EPISODE NOTES
Hello Mindsetters! Welcome to Episode 3 of The Retired Mindset—and trust us, this one is something special.
Podcast host Bob Preston’s guest today is aviation royalty. Rogers E. Smith—“Rog” to his friends—is a former Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, Air National Guard veteran, and NASA test pilot who spent nearly two decades at the legendary Dryden (now Neil Armstrong) Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.
During his incredible career, Rog flew some of the world’s most advanced aircraft: the X-29, X-31, F-15, F-16, and F-18 jets. But his crown jewel? Eight years in the cockpit of the SR-71 Blackbird—the world’s fastest airplane. We’re talking 85,000 feet and over Mach 3—more than 2,300 miles per hour. Yes, faster than a speeding bullet.
Beyond his jaw-dropping resume, Rog is a man of humility and depth. One of his quotes that stuck with me is: “Money is necessary, but it’s not a sufficient ingredient for fulfillment in life.”
That wisdom is what makes this conversation perfect for The Retired Mindset—a deep look at how purpose and passion evolve when the afterburners of our careers shut off and we enter new airspace: retirement.
We recorded this episode on location in beautiful Coronado, California, and we’re releasing this story in two parts.
- Part 1 (this episode): Rog’s incredible aviation journey—from fighter pilot to NASA test pilot—and the lessons learned along the way.
- Part 2 (coming soon): Rog’s personal philosophy on leadership, passion, and life after NASA, including his work today as a consultant, volunteer, and member of the Mountain Host and Safety Team at Mammoth Mountain.
Key Takeaways:
- The mindset and courage it takes to fly experimental aircraft at Mach 3+
- Why humility and curiosity matter more than speed or status
- Rog’s reflections on fulfillment beyond career achievements
- How to carry leadership, purpose, and passion into retirement
Join us as we post new episodes weekly!
Connect with Bob: BobbyP@theretiredmindset.com, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, TheRetiredMindset.com.
VIDEO
TRANSCRIPT
Rogers E. Smith: 0:00
The SR 71 could fly as high as by the book it could fly higher, but the the margin to safety was reducing if you went higher. The book answer was 85,000 feet and mock 3.2 means 3.2 times the speed of sound. So that translates at 85,000 feet. 3.2 is roughly speaking 2,300 miles per hour.Bob Preston (Host): 0:36
Welcome to the Retired Mindset Podcast, where soul meets body. Hosted by me, Bob Preston. Embrace the retirement journey of transformative insights, inspiring conversations, with new episodes produced weekly. Hello, mindsetters, Bob Preston here. Welcoming you to episode three of the Retired Mindset. This one’s going to be something very special because today I’ll be joined by a man that I am, quite frankly, honored to be able to call my friend, someone I deeply admire, and I’m honestly humbled that he agreed to come on the podcast. When you think of aviation legends, some names pop into one’s mind, like maybe the Wright brothers or Chuck Yeager. They might come to mind.
Bob Preston (Host): 1:28
Well, my guest today, quite frankly, belongs right up there with those amazing men. He’s a former Royal Canadian Air Force pilot who went on to serve in the Air National Guard, retiring there as a lieutenant colonel, and then went on to a nearly two-decade career as a test pilot at NASA’s Dryden Research Center, which is now known as the Neil Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.Bob Preston (Host): 1:57
This is the place for test pilots. And during his time there, he flew some of the world’s most advanced aircraft. The X-29, X-31, and the F-15, 16, and 18 class jets. But the crown jewel of his career? Eight years flying the legendary SR-71 Blackbird, the world’s fastest airplane, a reconnaissance jet that for 25 years was in a class all of its own, soaring at 85,000 feet and at speeds of Mach 3.2. That’s over three times the speed of sound or around 2,300 miles per hour. Yep, this guy faster than a speeding bullet.
Bob Preston (Host): 2:41
His name is Rogers E. Smith, known by his friends simply as Raj. Beyond his incredible career, what makes him truly remarkable is his humility and his outlook on life. In preparing for this episode, I watched a TED talk that he gave, and one thing he said really stuck with me, and that is that money is necessary, but it’s not sufficient as an ingredient for fulfillment in life. I thought that was amazing. It is exactly these kinds of intangibles that make a conversation with Raj a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and he’s a perfect guest for the Retired Mindset podcast. To address the impact retirement can have on the human spirit. I think you’re going to love this conversation. It is recorded on location in beautiful Coronado, California.
Bob Preston (Host): 3:34
Here’s the thing. And look, this can happen when filming on location. We had it all prepared, set up, but we had some technical glitches along the way, which prevented us from capturing the latter portion of our planned conversation and content. Rather than delay the whole thing, we’re going to produce and publish it in two parts.
Bob Preston (Host): 3:56
Part one, which we captured in this first session together, will focus on Raj’s background and amazing career. Part two, coming in a week or so, will cover Raj’s philosophy and core values on leadership and passion and how they applied not only to his previous career, but also to his current life in retirement as a consultant, volunteer, and member with me of the host and ski safety team at Mammoth Mountain. So sit back, enjoy part one, and get ready to be inspired. All right, let’s dive in.
Rogers, thank you so much for being on the retired mindset today.
Rogers E. Smith: 4:37
Bob, it’s my pleasure to have you with me in Coronado.
Bob Preston (Host): 4:42
Oh my god, look at look at the look at the background we get today. Is this awesome? So really excited about that. I quipped in my episode prologue that you truly are a man who is faster than a speeding bullet, right? Okay. And so what I’d like you to do, I always start by asking my guests to introduce themselves, maybe a little bit about your background, your current life, and maybe you can explain that faster than a speeding bullet thing, okay? Would that be a great place to start?Rogers E. Smith: 5:08
Sure, that’s fine. Yeah. So I uh it starts way back a long time ago. Uh my passion was to be a pilot, and specifically a technical pilot and a test pilot, and to go to school and study engineering, aeronautical engineering. So people often ask me many of the same questions that you do about how do I develop this passion? Well, I’d never been in an airplane.
Rogers E. Smith: 5:33
When I was six years old, I came to Toronto and Canada, and my favorite uncle was in the Second World War training people over in England how to fly beams and so on. And he was my hero. So he was a pilot, and that’s what I wanted to be. Okay. So when I finally got through school and I couldn’t, my parents could not afford to send me to university. So I joined a program that’s similar to the one in the United States, ROTC. It was called ROTP. This was in Canada.Rogers E. Smith: 6:04
So they paid my way through university. And because I wanted to study aeronautics, I was supposed to go to the military college, but I was allowed to go to University of Toronto. And that’s where I studied aeronautical engineering and eventually got a master’s degree. So we can, in the ensuing conversations, talk a little bit about some of the details as you ask questions. Sure. But my desire was to be a pilot so I could go to and be an engineer and a test pilot. And through the good offices of the Canadian Air Force, who paid my way through university and actually paid me $75 a month, paid for my books, paid for everything.
Rogers E. Smith: 6:46
And so I, in the summers, I went to pilot training. And the first airplane that I ever was in, I never was a passenger, was in the Canadian Air Force training, and we called it a Harvard, it’s called a T6 here. Pretty big airplane to be the first one you ever stepped inside. But I took training in the summers. Each summer was nice, contrast to university. And then finally I graduated and I went off to the final phase of training. And during that time, I was offered a scholarship back at the University of Toronto at the Institute of Aerospace Studies to get a master’s degree in ionical engineering. So one of the people that was the commander on the base that I was at in Manitoba and Canada. I knew him because I was a softball player, a fast pitch player that was good enough to play on the station team as a cadet. So I played shortstop on the team. And so therefore I knew him a little bit. So I asked if I could get an interview with him. So I went to his office and explained I got this offer for nine months, a fellowship to go back and study. And should I do that? It’d be right in the middle of my training, final training. For a graduate degree. And so he literally picked up the phone and called headquarters in Ottawa, said, I have this cadet here, named me, and said he’s got this offer and he should take it. And I want him to get nine months leave without pay from the Air Force. So this is by way of saying all the people that influenced me along the way. I was lucky enough to have people open doors that I wanted to see open, and I had to put forth the effort, but my passion was to be a test pilot. And for us, I wanted, I come from Canada and north of British Columbia. Had nothing to do with skiing until I was in Europe with the Canadian Air Force after I graduated from pilot training, where I started skiing.
Bob Preston (Host): 8:48
Okay, you weren’t one of those James Bond guys, like back with a rifle on his back chasing people on skis.
Rogers E. Smith: 8:54
No, no, no. But that ultimately connecting with us led me to live, work for NASA in Edwards Air Force Base near Lancaster in California. So from there we went, my family and I went up to Mammoth to ski on weekends. And ultimately we said, why don’t we see if we can buy a house up here? Wonderful. Which in 1997, 1997 bought a house and joined the host program at Mammoth as a ski host on the mountain. And then last year you came on that same program, and that’s how we met, and that’s why we’re sitting here now.
Bob Preston (Host): 9:32
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s how Roger and I met, everybody. We worked together, even though we’re both technically retired. I think Roger has some side hustle still as well. But I was gonna save this for later in the episode, but since you brought it up, I think I’ll I’ll mention it now. Because I can, you know, I can’t tell you. You did something for me, and I can’t tell you how much it meant to me at a time. When I first joined the host program, I loved it. Then the second year I took on more of a leadership role as a lead, right? You remember that? Yeah, I do. And I don’t remember if you know this conversation, but I think I do. Okay, awesome. A lot of the hosts who had been doing this for a long time, you know, they they were kind of giving me the business a little bit about being a lead. Like, you know, I I could I could read the room and I knew, you know, that there was some skepticism. But you didn’t do that. You you I so I don’t know if you remember this, but you you were different. You came up to me and you said, Bob, we need more people like you. I’m paraphrasing here, so it may not be verbatim. But if you ever have any questions or if I can be any help, don’t hesitate to ask. And I just really was impressed by that, and that made my day and just really made that transition easier for me. So I want to thank you for that, actually. I was gonna do it later in the episode, but since it came up.
Rogers E. Smith: 10:49
Now, I I remember the conversation and I certainly sense the atmosphere that you talked about. What I do now is I when I have the opportunities as a consultant, I have gone to companies and I I just interview people one-on-one, answer a question ultimately as a reporter. For example, in lots of aerospace companies, big and small, they want to know do we have a safety culture here? Yeah. And so that’s dependent on discipline on the part of the individuals. It’s dependent on dependent on people being good teammates, controlling their own ego. It’s also dependent on leadership, being a proper leader and caring about people. Yeah. And so I know I know the conversation I told a quick story to you that is pertinent to what you said. And it it doesn’t matter about the circumstances, the veracity of that. It matters the story goes that President Kennedy was down at Cape Canaveral with his entourage touring before we put a man on the moon. And so he’s wandering the halls with his group, going from A to B. He sees a cleaning guy with his apparatus at the side of the hallway, goes over and introduces himself. Imagine it’s a shock to the cleaning man, and said, Oh, the pertinent part is he said, Oh, what do you do here? And he replied, I’m helping to put a man on the moon. Oh my goodness. So that capture. I do remember that story. Yeah. That captures leadership. What leaders do is make people feel like they’re not important in the sense of being high in the hierarchy, but they’re important to the overall objectives. So for me, I’m important to the objective up for the guests up there, but you are now put in a position where you have a role to play with the same purpose. Yeah. And so if you feel like you want to include people to make them feel like you’re part of, as opposed to, I’m the boss, you’re nothing, and I’m telling you what to do. That doesn’t win any of the kind of response that you want. True. But as you told the story and as I added to it, that’s what leadership’s all about. No question about it.
Bob Preston (Host): 13:10
By the way, he’s been doing the host program. This is how we met. We we ski together or we ski on the same mountain in Mammoth together. He’s been doing it for 25 years as a host and mountain safety team member. He still is out there almost every day doing this thing. I was in my second year, so I was kind of a newbie still. And he showed me the respect to come and give me those kind words. And I just I just really appreciate it. Now I have a term for these kind of people. Okay. Can I share my metaphor? Of course. Okay, so I refer to people who are kind-hearted and show leadership and welcoming spirit, you did. I call them trail angels. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that term. I haven’t, but that’s well, trail angel is a person if you’re ever hiking out on the trail, you meet and they’re like, you know, just showing you the right way, maybe pulling out their map and they’re kind of, you get it, you get it, right? Well, the metaphorical trail angel are those that help you adapt in certain situations as you’re making a path in life, or maybe in a new role or in a new circumstance. And so, you, my friend, you know, one of the first trail angels that I had ever met. And so I wanted to say thank you for that. Good. Well, yeah. So anyway, you could tell you could tell somebody that sometime that, hey, yeah, I was Bob’s uh trail angel. Okay, so I want you to go back and explain the speeding bullet part. We didn’t get to that, right? You had a nice summary. We’re gonna get more detailed on your on your background and your career.
Rogers E. Smith: 14:33
But well, at the at NASA, the kind of one of the last big stops that I made in my career. And I just happened to be arrived at the time that NASA received the we’re retiring the SR-71 Blackbird, which is a very special airplane that flew as a recon reconnaissance airplane, mainly secretly, for 25 years for this country. The unique advantage it had it could fly faster and higher than anyone.
Bob Preston (Host): 15:06
How high did it fly?
Rogers E. Smith: 15:07
So the the nominal the book answer is 85,000 feet. Would you take it high?
Bob Preston (Host): 15:13
Would you ever sneak a little higher?
Rogers E. Smith: 15:15
Well, I think I went as high as 87. Okay. So they and there’s nothing, it’s an airplane that you have to fly in certain corridors for everything to work. And if people really wanted to understand the SR-71 Blackbird, they could go on YouTube and there’s an explanation of all the technology that’s there. It’s called the Insane Engineering in the SR-71.
Bob Preston (Host): 15:40
Still in a world, even though that plane is retired, it’s still on a class of its own.Rogers E. Smith: 15:44
Yeah, it still is the fastest air-breathing vehicle that we at least admit to. And I’m not suggesting I know differently, but so I’m I’m going to teach a class in November at the Test Pilot School for a week in Canada, in London, Ontario, the International Test Pilot School. So in fact, I’m just preparing all the various slides I have, PowerPoint for that. And one of the slides that I have goes goes up and says, yes, I did, fly faster than a bullet.
Bob Preston (Host): 16:17
All right, okay.
Rogers E. Smith: 16:18
So the SR 71 could fly as high as by the book, it could fly higher, but the the margin to safety was reducing if you went higher. But the book answer is 85,000 feet, and Mach, 3.2. Means 3.2 times the speed of sound.
Bob Preston (Host): 16:37
Okay.
Rogers E. Smith: 16:38
So that translates at 85,000 feet. 3.2 is roughly speaking 2,300 miles per hour. Incredible. And many muzzle velocities of many known rifles and guns are not as fast as that.
Bob Preston (Host): 16:55
Yeah, faster than the speeding bullet right here.
Rogers E. Smith: 16:57
So I truly did fly. I was lucky enough to get there at the right time. And so I ended up as a pilot, test pilot, not just a pilot, a test pilot, because we did things trying to uh do experiments with the SR-71 to support, you know, a national space plane, which never did materialize. But we did a lot of uh research flying. So we flew with uh a rocket on the back that we never did fire all the elements required because carrying hydrogen gas is very, very tricky. And you don’t want leaks and so on. So it’s a whole story there, but eight years I flew as a pilot, one of the pilots. We had two pilots designated on every airplane that we flew. And I flew at then called Dryden Flight Research Center in NASA. If there’s utopia to go to for a test pilot, that’s it.
Bob Preston (Host): 17:53
The creme de la creme of flying, basically.
Rogers E. Smith: 17:56
And I was I was at uh Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, New York, where in fact I met my second wife, Judy, that you met this morning. And so when I did some work on the special airplanes we had, which was the first examples of using computers in flight so that one pilot could fly at the controls and make inputs to the computer, and we could add or subtract to the model of the airplane so we’d fly either trying to simulate a new fighter or just doing research. We could use these special flying simulators that were the forerunner of fly by wire. Sure. So I did work out at NASA related to the space shuttle, and the man I flew with uh was a couple of weeks twice. After a month after I we flew the last time, he became the chief pilot. So he called me. For the space shuttle? No, he at NASA Dryden. We were the aeronautical research this year.
Bob Preston (Host): 18:56
By the way, Dryden is now Armstrong. Armstrong, yes. Yeah, so named after Neil Armstrong, who most of us.
Rogers E. Smith: 19:03
So I don’t want to wander through Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can when I first walked in with Tom McMurtry, was now the chief pilot, the one I did that experiment with. When I was ultimately hired, because he told me to want to why don’t you put in an application, which I did. Ultimately he hired, he chose me. And when I was introduced to the office to the other pilots, Bill Dana is a famous man that I’ll mention later.
Bob Preston (Host): 19:30
Thank you for joining us today on the retired mindset. And please join me in the near future for part two of my interview with NASA test pilot Rogers is a rocket power, not an air brake, a rocket.
Rogers E. Smith: 19:44
So he made the last flight in that Bill Dana. Anyway, Tom McMurray’s pointing, you’re gonna sit at that desk over there opposite Bill Dana, and so on, around the room, and I’m like, these are people in my gods in my world.