SW: I think what’s having a positive impact, aside from movies like The Martian, are the successes the commercial companies are having. I think SpaceX, the accomplishments they’ve had, have had quite a positive effect, and have brought back to the forefront of people’s thinking our space program. That’s always good. A lot of times, when we were in the routine of flying people on the shuttle, and flying people to the Space Station, the media wasn’t necessarily interested. So therefore the word wasn’t getting out to the general public that we had all of this great stuff happening. Right now SpaceX is doing wonderful things. They’re getting a lot of press. We’ve got Orbital ATK doing a lot of great things. We’ve got Jeff Bezos and his company, Sierra Nevada, flying his rockets. We’ve got Virgin Galactic. So there’s all these companies and people out there doing stuff, as well as the Mars rovers, and the pictures coming back from Jupiter, and the pictures coming back from Pluto. And all these things are coming together at this time, and putting NASA, and all the work NASA has been doing for years, and what we are doing now, in the forefront.

PF: Going back, things have dramatically changed since the days of the Cold War—you even worked for a year with Russia’s space program…

SW: Yes. It’s really interesting. I get the question a lot because certainly in today’s political climate, our two countries are not the best of friends. It’s really interesting to me, not just with the Russians, but working with all of our international partners, when you get down on the engineer and scientist level, everyone is the same the world over. Everyone is very dedicated to their job, everybody is passionate about their space program as well as our combined space programs. So in terms of working with the Russians on the day-to-day, engineer-to-engineer type interactions, everything is fine. It’s once you start getting higher up in management, when bigger decisions have to be made… I don’t want to say there are issues, but there are different issues that have to be worked through in such an international partnership. And then, once you get up to the politicians, then you start hearing all of the extreme rhetoric. Day to day, we worked very well together, and we were of the same mind in terms of what our mission goals are. So we actually are a big family. It’s really nice.

PF: You started out working on robotics for the international space station before becoming an astronaut. How did you make that transition?

SW: So, becoming an astronaut was something I always wanted to do since I was a kid. And I just kept applying until I was selected. So I went through the selection process and went to the final stages five times over a period of fourteen years or so before I was selected. So all my years I spent working at JSC (Johnson Space Center), I just kept adding to my, I don’t know, personal resume as it were. Working with robotics let me have some exposure to working with my international partners. I actually had one year where I stopped doing robotics stuff and worked with the Russians doing avionics integration. I lived in Moscow for a year. That was certainly not something I was very familiar with but it gave me a lot of experience working with the Russians, and, again, another side of working with the international partners. I think everything, all that experience, built up to me being attractive to being selected. And then once I was selected having that experience made the job a lot easier for me than for someone who maybe didn’t have that experience.

PF: What was it like actually getting to fulfill that childhood dream? Not just the emotional experience but also the practicality of, “Hey, I’m in outer space?”

SW: (gasps) Oh! Oh, it was such an awesome time! I mean, it was—you’re right. The emotional experience... it was satisfying to be able to do something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. I mean it just—it… it…. I mean, I realize it’s really rare that people get to fulfill those dreams the way I got to fulfill my dream. And then, living and working on the space station, I felt that I had found my niche in life. I enjoyed every minute of it. Even when some of the work was tedious. I was really happy to be up there. I never got bored. I could’ve gone home, I could’ve stayed longer. Whatever NASA needed me to do I was fine with it. It was just… it was, top to bottom, a great experience in space. It was a lot of fun.

PF: What’re you doing with the space program now?