About this episode

Colonel Mike Mullane discusses his experiences as a Space Shuttle astronaut and the lessons learned on leadership and safety.

Colonel Mike Mullane flew three Space Shuttle missions as a Mission Specialist and is a retired US Air Force weapon systems operator, flying 134 combat missions in Vietnam. He wrote the award-winning children's book Liftoff and the outrageously amusing and often times tragic “Riding Rockets”. He is a speaker on leadership, teamwork, and safety. He uses his experiences to explain the "normalisation of deviance," the tendency to take shortcuts and accept lower standards under pressure. Listen to Gareth’s interview with Mike, on the best and sadly some of the tragic elements of being a Space Shuttle astronaut.

People in this episode

Host: Gareth

Guest: Mike Mullane

Topics covered

• Space Shuttle missions
• leadership
• teamwork
• safety
• normalisation of deviance
• combat missions
• astronaut experiences

Keywords

• astronaut
• Space Shuttle
• leadership
• teamwork
• normalisation of deviance
• combat missions
• Mike Mullane

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: US Air Force

Books & works: Liftoff, Riding Rockets

More episodes of Xtended

• Ep.226 - Warbirds to Warhorses · February 16, 2026 · 54 min
• Ep.225 - The Invisible Campaign, with Jane Gulliford Lowes · February 2, 2026 · 1h 4m
• Ep.224 - Fifty Years of Flying Fun · November 3, 2025 · 18 min
• Ep.222 - Flight 540: 'Wake up, it's a crash' · September 8, 2025 · 30 min
• Ep.221 - Eagle Days with Victoria Taylor · May 25, 2025 · 1h 21m
• Ep.220 - Over Cold War Seas with Mike Napier · May 18, 2025 · 1h 11m

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Xtended podcast page.