.” [audience laughter] We were all 44 new ass cans. [audience laughter] 

 

And in our initial briefing, they told us how we could grow up to be astronauts. They gave us a list of things that were going to be doing over the next two years. All the different examinations and qualifications that we would have to get in order to do that. And the very first test we were going to have was the swim test. And I was like, “Really? [audience laughter] Can't we have like a math quiz [audience laughter] or a physics test?” And then, the briefer went on and said, “Okay. All the strong swimmers in this class, raise your hand.” And a couple of the military people raised their hand. We had a Navy diver who raised her hand. And then, he asks, “Okay, all the weak swimmers, raise your hands and be honest.” 

 

I sheepishly raised my hand, along with a couple other egghead PhDs. [audience laughter] And he said, “Great. You strong swimmers and you weak swimmers, this weekend, you're going to work together. And you strong swimmers are going to get these weak swimmers ready to pass the test.” And that's exactly what we did. We showed up that next week, all 44 of us, to take this test in full gear, flight suit, boots and helmet. And the feeling that day was everyone was going to pass. We were not going to leave that pool until everyone passed. 

 

We got in the water and we did our long-distance swim, demonstrating all the survival strokes that we needed to show. We did a lap underwater. We demonstrated that we could save each other, do a rescue swim. We drown proofed. Eventually, we got on our back with only our mouth exposed, bringing in sips of air to fill our lungs, so we get buoyancy on the water. And then, after you were good and tarred from all that, it was time to tread, tread water. And in the last few minutes of that tread, they blew a whistle and you had to bring your hands out of the water. And if your hands went underneath the water, you failed and you had to do the whole test over again. 

 

As I'm treading for dear life with my hands out of the water, those last few minutes, I'm looking around at my new classmates. I look for Mike Fink and don't see him anymore, but I see his hands. [audience laughter] They didn't say anything about your head being out of the water. [audience laughter] They only said, your hands had to be out of the water. And by golly, Mike was not going to let his hands go under that water. [audience laughter] I realized just how determined this group of people was, these people that I had now become classmates with, future astronauts with. Every one of us passed. Everyone passed that test. 

 

A few weeks later, we flew down to Naval Air Station Pensacola, the home of naval aviation. And for a kid who dreamt about being an astronaut and watched The Right Stuff a thousand times and read that book about 100 times, I was in heaven. There were F18s with blue angels in them screaming overhead. There were young Navy and Marine recruits exercising and running all over the place, and then there was us. We were there to be trained to eject out of a high-performance aircraft, be able to work our parachute and our survival gear, and survive in the water long enough for someone to come and get us. 

 

Now, this is something that I would never dream of doing in a million years. I found out how the Navy was going to get us ready to do this. You don't jump out of the plane the first day. What you do is you take it step by step and they build you up inch by inch, baby steps, until you're ready to do the big exercise at the end of the week. So, what we started to do was get by the end of the pool, just on the edge of the pool and jump in. Then once you got that down, you went on a platform about a foot off the water and you jumped from there and you got progressively higher. And then, they taught us how to go through our checklist. 

 

Once we ejected from the aircraft, make sure your canopy was good. You needed a good canopy above your head. And if you didn't have one, they told you what to do to fix it. And then, you went through all your other checks. Make sure your mask is off, your visor is up, deploy your seat kit with all your survival gear. And then, make sure, most important, one of the most important things for me anyway was that your LPU, your life preserver unit was inflated, because that's what's going to keep you floating when you hit the water. And then, pull three lines, a three-line jettison, which allows you to steer the parachute. After you got into the water, they taught us how to get away from the parachute and how to release from it, because that could fill with water and take you to the bottom of the ocean. 

 

We did this step by step, and the graduation exercise came at the end of that week. What that was going to be a parasail above the Gulf, where we were going to release from the boat, enter the water, get into a raft, signal for help and they would come pick us up and we had to do that twice. And if you did that twice successfully, you passed the water survival course. 

 

That Friday came, and I'm out on the Gulf of Mexico on a platform ship getting ready to be hooked up to a cable to be taken parasailing for this final exam. My classmate right in front of me is Stephanie Wilson. Stephanie Wilson is about 5 foot 2 and weighs about 100 pounds. Stephanie Wilson is about the size of one of my legs. [audience laughter] Stephanie starts marching in place. She gets a little tug from the boat, takes about a step and off she goes like Peter Pan. [audience laughter] Okay. 

 

Then he hooked me up to the boat, to the line. I'm really, really nervous, because not only am I scared of the water, I am also afraid of heights. [audience laughter] Yeah, I know, let it out. [audience laughter] An astronaut who's afraid of heights. I start marching in place, just like they told me and then I start walking and I'm getting pulled, and then I start walking faster and then I start running. And then, I start thinking, this boat is not infinitely long. [audience laughter] I get to the edge of the platform and I'm still moving my legs. I haven't gotten airborne yet. I start going toward the ocean. [audience laughter] I plunge and belly flop about 20ft and do a face plant into the water. And then, the boat starts dragging me through the water. [audience laughter] 

 

As I'm trying to gasp for air, and look, I see this chief petty officer, our instructor, in the back of that boat, signaling to me, telling me, “Release from your chute. Release from your chute.” I released from the chute just like she told me. Then they come and get me. And my LPU, the thing that's supposed to save me, the life preserver unit had popped on impact. They had a Navy doctor check me out, and he turns to the chief petty officer and says, “He'll be okay.” She looks at me and says, “That's good. You still got to do it twice. That didn't count.” [audience laughter] 

 

I get hooked up to the boat again. I start marching, I start running, I hit the edge of the boat again and here comes round two with the water. [audience laughter] But this time, I skim the water with my feet. My sail inflates and I rise above the water. And then, I get a signal from the chief petty officer. The green flag's waving at me, and that means to release from the boat and I do that and then I go through my check. Canopy, visor, mask, seat kit, LPU, three-line jettison and I steer myself down. I keep my eye on the horizon, horizon, horizon. Let it come. Wait for it. Wait for it. I see the horizon coming up. My feet get a little bit wet. I release from my chute. I do my survival exercise. They come get me, and I have to do it one more time and I can pass. 

 

They hook me up again. I march, walk, run, drop, [audience laughter] don't get wet, come up high. [audience laughter] I paused for a moment and I looked around, it was a beautiful day above the Gulf that day. I could see the coast of Florida. I could see the Atlantic Ocean. And it hit me what I was doing. What an extraordinary experience this had been. This skinny kid from Long Island was going through water survival training as an astronaut candidate, soon to be astronaut hopefully with the United States Navy. And then, I looked down at the boat and frantically the chief petty officer's waving a flag. [audience laughter] I release, do the whole routine again, land in the water and they come get me. 

 

I had this great feeling of accomplishment, more than I ever had in my life. I mean, I had gone through some tough tests as an undergraduate at Columbia. It almost killed me to get through my qualifying exam for my PhD at MIT and to complete my dissertation. But those things for some reason seemed doable. This was facing one of the greatest fears I had, and I had to do this in order to achieve my dream of flying in space. I just felt like a superhero getting this done. 

 

] And then, I realized I had become a good swimmer. Over those months of practicing and going through the swim test and all these lessons and the Navy, I had become a really good swimmer. I had swim goggles. I had a bathing suit. [audience laughter] I could maybe do this for exercise for the rest of my life. [audience laughter] Since that day over the Gulf of Mexico 20 years ago, I have never swam another lap.