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NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test Mission Overview News Conference · Elon Musk Podcast

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2:01
Good morning, and welcome back to NASA's Johnson Space Center
2:05
in Houston for a second in a series of three briefings today,
2:08
all talking about NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test.
2:11
This mission is a flight test of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft
2:15
scheduled to launch in early May with our two NASA astronauts,
2:19
Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore.
2:21
Our briefing today will focus on the details of that mission.
2:24
Our guests here with us today will discuss the timeline and
2:27
all phases of flight that they'll be keeping an eye on
2:30
here. With us today, we have Mike
2:31
Lammers, Starliner Ascent Flight Director, Ed Vance, ICE
2:36
Starliner Rendezvous Flight Director, and Vincent Lacorte,
2:39
International Space Station Flight Director.
2:42
We'll be taking some questions here in the room, on the phone
2:45
and on social media. If you're joining us from the
2:48
phone bridge, please press * one to enter our question queue.
2:52
And on social media, if you have a question, please use hashtag
2:55
ask NASA. When you're asking your
2:58
question, please state your name and media affiliation as well as
3:01
who you would like to address your question to.
3:04
But first, we're going to start off with some opening remarks.
3:07
I'll kick it off with Mike Lammers.
3:09
OK. Thank you, Chelsea again.
3:10
I'm, I'm Mike Lammers. I've, I've been a flight
3:13
director in Houston for about 15 years and a number of programs.
3:16
But today I'm kind of excited to come talk to you as the
3:20
Starliner Flight Director. I'm the lead flight director and
3:22
I also do the ascent phase of the flight and in that role I I
3:28
lead the Boeing and ULA United Launch Alliance operations team
3:34
that gets the the crew both into the vehicle pre launch as well
3:39
as gets them into space. And it's it's been a culmination
3:46
of a number of years of developing how this flight
3:50
system works with Boeing and the United Launch Alliance as well
3:54
as developing procedures operation techniques and
3:58
training especially here at the end where we go through a lot of
4:02
the details of the mission and it's it's it's really just
4:06
outstanding to to talk to you about it and I know we're all
4:09
we're all really excited to get into the details of the mission.
4:14
Just up top again we're we're targeting launch of the early
4:18
May and we will have a rendezvous 24 hours later and
4:23
we're going to do a minimum of an 8 day mission and test
4:26
flight. And I stress it's it's a test
4:28
flight right. The the mission is to shake down
4:32
the vehicle with the crew on board.
4:34
We've flown it twice before, but this will be the first time with
4:37
the crew when we want to learn about it and and make it
4:40
available as a tool to transport crew up and down to the
4:44
International Space Station. Again, it's targeting a minimum
4:49
of an 8 day mission, but the total length is going to be
4:52
defined by orbital mechanics and the weather at our landing
4:56
locations which are in the Southwest United States.
4:59
I'll talk about that in a little bit.
5:01
Again, I'm here with with Ed and Vincent.
5:05
What we're going to do is we'll talk about each phase of flight.
5:08
I'll start with ascent, Ed. We'll go into the rendezvous,
5:11
Vincent. We'll talk about what what we're
5:13
doing docked. Then I'll hand back over to me.
5:16
I'll go through kind of the landing phase and then we'll get
5:20
into questions. Again, real happy to go into all
5:26
sorts of detail. We, we we live and breathe this
5:28
stuff. So if you have any questions or
5:32
things that you want more amplification on, we're we're
5:34
more than happy to go into that. So what I'll do is I'll talk
5:38
verbally a little bit before we go into the video, but I'm going
5:41
to start with the day before launch.
5:45
The way this system works is the the vehicle's going to be
5:48
stacked on the Atlas Five at the at what we called the VIF, the
5:53
vertical integration facility. I believe that stands for out at
5:57
pad 41. And the day before launch, in
6:01
the morning, the stack will be rolled out to the launchpad,
6:06
brought down hard on the launchpad and they'll do some
6:10
checkouts. And then we have a Boeing team
6:15
in Florida at the Boeing mission BMCC, Boeing Mission Control
6:18
Center. They actually handle.
6:20
They're the team of engineers and technicians that do all the
6:24
integration and test of the spacecraft.
6:26
They power up the spacecraft, powered up and down all the
6:29
time. In fact, just over these last
6:32
few days, they've been doing that to fuel the spacecraft.
6:35
They will power up the spacecraft.
6:37
My team in Houston will come on and watch with that as well as
6:44
the Boeing engineering team that's that's based in Houston
6:47
will be right down the hall from me and we'll bring the vehicle
6:51
up. We'll do some checkouts.
6:52
We'll make sure it can communicate through T Driss and
6:54
the communications network and do some file up links to the
6:58
vehicle and just generally make sure it's ready for launch the
7:02
next day. We'll also do a briefing for the
7:03
crew just to give them any last minute things that may have come
7:10
up and kind of a look at the what the weather.
7:14
What we're going to do on launch day is Butch and Sunny will will
7:21
wake up on launch day, go through some of their
7:23
preliminary activities. They're turned over to Boeing at
7:27
about 4 1/2 hours before flight, right?
7:30
Then Boeing manages all the crew activities both to get them
7:35
ready and out to the pad. At that time we'll do a, we'll
7:39
do a basically a weather check with the crew.
7:42
I'll run out a weather briefing with them and then they'll go
7:45
ahead and go into the suit room and get suited up with the the
7:49
Boeing and that David Clark technicians that do that.
7:53
As the crew is getting ready, the Boeing team in Florida will
7:58
do the final activation of the spacecraft and that involves
8:01
bringing the propulsion system up to pressure and activated and
8:06
then they're ready to turn it over to the team in Houston who
8:09
will manage the spacecraft. Keep in mind that the way that
8:12
this system works is we've got the spacecraft managed from
8:15
Houston in flight and then of course the launch vehicle is is
8:22
activated and run in Florida until we hit the point of
8:25
launch. At 4 hours before launch, again,
8:31
we're going to hand over to Houston, a little bit different
8:34
than Shuttle and Artemis. We manage a lot of the last
8:39
activities as far as commanding to the spacecraft actually from
8:42
Houston, the there's also besides that Boeing team in
8:48
Houston and Florida, we also have a small team in Denver that
8:51
works for United Launch Alliance that handles what gives me some
8:55
information on what the rocket is going to be doing during
8:57
flights. So we're all coordinating.
9:00
The crew arrives at the pad two hours and 50 minutes before
9:05
launch. They'll go up to the white room.
9:08
You'll see the padtechs help them strap in.
9:10
That process takes a little bit over an hour.
9:13
They'll start closing the Hatch at one hour and 20 minutes
9:19
before flight. I should note too, that the the
9:21
rocket is actually fully fueled before the crew gets out there.
9:25
So that's one of the last things we do is we load the rocket with
9:28
the cryogenic propulsion while we suit up the crew.
9:35
Again, we're at an hour and 20 before launch.
9:37
We'll get the crew in and then the get the Hatch closed.
9:41
We'll do a leak check on the spacecraft and the pad team will
9:44
clear the pad about 50 minutes before launch.
9:47
OK. The real meat of the countdown,
9:50
where you'll hear a lot of things on the on the audio that
9:54
they provide, that's at l -, 18 minutes, we'll begin the
9:59
transfer to internal power. That's where we go from the
10:02
external power to the onboard batteries that's commanded from
10:05
Houston. You'll hear some com checks
10:08
between the crew and the ULA launch conductor Doug Lebo, a
10:13
number of poles going through the count.
10:15
And then in the final four minutes you'll hear the launch
10:22
conductor give the crew an instruction to do a switch
10:25
throw. It's called last arm to auto.
10:27
That'll that's last is the launch abort system.
10:30
The crew will alarm the abort system at 75 seconds and then
10:34
they'll go ahead and launch. OK, so it's already been a a
10:39
busy day but now we have liftoff.
10:42
So that's where my real work starts.
10:45
This is going to be the first crude ascent that's been flown
10:50
out of Mission Control in Houston since the STS 135 in
10:55
2011. Can we go ahead and roll the
10:58
first video? I'll just talk for about a
11:00
minute and 1/2 through the ascent activities on the Atlas
11:03
5, the animation ascent. OK, again, we've got the Atlas 5
11:11
on the pad. Crew access arms retracted at 11
11:15
minutes, by the way, so there's a liftoff from pad 41.
11:19
OK, On the Atlas 5, most of your energy to make orbit actually
11:22
comes from the first stage with those two Sr.
11:25
BS and the RD180 engine. Actually, one of the first
11:28
things you'll hear from the crew here is roll program while we're
11:31
going through Ascent. Looking forward to hearing Butch
11:34
talk to us right off the pad again.
11:41
RD180's got 2 engine bells. That's actually a single engine
11:44
there in the first stage. First stage will burn.
11:47
The Sr. BS will burn for about a minute
11:49
and a half. You'll see them burn out.
11:50
We actually carry the empty casings for another minute.
11:53
Goes a little faster in the video, but we got to get above
11:55
the atmosphere to jettison them. We'll get through first stage at
12:01
4 1/2 minutes. There's about a 15 second pause
12:04
as first stage separates. That's the ascent cover that
12:06
covers the docking system. It'll be jettisoned and the
12:09
Arrow skirt will jettison as well.
12:12
And then the two RL 10s on the Centaur will take us on a nice
12:16
easy cruise to space. That'll take us up to about 12
12:21
minutes into the mission. Miko is 12 minutes.
12:26
We'll stay on the booster for about 3 minutes, and then we'll
12:28
have a separation at 15 minutes into the mission.
12:32
Again, we're sub orbital still here.
12:35
We got to do another burn. Starliners actually got a pretty
12:39
spectacular orbital maneuvering system.
12:41
You'll see the four engines kick in there.
12:43
We'll do that at 31 minutes into the mission, and that'll push
12:46
the crew into orbit and get a get them heading on to
12:50
rendezvous. OK, so with that, as in the real
12:54
world, we do one more burn at an hour and 15 minutes.
12:57
But then I had it handed over to Ed and his rendezvous team.
13:01
All right. Thanks, Mike.
13:02
My name is Ed Van Sis and I've been a flight director since
13:07
class of 2009, certified in 2010.
13:09
So like Mike, about 14 or 15 years as a flight director.
13:13
Experience International Space Station, Artemis 1A, little bit
13:18
gateway flight director for for about a year.
13:21
Lots of projects inside the space station and now I've been
13:25
working Starliner since 2016. So really all three of us up
13:30
here have maybe different exact projects that we've worked on,
13:34
but we all have a significant experience across multiple
13:36
programs for the agency and also been working Starliner for for
13:40
quite some time. It's been really an honor and
13:43
actually humbling to be able to work on Starliner from the days
13:47
of when it was a PowerPoint presentation all the way up now
13:50
to having two flights behind us to get ready to go put crew into
13:53
orbit on on this third flight. The the teams that we get to
13:58
work with are are truly amazing and highly capable and
14:01
everything that they do and getting to be at the forefront
14:05
of leading the teams, not just the flight controllers but and
14:09
and the real time engineering teams as well.
14:11
But all the all the folks that are working in the factory and
14:14
with ULA and and all the other organizations we work with and
14:17
of course with NASA as well and the commercial crew program and
14:20
and the ISS program, just having that capability and and
14:25
experiences is just quite a pleasure.
14:29
Like Mike said, we're we're getting ready to put this
14:32
vehicle and this crew through a test flight and various phases
14:36
of of a test. So that's what you're going to
14:38
hear a lot about as we are working through the missions.
14:42
Obviously the primary goal is to get the crew up to the space
14:44
station and to get them back home to the Southwest US safely.
14:50
But in that process we are doing a lot of purposely, doing a lot
14:54
of tests of the vehicle as you would with the test flight of an
14:57
aircraft or anything else. So you'll you'll hear a lot
15:01
about from Vincent, you'll hear a lot about different test
15:04
things that we're going to do while we're docked.
15:05
But we also want to put the vehicle through some some
15:09
experiences that we don't anticipate being needed on a on
15:13
a normal 6 month mission to the space station.
15:16
But we know the vehicle should be capable of handling them if
15:19
the crew were to to need them. And so we want to check them out
15:22
on this test flight as well just to be able to say that yes, not
15:26
only the the normal mission will go fine, but then all of the
15:30
capabilities the vehicle has on maybe not a good day, all of
15:34
those work as well. So that's going to be the focus
15:37
of the bulk of the cruise afternoon after launch.
15:40
So they they got up early, they went through everything that
15:43
Mike just described. Now they're in space.
15:45
They just completed the the first Co elliptic burn and you'd
15:49
think that now it's just a a great relaxing ride to the space
15:53
station and it will be for that six month increment mission.
15:57
But like I said, we're putting the crew right to work getting
16:00
them out of their seats, out of their suits and then right into
16:03
some demonstrations. And we will be doing a bunch of
16:07
things with the spacecraft to make sure that it can help the
16:11
crew and the crew can also maneuver the spacecraft as they
16:14
need to. So we'll be doing things like
16:17
purposefully pointing it in a in an orientation that's say, not
16:22
exactly the the nominal the normal orientation for the
16:25
mission, and then having the crew manually fly the spacecraft
16:28
back into the the direction it should be pointing.
16:32
We also want to make sure that if for some reason the vehicle
16:35
doesn't know where the communication satellites are
16:38
located, that the crew can manually fly the spacecraft to
16:43
point the antennas at the satellite.
16:47
Another another thing that we'll be doing this day is tricking,
16:51
if you will, the spacecraft into thinking that it doesn't know
16:54
where it is in space. So we're going to de allocate a
16:58
couple of its Inertial Measurement Systems to They're
17:03
still running, but the vehicle computers are not actually
17:06
looking at them. So effectively the the computers
17:09
don't necessarily know where they are.
17:11
And then the crew will manually fly the spacecraft to look at
17:15
stars and use our star tracker to then rebuild its Inertial
17:20
navigation base. And we'll see how their manual,
17:23
manual way of doing it compares with what the still running
17:28
computers are are seeing and see how well that compares and they
17:32
should all compare very equally and we should be able to run off
17:37
of that solution that the crew comes up with.
17:39
But again it's a test flights, we want to see how well the
17:41
vehicle does in all these scenarios that we've thoroughly
17:44
tested out on the ground with all our avionics systems down
17:48
here. But want to see how the
17:49
spacecraft is really performing. And one other final thing that
17:54
what we're doing is we're putting all all of our thrusters
17:58
through a a human manual flying checkout.
18:01
So we want to make sure that not only can we point in space, but
18:04
also can we do translations as well.
18:06
So if we're close to the space station and the computers have a
18:10
hard time controlling Starliner, we want to make sure the
18:12
astronauts can manually fly away.
18:15
And to ensure we have that capability, we're going to give
18:19
the crew full manual control on this first day and just test
18:22
everything out. So we'll do some demonstrations
18:25
of that and that last part is really important for the safety
18:29
of the space station. So we have that manual
18:31
capability and we talked about the, the engineering teams that
18:34
are here in Houston, the ones that are in Florida as well and
18:37
the other NASA programs involved.
18:39
We're going to take a look at all this data while the crew's
18:41
sleeping and have the the Boeing teams that that we are embedded
18:46
with. We'll take a look at all that
18:47
data, bring recommendations to our mission management team and
18:50
ultimately take that to NASA to certify that this manual flying
18:54
capability is also something we're ready to use in proximity
18:57
to the space station if we were to need it.
19:01
So all that's happening while the crew's asleep and then
19:03
they'll wake up the next morning and we can go ahead and show the
19:06
video here for the free flight and the orbit.
19:10
So this is kind of the end of the cruise day.
19:14
There is the kind of representation of what they're
19:16
doing at the in those tests that I was talking about.
19:20
So we're pointing the nose towards the Earth trying to see
19:23
where we are with respect to the communication satellites.
19:26
We also fly in this tail to the sun attitude.
19:29
So our our solar arrays are at the the back of the Starliners.
19:32
We want to make sure we keep those pointed at the sun.
19:35
But the crews inside there and they're getting ready for bed,
19:39
and we'll do some more checkouts overnight while they're
19:41
sleeping. They'll wake up in the morning.
19:43
We'll be pretty close, you know, a couple couple 1000 kilometers
19:47
away from ISS and do a rendezvous.
19:50
That was exactly the same automated rendezvous we did for
19:53
the last flight. We'll fly up underneath the
19:55
space station and then around out in front.
19:58
And we'll we'll actually pause a little bit out in front of the
20:01
space station, do some more manual flying just to make sure
20:04
that's exactly the way the crew expects it.
20:06
Then we'll press in. And at 10 meters, we'll do our
20:09
final approach and dock, and then Sunny and Butch will get to
20:15
get everything situated inside the cabin and get ready to come
20:17
into their new home for the next few days.
20:19
And Vincent's the expert on the space station side, so I'll hand
20:21
it over to him to explain all that to you.
20:24
Thanks, Ed. So good afternoon, everybody.
20:26
My name is Vincent Lacorde. I'm the lead International Space
20:29
Station Flight Director for CFTI was selected into the office in
20:33
2015. I'm going to walk through our
20:35
dock time frame with International Space Station.
20:38
Our main goals of the dock mission are a few.
20:40
There's the practice and validate the planned operations
20:44
for long duration missions. We're also going to perform some
20:47
contingency operations just in case we were ever to need those
20:50
in contingencies. And then we'll do some cargo
20:53
operations. Our lead planners who are Richie
20:56
Chan, Lowe's and Izzy Lasky did a great job of trying to fit all
20:59
the puzzle pieces together and have figured out that we can do
21:02
our mission in a minimum of eight dock days.
21:05
So we have a few graphics I'm going to show you to kind of
21:08
show you how the mission will look day by day.
21:11
So the first of all, just as Mike said, we usually dock about
21:14
24 hours after launch. Once you arrive and dock to the
21:18
space station, you're going to get the crew is going to egress,
21:23
get out of their asset and entry suits.
21:26
Then they're going to repress the vestibules and be able to
21:32
open the hatches. And then they'll go on to the
21:33
space station and we'll have our welcome ceremony that you'll get
21:36
to watch on NASA TV. Then the ISIS crew members
21:40
conduct a safety briefing will they'll be able to take Butch
21:42
and Sonny and remind them of where all the emergency hardware
21:45
lives on the International Space Station, in case we have any
21:48
contingencies when they're on board.
21:50
Now let's go ahead and go to flight day three, which is dock
21:53
day #2. On this day, we're unloading all
21:56
of the cargo and we're also configuring the vehicle for
22:00
quiescent operations. If you can imagine when you're
22:03
when the Starliner is there for six months, you don't want to
22:06
use all the power and leave all of your equipment running the
22:08
whole time. So what the quiescent OPS does
22:11
is it basically powers off all the redundant equipment that you
22:13
don't really need. The crew will still be able to
22:15
go inside the capsule. They have good lights, good
22:17
displays, good ventilation, things like that, but all of the
22:20
extra computers and stuff like that will be powered off.
22:23
We'll also get to do some emergency hardware transfer.
22:26
I'm getting ready again for some of the contingency operations
22:29
that we're going to practice later in the mission.
22:32
Let's go again to Dock day #3. On dock day #3, we're going to
22:37
do some of our operational checkouts.
22:39
The first main one we're going to do is called our Safe Haven
22:41
checkout. If you can imagine if you have
22:43
an emergency on ISS, you want to be able to get in your Earth
22:46
return vehicle, isolate yourself and make sure you're in a safe
22:49
environment. So that's what we'll practice.
22:51
Butch and Sonny will go into Starliner.
22:54
They'll close the Hatch. They'll basically completely
22:57
power up the vehicle on their own to practice if they were
23:00
getting ready for an emergency undock and return.
23:03
So basically make sure all that all that stuff works in a kind
23:07
of a steady environment on entry.
23:11
We have a system called a supplementer that provides
23:13
cooling for the vehicle that uses water.
23:15
If for some reason there's any kind of leak or any kind of
23:19
where we need additional water, we have the capability to refill
23:22
that on board even though you normally would not need to do
23:25
that. So we'll get to practice that
23:27
again just to make sure all the hardware connects correctly,
23:29
make sure all the procedures are accurate.
23:31
So that way if we need that in contingency, we're ready for
23:33
that. On the long duration mission
23:36
we'll have 4 crew members and So what we'll do is we'll borrow a
23:39
few ISIS crew members, have them float into Starliner with Butch
23:42
and Sonny and we'll practice that that day of free flight to
23:46
see how would we Orient ourselves with four crew
23:48
members. So we'll get to practice that
23:50
before the the long duration mission and then we'll get to do
23:53
a Boeing event where we'll have all of the engineers and
23:56
employees who worked really hard to get Starliner on board.
23:59
They'll get to interact with the crew and spend some time with
24:01
them and see all that great hardware they built in space.
24:05
We'll go to the next day, dock day #4, so usually seven day in
24:11
the six month mission. Seven days before the mission
24:14
ends, you'll take that quiescent config and do a complete power
24:17
up and basically check out all the missions systems to make
24:20
sure all the computers come on, make sure all the the equipment
24:23
is working. We're basically going to test
24:24
that out. On dock day #4.
24:26
Butch and Sonny will basically sit in the capsule and watch all
24:29
of displays and watch all the units come up so that way they
24:32
can understand how all the systems are working.
24:34
Now let's go to flight day number six, which is dock day
24:38
#5. We put this sample day in there.
24:40
As Mike said, Orbiter Dynamics will really drive what day we're
24:45
able to undock. So if it's longer than a day
24:47
mission, this is one of the days we'll put in.
24:49
So we'll give the crew 1/2 day off.
24:52
Again, they're very busy on all these days, so they'll get a
24:54
little bit of rest. We've also trained Butch and
24:56
Sonny to be able to do basically all of the key International
25:01
Space Station tasks that could exist for them, so they're ready
25:04
for any preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance tasks as
25:06
well as a lot of science tasks. So we'll we'll ask the space
25:09
station program what extra activities are available and
25:13
Butch and Sonny will go back to their International Space
25:15
Station lives on their previous missions and get to do some of
25:18
those tasks that they remember doing.
25:21
Let's say let's go to dock day number six.
25:24
At this point, we're really now focused on the end of the
25:27
mission. So we're going to load all the
25:29
cargo that's going to come home on the Starliner and start some
25:32
of that undock preparations. That emergency equipment that
25:35
was in Starliner, when I'll take that out and put it back on the
25:38
the ISS where it lives. One of the other training
25:41
simulations we fly on Starliner is on entry.
25:45
It's all automated, but there is the capability that if needed
25:48
the crew can take manual control and fly an entry for Butch.
25:52
He's just going to practice that right before a lawn.
25:54
So he doesn't need a lot of practice.
25:55
But on six month mission you want the crew to be able to to
25:58
get in that simulator and really practice those entries to make
26:01
sure they're ready in case they need it.
26:03
We'll get to practice that on dock.
26:05
Day number six, let's go to the next day.
26:10
Now we'll really do a full undocked power up, make sure the
26:13
vehicle is completely ready. We're going to have a conference
26:15
with the crew to walk through all of their flight test
26:19
objectives, make sure they give us feedback.
26:20
So that way if we need to adjust any procedures or just any
26:23
hardware, we can do that before Starliner One and then we'll
26:27
have our standard departure news conference.
26:30
Then we go to our next day. What we did is we went ahead and
26:35
put in a sleep shift day because again, because of aerodynamics,
26:39
you don't always get to undock at the same time of day.
26:41
So this give us a chance to sleep shift the crew for any
26:46
anytime we need. And then we go to dock day #9,
26:49
which will be our last day on the International Space Station.
26:52
We'll get to do our farewell TV events.
26:55
The crew will get in there as an entry suit, we'll close the
26:58
Hatch and then we'll get ready to leave.
27:02
And at this point, we'll hand back over to Mike who will kind
27:05
of walk you through the operations of how you undock and
27:08
how you entry and land. OK.
27:12
Thank you, Vincent. So again, we mentioned where we
27:15
are now is we're on, we're on undocking day and the crew is in
27:18
the vehicle. I'll show a short video here in
27:21
a second. But undocking happens about 6
27:25
1/2 hours prior to landing. That's a little bit longer on
27:30
this test flight than it would be for a direct descent mission
27:35
at the end of a six month increment.
27:37
We added some time for the crew to do a couple more flight
27:41
tests, and these are really important ones.
27:43
Starliner is really unique in that it has a backup system, We
27:49
call it a backup system where the crew, you know, they have a
27:52
rotational and a translational hand controller and they
27:54
normally go through three flight computers that fly the vehicle
28:00
automated. But as it turns out, we can have
28:05
the crew engage backup control where they're actually firing.
28:09
The the commander can fire The Jets directly, bypassing the
28:14
computers. And that's just designed so that
28:16
if you had a really unlikely computer failure, the crew can
28:21
actually manually control the vehicle in this backup mode by
28:26
what I like to call stick and rudder flying.
28:28
In fact, they can even deorbit and and land in that mode.
28:32
So what we're going to do is we're going to spend about an
28:35
orbit with the Butch, engaging the various.
28:42
There's a couple of different jet manifolds that they can they
28:44
can engage to get some experience flying and back up
28:48
And just to make sure that get some feedback on how the vehicle
28:53
flies with respect to all the experience that he has, both,
28:57
you know, and our training Sims on the ground.
28:58
And then, of course, the other spacecraft and even aircraft
29:02
that he's flown before. So again, we'll go ahead and do
29:06
that. Over a couple of Revs, we do a
29:10
deorbit burn, and you'll see this in the video.
29:13
But we do a deorbit burn over the Pacific and we target a
29:16
landing in the Southwest United States.
29:19
We've got 3 landing areas, White Sands Missile Range in New
29:23
Mexico. There's actually two spots that
29:25
we can land there. It's a it's a really quite a big
29:27
place and the the other and that's where the previous two
29:32
Starliners have landed. There's also a landing area at
29:36
Wilcox Playa that's an area east of Tucson, AZ.
29:39
It's actually just off of I-10 or a Dugway proving Ground,
29:44
which is West of Salt Lake City. And that gives us kind of a
29:47
spread, geographical spread that allows us to to get
29:53
opportunities every day depending on where orbital
29:55
mechanics puts us. So we'll go ahead, we'll roll
29:59
the video here. This is only about a minute and
30:01
then we'll be finished. OK.
30:03
So there's undocking. I think you'll see right after
30:07
we undock, we back down the corridor, There's a cover that
30:10
this is a little early in the video.
30:11
There's a cover that closes over the docking system.
30:13
We fly 1/4 lap, we get go up over the zenith of ISS and then
30:17
we do a departure burn. I don't believe we show the
30:21
deorbit burn here, but this is some of the tests that we're
30:25
doing with the the backup control that I mentioned.
30:30
When we do the deorbit burn, it's pretty quick.
30:32
It's less than a minute and the deorbit burn will happen.
30:36
The service module is separated, it does the disposal burn and it
30:39
burns up over the Pacific. The capsule will go ahead and do
30:45
a guided the orbit using its own propulsion system, which was
30:49
activated shortly before this landing sequence begins at
30:53
30,000 feet. There goes the forward heat
30:55
shield and then we put out a couple of drogues.
31:00
You'll see those jettison here in a second.
31:02
Hopefully we'll have video from the NASA WB 57 for this.
31:06
When it happens, Mains go out reefed at 8000 feet and then
31:10
they'll dis reef 3 mains and takes about.
31:15
That's the bucket handle that gets us in the correct attitude
31:18
for landing. We're on the mains for about 3
31:22
minutes. You should see here in a second
31:25
the forward heat shield is dropped and then the airbags
31:30
deploy and the crew touches down and the crew will jettison the
31:41
shoots manually. They do a switch throw.
31:44
That'll cause a lot of the vehicle systems to power down.
31:48
Well, as they power down, we'll bring the crew up.
31:51
Actually on a satellite phone. The landing team is 4 kilometer
31:56
on a on an offset on on a on the edge of something we call the
32:00
four kilometer circle just to make sure that they're safe from
32:03
the falling parts that are coming off the vehicle.
32:06
There are things like mortar lids and those droves that you
32:08
saw before. Once the vehicle's on the
32:11
ground, that team will approach and they're actually on the SAT
32:16
phone call with me and the and the crew.
32:20
And they'll we'll go ahead and turn the vehicle over once
32:23
they're at the location. And then they'll go ahead and
32:27
make sure that do the usual safety checks that you do around
32:30
the capsule. And they'll take the crew out,
32:32
they'll do the medical checks and then the crew will be
32:35
helicoptered to a landing field and then they'll be flown back
32:39
to Houston. So that's that is the mission
32:43
summary. Great.
32:45
Thank you so much. That was a huge wealth of
32:46
information. Thank you to all of our briefers
32:48
for that in depth. Going over of the timeline,
32:52
we're going to switch over to some questions now.
32:54
We're going to be taking questions here in the room.
32:56
So if you have one, go ahead and raise your hand.
32:58
We'll also be taking questions on our phone bridge.
33:01
So if you are on the phone, go ahead and press * one.
33:04
If you've got a question for one of our briefers, again please
33:07
state your name, affiliation and who you'd like to address your
33:10
question to. We can go ahead and start right
33:13
here in the room. Hey, Mike, I made Rick Wall
33:17
Street Journal, not sure who this would go to.
33:19
Steve and Mark talked a little bit earlier about how Boeing is
33:22
using NASA flight OPS for for this mission.
33:25
First of all, just to be crystal clear, that's you guys, that's
33:28
your teams. And then second.
33:31
Could you talk a little bit about decision making during the
33:33
mission if there is an anomaly given that given NASA flight OPS
33:37
role in the Boeing's like ultimate responsibility and
33:41
authority and management. Over CFD, how does decision
33:46
making work and something? Goes wrong.
33:48
Thanks. So I'll take a little bit of
33:55
that, but I'll also let like Vincent to weigh in too.
33:59
So what you really have up here, you have three members of the
34:03
Johnson Space Center Flight Operations Directorate that are
34:06
NASA civil servants. But we also have APR 2 Starliner
34:10
mission operations flight directors that are operating out
34:13
of the white flight control room embedded with Boeing for design,
34:17
development, test flight mission execution of Starliner.
34:22
And you have one space station flight directors.
34:25
He's running his flight. Vincent's running his team down
34:28
on flight control Room 1 just like space station 24/7. 365 is
34:34
being run from there and his focus and his responsibilities
34:38
are for the safety and protection of the space station
34:41
and execution of the entire NASA mission.
34:43
So I'll let and I'll let him go into details on that versus our
34:46
side of things is focused on the crew safety vehicle safety
34:52
mission success of the Starliner mission for and with Boeing.
34:57
But also of course since we are providing a service to NASA and
35:02
the commercial crew program primary focus for us too is of
35:05
course safety and and mission success for the space station.
35:08
So it is a partnership with Vincent and his team and NASA
35:12
and ISS team but there are some pretty clear distinctions.
35:17
So we have for those of you familiar with our operational
35:20
products, we have flight rules, we have launched commit criteria
35:23
that are Boeing products that tell us the limitations, the go
35:27
no goes things like that for Starliner that are part of
35:32
Boeing process. We we work in developing those
35:35
with our mission operations flight control teams, the
35:38
mission engineer or the Boeing engineers and then the Boeing
35:41
management. So Mark and Leroy that you
35:43
talked with earlier and we get all those approved so that we
35:48
know how to go operate in the Starliner spacecraft at the
35:52
nitty gritty level. But we also then work with
35:55
commercial crew program and ISS to ensure that what we're doing
35:58
is within the requirements and and safety paradigm of of what
36:03
NASA needs for really taking care of their astronauts.
36:06
Even though they're our friends, they're the NASA astronauts, we
36:09
need to take good care of them. So that's it is a collaboration,
36:13
but there's still a distinction on the the extent to which were
36:16
embedded within Boeing and and their design and development
36:19
test versus Vincent's role. Yeah.
36:25
So I think from the International Space Station
36:27
flight director role, it's very similar to how we do SpaceX,
36:31
right. Once we get inside integrated
36:33
operations, the International Space Station Flight Director
36:36
has operational authority and they're making the ultimate
36:39
calls on, again, go being go to dock, go to undock.
36:42
Those kind of decisions on the same way we would work with a
36:46
SpaceX mission director because they are the experts in the
36:49
SpaceX capsule. The same way I'd work with Ed
36:51
and Mike that they're the expert in the Starliner capsule.
36:54
So if there's any anomalies on the Starliner vehicle, again my
36:58
team is not the expert. We will listen to them and get
37:01
their to get their advice. And then we have space station
37:05
flight rules where we document if they have failure of X
37:08
computer or we still go or we not go based on what we're done
37:11
and see what risk we will take. So again in a lot of ways for us
37:15
we've practiced this for years but it's very similar how we do
37:18
other vehicles where again my job is to make sure the ISS is
37:21
in the right configuration for docking, make sure all of our
37:24
systems are at the right redundancies and then to
37:27
communicate with Ed, Mike, Chloe and Rick and on their side to
37:31
make sure that I understand the situation and what what their
37:35
vehicle is doing. And again the the good news for
37:39
us is we we sit right down the hall from each other right so
37:42
off console it's very easy to work together and and get good
37:46
situation where it's on any anything they're working.
37:49
So that's the benefit right of working at Johnson Space Center
37:53
where Boeing has has contracted NASA to fly their vehicle.
37:56
It's easier to be sometimes easier to be on the same page
37:58
because we do work at the same place and and see each other all
38:01
the time. Great.
38:04
Thank you. We'll take a question on the
38:06
phone real quick. Marsha Dunn with The Associated
38:08
Press. Hi, I'm wondering how long could
38:13
the Starliner and its crew stay at the space station if
38:16
something goes amiss during Aspen and the initial part of
38:20
the flight, are you taking up extra rations just in case?
38:24
And is Boeing, NASA working with SpaceX to be on emergency
38:28
standby just in case? I'm just wondering the backup
38:31
plans. Thanks.
38:35
I can go to answer first like the cargo.
38:37
So we have, we basically bring a lot of supplies for the crew for
38:41
for kind of that initial mission.
38:44
We have some extended supplies and capes they stay but
38:47
obviously ISS has has plenty of food and water for example.
38:51
So really we're prepared for them to stay as long as they
38:53
need to. Obviously there's certain
38:55
weather requirements that we need to meet on on CFT and so we
39:00
have no issues if we need to stay stay any longer.
39:03
Yep. As far as duration goes, this
39:07
this is there's really no hard constraint on the vehicle.
39:11
This is the spacecraft that's designed to stay at space
39:15
station for six months, and there's nothing essentially
39:18
limiting that if you needed to. As far as being on standby, you
39:28
know those are. I'm not aware of of any of that.
39:35
OK. We're going to go to a question
39:36
in the room. Go ahead.
39:37
Hi Elizabeth Howell from space.com.
39:40
This is probably for Ed. So can you talk about during the
39:42
close proximity operations to the ISS aside from obviously the
39:46
flight activities of flight task activities, Sunny and Butcher
39:50
doing, are there any key difference with how a SpaceX
39:53
direct and close proximity operations those?
39:59
So I'm first going to admit that I've been focused on Starliner
40:02
for a long time and have not been a flight a NASA flight
40:06
director for a Crew Dragon mission.
40:08
So I don't have tremendous depth of detail to really give you a
40:12
point by point comparison. But I have worked a couple of
40:17
Dragon cargo missions in in previous years, so at a high
40:20
level the trajectories are basically the same.
40:24
Because largely because of what Benson described, with the way
40:27
that ISS wants to have vehicles approaching and the way they
40:29
want to manage the traffic plans.
40:31
So at a very high level, all the spacecraft that come up to the
40:35
ISS are going to come up from below and behind and then do
40:40
some sort of of rendezvous. If you're docking to the forward
40:43
part of ISS, obviously you'll go below, behind, in front, and
40:46
then and then kind of come up. The way that we do that with
40:49
Starliner is a little bit different than with the Dragon.
40:53
So the profiles will look a little bit different just
40:55
because the sensors that we use, the sensor suites for rendezvous
41:00
are all, you know, different technologies, different way of
41:03
doing things, different mission rules, different waypoints if
41:08
you will to to to get on that trajectory.
41:12
The way that the space station is monitoring the approaching
41:16
vehicle is very similar. It's obviously not exactly the
41:19
same, but it's very similar and then largely from that level I
41:27
can say that it's pretty close to the same.
41:30
I can't really do a good comparison for you on you know
41:34
timeline of events or the the manual capabilities of the
41:39
manual actions that crews might be doing.
41:42
But from that perspective it's it's pretty pretty similar.
41:46
We'll take another question in the room.
41:47
Thanks. Hi, Irene Clots with Aviation
41:51
wake up from M2 questions. So first one is considering that
41:56
redundancy in Starliner, do all systems need to be operational
42:01
to meet the launch commit criteria or are you able to fly?
42:06
If something is operational, you can provide any detail on that?
42:10
And then the second, just to clarify again the relationship
42:13
between Boeing and NASA for the Starliner missions, for all
42:17
intents and purposes, are you all sort of on leave from NASA
42:22
on your official jobs and working as subcontractors to
42:26
Boeing, So Boeing is your customer during these missions.
42:29
You're no longer sort of representing NASA as you would
42:33
if it wasn't a Starliner mission going on.
42:35
Thanks. Yeah, I'll good questions.
42:39
I'll I'll take your second question first because maybe
42:41
here's here's another way of of of of thinking about it and I
42:47
realized that that it it can be, it's challenging to describe
42:52
sometimes the relationship but I'll give it to you another way.
42:55
When when I'm working Starliner right Ed and I, we actually have
42:58
a charge code right and that that that is you know funded by
43:04
Boeing. I mean ultimately it's part of a
43:06
NASA contract but but but it's it's being managed by Boeing and
43:10
we're providing them service, right.
43:13
And then that goes into even how the mission is run.
43:16
When I report to the mission management team, the mission
43:18
management team is chaired by Leroy Cain who's a Boeing
43:21
employee. Boeing runs the mission until we
43:25
get to the joint OPS with with with Vincent as he as he
43:30
described then you know NASA has got an oversight role like they
43:33
do for all of the of the vehicles.
43:35
But but once if we're outside of this area around ISS, it's it's
43:40
a Boeing run mission that is done in partnership with their
43:45
customer who is NASA. As far as the launch commit
43:50
criteria, you know there's kind of two sets there's the ones
43:53
that ULA has United Launch Alliance on the Atlas Five.
43:58
I'm not as familiar with those except to say that they do their
44:01
own set of checks that's identical to all the commercial
44:04
and government missions that that they do for the rocket, for
44:09
the spacecraft. In general, all the systems have
44:12
to be up and running. I think I could probably get
44:14
into some details where there's there's some small things that
44:18
we can fly without. I was just, you know, talking
44:22
yesterday about about 1 criteria is how many.
44:25
You know the crew uses tablets for their procedures, right.
44:28
And we fly with four of them. Well if something happened to
44:31
one of them, we can fly with three.
44:33
So there's there's there's a few places where there's sufficient
44:37
redundant systems that can go ahead and launch but but in
44:40
general all the flight computers, all the Imus have to
44:45
be running to to to launch and we, I mean we're evaluating
44:49
those right down to lift off. Thank you, Mike.
44:53
We're going to switch to a question on our phone bridge,
44:56
Jeff Faust with Space News. Like one, is there anything like
45:04
the dry dress rehearsal that SpaceX does for true Dragon
45:08
missions for Starliner? And then you mentioned the
45:12
timeline for undocking the landing is a little bit longer
45:15
on CFT versus an operational mission.
45:17
What would be the the time from undocking to landing for an
45:20
operational mission? Thanks.
45:26
Let's see for the the dry dress, the answer is yes, there is an
45:32
activity and I forget the exact date right now, but it's about
45:36
8:00. It's it's eight days before
45:40
launch, seven or eight days before launch and it's called
45:42
the crew training activity. It's really a full up run where
45:49
the crew we we have the whole team there.
45:52
The crew suits up in the suit room.
45:56
They get get in the suits we take them down to the
45:59
spacecraft. The one difference is is the the
46:02
spacecraft and the rocket aren't at the pad, they're in the VIF,
46:05
the the integration building. But we we have them practice out
46:09
in the pad in the white room on some other activities.
46:12
But the crew will get into the spacecraft.
46:14
The spacecraft is going to be powered.
46:16
In fact, we're commanding it from Houston just as we would on
46:20
launch day and we go through the entire launch count including
46:25
things like having the crew do suit checks, working with the
46:30
pad team. We'll do all of that and get a
46:33
chance to to practice it. So that is being done and is
46:38
similar. It is a dry dress.
46:41
Let's see. The second question was the
46:44
amount of time for a post certification mission as we call
46:52
it, when when Starliners coming down it would be the shortest
46:55
possible time to get from undocked to landing would be
46:58
about four hours. There's a little bit of a
47:02
dependency on whether or not there's a fly around done so
47:05
Starliners got the capability to do a full fly around of the
47:10
entire space station to to do photography of space station.
47:14
We're not doing that on this mission.
47:17
Potential to do it on the next mission if NASA requested, and
47:20
if they do it be, I think closer to the six hours.
47:26
Thank you. Got a question right here in
47:27
the. Front sincere ABC News for Matt
47:30
what are the weather and lighting constraints for landing
47:35
was that so the question was weather and lighting
47:38
constraints. The the weather constraints for
47:42
landing are we essentially want the lowest wind that we can to
47:50
to undock and and that's just to give it a gentle the gentler not
47:59
not have a a large lateral component.
48:02
When we hit the ground also we do things like we account for if
48:07
a parachute fails or an airbag fails and so you tend to be a
48:10
little bit more conservative right now.
48:12
I think we we want limits that are less than 10 knots for that
48:18
and that kind of ties into the second part of your question
48:23
which was lighting. There are no requirements for
48:27
lighting. In fact we tend to like to land
48:29
at night and that's because two reasons.
48:33
One is the wind is lower at night in the places that we're
48:36
landing. Also you got to think about the
48:39
safety of the of the people that go out and meet the spacecraft
48:44
after it lands. Some of them are in things
48:46
called scape suits which are to protect them if there's a leak
48:50
of of fuel or oxidizer from the vehicle.
48:53
They're actually pretty hot and you know we land in the desert
48:56
and so we it's a lot easier on the landing team to land at
48:59
night. And it turns out we found in
49:01
previous missions, it's actually I when I started working this
49:06
program years ago. We're a little bit worried about
49:07
operating at night, but they've actually come up with a really
49:09
nice setup with the lights and of course if you see the the
49:14
video we've got the infrared tracking both from the ground
49:17
and the and the aircraft it's it's it's it's kind of funny.
49:21
We've gotten to the point where we almost prefer the night so.
49:25
Cape Got another question right here.
49:27
Or with CVS. Well, we prefer the daytime but
49:29
that's yeah, OK. It is prettier.
49:31
I I will give you that two quick ones for me and I know this
49:35
isn't about a this isn't a Dragon briefing obviously it's
49:38
it's it's Starliner. But are there any things in your
49:41
minds that are clear advantages that Starliner brings to the
49:44
table. Things that you particularly
49:46
appreciate in terms of how it flies and how you control the
49:49
spacecraft, how the crew does that.
49:51
And secondly, can do any of you have any idea what what sort of
49:55
TV we can expect from the mission between launch and
49:58
docking? I know what we get on once it's
50:00
at station, but is there any live downlinks during the
50:03
mission that you're aware of or do they have the capability to
50:06
do that? Thanks.
50:10
I haven't talked lately the the the for the second question
50:18
there is with the the current Starlight for CFT there is not
50:22
the capability to do live video downlink.
50:25
We do have the camera system that you saw on the last flight
50:28
that'll provide streaming video when we're docked to the space
50:31
station. And that camera system is
50:33
running during the free flight phases as well.
50:37
And the crew will actually be conducting some public affair
50:40
affair events during the free flight on both the 1st and 2nd
50:44
day of the mission. But they'll be recorded on the
50:46
video system and then played back after we've docked.
50:50
So they might be some some audio of that that comes down live,
50:54
but there's for this flight, there's no live TV capability in
50:58
the free flight phase. Comparing capabilities between
51:03
Dragon and Starliner, again I have to plead a little bit of of
51:08
Dragon lack of knowledge just because I haven't really worked
51:12
in depth on those vehicles to really give a good comparison.
51:16
But I can tell you that they are different and some obvious
51:21
differences are the fact that Starliner lands on the land
51:24
versus in the ocean. Starliner has tactile hand
51:30
controllers for manual flying, whereas Dragon doesn't, and
51:35
those are those are kind of some of the more obvious aspects and
51:39
they're just differences. They're not.
51:40
One's not really better than the other, one's not necessarily
51:43
more capable than the other, but they are different capabilities.
51:46
The rendezvous sensor suite is different between the two
51:49
vehicles. Just the way that the two
51:52
companies have approached how they want to approach and depart
51:54
from space station are also differences.
51:59
And that that then factors into how you train the crews, what
52:02
you focus on with the crew training and that really rolls
52:06
into exactly what NASA of course wanted with the commercial crew
52:09
program is you didn't you didn't want just one spacecraft or one
52:14
provider that you know all your eggs are in that basket.
52:17
You provide a couple of different capability from access
52:22
to space perspective, but you also provide a couple of
52:24
different venues for industry to design solutions in their own
52:29
way using their own ideas that are different from each other.
52:33
And you you start to have this low Earth or low Earth orbit
52:37
economy that NASA has been talking a lot about where now
52:39
you have different options if you want to get a ride into
52:43
space. So we we are definitely going to
52:46
be exercising those that Starliner has as much as we can.
52:51
And then maybe the best way to answer your question is going to
52:54
be after the mission when the the services are looking to
52:58
provide access to the Earth orbit.
52:59
Can then compare between the two and and see which of the two
53:03
menu options, if you will for accessing space are are to their
53:07
liking and meet their mission needs.
53:10
Thank you, Ed. We do look forward to seeing
53:12
those live down links once they get to the space station.
53:16
We have a question here in the room in the back.
53:22
Thank you. Stephen Clark, Ars Technika.
53:24
Just a follow up on Bill's question, what is the vehicle
53:28
lacking on this particular flight that doesn't allow you to
53:31
do the live video downlink and will that come online like with
53:35
Starliner One? And secondly, my main question,
53:39
Mike, can you talk about the abort modes during ascent?
53:43
Can you walk me through different abort phases,
53:46
different types of aborts you would conduct if you have to,
53:50
hopefully not at different stages?
53:52
Thanks. I can answer the first part and
53:55
then I'll let Mike do your part. Really the only thing that the
53:59
system is lacking is just connection from the the data,
54:02
the video recorder to a transmission system.
54:05
So the transmission antennas and the ground stations to receive
54:10
those transmission transmissions are just not online yet.
54:13
So the the capability within the capsule, the infrastructure for
54:18
it is all there. They just we just haven't
54:21
progressed enough into getting the the operational post
54:26
certification piece to where we have that capability yet to.
54:32
Answer the second part of the question, the aborts.
54:35
So we spent a lot of time working on aborts.
54:37
Boeing and United Launch Alliance have spent a great deal
54:42
of effort making a safe system. The the way aborts work is it's
54:49
kind of joint between the spacecraft and the launch
54:51
vehicle. The launch vehicle is monitoring
54:53
itself and if it needs to abort, it will tell the Starliner to
54:58
abort. Additionally, we've got, you
55:01
know, I've got a team of United Launch Alliance flight
55:04
controllers are actually in Denver and they're reporting to
55:07
me in real time and they will tell me if they see an abort
55:11
approaching. We can do some things like
55:13
perhaps abort early if we need to, just to put the crew in
55:16
better weather over the ocean. It's a very large swath of the
55:20
world we're flying over. But what you'll hear is that
55:22
lift off, as I mentioned earlier, the abort system goes
55:25
active 75 seconds before launch. And then as we lift off and you
55:29
gain more energy, you land at different places, right?
55:32
So the one of the you'll hear them call the abort boundaries
55:36
one of them is CM forward and that's just has to do with how
55:41
how the the service modules jettisoned after an abort but
55:44
that's still in the in the pad area around Florida as you get
55:49
more energy right when the first stage goes at 4 1/2 minutes
55:53
you'll hear ECAL that's East Coast aboard landing the it's a
55:57
heritage term you actually end up in the ocean generally east
56:02
of Cape Cod and then as you gain more energy you will hear a call
56:08
for St. John's and that is in the area
56:11
of the ocean near St. John's NL.
56:14
You'll do a guided landing there and then once you have enough
56:16
energy to get up over the North Atlantic, which is by design
56:20
vehicles designed to avoid that, you'll hear Shannon and that's
56:26
your Shannon, Ireland. And then once you obtain enough
56:32
energy to make orbit, we've actually got a mode called Ato
56:36
or abort to orbit and that'll get the the Starliner.
56:40
If if there's a low performance case, the Starliner can burn its
56:43
own engines and get into into a low orbit that's 200 kilometers
56:50
high. And actually in a lot of cases
56:51
we can give it a little bit of time.
56:53
We can actually figure out how to get a rendezvous out of that
56:55
if we need to. But those those are the kind of
56:57
the top level how abort modes work.
57:02
So I want to go to our phone bridge because I know we don't
57:04
have all that much time left. We'll go to Robert Pearlman with
57:07
Collect Space. Great.
57:11
Thank you. Two questions, Given the flight
57:15
rate, is there just one NASA team assigned to Boeing for all
57:19
of the Starliner flights in terms of Mission Control or are
57:23
there different assignments of different people assigned as you
57:25
progress from CFT to Starliner one?
57:28
And second quick second question, in terms of referring
57:32
to the vehicle on orbit, since there is a name of this
57:35
spacecraft Calypso, once you see me referring to it as Calypso or
57:39
as Starliner, as you call back and forth from space to ground,
57:45
I'll get the first one. So I'll get them both.
57:48
Hey the first question as far as the NASA team we that that
57:53
supports Starliner, this is a really good question actually
57:56
because you talk about the flight rate and Starliner is
57:59
kind of interesting in that you know Boeing flies this crude
58:03
mission and the the team that we use we have a very small core
58:12
group of people that work this full time.
58:14
But actually most of the team that flies this vehicle does
58:20
other things right. Both Ed and I do space station
58:24
shifts and we do, we've done Artemis shifts and it actually
58:28
really helps with this flight rate because as I'm a guy that
58:31
does operations, one of the things that's really important
58:34
for people that does kind of work that we do is you got to
58:37
fly things right and it and it's all about how often you get to
58:40
fly things that really builds a team that knows how to manage a
58:45
spacecraft and space and do it safely.
58:48
And the way this works out is that we can almost ebb and flow
58:54
on this program as we're needed, right.
58:59
So right now we're coming up to a flight and we surge.
59:02
When you get into some of the time in between these, in
59:05
between these year long missions, we can allocate people
59:10
to do other things And that ultimately, you know, saves
59:16
resources as far as having a team that otherwise you'd need
59:19
that have completely stood up to cover you know 24/7 OPS of a
59:24
spacecraft that that is free flying only a very short short
59:30
period of time. As far as the naming, what we've
59:34
been using in all of our simulations is, is Starliner.
59:38
That's kind of what we're used to and what we've been training.
59:40
So I'm sure the the the name that Sunny used will come up.
59:47
But in general, in our training we've been using Starliner and I
59:50
think I expect that's generally what you'll hear.
59:53
Great. So we only have a couple of
59:55
minutes left, but I do want to get one more question in the
59:57
room if it could be a quick one. Yeah, hopefully this will be
59:59
brief. Will Robinson Smith for Space
1:00:01
Flight. Now for Mike, assuming that the
1:00:05
airbags deploy as nominally. Can you describe what the the
1:00:09
impact the Butch and Sunny will feel like, what that sensation
1:00:13
will be? And if one of them only
1:00:15
partially inflates or doesn't fully inflate what the
1:00:17
difference for that might be? Thanks.
1:00:19
That'd be an excellent question for Butch and Sunny this
1:00:22
afternoon because they have both landed in well Butch has landed
1:00:28
in a Soyuz which has got an interesting way of landing as as
1:00:32
as we've we've seen you know they land on land too and but
1:00:36
they're using rockets instead of airbags.
1:00:39
But I believe the descent rate is about 25 feet per second.
1:00:44
I would say that it's likely a firm landing but but you know
1:00:51
the requirements for these vehicles that the both the NASA
1:00:55
crude vehicles as far as the conditions that the crew see it
1:01:01
impact is fairly gentle. It's it's not going to be I
1:01:09
think something that is puts the crew at risk in any way and that
1:01:12
includes with an airbag out, right.
1:01:14
All those requirements there, we call them the Health and Human
1:01:18
performance requirements but they were all there and the
1:01:20
vehicle is certified to do all these things even with an airbag
1:01:24
out and that was part of the requirements to to build it.
1:01:28
So I I suspect it's going to be pretty gentle.
1:01:33
Great. Thank you so much.
1:01:34
That is all of the time that we have today.
1:01:37
Thank you to our awesome briefers for talking about an
1:01:39
overview of NASA's Boeing crew flight test mission.
1:01:43
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