Innovation and ambition have always been tied to the American spirit, and these characteristics were at an all-time high in the throes of the space race of the ’50s and ’60s. That vigor hasn’t slowed; it’s evolved with technology and the expertise of the country’s bravest and most brilliant explorers. Three retired NASA astronauts share how they’ve navigated transformations in their careers and what’s next for space exploration.
Jack D. Fischer
Senior VP of production and operations at Intuitive Machines, retired U.S. Air Force colonel
Fischer has always gravitated toward innovation, seeking out what’s next and possible. In 2019, his sense of adventure led him to the U.S. Space Force, which he joined as vice commander of the division’s fighter wing after a nine-year stint at NASA.
Last February, the former fighter pilot was part of a history-defining team once again when Houston-based Intuitive Machines landed the first U.S. spacecraft on the moon in more than 50 years.
For Fischer, who’s worked with Intuitive Machines since 2021, his role is the perfect mix of his past professional lives. “I’m able to take every part of who and what I am and apply that to making a difference and really changing the face of commercial space, especially with respect to the moon,” Fischer says.
Intuitive Machines’ mission with Odysseus, the lander, was accomplished “in a pressure cooker of innovation” with a relatively small team (about 200 employees).
“We showed that, for very little money… and a whole lot of innovation and hard work, you can challenge the assumptions and do things in a different way,” Fischer says.
Fischer has managed organizations with more than 8,000 personnel and assets valued over $100 billion. When it comes to leading a team through times of rapid innovation, he keeps it simple: Fail fast, fail forward and don’t be afraid to try.
This is a crucial mantra in any organization where you’re starting something new. “Leadership never sleeps; you’re never done,” Fischer says. “You can’t have these strictly defined barriers because nobody’s ever done it before. You’ve got to build that environment of trust and mutual respect that allows everybody to grow together and define what ‘right’ looks like.”
Wendy B. Lawrence
Retired U.S. Navy captain and former helicopter pilot
Lawrence has been a trailblazer her entire life, checking off several “firsts.” She was the first of two female helicopter pilots to complete an extended deployment to the Indian Ocean, and she was the first female Naval Academy graduate to become an astronaut. Lawrence was also a crewmember on the first return flight mission after the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster, in which the spacecraft disintegrated while reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
But she says her most impactful, transformative work came while working as NASA’s director of operations for the Shuttle-Mir Program, a joint effort between the U.S. and Russia that began in the mid-1990s. This program, centered around the Soviet-Russian space station Mir, laid critical groundwork for the International Space Station.
“Up until that point, so much of what NASA had done and accomplished was driven by a direct competition with the Soviet Union,” Lawrence says. “If you were serving in the military, particularly in the ’60s, ’70s, early ’80s, you were trained to go to war against the Soviet Union.”
Lawrence accepted the mission, helping train Russians at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Facility in Star City, Russia, where she lived for 16 months. She says it was a “fascinating” and challenging experience, compounded by a significant amount of “grunt work” and learning.
“But the end result has been pretty amazing because that did lead to the International Space Station program, where, for 20 years now, we’ve had American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts flying together in space,” Lawrence says.
While historians will focus on the breakthrough science done on board the space station, Lawrence says the most significant contribution was a hard-earned partnership between nations.
“[The space station] proved that, when countries around this world—no matter what their political leanings are—when they choose to, they can work together peacefully and have some really amazing accomplishments,” she says.
Garrett Reisman
SpaceX senior adviser, professor, technical consultant for Apple TV+ sci-fi series For All Mankind
Reisman has spent a cumulative 107 days in space, completed three spacewalks, and helped SpaceX send humans to the cosmos. Still, he has one biting universal characteristic: imposter syndrome.
That’s nearly comical coming from someone who’s done segments on The Colbert Report from the International Space Station. But the charismatic Reisman is humble yet frank about the transformative experiences he’s navigated throughout his storied career, transitioning from a mechanical engineer to a NASA astronaut and then from a SpaceX executive to a University of Southern California professor.
“I’ve made these big jumps that took me way out of my comfort zone,” says Reisman, who’s flown on three space shuttles. “And every time I did that, I have to admit, it was terrifying. It’s not that I was so cocky or confident that I could do this without any ill effect…. Each time I did it, I was afflicted with major imposter syndrome.”
But, for Reisman, the risks—and fear—were always worth the rewards because he consistently moved toward opportunities that interest him. Reisman has found that healthy enthusiasm and fierce determination can combat imposter syndrome.
“Do it for the sense of excitement about the mission,” says Reisman, who’s also an aquanaut, having spent two weeks in an underwater lab, anchored to the sea floor at a depth of 60 feet. “When you make one of these jumps, do it because it’s something that you really believe in…. That will give you the energy to pull through because you’re going to need a deep well of energy to overcome these fears.”
The most transformative period of Reisman’s career came from his tenure at SpaceX, where he oversaw relations between NASA and SpaceX. When he joined the then-startup in 2010, it was “far from a done deal” that Elon Musk’s aerospace venture would be successful. “But I saw a potential there to completely revolutionize the aerospace industry,” Reisman says.
Reisman was up against a difficult, unprecedented task: getting two very different organizations with very different cultures to work together.
SpaceX viewed NASA as antiquated; NASA viewed SpaceX as a fast-moving, reckless Silicon Valley startup. “The animosity was really raw,” Reisman says. “Trying to get them to hold hands and work together as partners was really hard. But, ultimately, it was really good for both organizations.”
Reisman’s work helped SpaceX launch its Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket missions.
SpaceX gained reliability and experience, learning about the value of process and how to avoid mistakes when dealing with complex systems with high costs of failure. NASA left its long-held comfort zone created, in part, by the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia tragedies. “After each one of those, NASA got more and more risk averse, and SpaceX kind of pushed them back… towards the leading edge.”
Exploring the Final Frontier
The experts weigh in on what’s next for space exploration—and human spaceflight.
Commercial space flight
Commercial companies will continue to have an impact, Wendy B. Lawrence says. But their challenge lies in finding a profitable model. “For the commercial companies operating in low Earth or low Earth orbit, how many times is somebody going to want to go do a sub-orbital flight?” she asks.
But she sees the competition as healthy, as long as it’s done right. “It’s great that these commercial companies are getting all these capabilities because it’s going to give NASA more options for how it implements future missions,” she says.
Getting back to the moon
Commercial spaceflight has cultivated unique income streams, accelerating growth—and potential trips to the moon. That’s an important step because, aside from abundant resources, landing on the moon offers “the ability to learn how to have a blueprint for growing into a new environment and what that will mean for us going forward to Mars and beyond,” Fischer says.
Destination: Mars
Mars’ resources make it “the one place in the solar system other than the Earth that you could potentially have a self-sustaining human presence,” Garrett Reisman says.
But, colonizing Mars is really about “the survival of the species,” Reisman says, noting it could be a viable plan B. “We’re doing a pretty good job of turning the Earth from a place that is uniquely suitable for human life into a place that’s inhospitable for human life. If we don’t stop that and find some way to reverse it, we’re going to be in big trouble.”
So, what possibilities exist for space exploration?
“They all do,” Fischer says. “That exploration, the acceleration of technology, where we find ourselves as a species is unique in history, and I’m excited about the unbounded possibilities that lie ahead.”
Photo by Artsiom P/Shutterstock
