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From 534 Days in Space to Woodworking w/ Astronaut Jeff Williams | #woodworld Podcast Vadim Kovalev
7 Plays10 months ago
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Jeff Williams, retired NASA astronaut and former U.S. Army colonel, as he shares his incredible journey from commanding the International Space Station to pursuing his passion for woodworking. With over 534 days spent in space, Jeff's unique perspective on teamwork, problem-solving, and sustainable forestry offers valuable lessons for both the wood industry and beyond. In this episode, Jeff talks about his transition to woodworking, the business he started with his son, Brad, and the importance of preserving our natural resources through sustainable practices. Tune in to hear Jeff's thoughts on how his time in space has shaped his approach to craftsmanship and his commitment to sustainability. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights from leaders in the #WoodWorld! #SustainableForestry #Woodworking #Astronaut #JeffWilliams #SpaceToWood --- 🌟 About Koval We specialize in delivering high return and quality solutions to support the branding, business development, hiring, and training needs of people and businesses in the wood industry. 🌲 Improving the lives of people in the wood industry globally 🌎 🔗 Connect with Us - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kovaldigital/ 🚀 Ready to Elevate Your Digital Presence? Schedule a call with our team and let’s make things happen! Visit https://kovaldigital.com to get started. #woodworld #timber #woodindustry #sawmillbusiness #businessmanagement #timberindustry #masstimber #hardwoods
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Transcript
From Wisconsin to Space
00:00:00
Speaker
How does that feel to believe Earth and go to orbit? Oh, it's amazing. that Today, we're sitting down with Jeff Williams, a retired NASA astronaut and former U.S. Army colonel, whose incredible career took him from a dairy farm in Wisconsin to orbiting the Earth. You're feeling 3Gs and all of a sudden, boom, you're weightless. And then you just kind of float out.
00:00:22
Speaker
And you see this big sphere. With over 534 days spent in space across four missions, including commanding the International Space Station, Jeff brings a wealth of experience. In this episode, Jeff tells his story and talks about his post-NASA passion, woodworking.
00:00:40
Speaker
You've taken that slab that might have been, say, $1,000. Now you have a final finished product that might be worth $8,000. Teaming up with his son, Jeff has turned his attention from the heavens to the wonders of wood in their workshop. If you see things as God-given provision for our good, ah for our use, certainly trees and the lumber and the other products that come from trees are part of that.
00:01:08
Speaker
Today, we'll explore Jeff's unique life story, how his time in space has affected his view of life. The question would come up, how can you work in the area of science and be a believer? So I had to do a lot of study to to address the question. And how he has launched a new venture in the wood world. It's so cool to have a NASA astronaut space friend. Just another wood worker.
00:01:35
Speaker
Wood World, this is a podcast. Usually we do them through the internet and connect virtually, but today we have a great honor and privilege to connect with Jeffrey Williams, Colonel Williams. Excited for this conversation. Thank you so much for the opportunity to get together. Yeah, you bet. Jeff Williams, I spent 27 years active duty in the Army, retired as a Colonel in 2007. During that time I went to NASA.
00:02:01
Speaker
And that's what I'm most known for is the time at NASA working as an astronaut dedicated to the International Space Station, and accomplishing four flights in space at accumulated time of 534 days. And now we're here in Washington State and I'm back to my roots doing a little bit of woodworking. Just tell me a little bit about kind of like the highlights or the key moments of your career.
00:02:25
Speaker
How did we get to today? You breezed over it, but I'm just kind of curious. Yeah, well, I grew up on a dairy farm in northern Wisconsin on the farm that my grandfather carved out of the woods after he emigrated from Sweden in the early 20th century. ah So that's that was my early memories there. And I loved growing up. My grandmother passed away when I was very young.
00:02:49
Speaker
We moved in with my grandfather after that, so I grew up not only with my parents and my siblings, but my grandfather. In 1976, graduated high school and went to the military academy at West Point. why I had a desire to serve our country. It was right after the Vietnam War had ended. It ended it was ah it was a time that was very difficult for our country because of the war, but and it wasn't popular to serve in the military at the time, but for some reason I was called to do that. And West Point was a great opportunity, opened door for me. its It is the premier school, I think, in the country in terms of leadership and character development. And it really opened um began to open doors that, you know, then later would give opportunities that I never dreamed of at the
Journey to NASA
00:03:42
Speaker
time. while um But while at West Point,
00:03:45
Speaker
I was inspired by several folks, a professor, actually several professors, Army officers that were pilots that had just come back from Vietnam. The first Army astronaut was selected in 1978 while I was a cadet, Bob Stewart. um The influence of all those folks complemented my studies, which it was aeronautical engineering, in that i I wanted to become a pilot.
00:04:15
Speaker
And not only that, I grew it with a desire to be an experimental test pilot where you're actually doing the testing of aircraft. And that that was right on the path to be an astronaut. Most astronauts up until then had been experimental test pilots in the military. So I set those goals in the late 70s and then I was commissioned after I graduated West Point in 1980 and went right to flight school shortly after that and flew helicopters and flew actually in West Germany during the Cold War. And we'll get to the Russian piece, right? So the Soviet Union was the enemy. So I spent three years flying there. It was great flying.
00:05:02
Speaker
um the All of Germany, West Germany was a training area so we were low level and just it was it was just a lot of fun. um Came back to the U.S. and got the opportunity to go to grad school for an advanced engineering degree um and started applying to West Point during grad school. I'm sorry, try ah to to NASA as an astronaut. First application was in 1985.
00:05:29
Speaker
And out of grad school, I got asked by NASA to come to work from that application process. I got a call, sorry, we didn't select you as an astronaut, but would you like to come here to work for us? So that was kind of an offer I couldn't refuse. So I spent four years there. Long story, I won't go into the details, but the bottom line is I didt did not get selected at the end of that ah to be an astronaut. So it was a huge disappointment.
00:05:57
Speaker
let see That door closed. But the at the same time, the door to go to experimental test pilot school opened. Oh. So I went off. That's a one-year school, the Naval Test Pilot School in Patoxia River, Maryland, is the premier school in the world for experimental test flight.
First Space Flight Experience
00:06:16
Speaker
That was a great year. What year? That was 1992,
00:06:22
Speaker
ninety two 93. It was about 11 months there. After that, we went to Edwards Air Force Base, where the Army had their test activity, and I flew as a test pilot for two years there. Well, I mean, you say fly and you breathe through it, but like what kind of aircrafts were you flying? Well, over those years, I flew 50-some different types of aircraft. So at Edwards, I was flying continually five different types, helicopters and airplanes. So everything from ah were a variety of helicopters. I think everything in the Army inventory at the time, except the Apache and the Chinook,
00:06:56
Speaker
The light airplanes, a little bit of experience in heavy airplanes, big airplanes. At that time, a little bit of jet experience. Even a gyrocopter, gliders, so a little bit of everything. Never went in a balloon. um But, you know, 50-some different types. Doing all kinds of flying. Over. Upside down, too? Oh, lots of times. I used to a heck of time upside down.
00:07:23
Speaker
or spinning or whatever. So, no, that was a great time, great experience. And my love for flying just grew during all those years and all that experience. Well, then I went off to a school that the Army required me to go to. It actually was in Rhode Island, Naval War College. Even though I was in the Army, I spent time with the Navy, you know, Naval Test Pilot School.
00:07:53
Speaker
Naval War College. And at that time I kept applying to NASA and then I got selected for NASA. So had I been selected earlier I never would have had the opportunity to do experimental test flight there. So in God's providence he had it all. I mean it's just it's it's amazing when I look back at the providential unfolding of circumstances. ah So went to NASA in 1996 back to NASA this time as an astronaut.
00:08:25
Speaker
And I just retired earlier this year in 2024. Moved up here to Washington in 2020 after I was done flying in space, but continued to work for NASA remotely until early this year. um My flying time at NASA was amazing as well. It was, I had four flights in space.
00:08:51
Speaker
the first one is on the space shuttle so seriously fa show yeah thank you for bringing that Atlantis and this is a model of Atlantis can of kind of it was in 2000 that was an amazing machine that was designed to put up a space station that was his primary that's what it was designed for although it did lots of other things yeah Hubble Space Telescope other satellites and whatnot um But the primary purpose original purpose was to put up a space station. It turned out then that my time at NASA Was when we built the space station the International Space Station and now I talked about West Germany and the Cold War Soviet Union's the enemy The Soviet Union fell apart in what 1990?
00:09:40
Speaker
one Early 90s, yeah. And out of that circumstance, we ended up partnering with Russia. And what would have been space station freedom, which was what was being designed in the 80s, became the International Space Station with Russia along with Japan, the European Space Agency, and Canada as partners.
00:10:03
Speaker
Wow. So now we're working as partners with the former enemy Soviet Union and and and Russia. So my first flight, in fact, I flew with Russians every time I flew. We had one Russian Yuri Yousichev was on my space shuttle crew. That was in 2000. And it was a very early flight. It was the third shuttle flight dedicated to the building and space station. And the station at that time was just very small, two modules, before a permanent presence on station.
00:10:33
Speaker
And then after that flight, I got, what I jokingly say, I got banished to the Eastern Front. I got sent to Russia. And there was, and long story behind all of these details, right? So of course I just, i I went, I had been there several times in the late 90s and late 2002.
00:10:57
Speaker
I started living half my life in Russia. So my commute was Houston, Moscow, Houston, Moscow. And I would spend four to six weeks at a time typically training for my next, what turned out to be my next three flights in 2006, in 2009, and finally in 2016. So say that again, 2000 was your first one? In 2006.
00:11:23
Speaker
These are three long flights now. This one was 10 days long. My next three flights were about six months each. And your first flight was on the Atlantis? Yeah. And that was in 2000? 2000. And that was the shuttle's third flight? It was the third shuttle flight dedicated to the building of the International Space Station. OK. I was just trying to make sure I got my facts straight here. But that was your first flight? That was my
Life and Challenges in Space
00:11:51
Speaker
first flight. And you went out for 10 days?
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah, that was a 10 day flight. Okay, hold on just like I know you did that on repeat, but like that's insane already, right? I don't let's not go too far into the details, but like just What how did that how does that feel to believe earth and go to orbit? It's amazing. You know that when this thing and it's all unfortunately in museums down But when this launched you had the two solid rocket boosters these white pencil shaped objects and then three main engines back here and
00:12:25
Speaker
ah that burned liquid oxygen and hydrogen in this brown tank. And the whole thing, this whole thing sitting on a launch pad like this weighed ah about four million pounds. Just four million pounds? Four million pounds. And we're a crew of seven up here in the in the, you know, the flight deck and mid-deck, we called it and like in the crew module. Crew of seven. Crew of seven. I was a flight engineer, so I was in the flight deck right in the middle seat.
00:12:54
Speaker
You had a windshield seat. Yeah, it was great. You were front and center. Thank you. I could see right, left, front of us. Yeah, I know. So four million pounds sitting on a launch pad. At liftoff, it's producing seven and a half million pounds of thrust. um And it would burn through two minutes for the solid rocket boosters and the rest of the time, the whole time, on the main engines back here.
00:13:21
Speaker
And you're accelerating the entire time. You start obviously going straight up, but then you quickly start, as soon as you get out of the atmosphere, you start paralleling the Earth's surface to get orbital velocity around the Earth. And it took it took eight minutes and 53 seconds precisely from liftoff to what we called main engine cutoff. And you're going 17,500 miles an hour, which is orbital velocity.
00:13:50
Speaker
Now you're in orbit around the Earth. And so you experience all of that. was and about It was three Gs. That's my next question. um So not a whole lot of Gs, but over a long period of time. Compared to flying the experimental aircraft. Yeah, jet you might you might pull six, seven, eight, nine Gs even, but it's seconds at a time. know tip But it was sustained. This is sustained. And it wasn't sustained three, ah it would be like,
00:14:21
Speaker
two and a half down to two and then work up to three and then down to two and then work up to three again and then sustain to three. Were you the guy hitting the accelerator or what? The computer was down to two. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. and how And when you say main engine shut off, how does that feel?
00:14:39
Speaker
Well, you're you're going you're feeling and all of a sudden, boom, you're weightless. So now you're floating in the straps. You're strapped into your seat so you don't leave the seat, but now you're weightless. And then you unstrap the seat belt and you be you're really careful. In fact, you have to kind of hold yourself in the sitting position because your legs oh well push you will propel you out of the seat if you relax. And then you just kind of float out and float over to the window and there's some great windows here and you see this big sphere by the earth by the way the earth is not flying that was my next question and what did you see this sphere of the earth and uh you know we took off over the atlantic ocean by this time by the time you get out of the seat we're
00:15:26
Speaker
approach in the coast of Africa, I think. so kindly to you ah Well, the Sahara Desert. oh yeah um that you know the you Straight ah Gibraltar into the Northwest Africa.
00:15:42
Speaker
um But yeah, no, it's it's amazing. Then you're going around the Earth every 90 minutes. 90 minutes they around the Earth, so 16 times a day. So you have sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, yeah? Yeah, every 45 minutes, every soon. So, yeah. So it's, and you're watching the continents go by, you could cross North America in about 10 minutes. So you're always in golden hour, really, right? For videography, we say golden hours. You're always within within golden hour. Always good time to take a picture, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. I took over my long, we'll talk about the long flights in a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think I took a half a million pictures and not my Is that right? Yeah, I was driven, especially the Earth, to take the details of the Earth. got And he just, some of it, and much of it is artwork. It's just beautiful.
00:16:26
Speaker
Jeff, so I'm following your timeline. I have from 76, then you West Point grad at 80. 85, you apply at NASA. 92, 93, you're a naval experimental test pilot. You do 50 types of aircraft. 96, you're an astronaut. You become an astronaut. Or was that starting to train to become an astronaut? 96. I was starting to train to become an astronaut in 1996. Yeah. First flight was in 2000.
00:16:51
Speaker
Right, so so how do you train to become an astronaut? What does that even mean? Well, there's lots of things you do. One, we spend a lot of time understanding the space shuttle and understanding its systems and and then how to operate it for launch, for on-orbit operations for and for return. how to That's important. How to respond to failures and you know in any of the systems. So we spend over 90% of our time training for what might go wrong.
00:17:22
Speaker
90% of your time you're training for what might go wrong. Yes, yeah because that's the hardest. The routine things you train for, but there's endless number of things that could go wrong.
00:17:38
Speaker
Some are more critical than others, some are very critical, and you have to be able to respond quickly. Right. So because of the wide scope of things that could go wrong, you spend a lot of time training them, especially for the the critical things. I understand. But then there, you know, we trained in photography, we trained, actually had some medical training, because there's no doctor on board if you have a problem. um You train how to repair things, especially on space station later, you're there for a long time, ah you can't call an electrician plumber, things are gonna fail, you have to be able to fix them. ah We trained for, and I got this little thing here, trained for spacewalks. um I think the Hamilton Sunstrand built our spacesuit, and so they gave me that as a gift. I did five spacewalks in my career. Five spacewalks, yeah. And so, and I did one spacewalk on my first flight in the space show. That was part of the 10 days? Yeah. How much time did you spend outside?
00:18:37
Speaker
It was a little over six hours. I think that one that's quite a bit. Yeah a spacewalk generally we plan for six and a half hours Outside so it's a full day you spend almost half the day just getting ready to go out the door getting getting in the suit Getting all the tools configured, checking the suit out, and going through the process to ah get in the airlock. and and Let all the air out of the airlock so you can open the outside hatch and go out into into vacuum. And then you're just hand over hand. We call it a walk. It's really a hand over hand crawl. And it's highly choreographed. So we trained for that a lot too.
00:19:18
Speaker
I think, ah but well, we used to average about seven hours in the pool. We used a very large swimming pool to train in. Is that the one I saw? Yeah, you saw it. We were standing over top of it, and we saw it. Yeah, it's like 200 feet long, 100 feet wide, and 40 feet deep. That's a big pool. And it's got a full-scale mock-up of the space station and an early-day space shuttle in the bottom. So we would train there because you could simulate weightlessness there um pretty well.
00:19:45
Speaker
And we averaged a rat ah training ratio of about seven hours to every hour we spent doing it. I'm sorry, say that number again? Seven hours of training for every hour spent on a real spacewalk. So seven to one training ratio. Yeah. Because it's so choreographed and it's challenging. It's the hardest thing we do in space physically and mentally. Physically because you're inside this huge pressure suit. So every motion of your arm and hand or whatnot, every grip.
00:20:19
Speaker
you're working against the pressure of the suit. um so And highly choreographed, of course you're saturated with you know visual and other sensations. So the just focusing on what you're doing next and you want to do it efficiently because there's a lot to do in six and a half hours. It it gets to be... mentally draining So the six and a half hours is like planned by the minute or something? or Or you just go out there and you hang out?
00:20:48
Speaker
No, there's no hanging out. yeah he got the You got the time plan. You know, you go out, you do safety checks, you check each other, make sure, okay, I got out the door okay. Then you grab the equipment for the first task, then you go to the location of the first task, and then you execute. What are we talking, what are tasks? Well, yeah and as we built the space station, and right now it's bigger than a football field.
00:21:11
Speaker
Wow. But we built it piece by piece.
Cultural Exchange and Russian Missions
00:21:14
Speaker
So ah each piece averaged, let's say, 40 feet long and 12 feet in diameter, say, it would be a typical ah component that was in the payload bay of the space shuttle delivered there. Well, we would attach it using robotic arms, but we had a robotic arm here and one later on the space station. yeah But then we would have to go outside to connect up power cables, data cables, fluid lines, whatever, um deploy, say, solar arrays, that kind of thing. That would have to be done by hand on space walks.
00:21:49
Speaker
You did that? Five times, yeah. Yeah, over the career. So we haven't even gotten to the next reflex. Okay, keep going. 2006. Yes. Just summarize them please quickly. so Yeah. 2006, 2009, and when it actually went in 2010.
00:22:05
Speaker
and the final one 2016 and those were three six month flights roughly 170 some days do i have this right you have 2000 you have first flight here and then you have 06 09 10 16 well it was the fall of 09 through the spring of 10 so that's a combined flight yeah okay okay um and Each of those were six months in duration, so they were expedition flights, expeditionary flights to the space station. And then each time, I think, go back to Cold War days and early 80s, Soviet Union was the enemy. Each of those launches were on a Russian Soyuz from Kazakhstan, ah logic ah from the same launch pad that Yuri Gagarin launched from ah the first man in space.
00:22:59
Speaker
so that's why I spent so much time in Russia training for that so now I'm launching on a no English you know it's all in Russian and not only that it's an acronym so yeah that okay agree yeah Yeah, and ah so that's why Russia became my second home and I spent about half my time there in the early 2000s. So in fact,
00:23:29
Speaker
so yeah yeah in fact people ask me, well what's the hardest part of the training to go to space? And I say, oh, that's easy, the Russian language. Man, so when did you start learning Russian?
00:23:41
Speaker
About 2002, I think, when I... Do you know that I
00:24:11
Speaker
ni tamanoga so ah ah chiah ah motion wow the davda is a chi university as a bushit gym watch at lab ah apply And now, now you understand my amazement in God's providence Because it took me all through that, a year and a half in space, building the space station, which we'll get back to because it's kind of like a parallel to my woodwork early woodworking. Well, you want to tie it to woodworking. I had to learn the language, spent half half my time in Russia through the 2000s into the teens, continued to work with our Russian partners, you know, up until retirement early this year.
Woodworking and Wealth Creation
00:24:57
Speaker
um But in 2020, we moved to Washington State. We moved here.
00:25:01
Speaker
to join a Russian-speaking Slavic immigrant community. in which you were part I grew up in that church. Yeah. So, and joined the ministry here at Slovo Blacadati, or Word of Grace Bible Church. And Battleground Washington. Battleground Washington, yeah. So now I get more Russian immersion than I did in Russia.
00:25:23
Speaker
One of the highlights, how we met, to give you a little break, something that kind of really stands out to me is my uncle, Alexei Kolomitsov, is ah one time, I don't forget how he approached me, but he goes, um hey, I have this project or idea. My friend and I are doing this thing and he's going to space and I'm like, hold on a second, what kind of friend are we talking about? And we haven't met at this point. So he says, I need you to take a wide,
00:25:50
Speaker
Angled photo of the whole congregation when we have a full building oh you took that picture So I take the photo and then he's like don't tell anybody but we're gonna like surprise the the the church at our church annual church picnic and ah My friend's gonna give us a greeting so we need to to send the photo to him He's gonna get it printed and then he's gonna take it to space. I'm like sounds like a blind to me so I get up on the rafters plant the camera take the pictures and give it to him and then I remember downloading your greeting through the NASA file system somehow you created the file in space that's now on YouTube or I forget where it is and then and then yeah I ended up downloading it from space or from NASA I don't forget how it was but I was able to retrieve the files cut it together and there was your greeting to our our congregation and I just remember it was kind of funny how
00:26:43
Speaker
He wanted to, you know, I forget what the context was, but Alexei, you know, it tells the church, guys, like, we took you all to space and yeah yeah and explain that. I mean, you and you and him coordinated this. Yeah, well, I wanted to, it was a surprise and it was a gift to the congregation, as a special treat to vicariously take the congregation. to That's it. with
00:27:10
Speaker
Hello, Jeff Williams. here on board the International Space Station. And I just wanted to take a minute to give my greetings to my brothers and sisters in the faith located there, Word of Grace in Washington State. That was so cool. A thousand people went to space with Jeff. And then I think it was after that I'd been communicating when I was on board station. This was in 2016, the last flight. Oh, hi. um That all this occurred.
00:27:41
Speaker
Because I had come up here the first time in 2014. I got to know Alexei, your uncle. I see. And he invited us up here, so my wife and I came up, Panamri, and I came up. ah And that was first of many business over the years. But during during my flight and in 2016, I also flew right over here.
00:28:04
Speaker
during a Sunday morning. And ah i have we have Nikon professional grade cameras with lots of lenses to include. up I think I had an 800 millimeter lens. ah So I zeroed in on Thursday and Sunday morning. Actually it was 400 with a 2x doublet. Okay. um So about this big. Okay. um And I zeroed in on the parking lot, took a picture of the church. During the first service on a Sunday morning, emailed it to Alexei with a, you know, good to see the parking lot fall. It's a great worship. And he put it up on the screen during the second service. in this bus Oh man.
00:28:46
Speaker
Wow, you got to zoom in to our church parking lot from space. Yeah, you get pretty good at knowing the Earth when you're up there for. Now, so each of those flights. It's quite a vantage point, isn't it? Ten days, then six months, and then six months, and then six months. So a year and a half in space, roughly. Five hundred and thirty-four days, I think, is what they say. Totally, you get to know the planet pretty well. And of course, you zero in on the places on Earth that are personally most interesting to you, where you live and work and have friends. and Why not? So battleground Washington became one of my place one of my targets, ah the the Vancouver area. ah St. Helens, of course, I got many pictures of St. Helens Hood, Adams. reier And with that, you probably saw a lot of trees. Yeah, a lot of trees. And actually, a lot of checkerboard patterned areas around here that show the history of logging operations.
00:29:44
Speaker
Wow. Let me try to tie it to wood a little bit. Sure, please. I grew up on a farm. I said that was my... In Northern Wisconsin. Northern Wisconsin. But my grandfather, you couldn't make a living completely on it with a dairy farm, small dairy farm, 100 or 30, 100 acres. So my grandfather was a carpenter as well. Wow. And he taught me carpentry and we didn't have different trades. I mean, you you had the, what's the,
00:30:13
Speaker
the foundation of the basement was done, then we picked it up. So we did everything from framing the house to drying in the house to finishing the house to custom-made kitchen cabinets and and everything in between. wow So as soon as I was old enough to swing a hammer, I was there with them in the summertime. So I learned how to build homes to include cabin tree work growing up.
00:30:39
Speaker
What kind of equipment did he have? Did he have a sawmill, portable sawmill of sorts? no No, no sawmill. Everything went in the trunk of a car. You know, a lot of hand tools. okay There's no nailers in those days. It was all hammered, you know, so you. Wow. And even some hand saws, although we, by this time we had a circular saw, electric circular saw too.
00:31:02
Speaker
But yeah, it was different in those days. So I went through high school doing that with that experience. Well, then later, woodwork can be, you know, stayed as a hobby. So I always had a garage shop and made furniture, you know, now and then. This time permitted. Yeah, when you weren't in space. Yeah.
00:31:20
Speaker
So then we that ended up ah here um ah at Hamilton Lee Supply and and Hamilton Lee Designs is the is the part of the company that does the finished product you know ah tables and and the like But I guess, can I ask how that began? Because I remember the story with a tree fell in Texas somewhere. Yeah. What's that for? My son Brad, he he really runs the business and building a business. We're partners, but he's the real active guy. OK.
00:31:54
Speaker
Um, he, uh, was a home builder for many years and he started out with track homes, you know, big, big national company track homes. And then went to ended up, uh, with some custom home builders and, um, did a little commercial work for a while. Um, and he started, uh, got into the epoxy work as a hobby. Um, sometime prior to the 2020 shut down the COVID thing.
00:32:23
Speaker
um And even prior to that, I forget the exact year, maybe 2018, 2019, it was Hurricane Harvey came through Houston and blew down a very large 30-some inch pecan tree on his property. What year was this, Harvey? I don't remember. It was 18 or 19. Okay. Yeah. Maybe 18. You'd have to go look at it. Okay. But this tree came down.
00:32:53
Speaker
and pecans and nice wood. You know, it was always a selection for cabinets or homeowners, you know, when they're building a house and it was, a you know, a little more expensive than then say oak. So I thought we gotta do something with that tree. We got it we gotta to figure out how to, we gotta go find a mill, see if we can get the lumber out of that tree rather than just let it sit there and rot. Roughly how big diameter? little Over 30, 30,
00:33:20
Speaker
four inches or So I looked around the whole Houston area and found one or two mills but they were 24, 28 inches in the size of the log they could take. so I kept looking and finally found a company, it's a family owned business in Missouri called EZ Boardwalk.
00:33:44
Speaker
okay
00:33:47
Speaker
And ah I did a little research on them and I had a trip to St. Louis for other business and they were about an hour drive from St. Louis so I spent an extra day, went up and visited them. Like I said, family owned business.
00:34:04
Speaker
yeah They had the been in business for a while, but they produced these portable, relatively inexpensive sawmills. They had two sizes in those days. Now I think they have a third one um for less than $10,000. And this is a band saw. yeah Yeah. And it could take a log of ah roughly 40 inches or it was somewhere between 36 and 42 inches I forget exactly yeah ah but you could cut up close to three feet ah so after the visit I ordered one and three months later it was ready to pick up and Brad my son and his oldest Braden and I the three of us drove up to Missouri and picked it up and hauled it back and started milling and then we just got into it so we were and
00:34:56
Speaker
Brad being in the home building business, in those days he was doing high end custom homes in the older neighborhoods of Houston where they were tearing down, they'd go and buy part of a subdivision, they'd tear down the old house and go to a nice new one. So he was doing that way, you have to take a lot of trees down. And these are big oaks and pecans and other things.
00:35:24
Speaker
We had more logs that we could possibly could could process. and hand And then got a little bit more into epoxy and then started retailing epoxy products because there were others, Hobb used to round. So that seeded it. And then when the COVID shutdown occurred, of course, all buildings stopped. So he just without, it you know, hesitation just just focused on the business.
00:35:53
Speaker
Okay. ah That was in Houston, but then in the meantime, we had already planned it moving up here and he and his family and come to that as well. They were going to move as well.
00:36:11
Speaker
and So we started this out in Houston, mostly Brad, but we ended up here. we Initially we tried maintaining a Houston presence, but since then we had to close it down, but and we also grew it here. yeah So this is this is what we have now. So again, Brad runs it ah the most of the day-to-day stuff. you know We have some some folks that help us out, but he's shipping slabs all over the country.
00:36:41
Speaker
He's making projects, you know, people they'll come to him and say, hey, can you make this, make that, you know, bit of a job. Right now he's in California doing a big piece of conference room wall artwork with a huge redwood cookie that'll be in the wall out for Jim. It's just artwork, but it's a big project. Okay. So he's down there in Central Valley right now.
00:37:06
Speaker
working through that ah with somebody that that has a business like this, has the tools. Rather than bring the cookie up here, he chose to collaborate with this guy ah and and do it down there. ah Wonderful. But we're the business with here. We have a partner that has a big mill.
00:37:27
Speaker
Uh, most of the stuff in here, especially the big stuff was milk by Marshall Wade. Um, we also procured a, uh, eye dry kiln. So we, we got a kiln. We've got a flattener, uh, wood measure, flattener, slab measure. Uh, so we can process from log all the way to final product. Um, and to me that's.
00:37:57
Speaker
That's ah an amazing illustration of, you know, free if you look at it from the scriptural point of view, the Bible point of view, it says that God gives us the ability to produce wealth. And a lot of times people think, well, the wealth in the world is finite and it's like a pie and you have to divide it up and somebody has a bigger piece, you gotta go redistribute that big piece to the guys that have the smaller piece. okay But, and I'm transitioning now a little bit for you because I'm trying to get into your woodworking thing. But building wealth, I mean, think about it, a tree falls down because of the hurricane. yeah It's got little value, right? It just rots away over a few years, it's got no value, except maybe fertilizing in the soil. Well, they can dump carbon right back to the atmosphere. Yeah. decay yeah so ah But if you take that log and you put it through a mill,
00:38:51
Speaker
You've increased the value of the wood. Now you have a slab. But the slab still has limited use. You can't do it all up with a ah green slab, a wet slab. It's going to move. But now you take that slab, you let it air dry for a while. And we generally want to get the moisture content down to 25% of this. you And then, depending upon the species or whatnot, it might be ready to go into the kiln. And you're out in the kiln for it three or four weeks.
00:39:23
Speaker
um You've now got it one step closer to being useful and you've increased its value. So you've you've essentially increased, you've produced well.
00:39:35
Speaker
through the use of that tool. And now you you bring it from the kiln, you bring it next door here to the slap miser. And you put a perfectly flat surface on it. That is a reference point for a craftsman to then later do something that you've increased the value of the slap. You're producing wealth. And then you take that and you cut it down and you put it in a form and you pour a boxy around you make the river table or whatnot. And then you do all the labor to Say that it maybe you put it back through the flattener and then you saved it. You've taken that slab that might have been say $1,000 and you've produced wealth. Now you have a filed finished product that might be worth $8,000. You know, as a ah nice high-end dining room table, for example. So all of that is the production of wealth.
Sustainable Forest Management
00:40:32
Speaker
It's not splitting up the pie in different ways. It's actually growing wealth. And that's why I love this business i because it's utilizing the resources. And here's a, this ties it together here, right? This is wood and epoxy.
00:40:51
Speaker
What is this? This is actually a globe? Well, it it it was resembles made to resemble a globe, right? Yeah. it's not it's It's not laid out like the Earth. But when you see it, that's what comes to mind. Sure. Absolutely. So this was produced with the creativity of ah ah a woodworker who took what would have been, at best, firewood you know with some epoxy products and put the work into it. and um the raw materials here were worthless by themselves and now it's a piece of art. Wow. And it looks like the Earth. So now, you know. Can I take a look at it? Orbiting the Earth. Yeah. You know. Well, I was going to ask like relatively size-wise, Jeff.
00:41:36
Speaker
How, like, relatively, how far away are you when you're up there? We are skimming the surface. But you see the curvature. yeah yeah You see that it's a sphere yeah but it's like the And that's the point of view? The globe right. It fills the window. Yeah. But I know i'm I'm mixing themes here. That's perfect. That just comes from the heart. Yeah. So Jeff, a lot of times when I, this is perfect because this is how a lot of times with people ask me, well, what do you do?
00:42:06
Speaker
Well, I go around the world and I say, God is good and wood is good. That's my simple message. And when I start explaining, what do what do you mean wood? Well, trees. Okay, what about trees? Well, if we zoom out, I say, like, because people are, you know, in their day-to-day lives, they're so busy and that's their whole world. But it's like, if you zoom out, and I love the illustration that I use, which is, let's take a look at the globe as a marble, like there's a big marble. And if you get to this vantage point, just visual just in my mind, and then you start looking around, um wherever on the map you've got on the globe, you've got green or shades of green. My interpretation is that's a lot of
00:42:42
Speaker
typically tree canopy forest. us Yeah. And so I like to tell people wherever there's green on the from this perspective, those are places on the planet where humans are harvesting those resources. And using turning into like softwood would be used potentially for construction materials, your trusses, your home walls, a lot of times, and then hardwoods used for beautiful things like for mature and flooring and Pulp and paper so there's so much uses for wood products or wood fiber um And that's how I like to explain it to people then this is what I called the wood world I coined the term um And in my estimation the wood world is quite large because it includes both the guys who are
00:43:25
Speaker
you know on a day-to-day interacting and touching the wood, let's call it, right the wood fiber, there's sawmills. Let's go all the way upstream. It's the guys who are in the forest and taking care of the resource and growing it and subduing it there. Then you've got the guys who are logging and harvesting. And then we take we have the guys that are sawmilling, and it could be you know the this kind of sawmilling, where it's the big industrial sawmills that make lumber. um And then from there, you've got all kinds of value streams for wood and wood fiber.
00:43:55
Speaker
Absolutely. And each one of those steps you described increases the value of the wealth of of of the wood that you're working with. But and that's what I do every single day. I guess, speak to me if you could high level, like, again, like back to your your space flights. This is what's fascinating to me. And i'm I'm sure the audience, I kind of gave a sneak preview to a couple of people, like, I have a friend, I'm going to go talk to him. what What would you like me to ask him? And so here, people people are asking, is wood good? is what the wood itself, the wood and the wood product like trees, forests, can you speak to us about that a little bit? like um what What's your, help help me understand is what a good product should we be using it? Should we be harvesting it? like You've seen it from a global perspective. Just speak to me about what how do you
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if I understand the question, or the intent of the question, but because the answer is obviously yes. the Wood is good. It's, you know, um I have a pretty deep perspective, I think like you, similar to you of a biblical worldview. So I see things through the lens of of scripture.
00:45:09
Speaker
And what it clearly tells me, both in that and the experience of living, um is two two things. One is, there's an abundance of provision in God's work of creation. And the trees are included in that provision. And you think of other things, you know, the things you might not do, iron ore, zinc, you know, but bauxite to make aluminum.
00:45:38
Speaker
and All of those things that we grow, grow a lot of our food. We raise cattle for beef, for food. ah All of that is an example of provision ah of the provision of God's creative work. And what do you mean by provision? Well, um provision is just something that's useful and and oftentimes necessary, needed. We need water to drink. We need food to eat. We need shelters to live in. And air to breathe? And air to breathe, all of that. And then we have other things that are maybe not absolutely necessary for life, but they bring, they their they're there. They can be used for our good, for our comfort, for our entertainment, for our recreation, for whatever, you know, the whole spectrum. But all of that is provision.
00:46:31
Speaker
And Earth is uniquely created by the way. um it It is created to enable life and to sustain life and to support life. So the provision does that.
Faith, Science, and Creation
00:46:43
Speaker
Provision goes far beyond that though. hu the The fact that a team can design something like this and know exactly when to launch it what direction to point it, how long to fire the engine, to get to an orbit, a very precise orbit. To then later rendezvous with another spacecraft, this International Space Station, that's rendezvous and then an orbit going the same speed is a his ah a provision that I call mathematical ordering of God's creation. In other words,
00:47:24
Speaker
the Everything is precisely ordered mathematically. and there's Physics is very precise. We know that we learn the laws of physics. yeah we learned There's a chemical ordering. The periodic table of elements is a great illustration of that.
00:47:45
Speaker
We know about materials, different types of materials. They're useful for different ways. They're hazardous in different ways. They yeah they can be combined and used in a new way. um there's it But it's all precise, and it's all we've learned over time through science and technology development. We've we've learned that order and learned how to use it. Optics is another example. yeah If you have, if you need corrective lenses,
00:48:13
Speaker
You go to the optometrist. He puts your face in the and the machine. Is it number one better or number two better? Number one, number two. He converges on a solution. That's a precise optical solution to then eat he gets the prescription. You put the glasses on and now your world is clear. Very predictable, very precise, very repeatable example of order, the mathematical order in God's creation. ah the It turns out What are some of the names of scientists that we hear about in school? Isaac Newton. Newton, what the law of gravity. Yeah, yeah gravitational. by By the way, gravity is very predictable, very understandable. And that's good because you can return back to Earth. But nobody knows why it exists. OK. Nobody understands it. Yeah. But you got Boyle, you got Pasteur. everybody has pasteurized milk. pasteized milk louis Louis Pasteur. You've got Kepler who studied in the orbits of the planets. Yet many other... Thermodynamics. Yes. Maxwell, Maxwell's equations. All of those scientists that I listed and many more were Christians and theologians first. Is that right? Yes.
00:49:37
Speaker
It's not it written in our textbooks, but they were. And they they were convicted by the the revelation of the Bible that, yes, in addition to the the gospel of Jesus Christ, that God had created all things for our good in his glory, and he provisioned his creation. And bearing the image of God, we are created to with a curiosity to go explore Discover things, experiment, develop.
00:50:10
Speaker
make something useful out of that provision. It's true with wood. You know, tree out there is worthless, you know, in most cases, it might be aesthetically pleasing, but it's got such a useful purpose in it, embedded in it. And it's there. And we have this God given ability to go imagine what we can do with it. And we create things out of it. Right. So you got the provision and you got man's ability to go find and extract and develop that provision. that and So, woodworking fits right in that. Spaceflight fits right in that. So that's how I feel. Engineering. I mean, I was an engineer developing things and taking aluminum and making it super high value. Science, rightly understood, is exploring the provision found in God's creation and then developing it
00:51:09
Speaker
into technology, engineering, making useful things.
00:51:15
Speaker
and that's So being creative, like God was creative. Absolutely. absolutely
00:51:23
Speaker
That's kind of been my background, Jeff. I got an opportunity to speak, ah you know, in front of our industry and not not on a huge stage, but ah nevertheless, when it was my turn to speak, I wanted to start exactly from that perspective, is that there were the audience was, you know, let's call it sawmill owners, the wood products manufacturing companies.
00:51:44
Speaker
and companies who you know I was a part of these companies in the past where we were developing solutions technology software using optics and lasers and all kinds of cool stuff electronics to build a solution and in in my case it was a 3d measurement scanning system You need to understand this unique shape of the log you're dealing with and then create a solution, optimize mathematically how much value you can extract from it, how many 2x4s, 2x6s and so on so you can extract the most value out of it and then you go to cut it so you make a plan quickly and you go to cut it. So you could develop that capability and it'd be a repeatable, predictable capability only because of the ordering of God's creative work.
00:52:24
Speaker
And I was just going to comment on the fact that when I was opening up that ah conversation, I wanted to point people back to Genesis 1.28, is the verse that I go out all back to all the time. Specifically, my key word that I keep you know referring people back to, and I brought it up in that conversation, Jeff, is Genesis 1 verse 28, but I'll start at 27. So God created man in his own image, and the image of God, he created him. And that's when we that's the that's the creativity.
00:52:53
Speaker
And then in verse 28, I love the passage where it says, God blessed them, God said to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. So what does what does that mean, subdue it? it's it it's It includes everything we've been talking about. There's a provision out there, go discover it, go search it out, discover it and develop it and use it. That's a component of subduing God's creation.
00:53:15
Speaker
So everything we've been talking about is is that. So you're exactly right. Genesis 1.28. I've been applying it. The Dominion mandate. Okay. And it was the first command God gave before the fall, by the way.
00:53:31
Speaker
um And in the setting that later on, it describes, you know, working the garden, cultivating, tilling the garden. So the work is... work is a good thing and subduing and having dominion is a good thing and it includes everything we've been talking about. Usually I apply that word subdued to mean like make two by fours out of trees but somebody also means make a space shuttle. It's everything that we've been talking about yeah and much more.
00:54:05
Speaker
That's incredible. So Jeff, back to a little bit about space. So you fly these missions, give me some cool stories. Like it doesn't have to be tree related, but just space. I mean, that's, I don't have that experience. You've had to, I can watch, I can put on the VR headset and I have, and I've explored the international space station with the virtual reality and it felt quite real. You were there. Can you tell me a little bit more about what, what does it feel like when you're there? Like.
00:54:33
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's ah that's a big question. My experience was, of course, over those four flights, first flight, very beginning of the space station build. It was only two modules. The second flight, it was we were a little almost halfway through building it.
00:54:49
Speaker
So now it's it's pretty big, but we're a crew of two. ah My Russian crewmate, Pavlovina Gratov, and me were the that we we Expedition 13. Halfway through that, a space shuttle arrived, and a third person joined ah our crew while the space shuttle crew was there for about eight days. But they dropped off a third crew member, so we were crew of three.
00:55:13
Speaker
That was a German astronaut, Thomas Rider, so now he got an American, a Russian, and a German import. Sounds like the beginning of a joke. but No, we we had a great time. It was a good experience. And, of course, your view and you're studying the Earth, but we're also doing, we're running the space station, maintaining the space station, repairing what breaks it in. It's a laboratory, so we're doing science experiments all the time. And occasionally, you're doing a space walk. That's one big day, and you'd lead up to that. You're preparing that for a couple weeks. ah You have a supply ship show up, and and you get it docked, and then you and open up the hatch and unloading supplies.
00:55:51
Speaker
over a period of time. By the way, that that was always a treat when we opened the hatch with a supply ship, because the last thing loaded onto it, typically by the ground crew, and many of them came from Russia. ah they would They would put oranges and apples and... Onions and... On boards, so that, yeah, and finally had a little fresh fresh ah No, we never had that actually. no biky no We'd have to try to make our own, but but fresh your vegetables and fruit. sure um So that was a special treat. Well, Jeff, we take all these things, the basics of life here on Earth. for grant you don't You don't really think about taking your next breath, but we're always six minutes away from oh death if you don't take the next breath. That's not just by default happens in space. no so How are these basics? where
00:56:42
Speaker
We're focused, I mean, the life support systems are critical. Yeah. Yeah. So you're very aware of the status of the life support system. You know, keeping ah the pressure at the right pressure, keeping the temperature right, keeping the level of oxygen, keeping the humidity re removal system working, keeping the carbon dioxide removal system working.
00:57:05
Speaker
I've been in our high CO2 levels, breathe in it and get a headache and it's not it's not fun. um Even slightly elevated, you get into kind of a mental fog ah and you have to concentrate really just to do the simple things. How do you sleep? you just Each of us had ah crew quarters.
00:57:28
Speaker
It's hard to say this anymore because the young people don't know what a phone booth is, but it was about the size of an old phone booth. And you just have this your sleeping bag tied on the wall, one wall. And then you tie it to the wall so that when you get in and zip the zipper up, it was a mummy-type sleeping bag.
00:57:46
Speaker
You weren't floating around in the middle of the night. You just ten to you knew where you were. And you just slept. You just slept there, just floating. So it was the softest mattress that you can imagine and because there's no no pressure. and And Jeff, when you return back to Earth from first, second, like what's that what's that feeling when you get back to gravity? and well going there yet you have to go through an adaptation because i see you're weightless and um and and some people would get sick i never thankfully i never got sick but he'd get sick for a few days and then he slowly adapt and but it would take several weeks to really get fully acclimated to function in weightlessness um and then you go through the flight and a six-month flight is a long time so coming back now you come back
00:58:39
Speaker
and I can describe the entry maybe ah sure in a couple minutes but coming back is when you get back on the ground you realize that whoa I have not felt a relentless force of gravity is what I call it like I'm experiencing right now and just picking up an arm all of a sudden you have to pick it up um being able to walk and support your body weight is very difficult it takes a lot of work a lot of effort for two reasons you haven't been using the muscles like that for a while we do exercise on board to keep the muscles strong but you haven't been using them just to function and and weightlessness and your sense of balance has been turned off because your vesibular system depends upon
00:59:21
Speaker
yeah We can close our eyes and we can tell which way is up and down right from our vestibular system our but it requires gravity so you're you're you have no sense of balance and you have to work real hard to support your weight.
00:59:34
Speaker
So because you have no sense of balance, you're very dependent upon eyesight. You're you're focused on on your visual cues to to be able to stand up and not fall down. And it's pretty obvious. yeah I mean, you struggle at walking. initially That's why you know they don't put us on display too much walking in the first day or two. can you list um Because it's such an effort. and it It's a little more awkward. When you got to Earth, how did you you actually, like was were you in those parachutes in the capsule that crashed in the ocean? and No. ah I landed on a runway in the space shuttle. And on Russian Soyuz, you land in the middle of nowhere in central Kazakhstan. um And ah we would have a crew that would get the hatch open on the ground and pull us out of the capsule. Capsule's very small.
01:00:27
Speaker
I call it, as if you're triplets, there's three of you in there, are triplets in a womb, in the fetal position, shoulder to shoulder. So they they would help us get out, carry us over, let us sit in a chair for a while, kind of get our wits about us, you know, um before we ever stood up. And even after sitting there for a while outside, that's all on video, the world's watching us.
01:00:53
Speaker
um I can't remember if we stood up and walked at that point or if we were carried to a tent to get out of the spacesuits and then later walked to a helicopter. But walking was very, very challenging, very awkward. You're a family man, Jeff. You're married and you've got children you mentioned. um At what point, when do you say goodbye to your wife and when do you get to, you know, reunite with your family?
01:01:17
Speaker
If you're launching on a Russian Soyuz, you leave the U.S. about nine weeks before launch for the final training session, first in Russia and then you go down to Kazakhstan. And for the first two of those long flights, my wife came with me for that entire nine weeks and lived with me in Russia. and then The crew goes from Russia down to Kazakhstan about 12 days before launch. ah Then the family is able to come down about three days before launch.
01:01:51
Speaker
so
01:01:54
Speaker
um In my last flight, she did not come over for that two months. she came to Kazakhstan three days before launch so we didn't see you know I left the US and that we didn't see each other for the better part of eight weeks and by that time we're and we're getting ready to launch in Kazakhstan and then she showed up with our other guests and Anna Marie with other guests ah three days before launch I was able to spend some time with her the but couple days before launch
01:02:27
Speaker
and then go out You can go on the internet and find pictures like where're you know our our final in public. you know i' be I'm behind glass, the crew's behind glass, and we're putting our hands up on glass opposite each other to say the final goodbye. Because at this point you're like sterilized or whatever the procedures are? Yeah, yeah. Because you don't want to take any kind of bacterias or whatever, right? Right. Don't want to take any bug space.
01:02:53
Speaker
and Wow, covered a lot of ground. I mean, space. No pun intended. yeah This conversation branched into many directions, didn't it? Well, you need to come back and talk to Brad. I would love that. And come back and get a taste. yeah he's kind of ah hey It's hard to get him on a camera, but he's really the the He's the brains behind this whole thing. um And that the relatively supply is getting to be pretty well known. We're trying to get Brad out in front of a camera a little bit more so that people can know the person behind him. Well, you know a guy, I'd be happy to put him in front of my cameras, you know, whatever I can do to help. And that's what we do is we help grow businesses in the wood world, they call it. Well, we need to pin him down and and pin you down and in one room together.
01:03:50
Speaker
We should absolutely do that. And then I'd love to record the the shop working and see some of the shop in action, get some sawmilling action, you know. What kind of species do you work with usually?
01:04:01
Speaker
i Well, there's maples, big leaf maple. There's elms, big leaf maple mostly up here in the Pacific Northwest. Elm, there's walnut, of course. A little bit of cherry, although nobody likes cherry. Mappa burl is very unique and popular up here, comment are fairly common up here. and And a lot of it is very, very big. Jeff.
01:04:30
Speaker
um Can you speak to this a little bit? It's maybe more related to my our audience, but it seems that the you know when people see trees being cut and logged and trees being transported on, you see it around in this area a lot, like on trucks, you know you got logs hauling to sawmills. There's a really big negative perception of of that. And the industry that I love and am a part of,
01:05:01
Speaker
Scientifically, it's doing a good thing. We're sustainably managing and harvesting trees, making good products out of it, adding the value, creating that wealth you talked about. But there's a negative stereotype of a tree as it grows is sequestering carbon and all these buzzwords. It's sustainable. It's creating shade. It's creating oxygen, et cetera. Jeff, like speak to me a little bit about, or if you could speak to the people that maybe don't quite understand. Sure.
01:05:28
Speaker
well ah That's a kind of a broad question, too. But there's been a history, of course, that where we have, we, the humanity, has exploited things in nature in a negative way, in an unsustainable way, where we strip the earth of some resource without regard for the consequences of how we do it.
01:06:02
Speaker
um So that certainly has occurred in history. And that's true in mining and forestry. It's true in everything. Yeah, it's true in everything. ah If you want to tie it to the Bible again, it's because we're the fall into sin. So we will be inclined if we don't have controls around us. If we don't have constraints, ah be inclined to to basically rape the environment. You could say it that way.
01:06:31
Speaker
um However, again, if if you see things as God-given provision for our good, for our use, certainly trees and the lumber and the other products that come from trees are part of that.
01:06:47
Speaker
um so there's a One of the buzzwords today is sustainable sustainability, right? And I know it applies to that industry. It can be done in a way that utilizes the resource, but also doesn't doesn't abuse it. and and make it the process put in place in a way where it is sustainable. So for example, and as I drive around this part of the country, I see forestry operations and I see an area might be logged over and then immediately it's replanted.
01:07:25
Speaker
crack And you go right down the the road a little bit and you see, okay, here's another crop growing it was that was planted in 2015. Go down a little farther, use one planted in 2010, 2005, 2000, so you got signs out there. And you you see that the the resources then turned over. And it's managed that way. So it's managed responsibly. yes That's the key. Sustainable forestry. Yes, exactly.
01:07:52
Speaker
I think that the other extreme, you mentioned, so I think the word subdue could be misinterpreted and we're not called to do this, and you just covered exploiting. I also think that another extreme is idolizing creation, Jeff. Oh yeah, absolutely. So that's the opposite extreme, right? Right. And that's throughout history too, you call it nature worship. And there's different, actually different religions out there that their animism would be the generic term.
01:08:21
Speaker
ah animism Animism where you're basically worshipping the creation. You're worshipping the earth. You're worshipping something. you you You're worshipping your man-made idol. you know I don't think of that, but I ah i guess it could be an idol. So define idol. Anything that replaces God, basically the true God.
01:08:48
Speaker
It could be your job, it could be your spouse, it could be your kids, it could really be anything. could be yourself But why why do we even tend to worship an idol? who we I think it's ah bearing the image of our Creator. They'll fall in because we're fallen in sin. we have that We're born in this fallen nature, with the fallen nature.
01:09:09
Speaker
We're inclined away from God, but yet we are, you could say we're inherently religious. We have to worship something. It might be ourselves. It might be some goal. It might be our career. It might be status. It might be money. It might be the carved out image, you know, that the center wall or whatnot. it It can be anything, anything that replaces God.
01:09:38
Speaker
So then some people, I think, end up treating trees as an idol, forestry. Sure, well that's, yeah, if you, ah there's, sometimes there's movies that come out like that where, you know, the tree, and actually there's old mystic kinds of religions that are out there where you worship a tree, you know, a tree becomes the idol, the symbol of idol. We can do that even in modern times, even if we say we're not religious.
01:10:06
Speaker
or whatnot, we can worship nature. Certainly nature is good, right? And it's enjoyable. It's for our good. And there's a lot of good that comes out of it. And we especially in in this area, areas like this, we go out in the engine, you go hiking, you go sightseeing and whatnot, and enjoy the nature. But it's not to be worshiped. Although it often is. So we can enjoy it, but not idolize it? Exactly. How do you do that practically?
01:10:34
Speaker
well Ultimately, you can only do it by knowing the true God who deserves our worship. who is our creat What do you actually mean by that? like Somebody who doesn't know and is watching this, what what does that mean? Well, God has created all things he to include us. We are, because of our born in sin, and that that concept, even that word is offensive to many.
01:11:01
Speaker
um But it it's not hard to prove that there's problems in the world, there's evil in the world, and people do bad things. From a very early age, you know, a toddler,
01:11:17
Speaker
will get in trouble, a toddler will display the tendency to want to do something he knows or she knows shouldn't do. That's evidence of of our natural state that we're born in. We're born fallen, we're born sinful, inclined. There's an inclination to do bad things.
01:11:42
Speaker
Why don't we do worse than we what we do? Because there are constraints that constrain that tendency. Parents constrain the natural tendency of a child. The police officer sitting in the patrol car constrains our natural tendency that maybe went up.
01:12:00
Speaker
break the speed limit um there's punishment there's a consequence for stealing you know so we that may constrain us so there's lots of things our conscience will constrain our natural tendency to want to cheat or cut corners or whatnot but now yet we have that we we have that in our tendency we're born with it Jeff, so you believe there's a God? Absolutely. How do we know that there is a God? How are you convinced? I mean, you've been to space. how how do How do you know there's a God? Ultimately, I know it because he has revealed himself to me. What does that mean? He reveals himself in, you could say, two categories. One is what we've been talking about, creation itself.
01:12:54
Speaker
ah You know, nobody will deny that when they look into the night star field that theyre they're filled with awe and wonder, the the beauty of it, the vastness of it.
01:13:10
Speaker
um
01:13:13
Speaker
I'm convinced that that's that puts the glory of the creator on display. There's nothing nothing I would worship about a star field, but oh seeing the star field, seeing the details of the earth, seeing everything we talked about, seeing the wisdom behind it, the design behind it, the the grandeur behind it, the beauty behind it, ah gives evidence of the creator that who is responsible. So he reveals himself in his creative work.
01:13:44
Speaker
um But I have concluded that we can only know of him through that revelation. Can't know him. He's still distant. He's still impersonal. He's still maybe even threatening. We would still be afraid of a God like that.
01:14:07
Speaker
But he's also revealed himself in his, what we call special revelation, that's that's the Bible. He's revealed himself uniquely in the Bible of who he is and his ah provision,
01:14:24
Speaker
using that word again, for our fallen state in which we're born. Because if we are fallen, If we do acknowledge that, yeah, I don't do everything I should do, my conscience bears witness against me. You know, people are caught up in the obvious examples of of pornography, of drugs, of alcohol, of kids beating on each other, of lying, of stealing, all all of that.
01:14:57
Speaker
so we know ah We just have to look to ourselves and and know the consequence of being fallen if there is a God Then it's pretty hard to enter the courtroom if he's on the bench ah That's why we hide from him that's why we fear him that's why Ultimately, we could hate him Because he he we know he is our judge and we can't stand before him So that we're in a very bad place
01:15:31
Speaker
How do we get into a good place? but And he has revealed that way through the Son of God, the person of Jesus Christ. And and the Bible reveals him in that way. He is fully God. And this is very difficult to comprehend. It's beyond our comprehension. he is The God is triune. He's one God in three persons, a Father, Son, and Spirit.
01:16:00
Speaker
um and We won't go too much into the detail for for the sake of time, but sure the Bible reveals His work and plan of salvation that comes through the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was prophesied throughout Scripture written over 1,500 years. If you start out all this book in the Bible of the Old Testament through the writing of the New Testament,
01:16:29
Speaker
That's a time period of 1,500 years. And there's an amazing coherence in that entire book, the the Bible written over that time period, 1,500 years so on the order of, if I remember right, 40 authors in three different languages. And there's a coherence in that. It would be impossible to have written that except it from that its ah source is supernatural.
01:16:58
Speaker
So all the although the authors were men, fallen men, um they were inspired by the Holy Spirit is what the scripture would say. But in that, he reveals the way of salvation and the way of salvation comes through Jesus Christ. So if we're fallen, we can't stand before the judge. Christ came and took on flesh, became a man.
01:17:21
Speaker
lived a perfect life was without sin destined to go to the cross where he died sinless but he died for those he came to save from their sin from the punishment do their sin for those he came to save then who would be ah who would be granted the gift of faith to trust in that provision in other words I owe God my life because I'm fallen. But Christ came and died for me on my behalf. And he was perfect, he was without sin. And my trusting in him, I am granted, I am credited to my account, his perfection. At the same time, he bears on himself, he took on himself the punishment
01:18:18
Speaker
that I was due for my sin. So it's called the great exchange. The punishment that was due to me is transferred to him through faith. And I then am granted his righteous perfection.
01:18:34
Speaker
So not through that, it's called a substitutionary atonement, a substitutionary sacrifice. He went in my place, in my stead, and suffered the penalty of death that I owe my Creator for me. And he granted me, credited me. and't I'm not actually righteous, but he gave me his righteousness as God looks upon me.
01:19:05
Speaker
So that establishes, reestablishes the relationship then that I have with my Creator, who is now also my Redeemer. He has redeemed me from my sin. That's the revelation of the New Testament in particular, but it's prophesied in a thousand ways in the Old Testament, perfectly.
01:19:29
Speaker
So he said, God reveals himself. I asked you the question, how do you know that God is real and alive? And you said that we know that through creation and we know that through special revelation. So creation is, you mentioned the sky, your travels in space.
Reconciling Science and Faith
01:19:43
Speaker
You didn't find anything that made you question or lean away from God. You did the real science up there in the space station, right? and Real science is God given abilities, subdues creation. So what's with this, like,
01:19:59
Speaker
Where are the scientists, the folks say, on the other side? and they Well, there is a common belief that there's a conflict between science and scripture. it so They're always put opposed to each other, right? ah That science is progressive and religion or Christianity is regressive. It holds us back. And it I call it the ah most successful propaganda campaign of modern history.
01:20:24
Speaker
which started, modern history part of it started actually in the 1700s, but it culminated in the late 1800s, we think of Darwin and evolution. I've studied it for 30 years. There's absolutely no evidence, no scientific evidence that supports evolution at all. At all. Nothing. There's no evidence. There's not no science behind it. um But the successful propaganda campaign, as everybody believe in that, oh yeah, the science supports it, science tells you that. So therefore, we just assume it and we move on. And we build our worldview you thinking and
01:21:03
Speaker
based on that assumption, that presupposition. But it's a lie. It's an absolute lie. Like I said, those those famous scientists that we read about in our textbooks and they have laws, fundamental laws of our mathematical equations named after them, they were all believers first. um They were driven by their the theology. They were driven by their convictions that came from the Bible.
01:21:26
Speaker
So why Jeff, if I went to public school, why public school is hammering me when I went to public school in this area, evolution, evolution, evolution, and they used those laws that these guys discovered without explaining who they were, we ripped out of context. Here's gravity. Well, yeah, that's that's that's what propaganda does, right? So I studied the laws without studying the scientists in his worldview.
01:21:49
Speaker
You know nothing about the scientist except for the name. Right. Yeah, it doesn't fit in the, it doesn't fit the agenda. What's the agenda? The agenda is to deny God. Why? Well, that's it. Why? Because we I don't want to stand before the judge. So you believe like the flood account it is real? yeah I believe the scripture is real and it includes the flood account. I believe the iconic creation is real. It's in the beginning of Scripture. I challenge Christians who who have maybe been influenced by the educational system or whatnot, who don't are not convicted of the early chapters of Genesis are true because of that. I challenge them, when do you begin to believe the Bible that you say is God's revelation? If you don't believe it from Genesis 1.1,
01:22:47
Speaker
Let's say you start Genesis 12 and then, oh, that's history and whatnot, but the others, i um you undermine the entire foundation of the authority of the word of God. I want truthfulness. It's either true or it's not. And you believe it is. It is, absolutely. True. True. You know, by the way, even that is only by the grace of God. What do you mean?
01:23:13
Speaker
In my fallen state that I was born in, I do not have the ability to decide on my own to believe in God as He has revealed Himself, to come to faith in Jesus Christ. So you were not you were not always a Christian? i No, it wasn't. But i don't have none of us have that ability in and of ourselves. So can I ask you personally, when in this timeline did you... it was Right after graduate school arriving in Houston, I was so late, 1987. I mean, I don't know if you want to talk about this publicly, but can you? I just, ah you know, like a lot of... Why was it here you were doing your thing and then what happened? ah Actually, like it happens often. um My wife and I got into a period of kind of
01:24:10
Speaker
severe strain crisis in our marriage. And in that circumstance, in coming out of that circumstance, God orchestrated in his providential care some some witness to us that first brought Hannah Marie to faith and then her witness to me. I thought I wasn't blinded at first, but I spent several months actually studying this book.
01:24:40
Speaker
because I wanted to know what the substance of the Christian faith was. And most of my study was in the Gospel of John and the letter to the Romans. And after a period of about three and a half months or so, I came to faith, I came to trust that yes, this is true and know why I need to commit myself to Christ. As I grew in understanding what that was,
01:25:10
Speaker
I recognized though that it was also true that I didn't just make the decision that it was God working in my heart actually granted me the gift of faith to trust in Christ. And that's the way the Christian faith works. That's the way Christianity works. That's the way the gospel works. That's to what that and the the testimony of scripture. It's all by the grace of God. And then you go to space.
01:25:38
Speaker
and then i go to speak as a christian as a christian And I knew right away that lot the question would come up, how can you work in the area of science and be a believer? It comes up all the time. So I had to do a lot of study to to address the question and the related questions around it and try to understand why ah That presupposition is even there why the conflict or the perception of conflict is even there and it comes out of history ah Like I said the the what we call the age of science those famous scientists. They were Christians There was another group of folks Shortly after that overlapped in some cases um that took advantage of
01:26:28
Speaker
things like darwin Charles Darwin's work. There was a guy by the name of Charles Lyle who was ah actually a friend of Darwin and he hated the Christian faith.
01:26:41
Speaker
and but A lifetime before him was a guy by the name of Hutton. um Both of them hated the Christianity, the authority of the clergy and the Christian faith, and they were very key in developing this philosophy that the earth was millions of years old. Do you believe that the earth is millions of years old? No, I don't. So what do you believe? Well, the scripture would tell um ah
01:27:12
Speaker
where tell us that the creation is somewhere in the six to eight to 10,000, definitely less than 10,000 years. That seems like a young earth. Yeah. Well, it's in the category. A lot of times people use the term while you're a young earther and they they put you in this category that where you're dismissed. But that's what the scripture supports. That's what it is. And science and science.
01:27:39
Speaker
Yeah, well what is science? Science is the study of creation. uh science is trying to understand it's subduing it it's just subduing an understanding of this uh it's science by definitional by definition is coming up with a hypothesis for how something works so doing an experiment to see if your hypothesis is correct and if it's not correct you adjust it and feed it back but it's repeatable and happens over and over again
01:28:10
Speaker
And then you you eventually, you know, you solve your question in that way. That's that's the scientific method. Creation is not repeatable. You know, by the way, creation is a supernatural event. So you don't have to explain creation through science.
01:28:28
Speaker
It doesn't mean science. In fact, you can't explain creation through science because science by definition is repeatable. um You know, you can experiment in observable, repeatable. Nobody was around for creation. You know, Adam and Eve were created on day six. um So I see, you know, you read the creation account.
01:28:56
Speaker
I talked about provision. It says that in the beginning, it was empty and without form, specifically taught focusing on the earth. Yeah, the earth says verse two, the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. Right. So the first thing he does is he says, let there be light and there was light. And I consider the, in that word, light, all of energy. So he energized his work.
01:29:24
Speaker
because we only see the visible spectrum with our eyes right oh yeah but it's much more than that so i believe that that accounts for the energizing of his creation and then what was empty and without form the verse you just read yeah over six days he filled it and ordered it filled it and ordered it okay he gave it form And we can think of order ordering and ah as material ordering, as mathematical ordering, as chemical ordering, as optically ordering. A lot of times I'll talk to folks and I'll try to say how science ah and the scientific order is evidence of of design, creation, all of that, beauty,
01:30:16
Speaker
um intelligence behind it. It's all intelligible, right, um as evidence of God's creation. And I'll say, well, maybe you're not inclined to science. You don't like science. You don't like math. Maybe, but you like music. Well, music is a clear example of a mathematical ordering, you know, and then I'll grab the guitar that's on the stage, you know, and look at the guitarist. I'll say, you know, if I took this string, I pluck it. do You know, what note is that?
01:30:45
Speaker
If I took that string and I cut it in half, then I held it at the same tension. Don't worry, I won't cut your string in half. But I held it at the same tension. What note would it play? The same note, an octave higher. So that's just basic mathematical ordering of of music. And then we know what harmony is. We know what chords are. We know um that tells us two things. One is that there's a mathematical ordering. Just do the science of music, you know, chords in particular.
01:31:16
Speaker
and so there's a mathematical order in behind music and it is beauty it is art which is subjective which actually then know we have to look at ourselves why do we even care why why why would we call it good why would we call non-music dissonance you know it's not pleasing to the ear music can be pleasing to the ear because we bear the image of the creator So we, because we're not only creative, but we're artists in that way. And we we like order. And we don't like dissonance.
Humility and Legacy in NASA
01:32:00
Speaker
You could say some music, some modern music is pretty bad in that respect. can
01:32:05
Speaker
and in the extremes you can easily associate it with evil and those that follow it um because it's it is dissonance. It's not pleasing to the ear for those of us anyway that appreciate the order. It's intentionally disorderly and I think that's evidence and I'm getting on a lot of philosophical tangents here but that's evidence of the fault.
01:32:31
Speaker
I'm just here to listen, Jeff. So wherever direction you would like to take this conversation, I'm happy with that. I have pages of notes and I've just been scribbling here just to kind of keep this conversation straight. So we started way at the beginning of you in North Wisconsin. Listeners are not going to be able to follow this. They're going to have to take their own notes. That's fine. They can ask follow up questions and hopefully I can come back and get get with Brad and maybe an opportunity to ask you some follow up questions if you're with him.
01:33:00
Speaker
um
01:33:05
Speaker
It's so cool to have a NASA nasa astronaut space friend. Just another woodworker. What's the story you told me when they didn't recognize you in the parking lot or something like that? Oh, no, I would enjoy, you know. because you get a a why If you walk on the stage in a blue suit, a little fly suit, you know, you become the hero. and everybody's This guy, right? Yeah, yeah. so And you've got a lot of press and attention over your career. part of the job is going out and talking to people and I don't particularly like it but it's a duty you know we we need to do it um so Brad and I would be on you know at the in Houston for example where we have the sawmill and I'd be running the mill and a customer would show up and I'm just the
01:33:53
Speaker
The old guy in the back, full of sawdust, you know, and he was sweating and whatnot. So nobody wanted to
Future of the Wood Industry
01:33:59
Speaker
talk to me. They wanted to talk to Brad. Because he's the owner. yeah Yeah. Yeah. And he's the guy that, you know, they know about him. So that was kind of fun. um So that happened a lot. Jeff. Even it happens here. ah You know, because I stay in the background. I don't. Well, Brad's v's got the expertise. Jeff, listen. ah Look, we've got the audience here. and You know, um I feel like I'm on a mission and my mission is simple. The mission is to improve the lives of the people in the wood industry globally. um Kind of a unique thing.
01:34:36
Speaker
And that's the audience that's listening to you. and And I speak now, it's the wood industry, the guys that are maybe in the industrial wood sector, that they're, you know, high production, big sawmills, hard wood mills. Maybe they're in other parts of the wood world, as I call it. You know, as you, and I conclude here, maybe if you could give them Your thoughts, I mean, what you would would you like the audience to hear from you, from your from your words, what encouragement can you give them? Is it all doom and gloom here? Like, are we just, you know, I mean, I don't... Yeah, okay, i so I don't see any doom and gloom. much I encourage people to...
01:35:13
Speaker
We're all called to ah to a place in life, and and we want to do the best we can. We're given opportunities in that place. And you've just listed some opportunities that people have. I like to think that I i like to work through what I'm given ah for the good of others and not for myself. You know, so that's ah that's kind of a concept of calling in life.
01:35:37
Speaker
ah ah serving others and certainly those in the wood industry are serving the users of wood, right? And it takes ah everybody in that chain of events is important to get the product to market or to produce something. from what it's Understood. Any closing thoughts for the audience? just I love the industry. I love
01:36:02
Speaker
The whole concept of wood and using wood, so just keep on doing what you're doing. And please keep doing what you guys are doing. You guys are making beautiful pieces. Well, stay in touch and I look forward to visiting you again when Brad's in town. Thank you so much for the conversation, Jeff.