Is that a great looking group or what,
how about it? So welcome to the Kennedy
Space Center what a great day, I can't
wait till this evening when that Falcon 9
and Crew Dragon take off and once again
we're gonna be launching a crew vehicle
from Launchpad 39a after an eight-year hiatus
here at the Kennedy Space Center.
It's just one step forward to getting crews
to the International Space Station
before the end of the year on a U.S.
rocket with a U.S. crew from U.S. soil and
we're gonna make that happen and these
are the guys they're gonna be a part of it.
Now I think y'all know but I'll just
run down the line before I turn it over
the Administrator. Doug Hurley, Bob
Behnken our Administrator Jim
Bridenstine, Mike Hopkins and Victor
Glover and these guys you know you saw
them get assigned to fly except for the
one in the middle he wishes he were
assigned to fly and but Doug and Bob
they've been tracking this vehicle for a
long time as we developed it they were
assigned to watch The Commercial Crew
program to be involved and I'm gonna
leave the questions to them but before
we open it up for questions I want to
give the mic to our administrator Jim
Bridenstine, he's doing an outstanding
job leading us and I can't wait to get
this successful crew launch under his
belt. Thank you, thank you Bob for that
intro and I just want to share with you
how important this is it's a critically
important event in American history.
We're, we're on the precipice of
launching American astronauts on
American Rockets from American soil
again for the first time since the
retirement of the space shuttles in 2011.
And this time when we do it we're doing
it differently than we've ever done it
before, NASA is not going to purchase own
and operate the hardware in fact we're
going to be a customer we're gonna buy a
service and our goal here is to be one
customer of many customers driving down
the cost and increasing the access to
space in a very robust commercial
marketplace for human spaceflight in
low-earth orbit, but we don't just want
to be one customer of many customers we
also want ultimately to have numerous
providers that are competing on cost and
innovation
and because we have that capability
developing right now of which Demo-1 is a
critical I don't want to say first step
but it's a critical step in the
eventuality of launching Americans
again from our own soil because we have
that capability we're going to have more
access to space at a better cost than at
any point in human history, and we want
to continue this progress. I want to say
thank you to Bob Cabana, a lot of you
here might be local media and it is
absolutely true that with the retirement
of the space shuttles and the
cancellation of Constellation, this
Center was devastated, but because of the
activities that have been going on here
under Bob's leadership and previous NASA
administrators, this center, the Kennedy
Space Center is thriving and in fact
it's growing and we've got commercial
launches not just Boeing and SpaceX but
in the not-too-distant future we're
going to be launching the SLS with the
Orion crew capsule on a deep-space
mission all the way to the moon. So we
have a lot under development right now,
in fact, you could argue we've got more
under development right now than at any
time even during the Apollo era, so this
is a great time for American space
flight. I also want to say this and it's
an important point, we have had amazing
support from the administration with the
budget requests for NASA, in fact, the
president's first budget request took
NASA's budget up 1 billion dollars which
was over a five percent increase and by
the time I got sworn in as the NASA
Administrator bipartisan support in the
House of Representatives and in the
Senate gave us an increase of one point
seven billion dollars an eight percent
increase in NASA's budget. We haven't
seen this level of strong bipartisan
support and administration support in a
long time. So with all of this support
and with these commercial capabilities
that have been developing here on the
Space Coast, we are in a great position
right now and tonight is going to be a
great moment a great achievement in this
future of space exploration and the
future of space development that
includes launching commercial where NASA
is a customer and we have numerous
providers competing on cost and
innovation. So with that, I think we'll
just open it up for questions and we
have some very special guests here that
can maybe even entertain a few of those
questions themselves. Hello I think we're
asking from over here. Oh, we've got a line.
Marsha Dunne AP for Doug and Bob, please
what's it like to be next in line for
flying a Dragon? And capsule splashdowns
it's all so retro, it's back to the
future, could you sort of talk about that
too? Alright I'll take the first part and
maybe Bob will take the second. Next
in line is pretty exciting obviously as
the administrator said this is kind of
the next critical step in putting people
on Dragon so we've got this flight and
then we've got the in-flight abort and
then and then ideally our flight soon to
follow, so I can't begin to explain to
you how exciting it is for a test pilot
to be on a first flight of a vehicle and
you know we'll be ready when SpaceX and
NASA is ready for us to fly it.
I think for both of us as Doug mentioned there's something really exciting about being
first, getting to fly a crewed mission
kind of coming out of this and we're
gonna do it like you said, the the old
school way. We both landed on shuttles
smoothly at the the runway here, I think
for both of us on both of our shuttle
flights and so really excited to be
on this flight and to to take the
splashdown at the end. I think Suni
Williams described it the best, it was
the one experience that none of the
original group of us as Commercial Crew
cadre had under our belts was landing in
a capsule, and so we're looking looking
forward to that. Hi I'm Stephen Clark
from Space Flight Now for Doug and Bob
as well, if you could speak a little bit
about what you're gonna be doing during
the countdown tonight and we're gonna
watch the launch from are you gonna be
doing any practicing like it's gonna be
the real launch day for you guys or just
spectators? And also have you had a
chance to strap into this particular
Crew Dragon to go inside and look around
and giving your impressions of what
Ripley will experience during the launch?
Yeah, we we have not been in this
particular vehicle although prior to the
hot fire we were out at the pad on the
swingarm and at least got near it,
but we haven't actually haven't been in
the vehicle although Bob was here
for the CEIT so he might be able to tell
you a little bit more. We're gonna be in
Firing Room 4 for the launch itself
listening along with the team and kind
of keying on the things that would be
relatively important to us, you know the
timing for the fuelling and the
different things when we strap in all
those different events, so just kind of
keying in to what the team's doing at
those times. We've been here before for
hot fires and for launches, so we've kind
of gotten used to the cadence of their
team as they launch their Falcon 9 so
this will be just one more step in kind
of familiarizing ourselves with that
that event. I think we're taking the
opportunity with this this demo flight
to learn all that we can in preparation
for our upcoming crewed flight so one of
the things that we'll have to do is
understand our role as a part of the
team that pulls off this, this
spaceflight endeavor and so part of that
is understanding what happens inside the
firing room, what happens out at
Hawthorne for the spacecraft control so
we'll be chasing the spacecraft down in
some sense we'll be racing from here
cross-country to get out to Hawthorne
for the docking, and then we'll both be
in place in Hawthorne to follow along
with entry for this vehicle and it
really is our chance to not be on board
but be with the rest of the team that'll
support us when we actually fly this
vehicle when Demo-2 comes around. I was
able to be inside of the Demo-1
capsule a few months back as a part of
the kind of a crew exercise to check the
interfaces out that the crew on orbit
will have to operate to make this
mission successful when it gets to the
International Space Station. It was a
really neat experience not everything
was exactly as it is right now, it's
continued to get polished in some sense
to make it as successful as it can be
when it gets to the Space Station so
definitely excited to have been in a
space ship that's headed towards the
International Space Station later
tonight. Hi, Jeff Foust Space News, this
question for the Administrator, what's
your level of confidence that either
Crew Dragon and/or Boeing Starliner is
going to be ready to start flying people
by the end of the year safely and then
also what's the status of the review of
the safety culture of the Commercial
Crew program that you plan, you
announced a few months back would be
undertaken? So number one, I would say I'm
very confident in fact you can write in
your article I'm a hundred percent
confident, because
as far as I'm concerned, you're either for it
or you're not and I think we're going to get it
done. As far as the, you know the the
safety review that's underway this is
for both contractors, NASA has a long
history, we've been through accidents,
we've seen them before, and we want to
make sure that that culture that we have
developed over the years as a result of
those incidents, not just applies to our
agency but also applies to our
contractors. I'm certainly not going to
prejudge any any of the results of that.
I will tell you that I'm highly
confident that our contractors are
complying with the terms of their
contract and I expect that we will find
that their culture is very safe and we
look forward to revealing that when the
time is right. Hi, Marina Corn from the
Atlantic, this is a question for the crew.
I want to ask about your training inside
Crew Dragon versus Shuttle or Soyuz
because the inside of Dragon looks
really sleek and like something out of a
movie, but some of your previous
experiences you've just been faced with
wall to wall switches and buttons. I'm wondering if you can compare
your experiences between the two. Yeah, as
Colonel Cabana can testify, 2,000
switches and circuit breakers inside the
space shuttle, this vehicle has on the
order of about 30 buttons that are hard,
hardware buttons and everything else is
interacted with the vehicle via the
touchscreen. So it's, it's an incredibly
sleek looking vehicle from the inside
and it's very easy to operate from the
crew interface perspective relative to
what we were used to with shuttle so
much easier, a lot less errors that the
crew can make. The shuttle was very easy
you had switches literally right next to
each other and if you threw the wrong
one you could make your day a lot worse
rather than a lot better and it's just
so much more intuitive in this vehicle.
So they did a really nice job of kind of
setting it up for the crew to be
successful. If it's alright I'd like to
to address that as well and this is an
important point remember the goal here
for NASA is to be one customer of many
customers
in a robust commercial marketplace and
because of that objective we we we have
numerous providers that are competing on
cost and innovation and they are
preparing for a future where customers
are not NASA. Those customers could be, it
could be foreign sovereign countries, it
could be individuals that want to go to
space and so what has happened here is
we have one of our providers that has
developed a crew capsule that looks as
much as possible like the inside of the
cabin of a commercial airliner, which is
a development that took place not
because NASA had a requirement but
because NASA is a customer and in a in a
robust commercial marketplace of the
future where there will be other
commercial customers for this kind of
activity. So that's why I think that the
capsule has this very different look
than those of the past. Hello, Tim Fernholz
from Quartz another question for
the Administrator, in your previous job
in Congress you were a big advocate for
the public/private partnerships and the
kind of commercial activity you're
talking about right now. I'm curious if
you wanted to reflect now that we're
just at the moment before the launch, how
has the last couple years been for you
seeing this program come to maturity and
you know you were talking a minute ago
about the bipartisan support for it, why
has it attracted so much support now
after maybe being controversial earlier
on? So I think it, I think people have
seen the success they're seeing when I
say success not just commercial partners
launching things into space but they're
also seeing the driving down of cost and
the increasing of access they're
starting to see a more robust commercial
marketplace. The thing that's important
for me is the administrator is to
consider what the president has tasked
me with doing. I've been tasked to go
back to the Moon sustainably in other
words, this time when we go to the Moon
we're going to stay. That doesn't mean
we're going to necessarily have a
permanent human presence on the surface
of the Moon, but we're going to have
permanent access to the surface of the
Moon with landers and rovers and robots
and humans in, in and in this access
we're going to have more access to more
parts of the Moon than ever before
because of Gateway. In other words, we're
going to be able to get to the poles
where there are we now know that there
are
hundreds of millions of tons of of
water-ice.
Here's the point in all of this. We
really have you know one exploration
campaign with humans but we have three
theaters. We have low Earth orbit, we have
the Moon and we have Mars and when we
think about those three theaters each
one of them has requirements for funding
and if we can commercialize as much as
possible our activities in low Earth
orbit we can drive down the costs and
then we can spend our resources provided
by the taxpayer to do things for which
there is not yet a commercial
marketplace but where we believe there
will be an eventual commercial
marketplace. That being cislunar space and
the surface of the Moon. So I was an
advocate for commercial in the House of
Representatives that does not mean I was
not an advocate for what the government
is doing as well and SLS and Orion are a
critical piece of the architecture for
this entire this entire exploration
campaign which includes low Earth orbit
cislunar space and eventually Mars. So
again the goal here is is to fund the
entire package with international
partners which by the way we're working
really hard to grow the international
partnership and I know a lot of you guys
covered yesterday the fact that we had
this great announcement with Canada
joining us for the next 24 years in our
exploration of the Moon, which is
fantastic, we're thrilled about that
announcement, but we need international
partners we need them to grow the
partnership we need more international
partners. There's now more space agencies
on the surface of the planet than ever
before and we also need more commercial
partners folks that are willing to step
up and partner with us as you mentioned
the public-private partnership where
they have they can take advantage of
their own opportunities apart from just
providing services to the United States
government. So the whole architecture
commercial and government together
putting all of it together is ultimately
what's going to make it possible. Hi this
is Diana from Real Clear Media my
question is for the crew or the
administrator, if you could give us some
insight about what's been different
about the preparations for this unique
launch as opposed to others, do you treat
this like there are astronauts
on board, can you just give a little insight
into what that process has been like
getting ready for this? Wow that's a
tough one, when you've gone down the
list 1 2 & 3 and I ended up with that
question. So I guess the way I would
describe it as you as you look at the
Demo-1 vehicle and you compare that to
the in-flight abort vehicle or the Demo-2
vehicle, we have to take the lessons that
we can from this ship and see whether or
not they apply to our mission or if the
data that we can collect from this
mission is important enough in other
areas that maybe we would accept
something that isn't quite the same way
that we would do it for Demo-2, maybe
that's a long way to describe it but
what the kind of the crux of the issue
is that this is a test flight the
in-flight abort vehicle will be a test
flight, our flight to the International
Space Station will be a test flight in
preparation for the mission that that
these two guys along with a two
additional most likely international
partner astronauts will actually
undertake when they go for a six-month
increment and so this is a bit of a
shakeout cruise, we'll be the final shakeout
cruise before their their long-term
mission onboard the International Space
Station. I just like to add to that a
little bit too, when you talk about the
cadence and how we set up for this, you
know it was last week early in the week
we had a flight test readiness review
that the Commercial Crew program hosted
in preparation for the agency Flight
Readiness review that Bill Gerstenmaier
chaired here over at OSB II a week ago
Friday, a week ago today, you know that's
the same team that we brought together
with some minor differences that we did
for shuttle missions and we're getting
into that cadence in fact we all
commented it was great to have everybody
back at the Kennedy Space Center for a
Flight Readiness review. One of the great
things about this test flight is there
are some differences it's not exactly
the way we did shuttle it's not exactly
the way we do cargo or launch services
program missions when we do the
readiness reviews, so we're setting up
our procedures and processes to prepare
us this is a great learning event all
the way through as we work through all
the issues that we have to clear
everything for readiness for this flight
and prepare the next step we're actually
putting crew on board we're figuring out
how we're going to do that for this
program and we've taken some of how we
did shuttle we've taken
from other areas the way we do things
and we're setting up those procedures
now. So I think you know we know how to
do this, we know how to work through the
issues we know how to hold the reviews
we know how to determine what needs to
get done safely in order to make it
successful and what we learn from this
we'll go back into the next set of
reviews we'll make some modifications
and we'll do it even better after having
had this test flight. So this isn't just
a test flight of the vehicle it's a test
flight of the entire leadership
management team many of those folks who
weren't here for shuttle, so we kind of
got to set it up again and teach those
folks how to do this as we work through
it. So this has just been a great
experience so far getting to this point
This question is for Doug, eight years ago you were on the last shuttle mission and you'll be on the
first Crew Dragon mission
what's your sentiment like in being able
to connect it to important flights into
important areas in the US space exploration history?
You know it, it's it's not the easiest question to
answer I mean it it was the only thing
you can say is it's just great to have
grown up in this country and had that
opportunity and and been able to to
participate in the last flight of the
Space Shuttle, which in and of itself was
just incredible to be part of that whole
experience that whole year process of
how we did what we did and then
eventually flew the mission. And since
then it's kind of felt like trying to
get us back to a point where the United
States could fly humans in space again
and I kind of felt like that was
something that was important to me to do
before I did something else with my life
and and once again I think it's just a
case of you know I was in the right spot
at the right time and had the right
qualifications to be selected to be in
this flight and it's a tremendous
tremendous honor and and I take it very
seriously every day I try not to think
about it too much because you know the
focus that Bob and I and Mike and Victor
have right now is just Demo-1 then In-flight Abort
then Demo-2 and then as Bob said earlier
getting these guys up there for six
months for an expedition and so that's
what we've been doing and and frankly
I've been part of the Commercial Crew
program in some way shape or form
basically since I landed on Atlantis
almost eight years ago so it'll be
really neat to finally get dragged in in
space and get to the Space Station again
but it's it's it's a great thing for
NASA it's a great thing for SpaceX and
it's a great thing for the United States.
Hi guys, Phil Keating Fox News Channel
Victor and Mike good news you finally
get to chime, (about time) but the question is
question is for all four of you you know
the only thing on board is the mannequin
Ripley but it's loaded with sensors
which are really about your own safety
in the future, how impressed and
confident are you with SpaceX and its
relationship with NASA here that you
would you actually be willing to be on
board for this maiden voyage, why and why
not? So that's a tough question as well
right because as we prepared for the the
DM-1 mission of course it was done
knowing that there weren't crew on board
and and so like everything that's that's
been going on over the past eight nine
years with Commercial Crew it's been a
partnership between SpaceX and it's been
a partnership with NASA and the safety
teams and the engineering teams and all
of them evaluating this this particular
vehicle and making sure it's ready for
this particular milestone and this
particular milestone doesn't include
crew and and I think there's important
reasons why we don't put if we can if we
don't have to put crew on something of a
first flight like this for safety
reasons and and I think that's smart. So
in terms of, if we were going to be on
that I think it there it would probably
be a little bit different process
getting to this point maybe you'd reevaluate
some of the risks a little bit differently and so
I think if if we were a part of the plan
I think we would be ready for that and
we'd be ready to go. Anyone else?
So first, I apologize for the glare
coming off my head it's a little warm
out here but so I'm gonna answer your
question directly first and say no
because we've we've learned something
you've got a group of folks up here all
the training and experience that's up
here as developmental flight testers and
even though I'm the rookie in the group
I'm still a test pilot for military test
pilot as well and we understand the
importance of that build-up approach and
so if we were to put a crew on that I
can tell you this we wouldn't be having
this press conference right now we may
fly our first flight you know you're
probably referring back to the shuttle
and in that era and if we were to try to
do it with that approach it would take
us a lot longer so I'm very happy that
we're doing it this way and that we're
gonna get Bob and Doug up there to
finish shaking out and the in-flight
abort and make sure that we're ready to
go when we do a long-duration mission so
no. But Bob did you and do you anticipate
any nervousness the next you know this
summer ideally. Like I guess that part of
the reason that we're in the job that
we're in is that we tend to get nervous
kind of after the fact rather than in
the moment they do their best from a
training perspective to try to beat that
all out of you by giving you a lot of
experiences before you jump into the
actual spaceship and ride it into space
and I remember on my first shuttle
launch we did have an anomaly right off
the pad and we were flying through a
cloud deck and there was a lot of orange
light coming through the through the
windows and so when those two things
happen an anomaly and the orange light
coming through you start to think about
whether or not those are confirming cues
of badness you know and I remember going
through that moment and really having
just a fraction of a second where you
know you could be scared but really
thinking internally that well I hope
everything was done that could be done
because we're still heading in the
direction that we're headed and so there
was there was really nothing I could do
at that point being nervous wasn't going
to help. Definitely ten days later when
our whole ascent flight deck space
shuttle crew played back the video of
that moment that's when we all went
through the nervousness of the actual
situation and we realized that was a
little bit strange that wasn't what we
were expecting, the separation from the
external tank didn't go the way that we
expected it to but we lived through it
real time and and it just was something
that we processed and executed and then
got scared
several days later when we actually
played back the tape. Just to answer the
question that you would initially ask I
think that the process that Colonel
Cabana outlined earlier included our
SpaceX partners and so I think they
would acknowledge that they have more
work going forward in preparation for
the Demo-2 flight that we'll be on I'm
sure there'll be work that is a part of
that in-flight abort mission as well
that they want to accomplish before they
fly that one and so I think as a team we
would all agree that we probably aren't
ready for the Demo-2 mission. We expect to
get a lot of data from this one that
will provide us with a better
understanding of what we face when we
jump into that actual test flight in
preparation for the expedition crews
that come after us
but I think as a team including SpaceX
we would say that hey this is not Demo-2
this is this is Demo-1 and that's what
we assessed. Mike Wallace space.com,
going back to a couple questions ago I
mean, now this is gonna be a flight off of Pad 39a
and I mean we've seen the Shuttle go off
of that many times I mean, yeah I
just wonder if this upcoming milestone
kind of occasions any introspection
about what the Shuttle meant and kind of
what it meant to this country what it
was able to achieve so I mean you know
some of you guys have actually
flown in the shuttle so so I'm just
wondering if if you have any feelings
about that if it kind of brings anything
up about but what the legacy is and so on.
Well first off, this pad has an awesome
legacy like I said earlier you know I
mean all the flights that went to the
moon launched off this pad but this
isn't the first launch off this pad
since the shuttle launched you know
SpaceX has launched I think 13 times off
this pad they've launched the Falcon
Heavy they launched 12 Falcon nines
they had cargo to the International
Space Station, to me it's just it's an
excellent use of a national resource to
be able to repurpose it so it just
doesn't sit idle out there rusting away
in the salt air I mean how much better
could that be, and you know from a
Shuttle point of view,
hey the shuttle was an absolutely
amazing vehicle and we talk about
reusable vehicles I mean the shuttle was
reusable for 30 years. We were reused
the orbiter the engines the solid rocket
motors the only thing we didn't reuse
was the external tank. So you know what
you know the International Space Station
we couldn't have built it without the
shuttle. I think it was just a
tremendous program but that's the past
and what we gotta focus on is the future
we got to focus on commercializing
low Earth orbit. The shuttle was too
expensive for a commercial company to
run and operate and make a profit that
was a national asset a national program
a government program with these
commercial rockets we now have the
ability to commercialize low Earth orbit
and allow NASA to do that really
critical job of exploring beyond our
home planet to do the expense of work to
lay the groundwork in cooperation with
our commercial partners so you know what
does it mean to me, it means we're making
use of an awesome
asset that this nation has here at the
Kennedy Space Center and I'm just happy
to see rockets flying off it.
I'm hoping you can take us a little bit behind the
scenes of what you all are thinking as
we're getting closer to this this is a
first you know a first for SpaceX, what
is going on in your heads with your
families as you're talking about it the
camaraderie you maybe you have with each
other, you know as people not just as
astronauts participating in this what
are you talking to your families about
what are you talking to each other about
now is this is becoming really real?
Whoever wants to take it. I don't I don't
know if you know this but both Bob and I
are married to astronauts so in a lot of
cases it makes the discussions at home a
little easier because they both
understand I think what we're kind of
working towards and and what you would
deal with on launch day and and you know
I've told Victor this a couple times you
know the hardest the hardest job is not
your job it's the spouse watching you
launch into space so an appreciation for
that so whatever you can do to include
your family in any event and and this is
a little bit unique because especially
for Bob and I we've been we've been
traveling across the country for both
SpaceX and Boeing for the last three and
a half years working on this program so
just to include them in our trips to
California our trips to Huntsville our
trips to wherever we went Denver and
here and-and-and-and it could be the
most innocuous
things that you had happen or that you
saw for the first time and and the
little excitement the first time you do
an ascent in a simulator in a SpaceX
simulator or a Boeing simulator the
first time. It may not seem like that big
a deal but it's a pretty big deal when
you know when we first started this was
just this program was just PowerPoint
charts and now we have we got a vehicle
out on the pad so and and they
understand that and I think as much as
you can include your families in this
from start to finish they become just as
invested as you do and they and they
know that it's filled with ups and downs
and and they're along to enjoy it with
you. Anything else? Are you gonna do
anything special as the crew flights get
closer in terms of preparing with each
other and with your families? We we had a
pretty nice little Christmas party with
our families and the four of us and
there was no cameras so I'm not gonna
tell you what happened but it was fun
and then I don't know we're that's we
kind of talked about that the other day
you know there's we have a chance to
develop a tradition for all the crews
that fly on on Dragon and and so that
it's a little bit of a hefty task to
kind of come up with some of this stuff
but maybe that'll just happen naturally
but I think you know that that's kind of
the neat stuff that we that we're
looking forward to continue to do and
kind of pass on down the line to some of
the newer astronauts that are going to
fly these vehicles. I would just maybe
describe every one of these events that
you describe as a special one that we're
getting back into as we try again to get
astronauts flying again off the Florida
coast is a one that we look at and try
to understand what opportunities there
are to learn from it and so at a recent
cargo mission my wife and I looked at
the schedule and looked at what was in
front of us for this mission where I
would be in the flight control room and
trying to follow along with that team to
consider what we could do as a family to
prepare for for my eventual flight into
space and the last time I flew into
space I didn't have a son I didn't have
any children and and now I have a
four-year-old and he had not been to a
rocket launch before and I didn't want
his first one to be his father launching
into space and so we came down here and
we're on the top of the
building just across the way and watch
that mission together as a family in
preparation for my eventual flight on a
Falcon luckily it was a Falcon 9 mission
that was headed to Space Station so
there were a lot of similarities to the
mission that I'll fly on and so each one
of these opportunities we look at very
carefully at least I do with my spouse
as a family to see hey what can we take
away from it technically which is what
I'm gonna do here for the demo mission
number one what could we take away from
it from a family you know we had to have
the discussion should I wake my son up
in the middle of the night tonight to
try to get him to watch this rocket
launch. He's kind of grumpy when you
wake him up and so it's a trade-off case
right so I got to make that decision and
so having seen this mission we get to
maybe not wake him up in the middle of
the night this time around.
We have time for one more question. Hi Irene Klotz with Aviation Week maybe for Doug
if you could put your old crew cadre hat
on for a second and I was wondering what
you could have any thoughts or concerns
about the prospect of the Boeing crew
flight test turning into an extended
station stay and for Mr. Bridenstine
when you expect to make that call since
you're now hopefully within 10 months of
that flight. Well there there I know all
three of those folks very well obviously
we all do we we see him almost every
week at Johnson they're training for a
long-duration mission as we speak. I
think they were in the NBL the other day
and they've got a trip to Russia a
training trip to Russia soon and you
know that it you can you can think a lot
about whether you know a full
long-duration mission is what will
happen or it'll be kind of maybe a few
months it just kind of depends but
they'll be ready for it. I think going
into this even before we were selected
for those missions they knew that the
Boeing flight might be a longer flight
than potentially the SpaceX flight so I
think they're they're fine you know Mike
Fincke was our boss up until just a few
weeks ago and he's been to Space Station
gosh three times I think so he's more
than qualified to handle any
eventualities in that flight and
you know with Fergie he's been there
several times and and Duke this will be
her first flight but she's she's as
capable as anybody we have in the office
they'll be they'll be great.  I would
just say that as it gets closer we're
going to be able to assess what the
needs are and we'll make determinations
based on what those needs are what
Victor talked about earlier as far as a
step-by-step approach there's no reason
to prejudge what is necessary and I
don't I don't have a timeline for you at
this time I know that's probably not the
answer you wanted to receive but at the
end of the day we're gonna have specific
requirements in order to do what we need
to do on the International Space Station
and at the same time we have
requirements I have a requirement to
make sure that the guys behind me are
safe and so we're gonna do we're gonna
do that first. I want to be clear about
this point though and I think Victor
made this point very clear earlier we
are not in a space race like we have no
requirement to go early that race is
over. We went to the Moon and we won it's
done now we're in a position where we
can take our time and make sure we get
it right that's the goal here make sure
we get it right and that's what we
intend to do, thanks. Thank you. I want to
thank you all for coming out today
this is an absolutely exciting time for
NASA for the Kennedy Space Center for
human spaceflight for our nation and I
this is an awesome group back here these
guys are are awful humble but they've
worked really hard to be prepared for
what's coming up now and I gotta admit I
really envy them, I told them walking out
I'd trade places with them and they said
not on your life you know that's it so I
hope you all enjoy the launch tonight
it's going to be fantastic
last I checked everything's on track the
weather's still looking good so go
Dragon go Falcon. Thank you.
