into the search box at the top of the page. >> hi there everyone. my name >> tonight we're lucky thave nicholas schmidle in conversation with buzz bissinger discussing nicholas his new book , "test gods: virgin galactic and the making of a modern astronaut" q . the book does include many portions so if you'd like to ask nicholas you can click the ask a question button towards the bottom. if you'dlike to purchase this book , hit that green button just below and it will take you to our link. over to buzz and thank you so

much. >> thank you. readings from whatever this is on the screen, for those who are reading nick'scalling in from london so it's 2:00 in the morning . >> it is. >> if he's comatose or doesn't make sense we will forgive him. i'm here to ask questions because i've read this book beginning to end and fell in love with it . it's called "test gods". there's so many different moods to it. it's a swashbuckling story, it's a story of flight and speed and d,richard branson who is one of the greatest personalities we know of and it's the story of nick's father which is a relationship thatwe will talk about . i got to know of nick when he wrote defects and i read the new yorker because i'm a journalist and i get and yes . there's this incredible

reconstruction of the bin laden raid and i thought how the hell did he get that? it was incredible and i know him in person when he was teaching at princeton and he was kind enough to send me a copy of the. i get a lot of requestsfor floors . normally i read 10 pages, 15 pages, 20 pages. this i couldn't stop reading it. it's beautifully written, citingslice the stuff but in different . the speed of branson and virgin galactic and the future of space, the future of base travel. what sparked your interestin? you were at the new yorker at the time . >> that's when i got started. this is truly an honor to be in conversation and buzz

as a lifetime heroof mine . when i started reading about one of the nobles my dad gave was fighting project from it was otherwise in the subject matter of the right stuff and how to approach it with kind of as if booktv.org how do i approach it like friday night lights? that started in 2014 which is the critical moment, a pivotal moment for me is on halloween in 2014, virgin galactic was flying there for supersonic test flight and their spaceship which maybe it's help to show the configuration here. you can see on the cover have this unique air launch system which uses a wide winged mothership to carry the spaceship aloft to about

45,000 feet t, much like the explains of the mid-20th century. at that point, the mothership drops the spaceship. the mothership pulls away and the spaceship, the two test pilots, there's also a unique distinguish her from the other primary rocket companies which are mostly automated and vertically launched . they like the rocket, the rocket flies for a few seconds and enters this deep near vertical ascent tothe heavens . on this particular morning in october 2014, the copilot ignites the rocket and seconds into the flight commits this unthinkable error. >> i remember. it's totally bizarre class essentially pulled the emergency brake on the highway.

>> and how fast is it going? >> they're going .8 mock, they're just approaching my one and at mach 1 on either side is what they call the transonic and the transonic zone is this we described as the bermuda triangle of airspeed. it's this crazy moment on either side of mach 1 in which there are unexpected and unpredictable aerodynamic forces exert themselves on the vehicle and the test pilots had been aware you have to keep the spaceship, it has this unique feature where the tale rotates up and the reason for this is that upon reentry after they gone to space they need to figure out a way to have the spaceship make a careful control reentry and the idea was the ship would more or less be a tortilla that folds up like a taco and it would

allow them to float down like a shuttlecock. they said under no circumstances should you ever unlock the feathers . should you ever unlock the feather as your coaching mach 1 . for some reason on this morning copilot did that and as he did at the aerodynamic forces pushed and shredded the vehicleparts in midair . >> the pilot and copilot died . >> the copilot was killed. the pilot miraculously survived . there's no ejection seat. somehow wiggle out of his seat. he pulled the parachute, landed in creosote bush in the middle of the desert survived. i remember getting the news alert that day on my phone and kind of wanting to stop

for. there were so many assumptions. richard branson space tourism company crashed and i said wait a second. there's a british billionaire who owns the spaceship company that has a winged spaceship flying with test pilots on board and crashing and dying. the stakes seemed unmistakably high. it's on me was happening so that was the moment i went to my editor said we have to write about this. this is insane. his question was sounds cool but do we get real access is what he said. my next trip was to go to california to talk to the then vice president of the company and figure out if i could get real access. how could i embed with them?

>> i'm curious about that. how did that conversation go? and access is a double-edged sword. were they excited, did they want assurances from you? how did that initial conversation go and were there other subsequent conversations? how much workdid this take ? >> it was a little bit of work. there were surprisingly receptive and i'll tell you they were receptive for a couple of reasons. one is that they had just come off this horrific crash and i said i wanted to get there when emotions were wrong and i wanted to watch them work. i wanted to watch thembuild this new vehicle from scratch . and at that point the company's pr focused on the glitz and glamour of this

five-star experience they were offering. most of that was being driven by their commercial office in london. , now president of the company, formerly vice president or to the to tell the story of the women out there (, drawing the design, flying the ship. so he was surprisingly receptive. , the therapies that helped me get in the door is that the public affairs woman at the time was a huge of friday night lights and i told her i wanted to writefriday night lights . so that also helped get across the finish line. but there was also one other piece of us which was one of the at that point the pilot for was five people and one

of the pilots i had known, had pilot my dad but i had no 30 years ago. and i have seen him in 25 years but when i found out he worked at virgin galactic i met with him i sort of gave him my seal as to how i work and how i would do this and how the new yorkers fact checking apparatus work and i explained it to him and he said he got a lot of stuff written about us so much of it hasbeen falls . he went to mike moses said i don't know nick personally. i think all of them were a little distrusting of journalists but he said if we're going to let someone in this guy seems to come from these in stock. >> your father was the original maverick, with the? your father was a really asked five of the marine. >> he was.

my dad at that time was the three-star marine general who was in charge of all aviation for the marine corps. but the three stars were sort of less important to him that the fact that he was ill at his age, that would have been still in his early 60s at that point and he was still flying single speed fighter jets. so yes, he was elected in the marine corps. he got one of you distinguished flying crosses for a missionhe flew in the gulf war .st flu this incredibly all the mission in bosnia in 1994 and so yes. he's a legend in the marine corps. >> there's so many components ofthis book . it is a lot like the new

machine, i don't know if you've read that is one of the things i like about it. it's fascinating. i have no engineering background but how they put together, what works and what doesn't, it's really marvelous but another component is very very complex relationship, almost ironic to your dad. and for those out there who haven't read the book and i hope you buy it, nick revell's a little bit. he crashed his horse in a ditch. >> when the fact checker ran this past my dad, my mom and dad, my dad was deployed at thetime . he wrote back to the fact checker and he said i have no recollection of that . that was an evening my sophomore year of high school and i had to figure out a way to get the repairs done.

there was a tear in the radiator we had to get repaired. >> you fly? >> i don't. >> how is that possible? i can understand but your dad is one of the greatest pilots in the history of the marines . you obviously like flying. was it rebellion? i don't want to follow in his footsteps? i think you went to afghanistan and pakistan and enrich your life and you were out there in the mountains trying to get into the pakistani taliban. why not take a flying? >> i don't know. it just never quite sunk in. one of the things i realized in the process of writing this book was that i was

interested in it because i was interested in flight or in aviation, it was because i was interested in the aviators. even now at one point when i started going out to mojave california for the book, one of the pilots said you're out here all the timethere's an opportunity for you to get your pilots license . i thought about it and then i thought for some reason i can't explain it. it doesn't resonate with me. i go off and i fly with these pilots at virgin lactic and i come down and i would go cool . but it helped me understand the experience better and it helps me write about it better. but it wasn't something that resonated . and in some ways it's oo probably mas inexplicable as mike alsbury making this

mistake on the morning of the 2014flight . it's like one can't square the circle as to someone who grew up in my household couldn't have love ofaviation and want to fly . >> was there ever a determination into why he did that ? i remember thinking reading this and thinking this makes no sense. this isthe kind of mistake i would make up there but did anyone ever determine what happened ? >> there was an extensive review by the national transportation safety board into the accident and the conclusion was that at the end, no one knows. they spoke to his wife. they tried to figure out was he tired or distracted. the workload, it's worth noting the workload during the boost force of these spaceship two flights is

extraordinarily high. even among the test pilot community there is a high degree of respect for the test pilot flying spaceships because in those 60 seconds there's very little that's automated and these guys, there's so much to pay attention to. the margin of error is so thin. >> very little isautomated . >> this thing is a piper, with a rocket motor shoved in theback . as a piloting experience, there is nothing. these guys say there's nothing likeflying spaceships . we can talk about this later but this does raise questions about the viability of the business. >> i'm serious about that. i'll just add one thing i want to mention to the readers out there, what is . here's a company run by a

very flamboyant individual, richard branson. virgin airlines. other things. he's going to establish a space tourism business and he does it and then there's this horrific crash and it's the story of a company trying to recover from the crash and go on and see if they can build the perfect. before i ask about branson tell me about martin stucky who is the protagonist of this thing. i think he knew your father and your father. >> when i got out to the mojave, i was looking for someone who could help me tell the story.once i realized i was going to get this unique access i said how do i bring this together in a compelling way and i coknew mark stucky had flown the

first three power flights but hadnot flown the fourth power flight . i later found out that on the fourth power flight the copilot who made this error and died was mark stucky's best friend. immediately i thought there's a super compelling storyline. i met mark and he told me that he shared to me that he had been chasing this astronaut dream his wholelife . at age 4 he watched john glenn take his maiden flight. he tells his dad that day that's what i want to do. i want to become an astronaut most fathers would humor their children and say of course you want to become an astronaut , anything you want. mark stucky's dad was a conscientious objector and a mennonite tells his son no way and no son of his will become an astronautbecause all the astronauts come from the military .

>> i forgot all this delicious detail. >> stucky goes and like all rebellious teenagers he goes into the marine corps and he joins nasa and goes to theair force . he's chasing this dream for decades before he gets to the company that was contracted to builda spaceship for virgin galactic . when i first met stucky, we sat down at this tpub near his house and i claimed to him that i wanted to, i saw him as a character. he immediately to me felt recognizable . i knew the type in some ways and we will talk about this later about what qualities i saw of my father in him. but i didn't know this at the time but he also knew my dad. my dad has been his flight instructor 30 years ago in yuma arizona.

so he said you remind me of somebody else to. i knew your dad back when. it was an interesting moment and we are often asked i think as journalists why we pick a topic. why we sort of are ready to stick with something forfive or six years to write a book about it . one of the interesting revelations from this was that we are not the only ones picking. sometimes we come to a subject and sometimes a subject comes to us and i think mark stucky knew he had lived a phenomenal life and had been looking for someone to help him tell that story. and i arrived at just the right time and he arrived in my life at just the right timeand we had become really good friends . and that -- he's read the book. >> what did he think?

>> he went pretty deep and he was open he went pretty deep with. >> after the new yorker piece which was wrong and i think some people said to him what are you thinking, howare you cooperating with this guy . but i think he felt like i was fair. and that i understood him and that all of the personal stuff, all the stuff about his broken marriage and his failed relationship with his kids , >> that was wrenching, itwas a great part of the book . >> that stuff is personal, that's what makes for greatness, you got in deep thwithin. it's not just they did this and they did that. it's the back story ofmark stucky and what you went through in his marriage and what you went through with his kids . appointment is not the right word but very deep and it shows flaws which flaws are

much more interesting than perfection, basically and that was a terrific part of the book. >> at two i think is where this notion of a modern astronaut comes from . there's a modern side of it which is the commercial space industry and all that but the other side is that every other portrait of an astronaut that we've read is a set john perfect complexioned character. >> kind of like the john glenn. >> and here comes mark who is really willing to own up to all these e foibles and fall abilities s. and to let this reporter rummaged around in his email box for salacious details of his divorce. and i told him i said this is not even with the company i conveyed this. i said if you don't let me see the moment of tragedy and you don't let me see the difficulties, then the moment of triumph at the end for

both you personally and for the company isn't going to have the right payoff. and there were times when there was an incident or two where the company where people tried to tell me to leave a meeting or tell me to leave the room. there was something sensitive happening and i tsaid these are the moments that are going to going to redeem the big moment in the end when you fly to space. that is the same argument i made to mark throughout and unfortunately he said you let someone into the difficulties and it makes the success at the end thatmuch sweeter . >> how did he remind you, let's talk about your dad a little bit growing up, were you intimidated by him or i know he was awake a lot. he's up did you really know him that well? >>. >> so intimidated. he was a somewhat emotionally

distant but towering figure. we're not talking sort of the bold meacham, great santini. we were doing push-ups every morning. my dads intensity came from the fact that hewas , he always wanted to do things differently and a little bit more intense than even the normal way should have been. it wasn't just hunting. it was hunting wildhorse and hunting wild boars with abow and arrow . not just a regular bow and arrow along bow with arrows that he flinched in our garage with a 357 magnum strapped tohis leg in case the board ischarged . >> sounds like fun and a great way to spend a saturday afternoon. >> not a saturday afternoon

as i found out. this was a nick, you wantto go hunting ? sure. 3:00 in the morning roused out of bed and i'm thinking on the hour-long drive to the marsh we're towing the boat and we get in the boat and we drive to the marsh and it's dark for an hour and we pull into the marsh and get out in our boots andwe're slogging through the mud . from your 14 you are like this sucks. this is way too early. >> you clearly got thatfrom him . for those who don't know i think it was when you were beginning to be a reporter you did some hair-raising stuff . you were challenging life in your own right so you inherited that wanderlust so to speak it seems to me in a different way. but was he friendly? if i met him i would be on his ship list. he's so macho. >> that's the thing.

he didn't exude warmth but my mom more than made up for it. my mom is the heartbeatof the family . what i tried, when i have tried to reconcile and reckon with is i always knew my dad was setting this ngexpectation for my brother and i as we got older. so as i'm writing this i'm thinking about my relationship with my dad and looking at my relationship with my kids and i'm thinking on much more present and available. i mean, they're sleeping right down what they might come down and go dad, he's a tyrants still onmuch more present . but am i setting the same, how do you do both? how are you physically present and warm and also being the towering figure your kids want to constantly be striving to impress? and so i knew when mark

stucky described his relationship with his son i could see it from both ways. i knew how difficult it was for his son to have been living. and i also empathize with mark when he said my son is estranged, he doesn't talk to me and i said at that point, a six-year-old and a three-year-old and i thought i could never that was gut wrenching. so yes, it's a tough thing. my dad incredibly inspiring. constantly sort of wanted to live up to his expectations. and there's no part of it that i think that i almost appreciate the relationship more now when then i did then. i think.

>> were you all over the place? >> in the us. cawe sort of because of where the marine corps aerospace and bases are we found to beaufort south carolina where i lived we had three tours there for about 10 years so yuma arizona, which is the mohave in a sort of awful middle of nowhere way. and then increasing a lot of time up in northern virginia both between quantico and the pentagon. those are the two main knows right there. >> let's talk about grandson and in talking about grandson there's another important part of the book. at the beginning, i guess the question is was this really a large large and as the project went on and as you wrote the book he realized no, branson is serious. he sees this as the next frontier.

personally , i know that he spent aliens of dollars and these are very hardcharging and obviously there's must. but what was your sense of branson, was it for publicity, was it i want to do something thatwas different or how dedicated was he . >> i think he was very dedicated. and here's the reason why. and it's important to goback and to realize the centrality of this boutique aviation firm that first designed, that built spaceships to and spaceships one as his predecessor . this explains why mike alsbury made that mistake in 2014 and why their work all these failsafes built into these patients. we were in 1996 where there's a contest for the first $10 million, the first privately

built spacecraft that can reach space twice in two weeks. and a contest is going to in 2004, the contest is about to expire and here comes this small aviation firm in the mojave and they build this thing, spaceshipone which is a smaller version of spaceshiptwo they build the white knight which is a smaller version of white knights to and they use this airline configuration and it goes to space three times that year and it makes to qualifying spaceflights in two weeks and wins the x prize area so they proven the conceptthat you can do this and branson comes around and says , he throws $1 million towards the project in the end. and puts the virgin logo on the side of spaceshipone and earns the right to commission rattan to build him a bigger version of thiscraft . so it didn't seem like a lark

. it might have seemed like a lark before spaceshipone did this but now bishop one has does this, theircomposites could do anything . those composites and some crazy offers coming in. they had just proven everyone wrong. so this is the central challenge. because what composites did and has done and anyone who's been in the air and space museum knows dale composites without even knowing them because they had of the company has more designs signing up in the air in the air and space museum's than anyone else. >> he is a remarkable character as well. >> he's a genius. and but their whole thing is building prototypes, building walls so they don't put a lot of failsafes into their vehicles . so now you have this company that is trying to build a certifiable safe space

tourism vehicle. and you can see that that's going to be, that's a recipe c for disaster in some ways there , they don't build redundancies. they build redundancies where they need to be there. it's the redundancy doesn't need to be there they don't put it in. and then virgin galacticcomes along . they've got lawyers and they got all these peopleworried about is it going to be safe ? these two companies while they worked together it wasn't, it was often far from seamless as you can imagine so the cultural class to cthose two i found fascinating as well though branson had good reason to believe and it's hard to know what branson's head is now . he recently sold off hundred $50 million worth of personal stock shares in virgin galactic and virgin galactic's, it's hard to say. theyhave more money now than ever because they went public about a year and a half ago . >> i was wondering what the status was.

>> before they went public they had about $80 million in cash and cash reserves left in their 8accounts. they were sending 12 or $20 million a month so money was going to become anissue very quickly . they went public and now they're spending about 20, 25 million a month and they have 65 million in cash so have a long road to figure this out. the fact that branson pulled his money out recently or a large chunk of it raises questions as to where his head is at now as to the viability of this whole venture. >> is it a viable concept? we're reading news recently about elon musk and what he's doing. is it a viable concept? i know you can get people who want to do it but can it work? >> i think it can work for him and with what he's

building, i think that it's doable. i think that the challenge that virgin galactic has is that it's configuration just leaves and exposed to so many more , it leaves it so much more exposed because you have both a man in the loop, two men in a loop which as the 2004 act shows you can have the most extremely well qualified and trained pilots and sometimes they still have ne bad days . and also, this isn't an airplane company that built a spaceship and this is not a spaceship company that built a spaceship. it's dna is an aircraft company and your virgin galactic's is in the aircraft company . the vertical takeoff and vertical launch approach that blue origin, their main competitor space x used just teams to be it seems to have

more long-term viability. that i think is probably going to be the way. it's not the right virgin galactic off totally but their prognosis of where they will be in a few years is still infused with a magical thinking that they're going to be flying weekly flights with this thing . they only have one mothership . if the mothership goes down they are screwed. so that's kind of the top view of where the viability is in the coming years. >> i want to tell people out there we're certainly open to questions so pop them in please. a few people have commented. this is from joe last they want to know how to get access to a cleric in pakistan, how did you get

access to virgin galactic and you've admittedyou've got to court pakistan in there somewhere . someone else i think it was joe, he was the son of a mennonite and he loved airplanes . but he did not join the military. you do this book and when you set out to do the new yorker piece were you anticipating that it would be a book ? ordid it grow into a book ? >> we knew after the first couple trips out there i knew the level of access that i had and the fact that they were letting me sit in on these meetings and record these meetings and the granularity and the detail and the scale and the ambition of what they were trying to do felt to me relatively soon like there was a book potential there. so but it took a while to kind of wrestle and ittook a while to figure out what the story was . the first couple of versions,

i just had too many characters. i had too many, it was too flat. i couldn'tfigure out where the ark was . so it took me a while to continue to winnow out everything that wasn't stucky and to figure out what enhances him. the magazine piece, what enhances his story and doesn't get it out and when it comes to the book it was all, you mentioned earlier wasn't just one episode after another. it was helpful to have his story of his spine to figure out what feeds into it. what do you need to know in terms of history and back story to be able to further understand this story that's an enormous threat as youknow in writing the article . within every book is you balance the characters, the spine with the folks. you have the hub and the spokes but sometimes the spokes get in the way of the narrative and they slow it down because you're drawing a character . on the other hand the book

can be one becauseit has context and if you don't yourself in that history and other stuff it doesn't have the context . you pulled it off really really nicely. and really well. now, this is in the afterward and i was curious. it didn't affect the book but i was curious just emotionally they pull access on you . they go forth in 2014. 2018 mark moses who is now the president says okay, you are done. was that in response tothe new yorker piece ? were they nervous about something ? were they trying to hide: something ? what happened? >> the idea was that i would stick with them until they flew the fifth power flight. i wanted to stick with them until they flew dispersed rocket powered flight until

they built the new spaceship . i knew there was something that was different and that was going to affect the relationship. there were a couple of critical junctures and one was that on the morning of the fifth power flight i had up until that point not been denied access. i had not been told i couldn't come into a single meeting . are they sure? there was one occasion when they were talking about a man powered human resources thing where they said you can't record, you can listen for context but thisis the only meeting you can't record . that's what happened and i was walking in and i was f barred entry and the person barred my entry was his name i named steve burrow. >> what was he in the company ? >> he is the employee number one.

>> what does that mean? >> it means when branson first came up with this idea, steve burrow was the guy who was going to sell thetickets , the guy who was going to market the company focus on the customer experience. he was the guy, he was all in and this iswhat he was telling . and i knew that attenborough didn't like the fact that i was embedded. he felt, attenborough very much was controlling of the pr narrative. he wanted to be focused on the sponsorship deals with land rover and grey goose and all of a sudden there's this reporter running around that, what do we do with this guy? so the magazine piece comes out in august 18 and mike moses said to me this came out on monday and thursday i called moses and i said i got this book deal and i'm ready to go. i'm ready to get back in moses said give me a week or

so, i need to work on diplomatic things. there are some people who made who thought the magazine piece made what we were doing seemed exceedinglydangerous . i said guys, you've got three engineers killed in 2000 accident. i'm not the one making this sounds dangerous. >> that's ridiculous. >> so then it became this fight for the soul of the company in some ways. i'm in one year trying to say i'm going to tell the story and i knew that richard liked the magazine piece . he emailed weeks after the magazine piece and said to me he was reluctant to do this cause he didn't want to be seen as stopping on journalists independence but heappreciated all the time and effort that went into it . and we saw there was an opportunity to do what i

wanted to do and i met him again in december 2018 and he reiterated that they kept dragging their feet. they kept talking about how they had deals with other books that turned out to be and they were just nonissues. they were making up these things to prevent me from being in. the critical moment was i had this one-on-one relationship with branson. and he had without telling anyone else at the company invited me to the british virgin islands. spent a couple of days talking about the company two weeks before i was to leave i to my great -- i should have never mentioned this but i mentioned to the pr guy i was on my way down to the british virgin islands and all of a sudden alarms were going burrow said richard is not going to be the one to do this but you can't . but you asked how i felt.

i remember being really really scared that i wasn't going to be able to pull this off and. [bleep] off and i remember having my conversation with my dad and he said iyou have a book to write. yand that's the priority. all this, like i knew that i had what i needed at that point. i had mark stucky going into space. i had virgin galactic flying is test pilot interest 620 in some ways was a blessing in disguise because it gave realistically and i'm no longer fighting for access and in some ways it was the best thing that could have happened i was really thrown. >> access for a writer is a double edge sword.

you develop relationships and you have to, you end up liking people but to be able to step back and look at it with esharper eyes is in a way i think it's probably good you get addicted to access as well . access begets more access so i didn't think about that. it did enable you to step back. here's a question, how did writing this book affect your own life? you made 14 or 15 trips to mohave and your relationship with the books character and thepeople in your own spirit . were there some people talking to you, some people not and how did stucky feel? you put him out there. >> i think he feels that -- because i him the course of writing that i felt like our relationship was different.

the traditional horse, journalist subject. transcended all those sort of normalboundaries . was this moment that brought that to light which is when he became anastronaut . when he flew to lthe first time, he lands and i'm watching his wife give him hugs and i'm watching his son give him hugs and i was behind his son and i was next up and i said all right, what's the right thing for me to do here because the reporter reaches out his hand and says nice job or like, there's a simple couple of gives a guy there. and i reached out and i gave him a handshake and if the yard and stale so i reached around with the other arm and gave him a hug . he is more of that. and he is a friend and it's a unique relationship when you have this friend who you're writing about who knows that

you're going to write things that are not complementary. not damaging. i wasn't out to damage him but there were things that didn't make him look great and he knew i was talking to his ex-wife thatwhat he was going to say wasn't going to make him look great . and -- >> but he knew that. >> he knew that and i asked him for access to everyone. family members and he was cooperative to thehead . he had read the book and i think that the only time that been reserved, he says it's hard for me to comment on because it's all about me but people have written to him very complementary things and said like, you being willing to cooperate with the process gives me a whole new insight into who you are and i think he feels, evil is pleased

with the way it turns out. >> what is he doing now? >> is still at virgin galactic waiting to fly hopefully the next rocketship flight. sometime this month, actually . >> any regrets about doing the book? anything you wouldhave done differently ? you said you had an assistant researcher and he really save you a lot of places and became a good reader. when you did your firstdraft , you read it and we all read our first drafts and fear begins to set in. what was the problem? was there too much overthe map, too many characters , but the narrative wasn't driving the way you wanted it to? what were theproblems and how did you go about fixing it? >> the hardest part was writing about my dad . because the third of where i

left them talking to space came really easy. because it was a combination of natural action and a lot of access s and a lot of documentary materials that let me piece together with granular detail. the middle third was always my concern. that is the book writers, you people talk about the saggy middle. how do you maintain attention and that's when i knew i wanted to introduce the personal side of the story and a former student of mine who came and found this book in the class, she read the version of that and she said look, you probably have 12 pages too much of stuff about your dad or 12 pages too much about you where it's so clear in these pages you're trying to figure out what it is you

want to say and that's what it was. i knew my dad was central to me telling the story and why i wanted to come to the story and what drew me to the story but i was always worried it was going to feel pasted on or extraneous. and i need to figure out how to make it seem organic natural and she very much media that. >> i think it gave the book a special personal dimension. a narrative issue. didyou ever think about getting rid of it ? >> i did. >> i'm glad you didn't because it gave the book a dimension that went about this happened and that happened. went to the core of your soul which i thought was cool. >> i only thought llabout doing it when initially when i

found outwhat kind of book. it didn't come to me until i sat down and started writing the book itself. i had a bunch of parentheticals about my dad . there were like maybe eight words in the magazine but i knew i wanted to blow this out figure but i just wasn't sure how to do it . is the one who held my hand and she read things to this day that said i think you've overwritten this sentence or you need the sections that digressed too far from the central storyline which is stucky . is there a way to tie him back and go on this digression about adventurism and the values that you inherited, is there a way to bring stucky's story back in here so those narrative reminders, it was helpful. he had been a student of mine. i had imparted all of these values that i learned over the years and then he in some ways just held up a mirror and said don't forget this is what youtold us the third week of class . he gave me a dose of my own medicine and really, i cannot

imagine doing this book without her. >> how long did it take you to write? you were living it for four or five years, how long did it take to write? >> two years more or less. august 2018 through august 2020 i was nonstop. but doing a couple of other things along the way and really when the pandemic ugi was a third of the way in writing. and then i have the next evan months just having nothing else to do. that left me, i'm not sure. also i had a lot allotted myself enough time with an enforced quarantine. >> time is running but i'm curious, how high did it go up andwhat's the top speed ? >> this is a subject of some

diversity. because most of the world defines space as 100 kilometers and 328,000. virgin galactic is using the us air force definition of space which is 264,000 feet. you look at the pictures of them looking down on the earth, you are in space. there's stuff floating in the cockpit. the big blue earth is down below. space. they're going almostmy three to get there . >> miles per hour, how fastis that ? >> i always wanted to ground this always. i come back and say give me real numbers so mock one is

roughly give or take about700 miles per hour . so you could extrapolate if you're going higher than, it's all very because altitude and airspeed is adjusting. this is where i get into uncomfortable territory with the limitations of my aviation speak. >> would you say close to 2000? >> yes, i think that's, yeah. and within listening to stucky describe i remember the night of his spaceflight i said what did it feel like? and he said that he never felt more sure of anything in his life at that point. they're going almost mock three and at a certain point you rumbled through this i thick air and you get into the thinner air and the rocket motor is burning full on and you're going nearly 3 times the speed ofsound .

he said it just felt like a thoroughbred. she wanted to run and run. you could hear the excitement in his voice and i spent that evening with him drinking whiskey back back at his house. you'll appreciate this. stucky and spent a couple years in the air force one of the area 51 nevada top-secret site and this is one of the more halogen parts to write about the book because he was so cagey talking about the details. that night he said i've got this bottle of whiskey. and i've been saving it for a special moment. he fetches this bottle of whiskey that his wife cheryl bought for him and comes back with a rack of shot glasses is and the shot glasses each of them are embossed with one of the squadrons from area 51 and one of these sites. and he won't answer questions about any of them.

bill just give you these knowing smirks when i say i think i've read about this one, the dark knight . what are they doing ? he says i'm not going to get go to jail for this project . so we drink the bottle of whiskey and he asked me how i wanted it and he said let's take a shotso we pour these two shots and i don't drink whiskey . i haven't drank whiskey since i was in college so we are taking shots . so we cling and take this shot and i couldn't tell if he was offended or impressed when it was and he says i just meant we were going to sip it and i got back to my hotel and i look at it and it's a $600 bottle of whiskey . i feel like such a bumpkin. that was the relationship. the night of his crowning achievement it's me and his wife sitting around the table

talking about the day. so it's very unique and memorable relationship. >> you went up in some flights, how high did you get ? >> they had this little acrobatic aircraft and it builds up their tolerance and they take up this thing and it does spins so i went flying with them in ldthat 4 times. it kicked my. [bleep] and made me think i was going to vomit and all that but we probably went 10,000feet high . and they stalled aircraft and they spent upside down and pull out ofthat . and for them it's like going to the gym. >> how was it for you, didyou vomit ? >> know but it was very close. the first few timesit was extraordinarily close .

i definitely had my vomit bag under my leg and i'm ready to reach for it at a moments notice but i have managed to hold my stuff together. >> i just want to read what i wrote because i meanit . this is the test, it's hard to begin.it's brilliantly recorded with unprecedented access with akick. [bleep] adventure story . for those who are addicted to speed out the dude. it's a journey unlike any i've ever read and pulsating as it is poignant and personal. what makes a man routinely risked his life for a living? whatdoes he leave behind on earth ? cosmic questions with elegance and beauty, strap yourself and get ready for one hell of a ride and imeant every word . i do this very rarely so folks out there, we're just about out of time.

please get the book. read it for yourself and everything i said in that blur, i really mean . you did a great job. what are you working onnow ? >> i tried to figure out what i want to do now. i could use some advice from you. after you finish this book, i both want to sleep what work and i'm trying to figure out what's going to scratch that it . i'm trying to figure out -- >> you don't need to sleep but you've been through hell of a process . you will know. give it a few months. i take too long between books because they take a lot out of me. it's all about getting the right story. something's going to hit you and you've done it . is this your first book?

>> i wrote a book about pakistan as well. >> you will know, something will come across your desk and you'll read something and you will have the instinct of this is a book and then you let it sit for a while and if you still think it's a book a month laterthan it's a book . and anyway guys, for all of you listening ask a lot. get some sleep and it's 3 am in london and you deserve some rest. i'm on the west coast where it's a very boring 7:00. thank you everyone. >> it's been fun.

>> book tv continues now on c-span2, television for serious readers . >> good evening, i'm doyle mcmanus, director of georgetown's undergraduate journalism program and in my other lifea columnist for the los angeles times . we're delighted to welcome one of our occasional panelists on the profession of journalism with all its challenges and glories. our topic is women on war: testimonies and reflections from women who have distinguished themselves as war correspondents from vietnam until the present day . i want to extend a special welcome to colleagues, students and faculty from