Original subtitles

Francis Bourgeois is known for his love of trains...

TRAIN HORN BLOWS, LAUGHING

..but since childhood he's had another love.

Space.

For the first time in history,

space travel isn't just for elite pilots

or lifelong professionals.

We are living through a moment

where private companies are opening up space for everyone.

Not just to visit, but to work, to live and belong.

And Francis felt now was the time to see if he had what it takes.

Gonna miss you, sweetie. I'll miss you too.

Through his journey so far, he had been forced to confront

some hard truths about his limitations.

What's your application process like?

We don't really have an application process.

Call me. LAUGHING

But Francis is not one to give up easily

because even dreams, especially the big ones,

sometimes need re-routing.

Francis, can you hear us?

Sorry, I'm feeling a bit sick.

It's mine and Amy's anniversary, and I haven't spoken to her today.

And with access to the cosmos developing at light speed,

the question that had echoed in Francis's head his whole life

was about to be put to the test.

Can a train spotter become an astronaut?

I was halfway across the world trying to become an astronaut,

but so far things hadn't exactly gone to plan.

But I'd come to America to test myself,

and I wasn't about to give up.

Before I continued on my mission, there was something I needed to do,

someone I needed to call.

PHONE CHIMES Hello!

Hello.

I'm currently surrounded here by turkey vultures,

and it sounds like you're surrounded by crows. Crows.

I love crows.

Uh, yeah, just want to apologise

that we couldn't speak on our anniversary,

but the main thing is there have been quite,

quite a few moments where I've realised that I suppose this...

I might not be kind of totally cut out for this.

Well, that's all right. You don't have to be.

It was worrying, not hearing from you on our anniversary,

but I understand. I understood that you were probably just busy

and the time difference. It was quite a busy day.

I understand.

Thank you so much for the present, darling.

I thought it was so thoughtful. That's all right.

That's all right. Well, I hope it reminds you of home

and reminds you how much I love you.

Oh. Love you, too.

All right. Well, bye.

Love you. Bye. Love you.

I'd been in the US for almost a month.

I came out here to manifest an opportunity,

but it was becoming clear I still had work to do

before I was truly ready to realise my dream.

Under pressure, I had struggled.

So I knew if I wanted to go to space,

I had to learn to stay calm

in the most extreme high stress situations.

So I did some research, and that's when I found a place in Boston,

a facility where real astronauts are trained

to handle psychological pressure.

It's called Stratus, a simulation centre

that recreates medical emergencies in space.

They work with Nasa and private missions

to teach people how to stay calm when everything goes sideways,

which, if I'm honest, sounded like something I could use.

I want to understand whether, for me,

I can deal with high pressure scenarios

in the environment of space where there are already

so many things flying around my head.

We're going to practise a couple of skills that you may need

if you were to go up in space

and be encountering some of these medical emergencies. Yeah.

And then we're going to put it all together in the afternoon

with a couple of my team members to practise a scenario

where you are going to be in space,

dealing with one of these emergencies that come up. OK.

As missions travel deeper into space

and stretch over many months and even years,

astronauts need to be ready for anything.

This is one version of robotic surgery.

If you start moving your hands now... Whoa!

You can have an expert on Earth and the patient could be up in space.

Normally, it takes years to learn how to respond

to medical emergencies, and I only had a few hours.

So I told myself, stay calm, focus, and take this seriously.

Can I actually poke myself in the face?

You can try. Oh!

FRANCIS LAUGHS

Down here on Earth, we use a lot of tests like X-rays

and Cat scans and MRIs.

Up in space, that's not an option. Mm-hm.

One thing that they do have up in space, though, is ultrasound.

Uses piezoelectric crystals, right?

Exactly. You got it. So, inside these little probes

are little crystals, and that helps to generate the sound waves.

It's just amazing that it's as simple as that.

Would it be possible for me to try it on you?

Erm...

It reminds me of a cross section of an internal combustion engine. OK.

Just like the suck, squeeze, bang, blow. Yeah.

My medical training was going surprisingly well.

Oh!

I was starting to feel vaguely confident

that I could handle a cardiac arrest.

Or at the very least, not make it worse.

Oh. "Manufactured in Pakistan."

Andrew explained to me that a round trip to Mars

would take two to three years,

and companies are hoping to achieve this by 2030.

Being cut-off from other humans

means a crew would need to know a whole host of medical procedures

to look after each other should the worst happen.

So Andrew wanted to step up my training

to some more serious medical scenarios.

I was taken in to the simulated operating room,

where he taught me how to insert a chest tube

into a high fidelity thoracic mannequin,

which is medical simulation speak for horrifyingly lifelike.

It blinked, it breathed,

and I'm pretty sure it was judging me.

So this is an endoscopic camera.

So we can put that down.

If someone had really bad pneumonia... Yeah.

..we could go suck that out.

If someone had a tumour, we could go find it and take a sample.

OK, so this is now into the left lung?

Correct.

Wow. Well, I feel like I've explored a totally different profession

that I never imagined myself doing.

You hope that you're not going to need these skills up in space,

but sometimes you're going to need it unexpectedly.

Well... This is called a needle decompression.

If someone's lung collapses,

it can cause air outside of the lung to push on the healthy lung.

It's something you have to do right away,

or the patient can die.

You're just going to go straight up and down.

Oh! OK.

And then we can take the needle part out.

OK. Yep.

This would stay in to the patient

until kind of the emergency was over,

or if they need another procedure afterwards.

OK. Would the patient typically have a laptop on their chest?

Not typically, but for training purposes,

this lets us know if we did it correctly. Oh, OK.

I felt like I had been a model student,

but now it was time for the part that couldn't be taught -

staying calm when everything goes wrong.

So, we've had a chance this morning to work with Francis

on learning a couple different skills,

and now is the time for us to put those skills together

in responding to a medical scenario.

We work on the human factors

that leads to better performance in space

when teams like yourselves have to manage an emergency in space.

Teamwork, effective communication, and leadership.

So, the goal, really, of the scenario today

is to give you a little bit of that experience

and stress you a little bit.

My stress levels were rising,

especially now a Harvard professor was going to be evaluating

my performance.

Space crew, you're needed in the sickbay for a medical emergency.

Alongside Nick and Victoria,

two medical students who I'd only recently become acquainted with...

He's not talking. VICTORIA: Hello? Are you OK?

He's not talking.

So, Alex was out on a spacewalk, he just returned,

and he's reporting shortness of breath and pain in his chest.

I need you to help assess him and treat him as soon as possible.

Attach pulse oximeter.

Pulse ox - 88.

His oxygen is quite low.

I want to start a nebuliser treatment.

Get the albuterol out of that kit.

Get the oxygen kit out.

Francis, can you find that surgical kit?

He may have collapsed one of his lungs.

We need to do a needle decompression,

so I want you to find one of those long needles.

OK. Victoria, can you feel for pulses?

Nick, can you keep an eye on that C-array monitor?

So-Sorry. Sorry, Andrew, uh, what am I looking for again?

There are some orange needles to your left.

Get out one of those needles. We gotta do it fast.

His oxygen is getting lower.

I feel pulses on both sides, and they're regular.

Thank you, Victoria.

Middle of that bone there and two rib spaces down,

we're going to put that needle straight in.

OK. You gotta do it. Alex... His oxygen's getting lower.

We gotta do it. OK, so straight in.

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

OK, come on, Alex.

Oh, no. Sorry, that's...

Push, push, push, push, push. I think it's on his rib.

OK, erm...

Trying to... Yep. Do it the best you can. We gotta do it.

It's not going into Alex.

I'm really sorry, Alex.

How far down can I go?

As far as it can go, we just got to get it done.

WARNING BEEPS

Yeah, he has bilateral pulses, but they're pretty quick.

OK. OK, yes.

Come on, Alex, you're a fighter. Push, push, push, push, push.

Stay with us, Alex. Straight in. Straight in. Straight in.

Yeah, it's all the way in.

All right. And take the needle out. Leave the coloured part in.

Oh, I took it out. No, I took the whole...

No, I took the whole thing out.

OK, that's back in.

You can get another one if you need to.

No, it's off now. Yeah, I can't see. Is the catheter in his chest?

Yes, it's in, it's in.

OK, Alex, how are you doing? How are you feeling?

It's OK, Alex.

All right, team, that is the end of your scenario.

Please leave everything where it is and report to the debrief room.

Thank you all for participating in that.

I know it can be a little bit stressful.

Did you feel like you were getting stressed at all?

Yeah, well, especially when the blood oxygen levels were dropping.

We also experienced a needle malfunction.

OK. I thought I was going through, but I was getting resistance.

Yep. And then it happened again, and I just thought,

"I'm making things worse here."

Alex has already got a collapsed lung,

and I'm there poking him with the needle.

And then I ended up pulling the whole needle out. Yeah.

The time here in emergency space is extremely important.

Due to some of the delays in the needle decompression,

the patient, unfortunately, will not survive.

It's a bit of an eye opener that just a slight misjudgment

of my needle placement...

..basically meant that Alex wouldn't be able to return home

from the International Space Station.

It's...It's a lot more than just exciting engineering

and loud rockets and G-Force and, you know,

seeing Earth from afar.

And at the moment, in my mind,

kind of the scary, daunting, worrying things

are slightly outweighing my excitement, I suppose.

Erm...

VOICEOVER: I had trained for the worst,

but still I wasn't ready,

because in space, even the best preparation can unravel

in a heartbeat.

And right in the middle of filming this series,

something happened that made that reality hit home.

# When I die and they lay me to rest

# Gonna go to the place that's the best

# When I lay me down to die

# Going up to the spirit in the sky... #

Luckily, this was only a test flight and nobody died.

But it brought it all home again.

Space is no place for the faint hearted.

FRANCIS: I had just killed a colleague called Alex

in a medical space emergency simulation,

and even though he was made of silicon,

it was a harsh reminder that going to space

could very easily be a one-way ticket.

And whilst I wasn't frightened of that,

I was worried for the people I'd be leaving behind.

This wasn't a new thought to me.

I had felt it creeping up on me like a slow-moving freight train,

which is why, before I had even left for America,

I met with Dr Iya Whitely,

a space psychologist who works with Nasa astronauts on this very fear,

and I thought it was important to share with you

a part of our conversation,

because there was a very personal reason

why I was struggling with the idea of leaving the planet behind.

How do I stop my family and my girlfriend from worrying?

CHUCKLING

Well, that's a good question.

And we would usually ask,

how do you navigate that?

I feel a bit selfish.

Mm-hm. And I feel like I'm making a decision for myself

that is having an impact on someone who I love.

Amy has a form of epilepsy... Mm-hm.

..and that's been something that's developed

in the last three years.

So, I've gone from being in a relationship

that is still wonderful and still blossoming

and still so happy, but in my head I'm worrying, as well.

Mm. I don't want to leave that.

I don't want to... I don't want to leave that behind on Earth

because I always want to be there for her... Yeah.

..and I always want to be by her side if she needs me. Mm-hm.

So, one of the things that we do is that you record a message

in the eventuality that it's impossible to return home.

OK. I don't want to ask you now, but you may wish to do that or not,

in terms of thinking of what you put into that message.

It's up to you.

Yeah. I think I'd want her to know that, whatever happens,

I...I will be kind of around in some way or other. Mm-hm.

Like my cat, Makka Pakka, is in my ring.

Oh. In what capacity?

His ashes. Oh.

Erm... Sorry.

So I, erm... I feel like he's always with me.

Yeah.

And I hope in some way that she could do the same

if anything bad were to happen.

But, yeah...

Sorry, my cat always triggers me.

THEY CHUCKLE

Well, thank you for sharing that. Yeah.

An unexpected part of this adventure

is that I'm inadvertently training myself to be away from Amy.

Not long ago, two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams,

launched on what was meant to be an eight-day mission.

But when their return capsule ran into serious faults,

they were stuck in orbit for 286 days.

Engineers on Earth worked around the clock to bring them home,

and they thankfully made it back safely.

But it was still a reminder that even now,

with all our technology and ambition,

space is still unpredictable.

So I thought if I could experience what it's actually like

to be isolated, it might help straighten my thoughts

about leaving my loved ones behind.

As part of my research, I was intrigued by a company

called Exolith that was doing some exciting work

in the area of lunar reproduction,

building one of the world's largest replicas of the Moon's surface.

To start off, they wanted to show me the secret recipe

of how a lunar surface is made.

This kind of looks like the set-up for a cooking show.

Exactly, yeah. We say it's like baking a cake.

Start out with the anorthosite 250.

Basalt.

Bronzite.

Olivine.

Which is your favourite component, if you could have a favourite?

I like the anorthosite, honestly.

I couldn't help but agree that the anorthosite

was particularly special,

and I was excited to see it in its mock lunar environment.

So, this is the Regolith Bin.

As you can see, yeah, over 130 tons in this bin.

Before I stepped in, I was told to put on some PPE

as moon dust is abrasive and can be hazardous.

It does dry your hair out quite a bit.

I already have a really dry scalp... Uh-oh. ..so this might not be ideal.

I was suited up and ready to step into the Regolith Bin,

a ten by ten metre replica of the lunar surface.

Nasa's Artemis mission is planning to return humans

to the moon in 2026.

At Axiom, I had already got up close with the very suit

that the astronauts will be wearing for this mission.

And now, for the first time, I wasn't just imagining the moon...

..I was walking on something that felt just like it.

Whoa!

That's a crater. There you go.

LAUGHING There you go.

Whoa!

There you go. That's what we're talking about.

The team set me a task to search for buried ice,

just like the Artemis crews eventually will

when they return to the moon...

Wow. It really sticks to the shovel.

It does, yeah.

..because lunar ice, in theory, could be used to create rocket fuel,

which would be a game-changer for long-term space missions.

Here you go. All right.

Oh, we've found it.

LAUGHING Yeah, we have.

So it was nowhere near where I was digging.

Well... Maybe not.

This has been such a formative experience for me

in a way of understanding what it's like on the moon,

you know, from a materials point of view... Yeah. ..and how it feels.

It's kind of also like being in a desert

and another form of astronaut training

where they have wilderness survival, isolation training. Yeah.

And I was wondering if perhaps I could maybe...

I don't know if... I'll need to ask if it's all right,

but perhaps if, like, I could maybe, just maybe be here

for an extended period of time. Right, OK, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, an extended duration mission. Do it.

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Is that...? I think so, yeah.

Do you have anything going on, like, overnight?

No, we're free.

Sleepover. Yeah.

If I was ever going to understand what space might take from me,

I wanted to feel what it might be like to be truly isolated.

I feel like it can add another element to kind of the training.

So I asked the production team

if someone could kindly pick me up a tent

so I could pitch up for the night on the Regolith.

Is that OK? Yeah.

Do you ever get Regolithy bogeys?

As night fell, I stepped back onto the Regolith.

Just me and a few billion grains of synthetic moon dust.

I wanted to see if I could handle the silence

and be left alone with my own thoughts.

Have a good night, Francis.

As I began to pitch my tent,

I started to think about my conversation with Dr Whiteley.

Camping on a fake moon felt like the safest place

to try and say something honest.

I wasn't entirely sure what was about to come out of my mouth,

so I pointed my phone camera at my face,

which is the set-up I normally use for recording TikToks

about trains for my followers.

But this was different,

as this video was only meant for one person.

Hello, Amy.

Even though you're far away...

..and we're not together,

we're not at Pembroke Lodge having a chai latte,

we're not, you know, going on the Thames Clipper,

..we're...

Yeah. I'm...I'm still there with you.

And we have each other

and all we've given each other in our experiences,

our shared knowledge and our love.

And what you've given me is...

..incredible and life-changing.

I wouldn't be here, where I am now, if it wasn't for you.

And I just want to say I love you and I will always be with you.

Space travel demands more than just strength and science.

It asks you to sever the threads that tether you

to the people that you love.

And as I lay alone in a sea of artificial dust,

I began to understand the gravity of that distance.

Yeah, I think you might need to stop.

I think we might just miss it.

OK. Stop, stop.

Stop.

TRAIN HORN BLOWS

I have always loved trains.

How they move, how they work,

how sometimes it feels like they're alive and talking to me.

After the setbacks I'd faced trying to become an astronaut,

I needed to ground myself

because there was no way I could come to America

and not see the largest operational steam locomotive in the world.

TRAIN HORN BLOWS

A 600-tonne monument to human ingenuity

and the machine that fuelled my childhood love for engineering -

Union Pacific's Big Boy.

Built in the 1940s,

only 25 were ever made.

Each one 132ft long,

designed to haul freight over the Rocky Mountains during World War II.

And today, 4014 is the only operational Big Boy

left in the world.

It's not just big, it's historic.

And to me and many other railway enthusiasts around the world,

it's mythic.

This is the locomotive at the top of everyone's list.

I've watched clips of it for years, processed its sounds,

dreamt of one day standing in front of it.

And although this wasn't technically part of my astronaut journey,

I knew that if I was going to move forward,

I had to reconnect with where it all began.

Is it... Is it behind me right now?

That's the Big Boy right here. OK.

Oh. Oh, my goodness me.

Wow.

I honestly couldn't believe what I was looking at.

Even though it was stationary,

I could feel its power.

INDISTINCT

But you can see the work that we're doing.

You can see that little paper tag in there. Yeah.

Sorry.

LAUGHS Very good. It's cool, isn't it?

FRANCIS SNIFFLES

It's... I'm, like, totally overwhelmed.

Just looking at this cylinder and thinking the amount of pressure,

the amount of energy...

And usually, like, my emotional stimulation comes through noise,

and it's enough of a visual feast to provoke this response, I suppose.

For me, coming here,

there aren't any stressful strings attached

that I've been feeling with this astronaut training process.

I think not only has this been great just to see for my own passion,

but has also been a bit of a point of...

Almost like a point of realisation, I suppose.

Like, what do I really want to do with my life?

You know, this...this is so...

In my mind, so emotionally uncomplicated.

And I can tell my girlfriend, "I'm going off to see a train today,"

and not, "I'm going off to the outer atmosphere."

Seeing Big Boy, not only was it just a big bucket list item,

but it's actually been quite helpful

in understanding what I really want from this.

There is a common ground, of course, between the railway and space,

and that's engineering.

You know, we can still explore the space industry,

but maybe we can just boil it down

to more of, like, an engineering focus.

I came to America with the grand idea

of trying to become an astronaut,

but standing in front of Big Boy, I realised something.

Engineering runs through my veins.

Maybe I don't need to leave Earth to be part of space.

Perhaps I could help build the future from here.

So I reached out to Firefly,

a Texas-based rocket manufacturer who are building launch systems

for Nasa and beyond,

to see if I could understand how people like me

might still have a role in the new Space Age.

Right, I'm just gonna put my helmet away.

And I could tell pretty quickly I was surrounded by my kind of people.

We have our pneumatic systems.

So, this accumulator here will be all the GN2 pneumatics...

Without getting into a lecture on pneumatics,

it's safe to say I was in heaven.

All the testing pneumatics, all the GSE plumbing,

propellant valves, nitrogen valves, purge valves.

This is Reaver. Wow!

Oh, my goodness.

Wow. Is this, like, the tap off exhaust, then?

Correct. This is the exhaust, yeah.

These engines actually are the first tap off cycle engines

to have reached orbit.

And that, in general, usually increases the specific impulse,

doesn't it? Right, yes. These engines are very efficient.

It's a very reliable design.

It's about 45,000 foot-pounds of thrust... Yeah. ..per Reaver.

So, today we'll actually be trimming the engine in for flight.

My engineering mind is just, like, popping off

all over the place at the moment.

Yeah, you'll have a lot of fun today. You're in the right place.

What a dream to work somewhere like here.

The best job in the world for sure.

What's this pooling at the bottom here?

That's a little bit of RP1.

On my finger. On your finger.

OK. You'll probably want to get some IPA, clean that off.

LAUGHING

I've never touched refined kerosene before.

After thoroughly washing my hands with isopropyl alcohol,

I was introduced to some of the team

who were building the actual rocket engines,

and instantly I was drawn in.

Do you have a favourite kind of weave?

A favourite weave? I can't say.

You can't say?

I'm not allowed to say what we use here.

Oh, right. OK. But I do. I do have a favourite weave.

My favourite weave is also a secret.

We say the rocket talks to you.

Are you going to listen?

Right? And seriously, the data, the numbers, the vibrations,

dynamic shock, it talks to you.

What's it like working here?

It is never boring. It is a roller-coaster every day.

What I love about it is that I can own...

Like, that's mine.

When you see it launch, you're just like... It's like your child.

You're like, "Oh, there they go," you know? It's so beautiful.

These hold 5,500 PSIA at cryogenic temperatures.

It's like you're singing to me. JORDI LAUGHS

My brain is receiving your information

and is being stimulated in the same way that I'd listen to music.

What you're listening for is a dull, kind of hollow sound,

and that would indicate that you have a void.

Ooh-hoo.

HAMMERING, CLICKING

Wow!

We're just finding the resonant frequency.

We have it calculated.

It looks like a happy whale.

Yeah, this is cool.

I got it.

Spending time with the engineers, it just clicked.

I felt like I'd found my people.

Curious minds solving big problems.

And then, as if things couldn't get any more exciting,

the team asked me if I'd like to see something

I'd never thought I'd witness in real life.

A hot fire rocket engine test.

ROCKET ENGINE FIRES

Whoa!

Oh, my God!

Whoa!

Oh, my God!

BREATHING HEAVILY

Oh, my God. It's hard to put into words right?

When you... When you can feel it in your soul.

I'm in... I'm in shock.

That noise... The vwoop-pff!

Yeah, you can hear the turbopump spool up,

and then it just hits you all at once.

ROCKET ENGINE FIRES Oh.

That's one of my new favourite noises... Right?

..alongside with the Paxman Ruston 16RK3CTs.

The job satisfaction that comes from actually launching a rocket

or doing these types of things is just unmatched.

And as I understand, you know, Firefly's as a company

is expanding, right?

We're growing pretty exponentially.

Lunar landers, Alpha launch, our medium launch vehicle Eclipse.

Yeah. Are you looking for a job?

Well... I mean, yeah.

My engineering kind of skills and expertise, it's there.

There's your flame right there.

Oh, nice. Yeah.

I think I was just offered a job,

but unfortunately, I was distracted by some afterburn.

I've got the feeling

it's making me realise that this side of kind of the space industry

is kind of where the energy is kind of pulling me, in a way,

like being launched into space.

You know, that's tying into my sensation of centrifuges,

sensation of oxygen deprivation.

This is just tying into love and, like, passion.

For the first time, I started to believe

I might actually belong in the world of space.

I had failed my mission to become an astronaut,

but here, amongst my fellow engineers,

perhaps I had discovered my calling.

But then, just as I was starting to believe it,

everything changed.

So, remember Matt Ondler from Axiom?

He's just sent through a message.

Hi, Francis. We're in final preparation for Ax-4,

which will be another historic mission

to the International Space Station.

And it got me thinking about our conversations about your next steps.

I know you're serious about taking your engineering skills

from the workshop to orbit,

and we want to help you do that

and talk about our astronaut training opportunities.

Axiom Station will be in orbit before we know it,

and we're going to need crew.

So look forward to talking to you soon, Francis. Bye.

Sorry, I'm going to watch it again.

Taking your engineering skills to orbit.

We want to help you do that.

Astronaut training opportunities.

But this is... He's talking about Axiom Station, like, in orbit

and needing crew.

I know you're serious about taking your engineering skills

from the workshop to orbit,

and we want to help you do that

and talk about our astronaut training opportunities.

We're going to need crew.

So look forward to talking to you soon, Francis. Bye.

I had come all this way to try and get a foot in the space industry,

and now, somehow, I'd been offered a place

on an actual astronaut training programme...

..and I didn't have a clue what to do.

I was missing home, my body ached,

and my brain felt like it was orbiting itself.

I needed somewhere quiet to think.

Somewhere that reminded me why I started this journey

in the first place.

So I searched for "space museum near me"

and found the American Space Museum,

which was, conveniently, near me.

I was expecting something grand,

like a gleaming Nasa-style hall of heroism,

but what I got was a small bungalow.

However, as I'd soon come to realise,

sometimes the smallest places hold the biggest stories.

I was hoping for some quiet reflection,

but whilst I began perusing the various oddities,

a man suddenly appeared and introduced himself to me.

Welcome to the American Space Museum. Thank you.

OK, we love having foreign visitors here.

He was Mark Marquette, the museum director,

who then unexpectedly proceeded to give me a private

and extensive tour of some of the most incredible fragments

of history I'd ever seen.

And it's no exaggeration to say that this chance encounter

influenced the biggest decision of my life.

This is the hatch of the first Mercury that was launched

on an Atlas rocket, and it blew up.

We've got John Glenn's hard hat and pictures of him wearing it.

The world's first lithium battery that powers your cellphone.

Flight manual from Apollo 11 here.

This is the computer that took us to the moon, the slide rule.

This is Leland Melvin, and he likes Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs.

How do you know that?

This person was hearing 20 conversations going on at one time.

It's so beautifully retro.

Let me show you this.

Our newspaper... Oh, wow. ..from 1969.

I've got goose bumps. You should have been there.

So, this is launched over 350 Atlas II rockets

and a couple other rockets on there.

Flip that emergency control.

ALARM BLARES Oh.

MARK LAUGHS

But we had a gentleman came in that was 80-something years old.

He walked over to this machine, looks, "Oh, my gosh.

"This is my machine." Really?

"I worked on this machine in 1963, 1964.

"I pushed this start and stop button so many times I can't count it."

And he stood there and froze and looked,

and I saw tears welling up in his eyes.

And I said, "Sir, what are you thinking about?"

And he turned to me, Francis, and he said,

"Damn it, I loved everybody who worked here.

"I was 27 years old, and we were going to the moon."

His name was John Bauerlein.

And I go over to this picture and I say,

"Do you recognise anybody in this picture?"

And his son goes, "That's you, Dad."

And that's Jim.

And I went to school with Bob's kids.

And Bill died last year.

And I mean, I was like,

I was like almost crying now, just thinking about this, you know.

This... And then I tell people this story, and I say, like...

They had pride in their craft... Sorry. ..all right?

They had pride in their craft. Oh. OK?

It gets to you, too, buddy.

I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm getting so, like, erm...

Oh! That's what we're all about here, my friend.

That's... This is... This is, like, just pure passion.

Like, our spirits at the moment are just dancing together.

Absolutely.

It's like a...

It's... It's a sensory overload.

The associations of the stories with each object...

..gives me such goose bumps.

And kind of... What a brilliant conduit for it all

to hear it through Mark's kind of brilliant enthusiasm.

I just get passionate about it, Francis,

because I grew up with this as a boy,

and I hope other people have in their lifetime

something that they truly enjoy and are passionate about,

that they can share with other people.

Yeah. And that's the cool thing about this whole thing.

You don't have to fly the spaceship.

There's something for everybody when it comes to space.

It felt like every nut and bolt had a story,

and every scorch-marked relic had a soul.

Everything was real and analogue.

And for someone who grew up online, it felt refreshingly human.

And whilst most museum guides wrap up with a gift shop,

Mark had other ideas.

We do a podcast called Stay Curious to talk to space workers.

Would you do an interview with me?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good.

I mean... Well, we'll set that up here.

I wasn't exactly in the mood to be interviewed,

but Mark was just too kind to refuse.

And that looks good.

My lights here, our little crude studio here.

I actually unintentionally left this tie in my jacket pocket.

I feel like it'd be suitable for this occasion. OK.

But deep down, I knew I had something I needed to say,

not just to Mark, but to myself.

Today, with a special guest from the UK, Francois Bourgeois.

Francois, welcome to our humble little podcast here.

Sorry, it's Francis Bourgeois.

I've been calling you Francis all day, so... Yeah.

Just got a little carried away with the introduction.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, Francis.

Yeah. How did you get into this career?

This is kind of my first time in America,

so it's been a real learning experience for me

about what I might want to do.

Um, my interest lies very strongly in engineering,

but through a lot of...you know, some of the training processes

I've been exposed to,

you know, it's made me feel quite anxious and stressed

and, you know, maybe I'm realising that, you know,

maybe the astronaut journey isn't for me.

But perhaps my passion lies elsewhere.

In astronautical engineering,

you know, infrastructure engineering,

and maybe even just being a...

Sorry.

Maybe even just, um, you know, doing shows like this

to show how awesome it is to be part of,

like, the sort of...the profession in the space world,

or even to inspire those to become an astronaut.

I would not be discouraged about your quest to be an astronaut.

You have your dreams.

You don't know where your dreams are going to take you...

Yeah. ..in there.

There's many other roles to assume.

You know, I have my beautiful, lovely girlfriend, Amy,

back at home, my brilliant family... Uh-huh. ..and all my friends

who, you know, I don't have to worry about,

you know, if I were to never see them again.

Amy gave me a present before I left.

Oh, my gosh. Look, that's me, and that's my girlfriend, Amy.

Wow.

She really loves you.

Yeah. Look at that.

That is awesome.

Yeah. Amy's something else there.

Yeah, she's beautiful, even in model form.

Well, I hope that you find what you're looking for

in this journey of being an astronaut.

Thank you for sharing your story here with our watchers

and listeners here on Stay Curious.

Until next time that I meet you all, I want to say I'm Mark Marquette,

and I can't wait to see you again to bridge the space between us.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mark.

Was that... Was that OK?

I could have stayed with Mark all day.

What he'd built was extraordinary.

Not just a collection, but a cathedral of stories.

I felt like I had touched the past, and it had touched me back.

But even after all that, I was still stuck.

I had been offered the thing I set out to find - a way into space -

and I didn't know whether to say yes.

Cheerio. Cheerio. See you later.

Now, there's somebody that's going to do something with his life,

I guarantee it.

THUNDER RUMBLES

So I paddled to the coast.

There was a rocket due to launch that evening,

and I thought maybe watching someone else go

might help me work out if I really wanted to.

THUNDER RUMBLES

Wow!

Oh, my God.

HE LAUGHS

There are people on that.

Oh. Oh, that's the booster returning.

Wow.

THUNDER RUMBLES, WATER LAPPING

Hello, Matt. Thank you, truly, for your offer.

I never imagined I'd get this far,

let alone have someone like you and Axiom believe in me.

I came to America chasing a childhood dream,

and I found myself being violently sick on a zero gravity flight...

Sorry, I'm feeling a bit sick.

..accidentally killing a medical dummy

in a simulated space disaster...

Sorry, Alex.

..starving my brain of oxygen in a hyperbaric chamber,

and singing an Elton John classic

to a room full of very enthusiastic strangers.

HE LAUGHS

And along the way, I met some of the kindest

and most brilliant people I've ever come across.

But somewhere between all of this, I realised something.

I don't need to go to space to prove I belong in it.

So I'm going to have to politely decline your offer,

but only because this journey gave me something even more valuable

and I'm leaving with more than I ever came looking for.

I'm ready to go home.

THUNDER RUMBLES, LIGHTNING CRASHES

So you plunge the needle through...

Yeah. ..in between the ribs,

and then you can kind of reinflate the lung using that method.

How did you find that? Did you enjoy it?

Could that be a future career?

Probably not.

STEPHEN FRY: Space is no longer a mystery.

It's a marketplace.

And in this new age of extraordinary possibility,

one must pause to ask,

who are we really opening the stars up to and for what reason?

Francis's journey had begun with that very question,

but along the way he discovered that while the cosmos might be vast,

the space within one's heart is infinite.

As he stood beside Amy, watching a balloon fill up with hydrogen,

he knew that while he would always reach for the stars,

his home would forever be here,

amidst the laughter, joy, and love of his earthly existence.

FRANCIS: Up it goes.

HE LAUGHS Wow.

So speedy.

STEPHEN FRY: And as they watched the balloon disappear into the blue,

Francis understood that his real journey

was not about escaping the ties of Earth,

but about appreciating them,

for the beauty of our planet and the bonds we cherish

are the true anchors of our dreams.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media