Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Christian

Guru Murphy and this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about

the big ideas and their lives and the events that have helped shape them. My

guest this week is the British astronaut Tim Peek. He has been a test pilot,

he was in the Army Air Corps where he flew helicopters, and now he is post-astronaut, a sort of an ambassador for science and for space and an author.

And his latest book is Space, The Human Story, and is the story of the 628 people in human history who have left

earth. Tim welcome thank you for coming. It's great to be talking to you.

So why did you want to tell this story? I thought it was a good time to tell

the story because we were on the cusp of a new era of space exploration and

four of my good friends are currently training in NASA and they're looking to fly on Artemis 2 next year going back to the moon.

They won't actually land on the surface, that will be Artemis 3 the year after.

But this is really exciting. I was eight years old when Jean Cernan last stepped off the surface of the moon in

1972 and so to go back there now, well we've got a whole story in between and I wanted to tell that story of where we are now

looking forward but how we've got here.

And in all modesty I'm sure it's difficult to talk about this but I mean are astronauts

a special kind of superhuman?

Well that's I think where there's a bit of myth-busting going in there.

We're ordinary people doing an extraordinary job and yes we've got a tough selection process to go through and

tough medical through and tough

medicals and tough training.

But just like many jobs, when it's your passion,

then you tend to be absolutely focused and good at that.

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