Shawn Ryan Show
#185 Scott "Kidd" Poteet - SpaceX Polaris Dawn Astronaut on Spacewalk, Moon Landing and Mars
Mon, 24 Mar 2025
Scott “Kidd” Poteet is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and highly experienced pilot who served more than two decades in the military. Over the course of his Air Force career, he flew F-16s in multiple combat deployments and held roles in leadership and training, earning a reputation for his strong work ethic and focus on mission excellence. Poteet’s dedication to both teamwork and mentorship helped guide the next generation of pilots, showcasing his commitment to service and the advancement of aerospace. Since retiring from active duty, Poteet has remained deeply involved in pioneering space initiatives and operational leadership. He served as the Mission Director for Inspiration4—SpaceX’s first all-civilian orbital mission—and continues his journey into human spaceflight as a pilot for the Polaris Dawn mission, part of the groundbreaking Polaris Program. Through these endeavors, he exemplifies a passion for pushing the boundaries of exploration and technology, reflecting both his military heritage and forward-thinking vision for space travel. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD https://patriotmobile.com/srs | 972-PATRIOT https://cozyearth.com/srs https://ziprecruiter.com/srs https://roka.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://tryarmra.com/srs https://identityguard.com/srs https://boncharge.com/srs This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. Scott "Kidd" Poteet Links: Website - https://www.kiddpoteet.com X - https://x.com/KiddPoteet IG - https://www.instagram.com/kiddpoteet Polaris Program - https://polarisprogram.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Scott 'Kidd' Poteet and what is his background?
scott poteet welcome to the show thanks for having me this is this is quite a quite an experience so thank you yeah you know we uh been looking forward to this we met at inauguration and um had a quick i don't know maybe 15 minute conversation there and I've always wanted to have an astronaut on the show. So yeah, thank you for coming.
Absolutely. There's only like 650 astronauts that have gone into space. So blessed to have that opportunity and just excited to talk about it.
Yeah, me too. Me too. So I want to do a life story on you and talk about your time in the Air Force, your childhood, get into space. And then who knows what kind of rabbit holes will go down here. But yeah, like I said, thank you for coming. And I'm looking forward to this. So everybody starts off with an introduction here. Scott Kidd Poteet, born in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
You grew up in New Hampshire, earning a bachelor's in outdoor education from the University of New Hampshire before diving headfirst into the Air Force. You're a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with over 20 years of service where you logged more than 3,200 flight hours in aircraft like F-16s, A-4s, and T-38s.
Over 400 of those hours were in combat supporting operations like Northern Watch, Southern Watch, Joint Guardian, Freedom's Sentinel, and Resolute Support. You commanded the 64th Aggressor Squadron, graduated from the Elite USAF Weapons School, basically the Air Force's version of Top Gun, and even flew as the No. 4 Demonstration Pilot with the Thunderbirds.
You then went into the private sector serving as Director of Business Development at Draken International and later as Vice President of Strategic at Shift 4 Payments. You were the mission director for Inspiration4, the world's first all-civilian spaceflight in 2021.
You also suited up as the mission pilot for Polaris Dawn in 2024, a SpaceX mission that took you nearly 900 miles above Earth, the farthest humans have traveled since Apollo, and included the first ever commercial spacewalk. You're a triathlete who has competed in 15 Ironman races, including four world championships in Kona.
Now you live in New Hampshire with your wife, Kristen, and your three children. And most importantly, out of everything we mentioned, you're a Christian. Amen. So welcome to the show once again. If you watch, you know everybody gets a gift. Use these on your next Ironman. I will.
I appreciate that.
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Chapter 2: What was the journey like to become an F-16 pilot?
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How did you overcome the motion sickness? It took a long, long time. A lot of driving. I actually had to hide it from my instructors. Thankfully, the 38 is, you know, is that tandem? You know, it's front and back. Yeah. And you're separated. Where the 37 was next to each other. So you see exactly what's going on in the cockpit. But in 38, you're in front. But I would have to puke and swallow.
I would literally puke in my mask and just suck it up because you get to a certain point where, you know, depending on what your issue is. You would just puke in your mask? Yeah.
This might be TMI, but yeah. No, I'm like, where does it go?
If you can hold it long enough, you can either.
And my recommendation is if- How do you concentrate flying a jet while trying like hell to hold vomit down?
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Chapter 3: Why haven't we returned to the moon since 1969?
You know, the day you show up, you get a manual that's stacked that high on the research philosophy or radar philosophy. It's kind of a haze, but they're like, hey, here's your manuals. You have two days to study this and you're going to have an exam.
You know, so it's just this overwhelming firehose effect because it's, you know, you're taught all this stuff going through the ranks to up to instructor pilot. That's five, six, seven years before you get to this point, post-pilot training. But you take it to a whole new level.
um you know you'll fly one mission and it's phase-based it's that building block approach so you start off bfm that that 1v1 dog fighting skills you're going to hone those skills then the the 2v2 and then the 4v4 and then these huge massive employments towards the end of the graduation to include all the air to ground missions so you're you're
learning everything you possibly can throughout each phase and you might fly a one hour flight assorting um bfm one mission you'll put five six hours of prep into that you'll fly for one hour and you might debrief it for 10 hours you're dissecting every single thing that you did to hone your skills and become the best tactician that you possibly can be You'd be going to debrief sun setting.
And by the time you come out and sun's rising, you go grab breakfast at the 2-5 Club or something across the street at Nellis. But that's your life for six months. And everyone's on edge. And am I going to survive this program? Am I going to make it through? Yeah.
because there is a washout right and it's very intense interesting yeah let's talk about when is the first time that you you flew a combat mission um
There's certainly different flavors of combat. Some of the missions up in Korea, you're flying the patrol along the border, those are considered combat. The Northern Watch, Southern Watch, every once in a while you would employ against some AAA piece out in the middle. Honestly, it wasn't until towards the end of my career when I deployed to Afghanistan at the heat of ISIS, 2015,
doing counterterrorism missions that it was like every day you're employing. You remember the first one? I do. Yeah. So our configuration loadout, what we're carrying for munitions, we have... All my bros are going to give me shit if I can't remember. There's a GBU-38 and a GBU-54. These are 500-pound bombs. They're guided either coordinates that you put in or laser.
You can use your targeting pod and a laser designator. with the same PRF code and designate a target. But those are typically not fast movers. Those are stationary targets, buildings, KS-19 piece out in the open or camouflage, you know, based on the intel you're trying to figure it out. And we carry a Maverick. So that's the tank buster. That's, I think, a 300-pound warhead that, it's a missile.
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Chapter 4: How does the partnership between NASA and SpaceX work?
It's a pretty intense band of radiation called the Van Allen belts. And then we brought it down to 750-ish, I think it was. You were up there for how many days, three days? No, up there was just eight orbits. So 106 minutes times eight, whatever that equals, hour and a half, I don't know, 12 hours, 12, 14 hours.
So when you were up there, I mean, could you see the whole earth at once?
No, there was – I wish I had pictures – Do you have pictures? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. iPhone. We took thousands of pictures with our iPhone. Can you send me some? Absolutely. They're all over the internet. We have a Flickr page I'll send you that's got really cool videos, time lapse. The best pictures actually are from outside the capsule. It looks like CGI. Looks fake. It's not. Just like the moon.
But they modified, again, standard SpaceX badass. They had a camera outside, a selfie cam with a fisheye lens outside the hatch, the nose cone. So it had this beautiful picture of the spacewalk, just time lapse of all the evolution of the light, all that stuff. So I'll send you plenty. So could you see the whole? No. You could see a good portion of it. But we weren't far enough away.
There was enough underneath. And windows aren't that great. I mean, there's two windows. They're about that big. And then the Ford hatch, the actual hatch has a window in it. What's it like looking out into nothing? Very eerie. Sometimes you depend on the lighting, but you can see stars, and sometimes you couldn't.
Especially when the Dracos are firing, all you see is this hue of yellows and reds from the fuel exhaust. But there were times where it's just billions of stars. I mean, more than you could ever imagine. We did see constellation of Starlink. It passed, like, 70 kilometers away-ish, which is pretty close, I mean, relatively speaking. They track all that.
It's called MMOD, micrometeorite orbital debris. Any shit that's, you know, worthy of, well, anything that big would put a hole in your capsule, but... What was, I mean, what was...
What was the routine up there? Were you guys just, did you have to be, were you doing stuff?
Oh, yeah. No, it was constant. We packed a lot. 10 pounds of shit into a six-pound sock. It was a lot. Because we wanted to make it, I mean, how many astronauts have there been? You know, we've got to maximize this opportunity and leverage every minute and second we have. So we had a very intense timeline. And then you talk about all the adaptation to the environment.
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