Megan McArthur: A NASA astronaut's lessons on fear, confidence and preparing for spaceflight | TED

Pat Mitchell: Welcome, Megan.

Megan McArthur: Hello, Pat, thank you for having me.

PM: Let's go with the question that I think is probably coming up

for many of us.

This is unusual.

Husband and wife,

met during your training,

and in the year that you got married,

you both flew into space, separately.

You, on the Hubble Telescope mission

and Bob on the mission to construct the space station.

And ironically, if your mission had gone awry or needed help,

Bob was assigned to be on the rescue craft.

You know, launch day is for all of us a time of great excitement, yes.

But also anxieties about the risk and the fear we might feel inside

just watching.

How do you prepare for launch day?

MMA: Well, Pat, one of the most important things to focus on for me

was really preparing my son and making sure that he was ready

and that he enjoyed the experience of watching his father launch

and complete this mission that he'd been training for,

really for most of our son's life.

So when we walked out onto the roof of the launch control center

and we could see the rocket off in the distance

and were lining up against the rail,

ready for the countdown,

and of course, I got my arms around him

and we hear, "Three, two, one, liftoff."

And then we see the rocket carrying his father

you know, jumping off the launch pad.

And for me,

it was this moment of just an outpouring of feeling and emotion

that had been with me for such a long time.

And I'm crying and I'm laughing and I'm just shaking.

And so I had to let go of my son, who was fine, by the way,

he was completely fine.

And I’m covering up my mouth

because I don't know what kind of sounds I'm going to make

with this complete terror and this complete joy

at this moment.

And thinking about what it took to get there.

My husband, you know, an accomplished astronaut,

an experienced Air Force flight test engineer,

he had formerly been the chief astronaut.

And I've watched him launch into space twice before.

And it's been terrifying every time.

Why is that?

You know, of course, I love my husband, but it's more than that.

It's that I love my husband,

and right now I can't do anything at all to impact the situation.

I'm standing on a rooftop.

I have no job.

I have no way to contribute.

And so that's where for me the fear comes from

is that feeling of helplessness.

And so, over and over in my life, I've seen, of course,

that training and preparation can get us ready for an event like that,

but it's having the input,

having the ability to impact your situation

that is what removes the fear and balances it for you.

So the education, the experience, you have to have that,

but also having a voice, having an input,

having a seat in the cockpit

is what allows you to leave that fear behind.

PM: But what about your son, Megan?

He won't be there.

He'll be on the ground watching mommy take off into space

just as he watched his dad who returned safely.

But have you taken special preparations for him to see mommy doing the same?

MMA: Well, his first reaction

when learning that mommy was going to go into space

first, he told me, "No, mommy, you can't go."

That was his very first response.

And then as he got more comfortable with the idea,

you know, his dad went up and came back

and then he said, "Well, OK, you can go for 30 days,

but 180 days, that's too much.

You can’t, you can’t go for that long.”

He's also obviously seen his father go through all of this.

And so for him, it's become this normal thing.

This is a normal thing that mommy and daddy do.

We'll read stories back and forth while I'm here in Russia

over video conference.

And I was given the idea to fill a jar with chocolate kisses

and then he can have a kiss from mommy every day that I'm gone.

So he likes that idea very much.

PM: Well, just to be clear,

it's a great message that this young man is getting

about mommy and daddy doing the same job, isn't it?

And I just want to bring forward a quote

from the SpaceX leader Gwynne Shotwell,

who was asked about your going, and your husband's going,

and she was questioned about your flying

in the same pilot seat or spacecraft as your husband.

And here was part of her answer:

"I'd like to point out that, you know,

Megan is first and foremost

an astronaut when it comes to our perspective."

MMA: Well, I did want to reach through the screen

and high-five Ms. Shotwell when she said that,

I very much appreciated that remark.

You know, it has changed for me over the years,

the first time I flew in space

I was married, but I was not yet a parent.

And both my husband and I came to NASA as single people

and we met and married, of course, at NASA.

It's a different thing to take on as a family

that you're doing this thing that's for yourself.

It's also kind of for the greater good.

The notion of exploration and discovery is something to engage in.

And I think that that example,

you know, for my son to see

that his parents are engaged in this thing,

that, yes, it takes us away from him,

but these are important things to do.

PM: And you were in high school, Megan,

when the Challenger spacecraft tragically exploded

and the whole world confronted the realities of the risk

that you and your husband

and other brave women and men are taking.

I remember that moment

and I still hold my breath every time during each and every launch.

So how do you find the balance between knowing the risks are real

and you're feeling prepared enough to do what you have to do

and what you want to accomplish?

MMA: Well, the crux of it for us for feeling prepared and participating

is really training.

So we train our way into that seat.

You spend literally hundreds of hours preparing in every possible way.

We break down every system into bite-sized pieces, basically.

We have these wonderful instructors

who are professional instructors, basically,

and they know exactly what it's going to take for us

to learn these systems inside and out.

And so, sort of, one system at a time,

and then they put all the systems together

and then they break every possible thing that they can think of to break

so that you have to, as a team, as a crew,

solve these problems and work together to get through the situation.

And the reason that they do that

is not because they think those exact things are going to happen.

It's to build you up.

You prove to yourself that you have the ability to work

when maybe some really terrible things are happening

and to make your situation better.

And the thing that's going to happen

isn't necessarily going to be the specific one

or even hundred different scenarios that they've shown you.

But you have worked and you have developed your skills

which will support you to kind of tackle any problem that you might have,

not just as a crew in the ship,

but now you've worked with the whole team on the ground,

and you know you're going to be able to solve those situations

working together.

PM: Has there ever been a time when you felt fear,

real fear or maybe just being unprepared?

MMA: A couple of years ago, I had the, I'll say opportunity,

but I had the situation where I was "voluntold"

to take an assistant directorship job.

And it was something I was very reluctant to do,

I didn't feel prepared for it,

I didn't feel like I had the right skill set,

and I didn't feel like I was going to be good at it.

And none of those are good feelings.

There's a part in your book, Pat, where you say,

"I realized at some point that being ready

could mean being ready to learn quickly while doing."

And, you know, that expression,

that's exactly what it means to be an astronaut.

I know how to do that.

I can learn on the job, I can learn quickly.

And so I did dive into this job

and I did learn quickly while on the job.

I can't say that I was the best person ever to hold that job,

but it was important to me to do my very best

and to be part of this new team.

Women are particularly prone to this where we think,

"Oh, I haven't had training for that, I haven't had a job like that before.

I can't do it."

But you can do it.

You take all of the skills that you've developed

and all of the other things that you're doing,

and you use those to support you while you're learning quickly while doing.

PM: Such good advice, Megan,

I won't be learning by doing flying into space,

but taking that knowledge that we can learn by doing

and we can be prepared, so important.

How would you describe the changes in you personally

from being off this Earth?

MMA: But in the very beginning, when I first launched into space,

you're very busy, you know,

on this spaceship that's just gone through a launch sequence

and you have to turn your spaceship into an orbiting platform.

And so you're very busy.

So we have these books and we're heads down in the books

and we're going through all the steps and moving switches

and loading computer programs.

And I only had a brief moment of time to kind of look out the window

and say, yep, that's where the Earth is, that's exactly where it should be,

and that's how it's looked in all of the pictures I've seen growing up.

And I got right back to work.

And so it wasn't until I had more of an opportunity

to gaze out the window for a while

while I was operating the robotic arm that I could really observe the Earth.

I remember so clearly the first time I saw a lightning storm

across a huge expanse of the ocean

and the lightning, it appeared in different colors,

and it lights up the inside of the clouds

and it makes this kind of, you know, dramatic pattern.

It was like having your own laser light show laid out below you.

And the realization struck me that this is not static.

This is not a photo.

This is our Earth, it's a real living system.

It's hard to describe how impossibly thin it looks to you

with the vast blackness of space on one side

and our beautiful Earth on the other side

and this just incredibly thin layer of atmosphere

that's all that's keeping us and all of us alive

and every life form on Earth,

that's all that's keeping us alive.

And it's a very visceral reaction,

this very strong urge to want to protect

the Spaceship Earth that we're all you know,

you and I are both crew members here,

and, you know, we've all got to work together

to take care of this ship that we're moving on

through the universe.

So it was a very powerful response to seeing that.

PM: Thank you for your work, Megan.

And what do you say, "Safe flight?"

Is there ...?

MMA: We say Godspeed

or we say ad astra -- to the stars.

PM: Ad astra, to the stars, Godspeed, Megan McArthur.

Thank you.

MMA: Thank you so much, Pat.