Charles Frank Bolden Jr. is a retired US Marine Corps Major General and former NASA astronaut. After flying on four space shuttle missions—STS-61-C, STS-31, STS-45, and STS-60—Charlie was appointed by former President, Barack Obama, to serve as the 12th Administrator of NASA from 2009 to 2017, making him the first African American to head the agency permanently. Today, Charlie is the Founder and CEO Emeritus of the Charles F. Bolden Group, a consortium of accomplished leaders founded in 2017 to foster international collaboration in making life better for all humanity.

Charlie joins me today to discuss the qualities aspiring astronauts need to cultivate to be chosen for modern space programs. You’ll hear about his career at NASA and the characteristics he thinks made him a NASA astronaut. He explores how the dawn of the new space age may change selection preferences for would-be astronauts. You’ll also learn the value of being a team player and why being a jack-of-all-trades is essential to becoming an astronaut of today and tomorrow.

“You will be technicians, scientists, and researchers all in one—and that’s the kind of people we’re going to be looking for.”

- Charlie Bolden

This week on Kathy Sullivan Explores:

●      Qualities and characteristics NASA looked for in astronaut candidates in the 1980s

●      Civil rights in the 1980s and the psychological implications of growing up in the segregated South

●      Why being a team player is a high-value trait for NASA astronauts

●      Diversity as a trait of a high-performing organization

●      Why being a good fighter pilot doesn’t necessarily mean being a great astronaut

●      The lack of diversity in NASA’s Apollo era and how astronaut selection preferences have changed since

●      How the dawn of commercial spaceflight is changing preferences for would-be astronauts

●      How commercial spacecraft may change the employment prospects of future astronauts

●      The kind of crew NASA may seek for the Artemis program and beyond

●      Jessica Watkins, Kate Rubins, Peggy Whitson, and why researchers may be the astronauts of the future

●      Ridley Scott’s The Martian and what it takes to be a modern-day astronaut

Resources Mentioned:

●      Book: Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut by Mike Mullane

Our Favorite Quotes:

●      “A great test pilot isn’t necessarily going to be a great astronaut; a great test pilot with a big ego is going to be a lousy astronaut.” - Charlie Bolden

●      “The astronauts of today and tomorrow are not going to have the opportunity to train over and over again on something because they’ll find that every day is something new.” - Charlie Bolden

Connect with Charlie Bolden:

• Inter Astra

• Inter Astra on LinkedIn

• The Charles F. Bolden Group

• The Charles F. Bolden Group on LinkedIn

• The Charles F. Bolden Group on YouTube

• Charlie Bolden on LinkedIn

Credits:

Executive Producer: Toby Goodman

Audio & Sound Design: Lee Turner

Production by CxS Partners LTD

SPACESHIP NOT REQUIRED

I’m Kathy Sullivan, the only person to have walked in space and gone to the deepest point in the ocean.

I’m an explorer, and that doesn’t always have to involve going to some remote or exotic place. It simply requires a commitment to put curiosity into action.

In this podcast, you can explore, reflecting on lessons learned from life so far and from my brilliant and ever-inquisitive guests. We explore together in this very moment from right where you are… spaceship not required.

Welcome to Kathy Sullivan Explores.

This podcast is brought to you by the InterAstra Institute, the global public square for the business of space. Join us at interastra.space.

I was not the best at anything, but I was a I was a team player and very conversant and comfortable in my own skin and very inquisitive. The other thing that they allowed us to do, if you remember, was just get all over the astronaut office and all over the Johnson Space Center. And, you know, I spent as much time as I could with other people asking questions and trying to get to know people there. But also, I think deep down inside, trying to make sure that as many people knew me as possible that who could, if asked, could vouch for, for me at least as a kind of a human being.

I am the only person to have walked in space and gone to the deepest point in the ocean. Hi. I'm Kathy Sullivan, and I'm

explorer. Exploring doesn't always have to involve going to some remote or exotic place. It simply requires your commitment to put curiosity into action. So join me on this podcast journey as I reflect on lessons learned from life so far and from my brilliant and ever inquisitive guests. We'll explore together in this very moment from right where you are. Spaceship not required. Welcome to Kathy Sullivan Explores. Before we take off, I have a gift for you.

I believe that no matter where you are today, an active thirst for knowledge will help unlock your ability to live a life of meaning and happiness. So I'm sharing some lessons I've learned on my road less traveled. Over at Kathy Sullivan explores dot com, you'll find my 7 astronaut tips to improving your life on Earth. When you sign up, I'll send them to you and also make sure you're the first to discover future podcast episodes and learn more about exciting adventures ahead. Just head on over to kathysullivan explores.com. All paths to a spaceflight are unique with different milestones along the way and various gatekeepers to get past, and many factors affect the final outcome. Those of us who made the final cut at NASA never know for sure why we were chosen over other candidates. But each of us has memories of the journey and suspicions about why we got that prized blue flight suit.

Today, I'm talking with Charlie Bolden about his journey and what he thinks put him over the top and made him a NASA astronaut. Good morning, Charlie b. How are you today?

Hey, doctor Sullivan. It's good to talk to you today. You're doing the same.

I'm doing well. Thanks. Charlie, you were chosen in the class of 1980, just a couple of years after I had come aboard. And the tickets to get in at that point kind of boiled down to an advanced degree in science, engineering, or medicine or, you know, military test pilot qualifications. But in the final round of candidates, there were still a goodly number of both of those categories around. What qualities do you think it was at the time that NASA was really looking for as it talked with all of you that final round?

How I wish I knew. And and, but all these many years later, I still don't I still don't know for sure. But I, you know, I would guess that they were looking, 1, for people who are comfortable communicating with others, who are comfortable around other people, that are team players, without a doubt. I don't know about your class, but when I came down, even though we were just interviewing, they allowed us to play softball on the the astronaut softball team because I think they wanted to see, you know, just how did we how did we act in a team environment. You know, did we have to be the best in order to play? I think if that was the way you were, then you may not have fit. I was not the best at anything, but I was a I was a team player and very conversant and comfortable in my own skin and very inquisitive. The other thing that they allowed us to do, if you remember, was just get all over the astronaut office and all over the Johnson Space Center. And, you know, I spent as much time as I could with other people asking questions and trying to get to know people there, but also I think deep down inside trying to make sure that as many people knew me as possible, that who could, if asked, could vouch for, for me at least as a kind of a human being.

I will admit, you know, when I interviewed, it was 1980. The civil rights era was not that far removed then, and so in the back of my mind, as much as I tried not to have it, there was always the question of was I gonna be selected because I was black.

Mhmm.

You know, because they Like just because. Making just because. Yeah. That's one of the psychological factors of growing up in the segregated south, I think, that kinda gives us one stigma, which is the the imposter syndrome. So, you know, I grew up with it, and I live with it today. But but one of the things that I try to tell young people when I talk about opportunities and everything is don't even think about trying to change somebody's mind about you. Be comfortable with who you are. Do your absolute best, and they'll see that that you are an achiever and you are somebody who can contribute.

And either they'll come around or they'll be gone because either you will have an opportunity to get rid of them when you get in charge or somebody else will see that they really aren't the kind of team player that that the group needs.

Yeah. The 6 of us women in 1978, I know, certainly felt that stigma. And sometimes we're pretty sensitive and prickly about it. It was a little bit easy to get our goat sometimes if you poked at that one.

As an outsider to your group looking in, you had reason to be sensitive. You know, if if you I remember, there was still a a number of Apollo astronauts left over. Yeah. Or folk who had come in for the Apollo program may not have been assigned to crews, but they they had a different mindset than we did. They were not diversity was not something that was high on their list of things to do, whereas you and I had grown up with that as a a necessary characteristic of a high achieving organization because we had we had served in those and we had seen what what diverse organizations can do. They had never had an opportunity to even play in a diverse organization, because when they came in the in the Apollo era, there were no women. There were no no people of color. So it was easy for them to assume that you had to look like them to be good.

Right. And you had to have come down just exactly that pathway. So, you know, we were the first big group of civilians, and there's also a thing about you know, Mike Mullane has written about this in his book. Well, gee, I don't you know, I know if you're a combat pilot or a test pilot, that confirms you're good enough to be an astronaut, but didn't you just go to college? I'm not sure that works. You know?

And I love Mike, but that particular part in his book kind of highlights the fallacy of thinking of their thinking in that the fact that you had flown in combat or had served in combat means you're good. It just means your number came up and you were sent in, and you survived. That's that's all.

Didn't come up and you got back.

That is that is all it means. It doesn't mean yeah. I flew in Vietnam. I flew x number of missions, and I came back and all this kind of stuff. That doesn't mean I was the ace of the base. It meant I was very fortunate in not being one of the not too few in my squadron who did not come back. And some of whom were much better I thought were much better than I, but but their number came up and mine didn't.

Yeah. Yeah. So why do you think in the end what what do you think it was about you that got you that blue flight suit that put you over the top? Was there any particular secret sauce? Or

I would like to think that the secret sauce was, or at least a part of it was my easygoing nature, my, my love of people, which I I think shows through, and my willingness to admit that I'm wrong, that I don't know something. You know, one of the most memorable parts of the interview was when they asked if you came back to life as an animal, you know, what kind of animal would it be? And I remember sitting there thinking, what the hell? What kind of damn question is that? What does that have to do with being an astronaut? And so I said, shocks. If they're crazy enough to answer the question, I'm gonna be asked the question. I'm gonna be crazy enough to answer it. And I I told them a panther because that was my cosign. And, and they said, why? I said, well, because it's sleek and fast and stealthy and, and black. And, you know, George kinda looked and John Young kinda looked, and they all smiled and went on to the next question. But, they probably figured, okay, if if the guy's got the guts to say all that stuff Yeah.

He might fit.

George and John Young, for those who don't know, were the 2 dominant figures and, you know, most influential figures on that panel. Yeah. I I think I answered Kat too because they're sleek and curious and agile, and and everyone else thought you were supposed to answer bird because you're supposed to wanna fly. The answer should be bird. I figured I'd locked myself out right now.

Yeah.

Well and in later years, you went on as you became a senior astronaut and experienced flyer. You served on rating panels, the 2 stages of picking astronauts, the sort of first look who's worth asking references for, and second look is who's worth bringing down to Houston and taking a much closer look at. Had anything much changed by then, do you think, in terms of what NASA was looking for? Shuttle was maturing. It was beginning to build space station.

I think the very first time I had an opportunity to serve on a rating panel and then when I served on the selection board, I think we were already moving away from the fighter pilot, you know, the test pilot, the person with the scarf around his neck and everything, to looking for people who brought some intellectual value, some some intellectual curiosity. We were starting to look at people who had done oddball, non aviation things. I remember we selected 1 guy, and this was after Challenger. We selected 1 person who had been a diver for oceaneering, you know, on the offshore oil rigs because we were looking for someone's we were looking for an engineer who had experience with operations in high high temperature environments, and, you know, we knew that down around the drill head, you were talking about temperatures that were getting way up there, and the metallurgy and everything else was a lot different than what what we were running into in normal kinds of things, but but was exactly what we were running to with the SRBs and and other things on shuttle. So we were looking for people when I served on the selection board who had experiences that could help us with some of the problems that we had already started to encounter with shuttle. And and I think that was different from, you know, from the Apollo era when I think they looked at test pilot school performance and as and made the assumption that, you know, a great test pilot's gonna be a great astronaut, when you and I both know that that's not necessarily the case. A great test pilot with a big ego is gonna be a lousy astronaut because probably gonna eschew the any any commentary or comments from his teammates and not not be a team player.

Yeah. Not to mention, it's not necessarily a predictor of how great a leader you are.

Exactly.

So even later than than that era of your time on the selection board, of course, you became the administrator of NASA through, what, 20 2000

2009 to 2,007. 17. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's the era of retiring the shuttle and moving really into commercial transport of people and cargo to low earth orbit. A lot of those vehicles, the SpaceX Dragon, that's the one that has flown and delivered people and and cargo to the station. Axiom Space and Blue Origin are also working to become people deliverers, Boeing. A lot of those designs are are much more automated than the space shuttle was. And, of course, the computing technology has advanced tremendously. So you got much more, you know, artificial intelligence, advanced machine learning, driving software. What do you think will be the same and different as folks like Acxiom and Blue and SpaceX? What are they gonna be looking for in their crews, do you think?

Well, that's a that's a great question. And I I look at the folk that have been selected so far that I haven't known very many of them, but but having an opportunity to read about them and see them in action, the ones that that Blue Origin, for example, has selected, they don't necessarily have to have any ability to interact with the spacecraft because there is none. There is no ability to interact with the SpaceX.

Doing the joyride.

Right? Suborbital. They go up and come right back down. Right. In the case of, the SpaceX Dragon, we had the, the crew that flew to, raise funds for, St. Jude Children's Hospital. They had one real pilot, and that that's not fair to say that, but one very professional pilot on the crew who bought the mission, as a matter of fact. He was all also happened to be a multimillionaire, but even he was taught to do the very bare minimum to do things to safe the vehicle once it was docked or to get it ready to come home, but but no flying skills. And so I think that's what the commercial vehicles are going to look for more and more.

I'm not sure what, you know, the CST 100 Boeing's vehicle looks like in terms of controls, but I understand that folk in the astronaut office kinda said, look. We need to be able to do some type of intervention if something goes wrong, and Boeing leaned a little bit more heavily toward crew interaction than SpaceX did. Both vehicles do have an opportunity for crews to do things that related to command and control and navigation and the like, but but neither vehicle are intended to have the crew do that all the time. And if you remember, you know, shuttle was pretty heavily automated. We, we always loved to train to fly assets, and everybody knew that that was probably gonna be a really bad day, that you probably were you probably were not gonna survive because of the just the dynamic aeronautics environment getting to space. But, nonetheless, we trained so that we would at least have some modicum of confidence that if we had to, we'd at least give it our best try. Same thing with entry, but we didn't fly the entry.

But trying to steer £7,000,000 of thrust

Exactly.

On ascent was gonna anyone who's ever flown, you know, a glider or something knows you'd be surprised what hand movements do when you're pushing £7,000,000 of thrust directly. Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah. The shuttle was also different in that it came home more like an airplane. And the and its last stage is the descent. It really was much like an airplane, a really clunky airplane that dropped more like a brick and came in about, what, twice as fast and 4 times as steep as a jetliner. But that last minute or so, there was actually hands on the stick and feet on the rudder pedals. SpaceX and CST, these guys are gonna come back like an Apollo capsule. They're it's just ballistic. You're really not trying to steer anything very much.

Is it even possible to steer anything in the Dragon? Does it have any onboard steering controls, or is it just computer commands to control the thrusters?

As I understand, it has touch screen.

Okay.

So you can tell it right, left, and and I I'm not having been in it or flown it. I think what you do is you you ask it for a certain increment of steering. So you say you touch it right and tell it you want it to go either 2 degrees or you want it to go to a specific heading as opposed to flying it the way you and I fly an airplane where we move the stick to the right until we see on our nose what we like and we roll out. I don't think you can do that with any of the the current day commercial vehicle.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't imagine you could really do it in any ballistic vehicle very much Yeah. Roll about roll around an axis. So they're gonna be looking for what? Systems operators? Do you think they'll care at all about whether you've had some operationally demanding experience where, you know, some high stakes experience to demonstrate, you know, how to stay cool under pressure? Is that gonna matter?

My guess is we're gonna be looking for dominantly for people who work well in a laboratory, who are jacks of all trades and masters of none because they're gonna be people and, you know, I haven't read the debrief from Mike Lopez Alegria, who was the commander for the first Axiom crew, but I understand that one of the one of the I mean, he's a very seasoned, very veteran NASA astronaut, and, he said he was overwhelmed. You know, when they got there to do the experiments that they were scheduled to do because there was so much and he was the only experienced crew member, so he's trying to help his fellow crewmates adjust physically and psychologically to being in space and get them to jump right into experiments. And and and, you know, we didn't do that. We we had a period of, okay, let's let's get acclimated first, and then go into the more serious things as we got to day 2 or or whatever else. But and that, I think, has led NASA to say, okay. If you're coming to the International Space Station, we think it best that you have at least one experienced NASA astronaut or one experienced astronaut on that crew to make sure that they're they're taken care of because the onboard crew just doesn't have the time to do that. So I think they're gonna be looking for jacks of all trades, master of none, people who are pretty adept at having someone teach them how to do something that they may not may not be at all familiar with, but but quick studies and the like. And that's not your average fighter pilot, Or in my case, your average attack pilot.

You know, because I I was a pretty good attack pilot, but that was because I trained years repetitively doing the same thing over and over and over again. And today's astronaut, and especially tomorrow's astronaut, they're not gonna have the opportunity to train over and over and over again on something because they're gonna find that every day is something new or you why go?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that will shift additional burden onto the design of the spacecraft or the design of the experiments themselves. In that vein then, you know, NASA rolled their new vehicle out to the launch pad August 16th and is heading towards the Artemis program, the the Boeing Starliner. So another vehicle to transport people and and cargo back and forth to the station. But the big thing for NASA is going back to the moon with the Artemis program and potentially beyond there to to Mars someday. What kind of astronaut core do you think NASA's gonna be looking for for Artemis and beyond? I mean, the first wave of Artemis astronauts are the current NASA astronauts.

Right? Where do you think that's gonna go?

I think we have an excellent example of what the what the Artemis astronaut is gonna be like, and Jessica Watkins, who's on board the International Space Station right now. I love Jessica for a lot of reasons. Jessica was a was a star rugby player at Stanford as an undergrad, and yet she was an an honors student. And most importantly, from a a cred standpoint, Jessica became the first person to actually publish a paper while onboard the International Space Station.

Oh, I didn't know that.

She published a, peer reviewed paper, she and a group of people, and she said it was pretty difficult because the last pieces of it were actually done, you know, I think sort of review while she was aboard station. And, so she became the 1st astronaut to ever publish a peer reviewed paper while in space. And I think that's the wave of the future. You're gonna find people who are researchers. Peggy Whitson is my my great role model for me because I was one of her guinea pigs when she was a principal investigator doing a lot of blood work before she became an astronaut. You will find Peggy Whitsons tomorrow doing their research, but also flying on the International Space Station. And if they're lucky, they will have an opportunity to do some of their own research because they may have competed it, as something to be flown aboard the space station, and they just happened to arrive there at the same time that their experiment did. You will remember the the the high school science experiment that you and I did for I forget the young man's name, who was in medical school when we finally got around to doing it, you know, on the effects of the magnetic field on on electrical arc.

He is the kind of guy that's gonna be the Artemis astronaut.

So the early shuttle era vision of a payload specialist back in the day when shuttle

was flying everybody hated.

Yeah. Right.

The guy that everybody hated. That's the future astronaut.

Well, when shuttle was gonna fly, you know, 25 times a year or more, which was a dream that never happened, but when it was gonna fly that often, you know, the vision was that the likes of you and I were essentially truck drivers and chief engineer, and the important folks would be the the people who came aboard every different flight with their experiment or their company's cargo, and they actually did. We took them there. We took them back. We kept them safe and, you know, helped out, you know, rig up the electricals and things like that, but they were doing the science. And you're right. At the time, we all hated that idea. Those of us selected as the 1st group of shuttle astronauts who were scientists were going, wait. I thought that's what I was gonna do.

And you're only flying 5 or 8 times a year, you're gonna give one of my seats away. No. Not happy about that at all. But it's gonna come true.

It will but, again, let me go back because I don't wanna mislead people into thinking that that we're gonna be selecting and flying people with their own experiments. I think we're gonna be selecting and flying people who have the capability of working their own experiment. If they happen to coincide that their time on on orbit, their experiment comes into the queue. But it's because of their success as a researcher that we're gonna select them, and the fact that they're smart enough to be able to adapt to anything, whether it's in their discipline or not. We may find a surgeon who's doing, you know, an experiment in meteorology or something else.

Right. It's real science.

They have the wherewithal to do it. And they may very fortunately, like Kate Rubin, you know, I don't know that it was planned that we were specifically gonna fly Kate on the first mission that did gene sequencing, you know, her field

Yep.

Just so happened that she was there. And so she got an op she got the golden opportunity of a lifetime to do something in her own field. Granted it was doctor Francis Collins' experiment, but, but she was in a dream world. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 2 of my flights were earth sciences, and it was fabulous to get to do my stuff, you know, in Orpah. So, Charlie, part of what you're saying makes me think about my own ground based lab and chipboard experiences. And would you say these researchers are gonna have to be I did not have to be a really wizard lab tech. You had a team of techs around me that deal with the sensors or rig up the electron microscope and fine tune it. I didn't have to master all of that. You think the Artemis and later crews are gonna have to be a different blend of lab tech and researcher because of the size of the cadre that you'll have aboard?

When I watched the movie The Martian, I realized that I am probably not gonna be a Mars astronaut. Not because I'm I will be too old, but because I don't have the wherewithal of a Mark Watney. What absolutely dazzled me for those who have not seen The Martian those rare people on this planet, Mark Mark Watney's profession was botanist. But Mark Watney was a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer.

Chemist?

Chemist. He had it all, and that's the modern day astronaut, or that's the future astronaut because we unfortunately, at least not for eons, we're not gonna be able to fly people who are strictly technicians. So those of you who are accustomed to going into the laboratory and the tech has set up all your equipment, you better study hard what what he or she does because you're gonna be doing that on orbit or on the station or on gateway or on moon or on Mars. You're gonna have to be keep going back to this term, a jack of all trades. You know, you will be technicians, scientists, researcher, and all in one, and that's what that's the kind of people we're gonna be looking for. And that's why we're selecting more and more astronauts who I forget who it was who was the penguinologist. Spent Yeah. A year, you know, in Antarctica studying the emperor penguin or people who, have done

No. I'm dealing with everything it takes to overwinter in Antarctica. Right? Exactly. Small cadre of people at a large station. Everyone's doing multiple things.

Exactly.

Yeah. When you say jack of all trades, master of none, just to put a fine point on that, it's jack of all trades and pretty doggone good at all.

Very good at all.

The the master of none doesn't mean you can kinda suck at half of it. You're gonna be

you

gotta be really very good at all of it, but you're not you know, you'll find someone else on earth that could do any piece of it better than you.

Yeah. A master of 1 is not useful.

Right. Exactly. Well, Charlie, thank you. This is great to catch your views on where we are and where we're going, and you've given me new things to keep an eye on as I look at future astronauts coming in and see if we're on trend with your predictions.

Well, you know how we are having flown together twice. We know everything. No. But we also know that we don't know everything, and we're constantly asking other people. But, it's been a pleasure being with you again, Kathy. It's always good to fly with you, and I'll continue to fly with you anywhere.

I'll be your back seat anytime, Charlie b.

Alright.

Thanks again.

Take care.

Thanks so much for joining me on today's mission. For more solo shows and deep dives with incredible guests, along with all the ways to get the podcast and much more, head over to Kathy Sullivan explores.com.

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