There are many pathways into the space industry, now more than ever. Over 200,000 people work in space in the United States alone, but there are always some stories that just stand out in the crowd. So how can one go from being a geology professor and an artist to being an author, a science communicator and oh yeah, the first female commercial spaceship pilot during the pandemic? Well, we're about to find out. Welcome to T-Minus Deep Space from N2K Networks. I'm Marie Varmazis. Dr. Sian Leo Proctor was the keynote speaker at Spacecom 2025, and I caught up with the inspiration for Astronaut to find out about her amazing journey into space and how it inspires her art here on Earth. Hi, welcome to T-Minus Space Daily from Commercial Space Week, and with me is our VIP Dr. Sian Proctor. I am so glad to meet you in person after we chatted just not that long ago. Thank you for joining me this morning. It's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, the pleasure is ours. Thanks again. Oh my goodness. So last time we spoke, you know, I got some really important feedback that I didn't really talk to you about. So I really, I'm just, I kind of want to live vicariously through you this morning as much as one can for such an amazing experience. Can we walk through the whole journey? Yeah, you know, it was really out of the blue. I don't think anybody saw this coming because, you know, in 2020, it's the pandemic. I'm home and I'm in May of 2020. I'm watching Bob and Doug with the return to flight at the U.S. with Demo 2. And we're all cheering that on, right? Yeah. And I had no clue a year later I'd be training for my own space mission. And so right after that, right after Bob and Doug launched and SpaceX started their human launch commercial side, I became a space artist. So I'm living at home. I'm I, so my, it was my coping mechanism. So I started doing space art and poetry. And because I was also going through a divorce, I think a lot of people, you know, the pandemic kind of brought a lot of us. Yeah. Yes. And so I was going through a divorce and then at the end of 2020, you know, I'm broke. I'm living with my brother. I'm, you know, trying to get my life back together. And then coming into 2021, just about a year going into the pandemic, they announced the first all civilian mission to orbit that you can win a seat to space. And I was really fortunate because I won the prosperity seat as an artist and a poet. And in March of 2021, I started training. And six months later, I launched into space for three days with the inspiration for that. What? Okay. Just the macro of that. I mean, the journey is just incredible. You never know where life's going to take you truly. You don't know. And you just got to be open to the opportunity. I mean, I could have easily said, Oh, they're never going to take me or, you know, there's too many people that are have entered this contest or a lot of ways of talking yourself out of opportunity. But instead I just said, you know what? I'm going to do this. I found my authentic voice as an artist and a poet. So I am going to, you know, write this poem called space to inspire. Do you remember the poem off hand? I do. Can you recite it? Yeah. I can. Do you want the whole thing or do you want to say it's about two minutes? I would love the whole thing. Okay. If you don't mind indulging me. No. And so it was really interesting time, right? Because thinking about how to create a message through poetry that could resonate for the future. And I grew up a huge Star Wars and Star Trek fan and thinking about how we boldly go together. And so I, this is space to inspire the poem that won me a seat to space. You've got space. I've got space. We all have space to inspire. That's why we dream of going higher and higher. What is space? If you can't breathe, let's stop sucking out the air of our humanity. We have a moment to seize the light, earth from space, both day and night. We have J for justice to ignite the bold. We have E for equity to cut past the old. We have D for diversity to end the fight. We have I for inclusion to try to make it right. A Jedi space to rally behind a universal force so big it binds inspiration to change the world a new beginning for us to hold. It's not about you. It's not about me. It's about space to inspire for all of humanity science, technology, engineering and math, sending us out on the explorers path. Like don't forget the arts, the heartbeat of time. Consider sending a poet who knows how to rhyme. So let us drop the mic and close the capsule door, but please make sure Dr. Proctor is on board. My space to inspire is what we need inspiration for for all of humanity. And yeah, I wrote that poem. By the way. And thank you. And like, I felt like my ancestors were like, here you go, you know. And that just kind of poured out of me. And it's a Star Wars acronym, but it's a Star Trek meaning. And that whole idea of, especially as we're pushing back against DEI, you know, I feel like when it comes to the space industry, we really should be doubling down on the fact that humanity is going to the moon, Mars and beyond. And we get to choose how we do that. And if we're going to create space for all, then the foundation of that should be just Aquaroa Diverse and Inclusive. There's nothing wrong with that because we all want that Star Trek future. I know I certainly do. And certainly I really appreciate you saying that because space belongs to everyone. Yeah, it really does. Yeah, it's not just for the highly qualified. Like that's that's to me. It's like, no, no, we want, you know, and this is one of the things that I love about commercial space and being here is that we are, we can write that narrative of human spaceflight and we want everybody to go. We want everybody of different sizes and in different backgrounds. I mean, if it's if we have highly qualified is the only measure of human success, then you know, we leave out people in all kinds of categories because we don't consider particularly like the arts to be highly qualified. You know, for this. And that's just we're missing the beauty and the creativity and the inspiration that makes us human. Yes. And as this phrase often goes, they should have sent a poet and they did. And they did. I'm sure you did. While I was in space, I literally say that I go, I'm floating in the earth's behind me and I'm like, oh, they should have sent a poet. And I go, they did. It's a real honor to be the first artist selected to go to space. I on behalf of all the artists, I'm so glad that one of us was there. It just makes me as I think I told you last time we spoke, your mission especially was very resonant with so many of us who are at home watching you. I was with a three year old and just just dreaming of just just again, the inspiration of it. I was like, oh my God, I'm getting a little over clump thinking about it. But anyway, tell me a bit about the training that you went through because this is always fascinating to me too. The training was amazing and intense. So you can imagine, you know, it's a contest and you've written a poem, you're trying to go as an artist, then you get on the zoom call and there's Jared Isaac man, the most amazing human. And he's like, yeah, we picked a winner and it's you. And then he doesn't mess around. And Jared's like, yeah, and I want you to be my mission pilot. And you're, you know, in your head, you're like, does he know that I'm probably flowing out of system 172? I don't know what that means, but sure, I'll be your mission pilot. And then you go and you're whisked off to SpaceX headquarters and Hawthorne and you really start digging into what that is. And so training, we do all the same training that NASA astronauts do for a required due for SpaceX, but you know, and the typical things, you know, we do a hyperbolic chamber, we do, we do zero G, we do crew cohesion, we do, you know, jet fighter jet training, all of those things that you think about. But as a mission pilot, I now have six months to become a systems engineer. And I love SpaceX because they're like, yeah, you know, I like to refer to it as like, you want to contest the space, you know, you're kind of like this Yahoo coming in, you know, you're not going to be the mission pilot unless you qualify because it's safety first, right? And so they're probably thinking like, okay, you know, we, here's a proving ground that we can take somebody who's non-military, non-NASA, and in six months, we can get them flight qualified to be the mission pilot. And that's what SpaceX did. I'm a geoscience professor. That means, you know, I teach about rocks and earth processes. I'm not an engineer. What SpaceX did was they created a program to get me to know the terminology, to understand the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon spacecraft, to learn all the emergencies and contingencies. Having my pilot's license helped me get there. Yeah. You know, it gave me the confidence and then gave me the confidence to know that I could get myself there. That's incredible. It's like a boot camp for it. It was. It literally was. I can't imagine me coming in and I'm like, wait, what stacks of books of engineering and just knowledge and procedures. And you go, again, me and Jared spend a lot of time together in the simulator going through all the emergencies and the procedures again and again and again so that you, you know, you've got it dialed in just like a NASA astronaut. We'll be right back after this quick break. Okay. And to me, it also speaks a lot to what SpaceX has done with their engineering and that it's sort of you all can meet in the middle in that way that like reduction of complexity, but also your training meets. Absolutely. And that's why it's really, that's why I say as the mission pilot, I really become a systems engineer. I am watching what the flight computer is doing. I understand if something goes wrong, what we can and cannot do as a crew. And my job fundamentally becomes, you know, added situational awareness for my command art. Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. So I got to get to the big question about, okay, the launch, the everything. So how can you even walk someone through it who has been, who has never been? I'm just so curious, but can you try? Yeah, it is the most amazing day of your life. You know, you go and you get up, you have breakfast with your family one last time and your friends. And I love the fact that when we came out of the SpaceX hangar, all of our family and friends were lined up. And we got to kind of say that last goodbye and walk through. How did that feel? Oh, I was so excited. You were just excited? Oh, yeah. Not scared? I don't care. You know, that's the number one question is the day of launch when I'm strapped into the Dragon capsule and I'm getting ready to, you know, lift off on this beautiful rocket. Am I afraid? And I always say no, I was ready. I was ready to go. All right. I was, I was excited. And, you know, when I give my keynotes, I walk people through this experience and, you know, just let them know like I had been chasing space my entire life. And I was more terrified that I would lose the opportunity. I haven't taken away, like, medical, were they going to find something wrong with me? You know, it's COVID. You can't get sick. You can't get hurt. You know, what if you had gotten broken a leg or something? Like, you know, these are just things that I just think about, like, am I going to make it to that day where I get to lift off? And so when you, or will I not qualify as the mission pilot? You know, I've got six months and what if I fall short? And they say, sorry, you know, we don't think that you're qualified. These are all things that you're terrified of happening. So by the time you get there and they're like strapping you in, you're like, light the sucker. We're ready to go. I'm here. I made it. Yeah. You're like, I made it. Yeah. Like, you're like, I made it. Let's do it. Yeah. Magic moment. All right. So can you walk me through those moments? Like, okay, you're in. You're about to lift off. What is that kick? What does that feel like? Oh, it's great. You know, you're counting down because the next thing you're sitting in the rocket, you don't want to scrub. And then you realize, you know, they're counting down to zero and you're just, you know, you've got this huge grin on your face and, you know, and you're just kind of sitting there and you're waiting. And it's amazing because you feel the rocket roar to life. And I literally say it roars to life. You're on a dragon. Yeah. And you're, and you're going to space and, and you get pushed back. And then mission pilot, me and Jared laser focused on the job. Chris and Haley as the mission specialist kind of got to sit back and enjoy the ride and really take those sensations in. But man, I, as the mission pilot, you know, first black woman pilot, pilot of space ship. Yes, indeed. I'm not f'ing this up. I'm just going to say it. Like you're like laser focused on the job. And so for me, what I did notice was one, it wasn't as shaky, like on TV and the movies, they show you kind of violently shaking. They got that Falcon 9 dialed in. Really? Really? It's kind of like going down a bumpy road and I could read my flight monitors. No problem. Wow. Like it was, it was super, super smooth compared to what I thought it was going to be. Yeah. And then you go through your stages and every stage, you know, Jared's calling out your location as you're hitting these different stages and I'm watching the flight computer. And then, you know, 10 minutes later, you're in space and literally you do that, your hands just float up and you're like, oh, yeah, this is cool. You know, you're seeing the zero G indicator, which for us was a St. Jude therapy dog. Right. That's right. You're like this and you're like, wow, you know, we made it. But again, then you've got next things to happen as the mission pilot and of course, Jared as the commander, you've got all of these like system checkouts and things. Yeah, you're all going to have to open. Yeah, you're busy. And then you're re-erasing your orbit. You know, we were hired in the International Space Station, we're about 585 kilometers up and you're just kind of like amazed that you're there. And then you get the opportunity to get out of your space suit. And I remember like Haley basically slid out and started tumbling and I was out of mind and I was kind of like, that looks fun. But my stomach was like, eh, you don't really want to do that right now. So you get biology doing a thing. Space adaptation. And a lot of times people are like, well, I get sick and stuff. It's not, you definitely have fluid shifts and people will have different degrees of that. So for me, it was that slight like nausea where you're kind of like, oh, I don't feel my best, but not enough to throw up. And that's when I highly recommend anybody better living through chemistry. Just take medicine. Because a half hour later, I felt fine. And I didn't have to worry about throwing up or any of that. And then I could really settle in and enjoy being in space for the next three days. And then we talked about Earthlight. Yes. Oh my gosh. So I'm going to refer people to our previous conversation where we talked about this a bit. Definitely. It was really magical hearing you describing that. Yeah. That was my, you know, people were like, oh, did it transform you? Yes. I discovered something new for myself. Something that most of us don't know, have a clue about. Yeah. Like we learn about sunlight. We learn about moonlight, but nobody learns about Earthlight. And it is fundamentally what makes life exist. If our planet didn't strip sunlight down and reduce most of that radiation, life would not exist. It fundamentally takes sunlight and transforms it into Earthlight. And we live in Earthlight. And it's the most beautiful light there is. I just want to soak in that for a second because it's just such a profound thought. And I'm feeling very inelegant to say, and I want to change topics now. Well, I will just end by saying, you know, it took humanity. Like I had to go out into space to discover Earthlight for myself. And it's that idea of a fish in water. Does a fish know what's in water until it jumps out of the water? That's right. You know? And for me, that was my moment. Going to space, realizing that I was being bathed in Earthlight and being like, whoa. And I think as an artist, because a lot of astronauts have gone to space, you know, they talk about the Earth globe, but I literally realized that I was being bathed in Earthlight. And that that fundamentally was, I believe, a driving force for the overview effect. I completely believe it. And so much about your journey also sounds like a rebirth. Like you really are a phoenix that just rose from so much. Oh, so much. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's like baptized in Earthlight, honestly. Yes, we all should be. I hope one day for me as well. We technically are every day when we walk outside, but we don't realize it. And we live in a world of reflected beautiful light. And our planet is really special. It truly is. I'm so sorry to be in elegant about this, but we're talking about Earthlight. And I have to bring us to your incredible shirt, which I know I feel like I want to make sure I hold it up for the camera. It's beautiful. Thank you. This is mine. So I bought this one specifically because I wanted to show it like, I have it. And I would love for you to sign in if you have a moment. I would love to. And so this design here, this is one of my X knots. So I call them my Zen knots actually. So because they're finding Zen in the cosmos. And this one particularly I call Faith Knot. And the reason why I put it on the t-shirt is that I have faith in us, in humanity, to go out and, you know, advance human spaceflight for the purpose of making the Earth more sustainable. And so for a long time, one of my sayings has been solving for space is solving for Earth. Absolutely. And there's that beautiful Earthlight also, right? And yeah, it's gorgeous. Yes. So I was thinking, I was like, that was the segue I'm trying to make. Yeah, see? It's a gorgeous, gorgeous shirt. And we're here at Spacecom. And this is the beautiful, one of the many beautiful things that you have made for Spacecom. And I'm just before we close out because I know we're running short on time. I know you're about to give a keynote shortly, kind of maybe a thumbnail version of what your message is for Spacecom while you're here. Yeah, you know, my big message is that we get to actively design humanity's future in space. And what I encourage us all to do is strive for that Jedi space, that just equitable, diverse, inclusive space so that we can, you know, be a role model for what we want life on Earth to be like. And that, you know, all that technology and innovation that we're putting into the advancement of human spaceflight, own the fact that as we're solving for space, we're solving for Earth and that we're making ourselves more sustainable in the future. And encouraging everybody to let their Earthlight shine. It's beautiful. Thank you so much for your wonderful message. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me again. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It was an honor meeting you in person. Thank you so much for joining me today. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC] That's it for T-Minus Deep Space brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us at space@n2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes. Your feedback ensures that we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. T-Minus Deep Space is produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ivan. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
