New Delhi: NASA astronaut Sunita Williams returned to Earth Wednesday after an unplanned extended stay of over 9 months aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Williams and fellow astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore were originally set to return much earlier, but technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft delayed their departure. NASA deemed the vehicle unfit for the return journey, and the two astronauts splashed down off the coast of Florida in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
In an October 2007 episode of Walk the Talk with Shekhar Gupta, Williams spoke about her childhood; her relationship with Indian-American astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who died in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster; her Indian heritage; and journey to space.
SG: I do not think there’s anybody with access to a television set who doesn’t know who my guest this week is. Astronaut Sunita Williams, welcome to Walk the Talk.
SW: Thank you. It’s really nice to be here, Shekhar. I appreciate it.
SG: And welcome to Walk the Talk in Delhi and right next to the module in which our own astronaut, we consider you as our own as well, but the original, the first, the first…Rakesh Sharma.
SW: Right, right. Yeah, I had the pleasure of meeting him when I was in Hyderabad and this is quite a different capsule from what I went up in the space shuttle. But it’s again just an amazing, amazing ride to go to space and anyway, any way to get there is great.
SG: And for you, 195 days out, four walks, I think 29 hours altogether, record for a woman astronaut. Tell us a bit more about it.
SW: The time went by so fast. I mean, 195 days, it just flew by, literally. We had so much to do. We are in the middle of the construction of the International Space Station and that is why we had so many spacewalks . When I was up there, changing the temporary electrical and temporary heating and cooling system to both more permanent.
SG: I thought I would come to that a little bit later, but you started it, this whole business of setting up a space station. I know that you take John Young very seriously. Apollo 16, he walked on the Moon and he inspired you, I believe you listened to him. And he has always said that you need to do something, we can’t carry on being a one planet species, you need to fix that.
SW: Exactly. And the space station is just the stepping stone. Space station is just a laboratory, a collaborative of work from countries all over the world together to help us to try to understand what it is like to live in space for a long period of time and then we can use that laboratory to help us develop materials and new flight control systems, for example, of how we are going to leave low earth orbit, go back to the Moon and hopefully on to Mars.
SG: It’s also amazing how in this country, you know, we have had Rakesh Sharma, we have had a space program of our own and we have had leaders who have used the space program or the idea of using space to fire people’s imaginations, but it is you and Kalpana Chawla who have made such a difference.
SW: I think I am on the edge of continuing the legacy of Kalpana. She was just an incredible person, an amazing friend, and I learned quite a bit from her just about life as well as being an astronaut. I think one time she mentioned to me and to many people, which was also printed that she was a citizen of the universe and I mentioned earlier at another talk that I didn’t even understand that, she had so much foresight until I went to space.
I think I would like to explain that a little bit to the kids and that’s part of my charter here in India, to try to explain that in a picture which they will understand. I have explained what I saw from space, all the continents, and our planet as one big place where people from all over the world live together and the borders—a subject that I brought up many times now—that is only really the little lines that we draw with pen on a piece of paper, they are not really there on the world themselves. So when you are up in space and you see that and then you see the vastness of the universe, you really feel that you are just one little piece, one little part.
SG: And I believe what persuaded you to come to the very unscientific New Delhi was to meet Kalpana’s family.
SW: Absolutely, I was here in 2003 after the Columbia accident and came back with them, we became great friends, and absolutely if I was coming to India, I was coming to see my second family, Kalpana’s family.
SG: Yeah, because for all of India, there would have been a lot of excitement about you being up there and a lot of concern about you but it got so heightened because of Kalpana and because of what had happened.
SW: Absolutely and unfortunately the Columbia accident brought back a lot of the ideas, the thrill of space for everybody because they understood, yes we are still going to space, it became a little bit routine and people thought it was just everybody was going.
SG: Like climbing Everest now. People can climb backwards, people can climb on one foot, now somebody wants to build a highway so it is not quite so simple.
SW: Right, and no matter how we look at space flight right now, it is still experimental. We still don’t know every single thing about it, it is dangerous, we are on the cutting edge with our spacecraft, they just have enough power to get to space and you know they are designed to come back with automated flight control systems and so we do have quite a bit to learn.
I think I am always what we call a glass half full person. I think one of the positive things about the Columbia accident was that this awareness of space travel and this awareness of science and technology and math and I think I feel that from the children here in India, it is great.
SG: And how all of India embraced you, forget the other half, pardon my saying so.
SW: Oh absolutely, absolutely. I mean it is just overwhelming here in India, just the small towns that I went to in Gujarat and all the way up to the capital city here in Delhi, the kids, they are the best, their eyes get huge, the questions just flow out of them, they are so excited about space and really want to know about it.
SG: And you have been competing with our victorious cricket team, you have done fine, haven’t you?
SW: Well, unfortunately I don’t really understand cricket but I am happy, India did a great job and won the big match the other day.
SG: Never say that to anybody in India, on a flight, on the streets, you will get a one hour tutorial on intricacies of cricket.
SW: Oh I hope so, I hope so one day, that would be good, I would love to learn how to play.
SG: So you tell me, how do you balance this, if I may put it this way, Massachusetts and Mehsana? Because you are very American, I know you are a Boston Red Sox fan.
SW: Of course, of course, you know I have family and friends all over the world and I am very lucky for that, people are just wonderful but I feel a big connection of course to Massachusetts, I was a child there, I also feel a big connection to India. When we flew over, I mean I think I was drawn to the window, trying to find where my father grew up and so going back to that area, Jalsan and Kadi and Nadipur and the Mehsana district of Gujarat was just overwhelming, it was just so wonderful. There is a lot of history and friends of my father from when he was a young child, it was really, really wonderful.
SG: I was reading one of your earlier interviews. Talking about your father, you said what he did, coming from India to settle down in America, was perhaps the most enterprising, the bravest thing to do.
SW: I feel that way because, you know, I have challenged kids here to undertake things that they don’t know, because it seemed like my life was a little bit known, you know, every step I took, granted I wasn’t that familiar with it but I had seen other people who had become successful in that arena. For example, going into the military, becoming a pilot. Or what my father did, he followed in his brother’s footsteps coming to the US but that also meant leaving behind so much that you knew to try something very, very different in a very faraway place. We were talking about it just this morning about how he traveled on a boat, not on an airplane, so it was a many-day journey to the United States. And I think that takes a lot of bravery to just go and try something really new in another country across the world.
SG: You grew up in a household full of diagrams of the human brain?
SW: Yeah, that’s very funny. On our dining room table, [there] used to be all sorts of pictures of the human brain as he was diagramming and trying to understand neuroanatomy. While we were young, we saw brains in a jar as they were going to be dissected and tried to be understood.
SG: But that somehow didn’t drive you into medicine or biology?
SW: Maybe it scared me, I am not sure.
SG: And something scared you? You wanted to become a diver, you became a pilot, you wanted to become a fighter pilot, a jet pilot, became a helicopter pilot, but second choices didn’t deter you.
SW: Right, and I think the message there is what life hands you, you take advantage of, you become good at it and you enjoy it, then other doors open that you never would have expected before and I think that is sort of how my life happened and how I became an astronaut. So I think this message is one that a lot of kids should hear because I think you wind up missing out or not being able to excel because you feel that maybe you didn’t get what you wanted, so then you feel a little bit bad about that, but instead take advantage.
SG: You may get the second best, but you can still become the best?
SW: Absolutely, absolutely. There are new things that you’ll find.
SG: Tell us also the influence that Top Gun had on you and Tom Cruise.
SW: Yeah, when I was graduating college, that movie had just come out and actually I had never even known what Top Gun was until I went to the movie and then I saw it. And so you see jets flying around and that is absolutely what I wanted to do. I thought that was the coolest thing ever and so that is what I put in for my first choice and way back then the options for women in the US military were a little bit more limited, so I didn’t get jets, I got helicopters. But you know that was great, I had a wonderful time flying helicopters and I was able to get into test pilot school, which allowed me to then become a test pilot.
Also read: Splashdown! Stranded for 9 months, astronauts Sunita Williams & Butch Wilmore back on Earth
SG: I believe you were a tough test pilot, did you sometimes knock your trainees on the head or on the knuckles or the knees?
SW: Oh no, I was nice, but that was also the first time I really felt that some of the science and math can be applied to real things that we do in normal life and it took me all the way till I was in my mid-twenties to understand that.
SG: I only figured that in my mid-forties, until then I thought math was a complete waste.
SW: Exactly, and I remember in college wondering why am I learning this and that is one of these points that gets discouraging for young kids today where they don’t understand why they are learning the things that they are learning. It is one of the reasons I would like to become a school teacher, to be able to bring back some of these practical examples in life into the classroom.
SG: And also to convince kids maybe that rocket science isn’t rocket science.
SW: Yeah, isn’t hard, rocket science is okay.
SG: As a helicopter pilot you went into real operations in the Persian Gulf, carrying everything from potatoes to bombs.
SW: Yeah, I did two long deployments and a couple of short deployments. My first long deployment—we went to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. And the second deployment—we went all the way to the Persian Gulf. We were very busy. We were on supply ships.
And that means the ship that has all the supplies for all the rest of the ships in the battle group. And so our ship would be steaming straight ahead, and the rest of the ships would come up alongside. We would transfer fuel by gas line, and the helicopters would do what we call vertical replenishment, VERTREP for short. And we would transfer everything in a sling load underneath the helicopters, everything from eggs to toilet paper.
SG: So were you then conscious of your Indianness ever, or were your colleagues conscious of your Indianness?
SW: I think that is in the same light of being a woman. I think I have never let anything about me deter me from what I was doing, one way or the other. I am not saying it is good. I am not saying it is bad. I just never let anything sort of get in my way. I have mentioned this when I am talking to kids, too, the helicopter doesn’t know if you’re a man or a woman. It doesn’t know if you are white, if you are black, if you are Hispanic, if you are Indian, if you are Chinese, doesn’t know. And so, you know, if you have felt that there were any limiting factors, that is all your own perceptions in your mind.
SG: And one day your helicopter landed in the Johnson Space Center.
SW: Eventually. When I was in test pilot school, when we went to Johnson Space Center as a tour there, I mentioned John Young and he had mentioned that helicopter flying was something that they did to learn how to land the lunar landers. And I thought, wow, well, this is an opportunity for me. You know, if I am the only one, again, telling myself that I am not going to be an astronaut.
SG: John Young was a Navy pilot, too.
SW: He was a Navy jet pilot. Yeah. Absolutely. So I figured we are going to go back to the Moon at some point in time. My skills are useful. So why not?
SG: And tell us a bit about the training and how tough it was. Were there moments where you thought it was too much?
SW: As an astronaut? Yes. Oh, no, I will take that back a little bit. But there are times that I thought training to be an astronaut was just for me. My family is very outdoorsy.
We like to go camping. That was sort of our activity as a vacation. And we would climb mountains and we were also swimmers and did a lot of athletic stuff. So there is a lot of athleticism that is in training to be an astronaut, so far as survival training, some of the outdoor leadership courses that we take, some of the spacewalking stuff that we take is very physically demanding. The robotic work is just like flying. So at times I thought this job was just for me. Now, when we start talking about orbital mechanics, we start talking about physics and asteroids and black holes, and there’s some people around me that have their PhDs in astrophysics and they know all about this. I thought to myself, what am I doing here? There are some incredibly smart people. Of course, there’s millions of smart people working for NASA and all the space centers around the world that are making these spacecraft fly. But they are also very human. And they put it in a term that even me as a helicopter pilot can understand. I mean, Kalpana was a fine example of one of these extremely smart people who was working for the program. She was working out at Ames and then she came to Johnson Space Center as an astronaut. So there is a wide variety of folks that are working there.
SG: Did that accident have an influence on you or did it ever worry you when you were up there? You had a little bit of a niggle as well on your craft.
SW: You know, it never worried me, you know, because after the accident, we went through a lot, looking back at our program for a number of reasons about how we all work together. Secondly, the technical aspects of what happened and how to prevent that. And we really did a lot of soul searching and research. And we waited a couple of years, making sure we got the right test techniques. And then we started to fly again. And I think all of us in the office, nobody left because of the accident. Everybody felt that the whole crew of Columbia, their desire would be to continue on there. They were living proof that exploration is something that needs to continue on. It is just that we don’t know at all.
SG: But this whole talk that NASA had been cutting corners, that there was too much economy, that quality was maybe being compromised, the safety was being compromised. Did that ever work in the back of their heads?
SW: No, I don’t think so. Because I think the organisation, when we know that there is a problem, we will hunt it down and do the best of our ability to try to understand it and figure it out. The part that is tough is to guess what the unknowns are. You know, spaceflight is again something that we can’t repeat here on Earth, so we don’t know every little aspect of it. We know a lot about it now that we have done it a lot, but we don’t know every single thing about it.
So there are some things here and there that are going to catch us by surprise.
SG: Tell me a few things that you will take back from this India trip.
SW: Oh, well, first and foremost, the warmth and interest and overwhelming support I feel like is all that I have seen. The whole Indian population has had for my sojourn and the whole idea of going to space. I think the people here are a little bit surprising to me, they really want to get involved. I mean, you hear about India’s space program, but the Indian manned space flight program hasn’t always been on the forefront. But I am hearing loud and clear from the kids that they want to get involved.
SG: But science and math and technology is, I think, the scourge of the Indian kid. All study science and math, but they also go to get 100 percent, because in this country, if you don’t get that much, you don’t even get admitted to the next class.
SW: And I heard that the schooling here is pretty tough. And I have mentioned a couple of times about my career path and not always being number one, just being somewhere in the middle of the road.
SG: Don’t say that. Many Indian parents will switch off their TV sets at this point.
SW: Well, I mean, the point there is it is okay to make mistakes if you learn from them. If you don’t let them swallow you up and you and you regress back. If you make a mistake and you go and you learn something more from that mistake and you continue on and press on even harder, then I think you have probably learned a little bit more.
SG: And the real message of your life is that even when you don’t get your first choice, it doesn’t matter, you can get it.
SW: Yes, you can. If you handle it gracefully and learn from there and press on to the next level, you are probably one step ahead even.
SG: Even one more thing. I read, I think, a NASA interview before you went up in space. I think you said that each time somebody comes back, it inspires a lot of people to think into saying, look, could be me now.
SW: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
SG: We see what you have done now to Indian kids.
SW: I hope so. I mean, I see them and I see myself as a little kid. I hope they see a little of them in me. So I see we have a lot in common.
SG: Probably the youngest population in the world right now. Demographics of India being what they are.
SW: Well, I am very encouraged by it because I see that they want to do this type of work or any type of work. They want to get out there and be part of the world. Absolutely.
SG: So I do hope you come back now. This was the fourth visit, wasn’t it? I hope you come back [for the] fifth time now. Soon enough.
SW: I hope so.
SG: Even happier times.
SW: I was invited by a couple of people to come back on a more annual basis and hopefully go into the classrooms with the kids and find out what they are working on. And talk to them about what it is.
SG: If you want to teach math, physics, astronomy. Come to an Indian high school. And I think you will find the best kids.
SW: Okay, I am all over it. Thank you.
SG: … And they will find you inspiring as all of us, too.
SW: Thank you very much. It has been great talking to you.