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Join us on our quest for the extraordinary!
Sam McKee (@polymath_sam) has 9 university qualifications across 4 subjects including doctorates in history and philosophy of science and molecular biology. He researches both at two British universities and contributes to both space science and cancer research. Meet fellow polymaths and discipline leaders working on the frontiers of research from all over the world. Be inspired to pursue knowledge and drive the world forwards.
Watch and share interviews with professors, lecturers, researchers, engineers, scientists and astronauts, right here! We talk to the most extraordinary people working on the frontiers for humanity, driving research forwards and changing the world that we live in. We dive deep with thinkers, academics and true icons - many of whom you won't yet have heard of.
Listen to us here and on podcast whilst you drive, exercise, do chores, and be inspired to pursue extraordinary in your own life.
www.sam-mckee.co.uk
Polymath World (00:01.314)
Hello and welcome to the Polymath World Channel and we are talking to another astronaut today which is really really terrific. We always love talking to astronauts here on this channel. It's so inspiring. But today is something different because it's not a NASA astronaut or an ESA astronaut. We've got our first commercial astronaut here and not just any commercial astronaut. We have Chris Sombroski from the Inspiration4 mission. The first ever all commercial private citizen flight.
And you can see all about that on the Netflix documentary Inspiration4. But I'm so excited to be joined by you today, Chris. Thanks for taking time out to be here.
Chris Sembroski (00:40.44)
I'm delighted to be here as well and to share my story a little bit with your listeners today.
Polymath World (00:46.892)
Yeah, let's start from the beginning of your story. Did you ever as a kid have any thoughts or dreams of being an astronaut? Was young Chris sort of building model rockets and that sort of thing?
Chris Sembroski (01:00.713)
Well, yeah, I was, right? I was building model rockets as a kid. My dad got me into that. I remember, you know, in elementary school at about age eight, impatiently waiting for the glue to dry. I couldn't wait to get outside and stick an engine in that rocket and see it fly and promptly lost it in a very tall tree on this very first flight. But yeah, I got involved with math.
competitions and building model rockets. And I loved all things that dealt with astronomy and physics, but I never thought that there was a chance that I would be the person who would fly to space. And so I'd always was curious about it, wanted to explore. But to me, know, my brother would be the one who was collecting baseball cards and sports memorabilia, autographs of famous athletes. And I was the kid who had his
collection of 8x10 glossies of astronauts. And that's just really how it was. I never thought I would be one of them, but I always looked up to them thinking that they were some of the best people that were taking us out into the stars. They've done a lot of research. They were training incredibly hard, but that was never something that I believed that I would have a chance to be a part of.
So, but being as close to it as I could be was something that I always wanted to do.
Polymath World (02:35.543)
Did you study engineering or science at school and university?
Chris Sembroski (02:40.351)
Yeah, so I did. I did. Because I was curious in those subjects. You know, I actually had a chance to go to a science and math magnet school in North Carolina called the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. And I absolutely loved it. It was for my last two years of high school as a resident. It was a residential campus. So it's I got to leave home two years earlier than most kids before they go to university. And so
I had a chance to go there and that's where I really was encouraged by some really great teachers to pursue astronomy and other subject areas of passion. And I really liked the opportunities of getting on top of the school roof and looking up at the stars with just a little bit of extra magnification and realizing there is a lot just out of the view of our normal eyes and just with a little bit of help and a little bit of magnification.
You can start to see galaxies and clusters and colors that you didn't realize were hiding behind those clouds. But I remember that I was constantly encouraged to just kind of pursue some curiosities in high school, but also carry that with me into college where I did start out as an engineering student, ended up
working on a degree in aeronautics. And it was when I was in college that I got to see my first space shuttle mission relatively up close. And if you see a space shuttle mission, if anybody remembers watching those solid rocket boosters light, especially on a night launch where the entire night sky lights up from miles away where you can read by how bright it is, just the sound and the power of that rocket taking you into
flight, I knew there was not going to be any other passion for me except doing something that would get me directly involved with that amazing feat of engineering and technology.
Polymath World (04:47.649)
Yeah, I mean, you and I, we are the space shuttle generation. It was pretty normal for us that there were three, four, five shuttle missions a year and you saw people, know, crews of six or seven just regularly going and being part of space. It breaks my heart a little bit that young people will never see that magnificent machine fly again.
Chris Sembroski (05:04.223)
Yeah.
Chris Sembroski (05:10.463)
I mean, I remember working at space camp and walk taking this was when they had a campus that was also in next to Kennedy Space Center. And so we were touring kids through the history of space flight. And that's through the International Space Station processing facility where they were getting modules like ready to take up to the station and bring back. That's and while it was the time when they were constructing the space station in the late 90s, early 2000s and
It was always inspiring to know that the things that I'm seeing directly in front of me, the people that are wearing bunny suits, crawling in and out, making sure things are staying clean and getting ready for flight. These modules are about to be loaded into the space shuttle to go build that orbital laboratory.
Polymath World (05:58.37)
It was an incredible time and it's a different time now. you become an engineer, life, you know, happens. And then I remember seeing the advert for inspiration for during the Super Bowl. Is that where you first saw it?
Chris Sembroski (06:13.041)
Yeah, it was. I mean, there was an interesting time just like the way you mentioned it. You know, working at space camp, I was taking kids through space, simulated space shuttle missions. The space shuttle was the way to go to space. And so that was what was on our minds. And you know, when the last space shuttle flew in 2011, it felt as if we were entering somewhat of a
a dark period more or less in terms of human space flight from the United States. And there was a gap and we didn't really know where we were going to go next and how we were going to get back to space or if we were going to be able to get back to space in some sort of meaningful way. And when SpaceX launched Bob and Doug on that Demo 2 mission for the first time, I dragged my
kids into the living room to watch this on TV. And they just kind of rolled their eyes like, oh, here's dad in his space geekiness coming out again. But it was so impactful and so meaningful to see people be able to fly aboard a dragon on a SpaceX rocket, which was a completely commercially built vehicle. And I never would have thought that from May of
of that year to February of the following year that when that advertisement on during the Super Bowl aired that they would be ready that quickly to send an entire civilian crew to space. But yeah, I was sitting on the couch, you know, as most of us do during that Super Bowl event, you know, whether or not our teams are playing, which my team was not playing that year, but the commercials were fun and the snacks were great. And I...
saw the inspiration for a commercial come up and saw that you could donate to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and went a trip to space and I thought the patch looked kind of cool and knowing that I might just only get a patch out of it but I would be donating to a good cause I you know just surreptitiously you know pulled out my phone and made a small donation I think my wife was in the kitchen I didn't even mention it to her because there's no way anything like this would
Chris Sembroski (08:38.163)
would show up and I just confess later, yeah, I spent a little bit of money and all I got was a cool patch out of it, but hey, it's a space patch, Aaron, it's cool. I imagine she would just roll her eyes and smile at me when she saw that in the mail one day. But I promptly forgot about that donation for an entire month. And then it wasn't until the next month in March where I...
started getting some interesting phone calls one Saturday morning from something called Inspiration4, which I had no idea who that was. My phone was upstairs on the nightstand vibrating away as I was downstairs tending to our young kids and trying to let my wife sleep as it was her turn to sleep in that morning. But when there's a phone next to your head vibrating away like crazy, I heard from her upstairs saying, Chris, come get your phone. It's keeping me awake.
Polymath World (09:35.789)
you
Chris Sembroski (09:36.415)
So I managed to run upstairs, grab the phone and call this person called Inspiration4 back.
I ended up speaking to someone named Kidd. I thought that was an odd name at the time. His real name is Scott Poteet. And he was talking to me about this something, this space mission called Inspiration 4. Yeah, it was a wild moment. I think that he was trying to get me to give him some personal information for my social security number to, you know, some employment history and other things.
The way he was selling it was bad. I mean, it really was. like, what sort of used car warranty am I supposed to be buying from this person on the phone? And I mentioned it to him, and you know, this is some fairly private information I'm going to be sharing with you. And this is kind of a cold call. I'm going to have to do some digging into who you are as well.
Polymath World (10:21.163)
Ha ha ha.
Chris Sembroski (10:39.231)
That's when he took a step back, I imagine in my mind, and he said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you can look me up on LinkedIn. I'm a former weapons school instructor, retired Air Force Colonel, Thunderbird pilot, F-16 instructor. And that's when I raised an eyebrow and thought, well, that's odd. That's not what I expected to hear today. So I figured why not send any information? At worst, you he'd steal my identity and I could get.
a LifeLock subscription and recover everything. But really, he called me back later that day and said, hey, I'd also like to get you on a Zoom call tomorrow morning. That way we can get to know you. You can ask us some questions as part of this deep pool of candidates that we're doing a verification on. And so when I got on that call the next morning, I was sitting in my daughter's playroom at the time as my wife had occupied the office for another skull.
another call she had previously scheduled with some of her friends because we're in the height of COVID and the only interaction with other other humans at this point was over Zoom. And so here I am on a Zoom call with this guy named Kid. I get this other gentleman on the phone on the on the Zoom call named Jared Isaacman who I did not remember who he was at this point. Come to find out you know he's the founder and owner of Shift 4 Payments and
Polymath World (11:43.629)
Ready.
Chris Sembroski (12:06.245)
and an accomplished pilot of his own. And I have these decorative butterflies hanging from the ceiling behind me and, you know, very not office-like aerospace-like decorations all around me because it's the kids' playroom. all of a sudden between kid and Jared, I see a third person show up and it's my friend Kyle from college. The guy who I had built high-power model rockets with.
had toured Kennedy Space Center with, had seen multiple shuttle launches with, had gone to Washington DC to lobby for the opening up of space to more people. And I thought maybe he was another candidate that was in this deep pool that kid was trying to verify and come to find out quickly that, actually, Kyle's the name that we pulled out of the sweepstakes and he can't accept the...
the prize so he's elected to give it to you Chris so you're gonna go to space in six months. That deep pool of candidates got really shallow really quick.
Polymath World (13:09.377)
Wow.
Polymath World (13:12.813)
God.
Polymath World (13:17.533)
Hmm. Gosh.
Chris Sembroski (13:17.641)
So not the call I was expecting. The next thing I know, I'm sitting there in somewhat shock thinking, wow, thank you. Wow, awesome. And on the inside, you're thinking all those different emotions all at once. You're feeling everything all at once between joy, excitement, exhilaration. You want to jump up and scream. At the same time, I have to go upstairs and tell my wife that
her husband's going to be blasted off into space with 1.8 million pounds of thrust at the bottom of the rocket. That's not something she's expecting to hear today. So I remember just sitting there freezing for a few moments after the call just to kind of collect myself and think about what in the world just happened. And yeah, that was all because of watching the Super Bowl just a month prior.
Polymath World (13:54.389)
Yeah.
Polymath World (14:17.109)
Yeah, I remember getting so excited by that Superlava and looking it up myself and then finding out that British people couldn't go. Which was, which was, which was, yeah. But, but being so excited about it and, know, everything you've just said, I felt the exact same thing. That last shuttle flight was, it felt like the end of an era, but it felt like more than that. Like, where is the next flight coming from? And,
Chris Sembroski (14:26.222)
no, he had to be a US citizen at that time,
Polymath World (14:47.125)
I got my twins when Bob and Doug flew on the first Crew Dragon. I got my twins downstairs and I made them watch it too. And I said, you know, this is really significant. You don't know it, but you know, we're back to routine space flight now. Again, it's not just Russia and China controlled.
Chris Sembroski (15:08.031)
Right, isn't that odd? mean, thinking about having to get back to routine space flight, but also it looked as if we were going back 30 or 40 years back to the capsule era, but at the same time realizing there is so much more technology embedded in this vehicle and it's so much safer than anything that we've ever flown before with humans that, well, maybe there's a chance that this does get opened up for more people.
Polymath World (15:21.345)
Yes.
Polymath World (15:32.429)
Mm.
Chris Sembroski (15:37.951)
that the costs are going to come down finally, the opportunities, the innovations that will come from that. Yeah, it represented a lot. It represented the end of a gap in time of a whole decade where, you know, we lost probably a decade's worth of inspiration for new engineers that would want to pursue spaceflight. And Space Camp itself, you know, was teetering on the brink of closure.
Polymath World (15:57.26)
Yes. Yeah.
Chris Sembroski (16:05.331)
because the excitement, the passion, the people that wanted to go to space camp, you know, weren't there anymore. But when Bob and Doug flew, that changed a lot for a lot of people.
Polymath World (16:11.853)
cost.
Polymath World (16:18.529)
Now there is not a lot of time between Bob and Doug's crew dragon flight and your flight. Is that weighing in your mind a lot? mean, it almost seemed like it's, okay, we've done it. It's human rated. We can just start doing it. How much is that weighing on your mind?
Chris Sembroski (16:27.39)
I know.
Chris Sembroski (16:40.323)
Little bit I I mean when someone says you're gonna go to space you don't really question it too much Then I had a conversation with my wife and I realized she's questioning it quite a bit But I you do you think about you know Jared signed the contract for inspiration for Just after crew just after crew one, you know lift it off to go to the space station So I mean they had only had two missions only one successfully returning
Polymath World (16:45.805)
No.
Chris Sembroski (17:09.597)
before he inked that. And we would be the fourth crewed mission for SpaceX. That felt very SpaceX-like. That rapid iteration, once you prove something, what can you do to take it to the next level and do so effectively and safely? I thought about that quite a bit, but not in the, my goodness, I need to see thousands of these
to launch before I feel safe on board. was more of how amazing and incredible the innovation has been and the rigorous safety measures that they've put into place and the testing they've done on the ground rapidly to get to this point. How cool is that? And that's really what I kept thinking. Yeah.
Polymath World (17:55.531)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a healthy way of looking at it. The next thing that I imagine must have been weighing on pretty quickly is you're only training for six months. And not only that, you are a completely civilian crew. Everyone is a rookie flyer. Talk me through those.
Chris Sembroski (18:19.433)
Well, I mean, the first thoughts were like, okay, well, who is this crew going to be made up of? I mean, I was a sweepstakes winner. I was pretty much the absolute wild card in all of this. And it just so happened that I understood a lot of the human spaceflight history from the United States and had taken people through space camp missions and had studied at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University about...
the history of like the Challenger accident. I was in college when Columbia had its breakup through the atmosphere and actually had a chance to tour the hangar where they were putting it back together as part of the investigation. that was a very sobering experience. seeing all that, I mean, that's what I came to the mission with thinking, oh, gosh, maybe just apart from Jared, am I the like the...
the ring, am I a ringer in here who's like just bringing a lot of knowledge and expertise that I don't necessarily see in the general public or who else am I going to be joining in all of this? And it turned out that we all brought some incredible attributes to make an incredible crew. I don't think I knew exactly what would make up a perfect crew, but through it all and through the process of the selection,
the different ways that people were selected for this flight. It formed a crew that you could not have assembled in any other way. We all filled the roles that we needed to fill expertly. yeah, I mean, we had a childhood cancer survivor who became a physician's assistant at St. Jude and that was Haley. And we had someone who had tried to become a NASA astronaut in Dr. Proctor.
you know, made it through 99 % of the interviewing process and got down to that last yes or no question. And she ended up putting that dream on hold for a decade and started pursuing her passion for art and poetry. And that's what ultimately got her her seat on board. And of course, then Jared just having a long, long time love of everything that flies and.
Chris Sembroski (20:45.039)
I think he saw Richard Garriott take flight on the Soyuz and that was his moment of inspiration to think, okay, I want to do that too. And so the all four of us came together and brought our strengths and they were all unique and different. But I think through it all, there was no better crew that we could have put together for this particular mission that was meant to inspire people.
Polymath World (21:10.367)
Yeah, absolutely. You're a wonderful crew. it was I felt like, yeah, this is an all civilian crew. But actually, you could put a checkmark by it that says we've got an engineer, we've got a pilot, we've got someone with a PhD, you who knows NASA, you got a medic. Actually, you kind of you tick all the boxes. I loved seeing it come together.
Chris Sembroski (21:29.757)
Well, that was not... Yeah, and we did not intentionally build a crew that way. Yeah, as Jared kept saying throughout the whole lead up to the launch, like the stars aligned at every turn. I don't know how that happened, yeah, it was... That's exactly like you mentioned. We started ticking off all these boxes, not realizing that that's what we were doing.
Polymath World (21:54.694)
I loved watching it come together on the Netflix documentary and yeah, actually, what was that like? Because you're taking this all in and training, but you've got Netflix cameras following you around everywhere.
Chris Sembroski (22:06.719)
Yeah, which is odd. Yeah, I mean, gosh, you know, there's a bit of a guilty pleasure we take in at home, especially my wife of watching reality TV and, you know, and so getting cameras to follow you around a lot and wearing microphones constantly. What sort of reality show are we making? And there's a bit of skepticism in that for a long time as to, what sort of drama are they going to try to portray?
They did an excellent job of really staying true to the story of showing, you know, the meaningful parts behind things and not just going after, you know, the juicy bits that would make good for make for a good reality TV late at night. So it was jarring, definitely jarring at first. And we went through, they provided us a little bit of media training to know how to answer questions, you know, understand that we are
going to be representing a great cause in St. Jude. And so that you want to make sure that you don't tarnish that image that I felt a responsibility and a duty to help support that mission as it was the biggest driver behind inspiration for. And so, yeah, it took a lot of getting used to, but it also at the same time,
pushed we have you know, my wife and I wait to push back quite a bit to saying all right now I I know the whole story that that Would make for good TV and a good story saying that I'm a family man. I'm a dad of two daughters But I don't want my daughters in this we're gonna let them come Decide when they're ready to be out there, but we'll protect them for now and and not force this upon them that was something that was important to us to respect our privacy because
We were not used to being in the spotlight by any stretch of the imagination. My wife being a school teacher and me being a behind the scenes type engineer and analytics and data guy, this was not familiar territory. Jared has done air shows and he's been in the public eye for a long time and so there was a lot of...
Chris Sembroski (24:29.011)
familiarity with his family about understanding what that environment is like but my wife kept thinking about Krista McAuliffe and her family and how the cameras were turned back towards her mom at those most vulnerable moments and She wanted to know the outcome before Before she would be vulnerable to a lot of those circumstances. Yeah, like you didn't want
Polymath World (24:54.647)
Yeah, and it's not... Sorry, go ahead.
Chris Sembroski (24:59.197)
No, it's like she didn't want to mourn in public, she wanted to know that things are gonna be okay. Yeah.
Polymath World (25:04.543)
Yeah, I thought they did a pretty good job. It is a great documentary and it was putting the emphasis in the right places. But I do remember a poignant moment where you and your wife are looking at the rocket, I think the night before, and it did seem to be sinking in and I felt a bit like, gosh, how would I feel in your situation? But it's also the fact that this is forever, you forever you guys are going to have an element of fame.
for this happening that you guys have to contend with long after.
Chris Sembroski (25:39.337)
Yeah, I mean, you know, that's not terribly a thing we have to work with all the time or, you know, that's it's not something that we're constantly facing. But it's in those moments, you know, every now and then someone will come up or recognize her before they recognize me of all things. you know, like I saw you crying on top of the tower. And that's when I really empathize with you the most out of anybody. They're not talking to me. They're talking to my wife.
And yeah, it showed some more of the human elements of what it takes to go to space. to stretch out on a journey that's unexpected and an adventure that was traditionally filled with lots of risk and danger, but at the same time, it's come so far that it, you know, I hate to use the word it's completely safe, but it's way...
more safe than it has ever been in the past. But I don't know, but you try to tell anybody that is married to their or, you engaged to a significant other that, yeah, this is completely safe. To them, it is or it isn't. You're coming back or you're not. It's black or it's white. There's no like, well, it's less than 1 % chance of risk. Well, there's still that chance. And, you know, I appreciate that you're taking this risk of your own, Chris, of sitting on top of this rocket.
Polymath World (26:39.959)
Yeah, certainly.
Chris Sembroski (27:05.955)
But when you have a family, the risk of what the after effects are going to be are very much placed on your partner. Because if things go the way they shouldn't, then there's a lot of things that will have to happen and the burdens primarily placed on the loved ones that are on the ground.
Polymath World (27:24.373)
Yeah, and you can't help but feel that with that few launches, even though SpaceX do things the way they do, it's still, for all intents and purposes, experimental, even though it's now human rated, to fly that few times to space. I wanted to ask you, was it you or someone else who chose the call sign Hanks?
Chris Sembroski (27:46.319)
gosh, well, that, yeah, that leads right into, yeah, the training that they gave us because in order to be ready for anything that could potentially come up, they gave us, you know, the abbreviated version of what all the other astronauts, NASA astronauts go through in terms of safety training. I say the abbreviated version because you take the International Space Station connection part out of it and so that you can, you know, cut off a lot of...
and getting ready for flight, but we had other things to consider because we were going to be staying in Dragon a lot longer than other previous missions. And so we had to learn how to live and operate in space within Dragon. And part of that was, you know, we're gonna take all of our media calls from inside Dragon as well. And in the course of training, we get prepared to do a fully integrated SIM.
with Mission Control and I believe there was a representative from St. Jude standing by as we're practicing what is it like to do a media call from space with everybody integrated together? we going, does everybody know how to make the connections from space to the ground, to the phones, to the zoom interface correctly? And as all good trainers do, you think you're going through a nominal procedure and all of a sudden you get handed a green card that throws in an anomaly.
And at this point we have our iPads with us and so we were getting airdrop communication from outside the simulator. so Jared's iPad makes the little airdrop indication sound and he pulls it up and reads out loud that Chris is going to be loudly and violently ill during a media event. And I kind of just.
Second guessed him when he said that like, okay, you're kidding, right? It's funny. Haha. Chris is gonna get sick again No, seriously Chris here read it. So We get on this call we're going through it. It's like, alright I'll start saying my spiel and so I've got the microphone in hand and you know about a minute into it I I dive into feeling sick pretending to be in
Chris Sembroski (30:05.855)
It's like, hang on, let me pass the microphone over and I just start making these horrible wrenching sounds and trying to look as sick as I possibly can and be as loud and obnoxious with it as I absolutely could. Mission Control is just dying in their seats, I find out later, just rolling on the floor with laughter and Haley's being incredibly professional with it as I hand the microphone to her. It's like, well, as you can hear, we are...
experienced some difficulties up here so we're gonna have to cut this short today just as if it's a normal Tuesday of some kind or another and but anyway the result of that was for my Oscar-worthy performance and as Tom Hanks has also portrayed people in space I got to call sign Hanks.
Polymath World (30:55.509)
that sounds like a great way to earn a really great call sign. that's terrific. So how was the launch for you?
Chris Sembroski (30:56.244)
Yeah.
Chris Sembroski (31:07.743)
the launch, incredible. Our training was excellent. And so everything leading up to that point, just prior to ignition, felt and sounded just like training. The biggest difference was that, you you started to see the sun set outside the window. You saw the crew access arm retract and...
But you and you started to hear the different sounds of the fueling of the rocket, you know, about 35 minutes prior to liftoff. And then when the engines lit and we left the launch pad, then you knew it was for real this time. This was exactly, you felt that initial push of acceleration. It wasn't a sudden jolt or a bang. It was just, okay, the brakes are released and you are now taking off on that runway. And that acceleration just continued.
for the next eight and a half minutes.
What a feeling that was. We experienced up to three and a half, four Gs on the way up. And the sounds of hearing the turbo pumps pump the fuel through the engines was similar to like a Formula One race car that you hear it spool up and spool down. And it was just an incredible feeling of just nonstop acceleration.
And of course, eight and a half minutes now you're orbiting the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, like 25,000 kilometers an hour. just, one of the most incredible experiences I think I've ever had, yeah.
Polymath World (32:51.981)
You guys made the decision, Jared made the decision quite early on that you were going to go to quite a high altitude. Sort of about twice the ISS altitude, more like Hubble's altitude. yeah, that's high. People haven't been that high really since the Hubble repair missions. So what, from that high, I've spoken to Michael Fowle and other astronauts who've done ISS, sorry, have done Hubble repair.
Chris Sembroski (33:12.382)
Right.
Polymath World (33:21.759)
EVAs and they talk about difference in the view of the Earth from that high. You can sort of see the whole of the planet. What was that like for you? That first overview effect?
Chris Sembroski (33:32.755)
Yeah, you really can. Yeah, I mean, especially they gave us this beautiful window, this bubble shaped window. Since we didn't need to go to the space station, like you mentioned, they replaced that with this big bubble dome. And you could you could you could see the entire Earth without interruption, the entire circumference of it. And for your listeners, I'm holding my hands above my head because it's, you know, to us, the Earth was always in the up orientation.
And so when I was looking up at Earth and I was able to just to rotate my head and see the entire horizon, it, you know, yeah, it took me, it's hard to describe it sometimes. Yeah, I knew I wasn't going to see lines and borders and, you know, those things that we think are so important on the ground that.
And that all is true and that thin blue line of the atmosphere on the edge of the surface that is all the air that we get to breathe and that protects us from the vacuum of space. that's true too. Seeing the earth like that, what I didn't expect was to feel more closely connected to it than I'd ever felt before.
seeing the snow-capped Andes Mountains next to the Gobi Desert in South America, or seeing the reddish-brown interior of Australia next to the coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef in those contrasting colors, to even seeing the darker plumes of smoke coming out of the middle of South America, I felt as if it was an incredible introduction
to our home planet Earth, that we should all be introduced to our planet this way. Because now that's a mission for me, is to go and experience all these places I've now seen from space, to now go visit them and be amongst that geography and to meet the people that live in those areas. Like I felt a better closeness to the Earth, even though I really felt a...
Chris Sembroski (35:55.791)
separation. I could feel that there was this blackness that separated us from the top of the atmosphere and it was quite a gap but at the same time emotionally I felt really connected to everything I was seeing.
And you're right about there is a difference in altitude. You know, we had to lower come down to a lower altitude, a lower orbit prior to reentry. And it's a completely different experience. know, it looks like the Earth's going by faster in the window. You can't quite see as far across the horizon. And one of the bigger differences aboard between our mission and the Hubble missions, you know, the Hubble Space Telescope
you know, is at a inclination very similar to the latitude of Kennedy Space Center. But we were flying at an inclination similar to the International Space Station, which meant that we were able to see farther into the northern and southern poles of the planet than most people have ever seen. And then there was that one point, I think we were able to just see that.
a small part of Antarctica that hadn't been seen by human eyes from space since the Apollo era. Of course, that's different now because the From 2 mission that launched not too long ago from our conversation here, that was a polar orbit. So they were able to experience the poles more directly.
But overall, being able to, what mattered though in that moment was that I knew that I wanted to take as many pictures of the Earth as I possibly could. It was the same thing for my wife and I at our wedding. It's like our memories are gonna fade. We'll forget the taste of the food, but we will always have those pictures to help remind us of where we were. And so I took that to heart on our space mission. And I had a couple of good mentors to help us.
Chris Sembroski (37:56.991)
practice with the cameras and you know between John Krauss and who does rocket photography and then John, Don Pettit gave us an hour and a half long crash course in space photography. It's like well if I'll listen to him definitely he's taken some most incredible pictures from space from the space station and when he was thinking about it he said you know you're not going to be able to match the photography that the space station astronauts get.
Polymath World (38:07.607)
Wow.
Polymath World (38:12.705)
Yeah, definitely.
Chris Sembroski (38:25.759)
No, you just not. You only have three days. They have six months to practice and prepare, prepare. And you know that you're going to be at a higher altitude. You're not going to be able to zoom in better than Google Maps does even. So he said, what's different and what opportunity you have here, guys, is to to zoom out and capture things that matter to your heart, that that speak to you, that that you
that invokes some sort of feeling and just captures some beauty. And I think that's what you guys can do differently. So I took those lessons and I really started taking pictures just as you mentioned, like the Hubble astronauts kind of indicated, and that's, we get a chance to see the Earth in a new way, in a much broader and wider angle. And so most of the pictures that I took were worth that in mind.
Like how can I bring back the beauty of the earth in a way that not many people have seen?
Polymath World (39:27.851)
Yeah. You did a little bit of science, didn't you? I mean, I imagine a lot of it was human guinea pig stuff, but anything particularly interesting?
Chris Sembroski (39:36.219)
yeah. right. Well, I mean, that's the other part. Like we didn't want to be the first off civilian crew and the last. We want to make sure other crews can be successful. So yeah, we were, we did blood draws and, you know, and, immuno essays and, you know, we, did microbiome swabs of our different areas on our body and of, of, of the capsule itself. you know, we.
We were testing out a handheld ultrasound device that you could connect to an iPhone to get really good indications for what's going on inside the body. Yeah, we were testing out some techniques that were new and some of the guinea pig aspects of that were how much training do we need to give someone so that they can do meaningful research in space?
And the researchers learned from that aspect as well. But it was fascinating to see how the microbiomes change and our cells change and how things migrate from one astronaut to another in space. And then of course that led to a whole series of papers being published about a year ago.
Polymath World (40:57.419)
Yeah, that's amazing. Did you get sick in the end? Or did anyone on the crew get some space sickness?
Chris Sembroski (41:05.631)
I think both Cyan and I felt it a little bit. Fortunately, no one lost their lunch in space on our mission. But I mean, half, we're told, going through training, half of all the astronauts that go to space do get sick in some fashion or another. Haley did take the opportunity to practice her medical skills and was able to give each of us, well, Cyan and I, both a shot of medicine so that we wouldn't be sick.
so that she got to practice that. I still remember the feeling of her jabbing my arm with a needle. She was not gentle with that. She got it right where it needed to be. Didn't want to miss, I guess. But it did the effect that I needed so that I wouldn't be sick in space. Because, I mean, if you're only up in space for three days, you don't want to spend half of it just feeling awful.
take the medicine at the earliest sign of any sort of discomfort or discomfort. yeah, thankfully we didn't have to go any farther than that. And we were able to do all the things we needed to do after a little bit of rest and yeah, a little bit of medicine.
Polymath World (42:23.179)
Yeah, did you sleep at all? I think if I was in your position, I probably wouldn't sleep very much at all.
Chris Sembroski (42:30.245)
I mean, the human body is funny that way. We were busy. We really were. And there was a lot to do. And so at the end of our day, we were tired. We all went to sleep right on schedule. I don't think you need a full eight hours. I don't think I ever slept the full eight hours. I was awake after six, I think, every night. yeah, we got tired and needed that rest.
Polymath World (42:59.147)
Okay, yeah, I remember Jeff Hoffman, famous shuttle astronaut, saying that it is first trip to space. He just didn't sleep. He slept next to the window of the shuttle and just watched the world go by. How was re-entering?
Chris Sembroski (43:13.822)
Yeah.
Chris Sembroski (43:17.439)
Reentry wait when I remember going through it. It didn't feel all that dynamic at first and I remember watching a video that I decided to take later and realized the plasma going by the window that was you know below my feet was Very much more intense than I remember it from my eyes And I probably should have been a little more worried than I was but it was it was way more intense than liftoff
And I say that because you can imagine all that energy that takes you, that is required to take you off the ground to get you to the orbital velocity. You got to get rid of all the energy to safely splash down at about 15 miles an hour instead of 17,000 miles an hour. And it may not have peaked at a high G.
We may not have peaked at such a high g-force level on the re-entry, but we sustained four g's for a longer period of time and that's right on the border of uncomfortable and difficult. mean three g's you can handle that constantly, practically all day, but you start pushing four g's you're consciously thinking, I just need to remember to just breathe normal, that this is just temporary, this feels really heavy.
but we'll get through it. I do remember feeling excited and seeing the awe of seeing the clouds change direction quickly through the window while I was still able to see out and as this Dragon spacecraft's making its S turns through the atmosphere and I thought that was really cool. And then of course when the parachutes come out and we hear four healthy mains and
Jared admits later that his eyes might have sweated just a little bit at that point to see the good parachutes there Had to rip off my iPad from my velcro and hand it to Cyan so she could take a picture of the camera views of the four good healthy mains and then splashing down in in the Atlantic Ocean, you know what? You know, you splash down. It feels like a someone takes like a plastic bat and just smacks the back of your chair
Chris Sembroski (45:44.159)
when you splashed into the water initially. But it was a wild ride for sure. And with all the bumps and jolts and bounces that they predicted.
but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It was fun, yeah.
Polymath World (45:59.586)
Yeah, amazing. Absolutely amazing. So tell us a bit about what you're doing now. You're working as an engineer with Blue Origin and you're involved in academia as well. What's life like now?
Chris Sembroski (46:13.919)
Right, so I did take a job at Blue Origin where I was working to help to get their orbital class vehicle called the New Glenn to flight. And it did so successfully in January of 2025 of this year, which is so, so happy to see, know, and knowing that the work on the avionics units that I was a part of functioned correctly. And there's public evidence of that because we saw camera views from space through
And some of that information had to get processed and put through the units that I was working on and touching. so I have since though, I have moved on from Blue Origin and I am primarily focusing on a lot of outreach and nonprofit work at the moment with, well, on the education side, I get to go back to my alma mater and I've been teaching classes for them at Embry-Riddle.
teaching some space courses for some undergraduate and graduate students, which has been so fun for me. And the students that are part of these programs are from all walks of life. And some are early career, some are late career, and they bring so much to these courses. I learned probably as much from them as they learned during the course. And that's been inspiring for me. And then...
I'm also having this opportunity to work with the Deep Space Initiative, is Sarah Sabri's international program that enables researchers from all over the world to collaborate together no matter where they're from, provide resources to allow people who are curious and wanting to do research in space topics to give them the resources to be able to do so.
places where they may traditionally may not have the same availability and access to do that. that's been a rewarding change for me. And that's, I think that's some of the most important aspects to what I took away from being in space. Not just feeling closer to the planet overall and wanting to be.
Chris Sembroski (48:33.959)
an avid traveler to experience some of those places firsthand. But connecting people together and giving them similar opportunities in whatever ways that I can make happen. With the end goal in mind, thinking that, you know, what we think is really important in our day-to-day lives, that a lot of those problems and things that we struggle with constantly, they fall away to insignificance.
when you get that broader view of the Earth and how we really are all in this thing together. And Nicole Stott says that we should be treating each other and this planet as crew, as we are not just pastors on this spaceship of Earth. And it's absolutely true. If we can travel around the entire globe in an hour and a half, it's really not that big of a place.
Polymath World (49:30.229)
Yeah, sadly I have to wrap up now, what in one minute, what is the legacy of Inspiration for? You know, the first ever commercial crew, obviously that will live in history, but you know, what are you really hoping will emerge from it?
Chris Sembroski (49:47.729)
I think that Inspiration4 did a lot in terms of changing the narrative of what an astronaut looks like. What does it require someone to, of someone to be able to go to space and do so successfully? The old days of having to have the right stuff and being the perfect physical specimen or having advanced degrees is not a requirement to just be a part of space travel.
It really showed that we can support people in numerous ways, in ways that we haven't done traditionally, to allow people to experience what it is to see the earth this way, and to even venture out farther towards the moon and beyond. I think it has inspired so many kids and adults to think differently and think bigger than what they ever thought in the past. so kids like me who, growing up thought that, I...
won't be able to fly to space, but I can maybe work towards something close to it. I can start thinking more directly that, I really do want to be someone who travels into space. And those dreams really can come true. It may not always be in the path you expect, but I think we are building those paths to space.
Polymath World (51:07.285)
Yeah, and just like Bob and Doug's flight, know, your flight's going to be really, really important in history. It's really amazing to think about, but it's just the beginning. Thank you so much for joining us today, Chris. It's been amazing to hear your story and I could ask you a thousand more questions, but I really appreciate your time today.
Chris Sembroski (51:18.93)
Absolutely.
Chris Sembroski (51:26.003)
Now I can sit here and answer them all day. I really appreciate having a chance to talk with you.
Polymath World (51:31.378)
wonderful. Thank you, look forward to catching you again sometime then.
Chris Sembroski (51:36.936)
Excellent. Thanks again.