The Moth (15 page)

So now I was heads-up against Phil Hellmuth, the thief of my confidence. And I got in a big pot with him when I had more chips, and I had king ten and he had ten eight, and I won the hand, and I actually beat Phil to collect the $2 million prize and win the tournament that no one thought I even deserved to be at.

And now when people ask me what the most important hand of poker I ever played in my life was, I don’t say it was the
king ten that I beat Phil Hellmuth with to win that big prize. I say it was the two tens that I found such a difficult fold with, because sometimes it’s not the really big things that you do that get you the win, it’s the really big things that you don’t do.

Annie Duke
has succeeded as a poker player, teacher, reality television star, business consultant, charity fund-raiser, and a coauthor of
Decide to Play Great Poker
(2011). Through March 2012, Annie has earned over $4.2 million in live poker tournaments. At the World Series of Poker alone, she has cashed on thirty-nine occasions, made fifteen final tables, and won a gold bracelet in 2004. In 2010, Duke won the NBC National Heads-Up Championship, one of the most coveted titles in poker. Duke founded Ante Up For Africa and regularly runs fund-raising poker tournaments, raising millions of dollars for charities. In 2009, she raised $730,000 on
Celebrity Apprentice
for Refugees International. Annie is currently using her years of good decision-making at the table to help others become better thinkers through consulting and speaking on decision bias and critical thinking.

MICHAEL MASSIMINO

I
n 1984 I was a senior in college, and I went to see the movie
The Right Stuff
. And a couple of things really struck me in that movie. The first was the view out the window of John Glenn’s spaceship—the view of the Earth, how beautiful it was on the big screen. I wanted to see that view. And secondly, the camaraderie between the original seven astronauts depicted in that movie—how they were good friends, how they stuck up for each other, how they would never let each other down. I wanted to be part of an organization like that.

And it rekindled a boyhood dream that had gone dormant over the years. That dream was to grow up to be an astronaut. And I just could not ignore this dream. I had to pursue it. So I decided I wanted to go to graduate school, and I was lucky enough to get accepted to MIT.

While I was at MIT, I started applying to NASA to become an astronaut. I filled out my application, and I received a letter that said they weren’t quite interested. So I waited a couple years, and I sent in another application. They sent me back
pretty much the same letter. So I applied a
third
time, and this time I got an interview, so they got to know who I was. And then they told me no.

So I applied a fourth time. And on April 22, 1996, I knew the call was coming, good or bad. I picked up the phone, and it was Dave Leestma, the head of flight crew operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

He said, “Hey, Mike. This is Dave Leestma. How you doing this morning?”

And I said, “I really don’t know, Dave. You’re gonna have to tell me.”

And he said, “Well, I think you’re gonna be pretty good after this phone call, ’cause we wanna make you an astronaut.”

Thirteen years after that, it’s May 17, 2009, and I’m on space shuttle
Atlantis
, about to go out and do a spacewalk on the Hubble Space Telescope. And our task that day was to repair an instrument that had failed. This instrument was used by scientists to detect the atmospheres of far-off planets. Planets in other solar systems could be analyzed using this spectrograph to see if we might find a planet that was Earth-like, or a planet that could support life. And just when they got good at doing this, the power supply on this instrument failed. It blew. So the instrument could no longer be used.

And there was no way really to replace this unit or to repair the instrument, because when they launched this thing, and they got it ready for space flight, they really buttoned it up. They didn’t want anybody to screw with this thing. It was buttoned up with an access panel that blocked the power supply that had failed. This access panel had 117 small screws with washers, and just to play it safe, they put glue on the screw threads so they would never come apart. You know, it could withstand a
space launch, and there was no way we could get in to fix this thing.

But we really wanted the Hubble’s capability back, so we started working. And for five years, we designed a spacewalk. We designed over one hundred new space tools to be used—at great taxpayers’ expense, millions of dollars, thousands of people worked on this. And my buddy Mike Good (who we call Bueno)—he and I were gonna go out to do this spacewalk. I was gonna be the guy actually doing the repair.

And inside was Drew Feustel, one of my best friends. He was gonna read me the checklist. And we had practiced for years and years for this. They built us our own practice instrument and gave us our own set of tools so we could practice in our office, in our free time, during lunch, after work, on the weekends. We became like one mind. He would say it, I would do it. We had our own language. And now was the day to go out and do this task.

The thing I was most worried about when leaving the airlock that day was my path to get to the telescope, because it was along the side of the space shuttle. And if you look over the edge of the shuttle, it’s like looking over a cliff, with 350 miles to go down to the planet. And there are no good handrails.

When we’re spacewalking, we like to grab on to things with our space gloves and be nice and steady. But I got to this one area along the side of the shuttle, and there was nothing good to grab. I had to grab a wire or a hose or a knob or a screw. And I’m kind of a big goon. And when there’s no gravity, you can get a lot of momentum built up, and I could go spinning off into space. I knew I had a safety tether that would probably hold, but I also had a heart that I wasn’t so sure about. I knew they would get me back, I just wasn’t sure what they would get back on the
end of the tether when they reeled me in. So I was really concerned about this. I took my time, and I got through the treacherous path and out to the telescope.

The first thing I had to do was to remove a handrail from the telescope that was blocking the access panel. There were two screws on the top, and they came off easily. And there was one screw on the bottom right and that came out easily. The fourth screw is not moving. My tool is moving, but the screw is not. I look close and it’s stripped. And I realize that that handrail’s not coming off, which means I can’t get to the access panel with these 117 screws that I’ve been worrying about for five years, which means I can’t get to the power supply that failed, which means we’re not gonna be able to fix this instrument today, which means all these smart scientists can’t find life on other planets.

And I’m to blame for this.

And I could see what they would be saying in the science books of the future. This was gonna be my legacy. My children and my grandchildren would read in their classrooms:

We would know if there was life on other planets… but Gabby and Daniel’s dad…
My children would suffer from this.

Gabby and Daniel’s dad broke the Hubble Space Telescope, and we’ll never know.

And through this nightmare that had just begun, I looked at my buddy Bueno, next to me in his space suit, and he was there to assist in the repair but could not take over my role. He had his own responsibilities, and I was the one trained to do the now broken part of the repair. It was my job to fix this thing. I turned and looked into the cabin where my five crewmates were, and I realized nobody in there had a space suit on. They
couldn’t come out here and help me. And then I actually looked at the Earth; I looked at our planet, and I thought,
There are billions of people down there, but there’s no way I’m gonna get a house call on this one. No one can help me
.

I felt this deep loneliness. And it wasn’t just a “Saturday afternoon with a book” alone. I felt… detached from the Earth. I felt that I was by myself, and everything that I knew and loved and that made me feel comfortable was far away. And then it started getting dark and cold.

Because we travel 17,500 miles an hour, ninety minutes is one lap around the Earth. So it’s forty-five minutes of sunlight and forty-five minutes of darkness. And when you enter the darkness, it is not just darkness. It’s the darkest black I have ever experienced. It’s the complete absence of light. It gets cold, and I could feel that coldness, and I could sense the darkness coming. And it just added to my loneliness.

For the next hour or so, we tried all kinds of things. I was going up and down the space shuttle, trying to figure out where I needed to go to get the next tool to try to fix this problem, and nothing was working. And then they called up, after about an hour and fifteen minutes of this, and said they wanted me to go to the front of the shuttle to a toolbox and get vise grips and tape. I thought to myself,
We are running out of ideas. I didn’t even know we had tape on board. I’m gonna be the first astronaut to use tape in space during a spacewalk
.

But I followed directions. I got to the front of the space shuttle, and I opened up the toolbox and there was the tape. At that point I was very close to the front of the orbiter, right by the cabin window, and I knew that my best pal was in there, trying to help me out. And I could not even stand to think of looking
at him, because I felt so bad about the way this day was going, with all the work he and I had put in.

But through the corner of my eye, through my helmet, you know, just the side there, I can kinda see that he’s trying to get my attention. And I look up at him, and he’s just cracking up, smiling and giving me the okay sign. And I’m like,
Is there another spacewalk going on out here?
I really can’t talk to him, because if I say anything, the ground will hear. You know, Houston. The control center. So I’m kinda like playing charades with him. I’m like,
What are you, nuts?
And I didn’t wanna look before, because I thought he was gonna give me the finger because he’s gonna go down in the history books with me. But he’s saying,
No, we’re okay. You just hang in there a little bit longer. We’re gonna make it through this. We’re in this together. You’re doing great. Just hang in there.

And if there was ever a time in my life that I needed a friend, it was at that moment. And there was my buddy, just like I saw in that movie, the camaraderie of those guys sticking together. I didn’t believe him at all. I figured that we were outta luck. But I thought,
At least if I’m going down, I’m going down with my best pal.

And as I turned to make my way back over the treacherous path one more time, Houston called up and told us what they had in mind. They wanted me to use that tape to tape the bottom of the handrail and then see if I could yank it off the telescope. They said it was gonna take about sixty pounds of force for me to do that.

And Drew answers the call, and he goes, “Sixty pounds of force?”

He goes, “Mass, I think you got that in you. What do you think?”

And I’m like, “You bet, Drew. Let’s go get this thing.”

I get back to the telescope, and I put my hand on that handrail, and the ground calls again, and they go, “Well, Drew, you know, you guys are okay to do this, but right now we don’t have any downlink from Mike’s helmet camera.” I’ve got these cameras mounted on my helmet, so they can see everything I’m doing. It’s kinda like your mom looking over your shoulder when you’re doing your homework, you know?

And they go, “We don’t have any downlink for another three minutes, but we know we’re running late on time here, so if you have to…” And I’m thinking,
Let’s do it now while they can’t watch!
Because the reason I’m taping this thing is if any debris gets loose, they’re gonna get all worried, and it’s gonna be another hour, and we’ll never fix this thing. We’ve been through enough already.

So I’m like,
Let’s do it now, while Mom and Dad aren’t home. Let’s have the party.

So I say, “Drew, I think we should do it now.”

And Drew’s like, “Go!” And
bam!
That thing comes right off. I pull out my power tool, and now I’ve got that access panel with those 117 little bitty screws with their washers and glue, and I’m ready to get each one of them. And I pull the trigger on my power tool and nothing happens, and I look, and I see that the battery is dead. And I turn my head to look at Bueno, who’s in his space suit, again looking at me like,
What else can happen today?

And I said, “Drew, the battery’s dead in this thing. I’m gonna go back to the air lock, and we’re gonna swap out the battery, and I’m gonna recharge my oxygen tank.” Because I was getting low on oxygen; I needed to get a refill.

And he said, “Go.” And I was going back over that shuttle,
and I noticed two things. One was that that treacherous path that I was so scaredy-cat-sissy-pants about going over—it wasn’t scary anymore. That in the course of those couple hours of fighting this problem, I had gone up and down that thing about twenty times, and my fear had gone away, because there was no time to be a scaredy-cat, it was time to get the job done. And what we were doing was more important than me being worried, and it was actually kinda fun going across that little jungle gym, back and forth over the shuttle.