About five years ago, I was backstage at a conference I was speaking at when I casually got into a conversation with one of the other speakers.

It turned out she was an astronaut. She had flown multiple missions to space and had spent six months on the International Space Station.

Upon finding this out I immediately said I apologize in advance for the barrage of questions

about space that I'm going to ask you.

Feel free to change the subject at any time.

And for the next two hours, I bombarded her

with questions about space.

Space missions, space flight, living in space,

zero gravity.

I mean, like, how do you eat, how do you poop, how do you do anything?

She never tired, she never changed the subject, and we've been friends ever since.

Katie Coleman is a scientist, an astronaut, and an Air Force veteran.

She built her incredible career in the 80s and 90s, an era where there were few to know women in the rooms that Katie was in,

and she managed to excel through all of them.

If I had to describe Katie in a word, and she managed to excel through all of them.

If I had to describe Katie in a word, I would say,

tenacity.

She is a single-mindedness about her that is very rare,

a way of pressing ahead through adversity

without accumulating the resentment or pity parades that most of us do.

Or as she puts it, cheerfully showing up even when you weren't invited.

A few weeks ago, she released her first book, it's called Sharing Space, and I had her on the show to talk

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