Please visit Mike’s YouTube channel to see excerpts from his speaking programs and from his safety video.
In his program, The Lighter Side of Spaceflight, Astronaut Mike Mullane will take the audience on a uniquely revealing, captivating and hilarious space journey. Using spectacular video and slides he will answer everybody’s space questions: What does a shuttle launch feel like?…How does an astronaut deal with the incredible fear of launch?…How do you sleep, bathe, eat, drink, etc.?….What do you see from space?…And, of course, he will answer the top two questions that astronauts are ever asked:
Number 1: How does the space toilet work?
Number 2: Has he seen any UFOs or aliens?
The answers to these questions and many, many more are lavishly wrapped with inside, hilarious stories and supported with amazing video.
The audience will not only be thoroughly entertained by The Lighter Side of Spaceflight but will they will also find Mullane’s message on goal setting and achievement to be powerfully inspirational. Most audiences are shocked to learn how ordinary Mullane was. People assume, because he is an astronaut now, that in his youth, he was a super-child, destined for great success. That is not the case. Mullane uses slides and video to prove he wasn’t a child genius. He wasn’t a high school sports star. He didn’t date the homecoming queen. He wasn’t popular. (He shows a slide of the dedication pages from his high school year book…which are blank except for a single inscription: “You missed Korea but here’s hoping you make Vietnam”.)
Yet, Mullane realized a lifetime dream of becoming an astronaut through the practice of “mapping the edge of his performance envelope”. Every individual and team has an “edge of a performance envelope” and individuals and teams find those “edges” (as team member, leaders, parents, spouses, etc.) through self-challenge and tenacity. (Mullane’s father was rendered a paraplegic at age 33 by polio and Mullane’s story of his parents response to that tragedy while raising six children is the basis of his message on tenacity and goal-achievement in the face of adversity). Mullane develops this philosophy of self-leadership: “Success isn’t a final destination. It’s a continuous life journey of mapping our performance envelopes through challenge and tenacity.”
The Lighter Side of Spaceflight is remarkably inspirational and humorous. The audience will come away from the program with a renewed sense of their potential and the potential of their teams.