Speaker 1: Hey, they're folks, say, real life Gilligan's Island is playing
Speaker 1: out in space right now. Two astronauts were supposed to
Speaker 1: be in orbit eight days. As we speak, it's been
Speaker 1: two months and still unclear on when they might come home. Folks,
Speaker 1: welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Rhodes. I'm
Speaker 1: always and we're always fascinated by space stuff. We're always
Speaker 1: in awe of it. But this time we were kind
Speaker 1: of all scratching our heads and trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what went wrong and when can they come home.
Speaker 2: I'm still laughing at your Gilligan's Island reference three hour tour.
Speaker 1: There's supposed to be an eight day tour.
Speaker 3: But it turns possibly into an eight month too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whoa, it seems indefinite and a lot of people
Speaker 1: familiar with this story. But two astronauts went up in June,
Speaker 1: supposed to be eight days orbiting. Something's wrong with the
Speaker 1: orbiter that they're in, the craft they're in, so they're
Speaker 1: kind of stranded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what I got was some thrusters weren't working, some
Speaker 2: helium was leaking. I don't know what any of that means,
Speaker 2: but none of it sounds good. And there's a question
Speaker 2: as to whether or not that vehicle that they arrived
Speaker 2: at the International Space Station in can actually take them
Speaker 2: back to Earth safely. And so because there is a
Speaker 2: question mark, and I'm sure the astronauts appreciate that scientists, astrophysicists,
Speaker 2: folks at NASA, folks at Boeing are all making sure
Speaker 2: that their safety is at the top of the list.
Speaker 2: So how do they get back home in one piece? No,
Speaker 2: you can't, there's not yet, and.
Speaker 3: There's a long wait.
Speaker 1: There is right now.
Speaker 3: And it's cramped quarters, we should point out.
Speaker 2: So the International Space Station, upon my big research that
Speaker 2: I've done this morning, is usually there to accommodate about
Speaker 2: six people, six to seven at the most. Now there
Speaker 2: are I believe nine people there. Wow, so there's some
Speaker 2: sleeping quarter issues. They just got a supply truck, which
Speaker 2: made me laugh.
Speaker 3: It's not a truck, but they actually I was amazed.
Speaker 2: They actually sense apply missions up to them. So they
Speaker 2: needed some new clothes. I mean, this is all new
Speaker 2: to me, but it's it sounds like a movie, but
Speaker 2: it's happening in real time, in real life.
Speaker 1: I didn't see that part about it. We've all been
Speaker 1: there before on vacation or somebody's house. It's it's sleep
Speaker 1: it's a four bedroom house. But seven people are we
Speaker 1: going to figure this out?
Speaker 2: Or how many times have you been on vacation and
Speaker 2: you get called to go to work to like a
Speaker 2: work event, and you don't have enough clothes, you.
Speaker 3: Don't have enough underwear, you don't have enough socks.
Speaker 2: That's happened. We're talking like a few days. This is
Speaker 2: like months and months.
Speaker 1: They have a couch, there's so many crash on the
Speaker 1: no and they.
Speaker 2: Don't have a washer or a dryer, so there's no laundry.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of things going on.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking a damn about their laundry right now.
Speaker 3: They might care more than you think. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: an issue.
Speaker 1: Well, that's bringing into somebody. Clearly we need help understanding
Speaker 1: what the hell is going on. So let's bring in
Speaker 1: somebody who knows it. He's actually an astrophysicist. He's an astronomer,
Speaker 1: a Smithsonian astronomer, Johnathan McDowell is with us now. So
Speaker 1: we appreciate you helping us out with what's We tried
Speaker 1: to go through the story a little bit, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are familiar with it, but can you
Speaker 1: tell us, first of all, they plan for contingencies like
Speaker 1: this or is this something that nobody necessarily had a
Speaker 1: plan for in a scenario for well, I.
Speaker 4: Think it's a bit of a surprise, but it's within
Speaker 4: the scope of what you know. That's that's it is
Speaker 4: all about what happens if this failure, what happens if
Speaker 4: the next failure? And so so they're they're they're pretty
Speaker 4: they go pretty deep into what do we do if
Speaker 4: By the way, I just say, I I do love
Speaker 4: the Gilligans Island comparison. I had not thought of that.
Speaker 4: And it's perfect.
Speaker 1: You can have it, you can use it.
Speaker 4: Yea, yeah, so so uh so yeah, so so they
Speaker 4: have this space ship, the Starliner, and you know, it's
Speaker 4: had a bit of a rocky history. The the test
Speaker 4: flights without a crew didn't go that brilliantly, and so
Speaker 4: they were really hoping that this one would just be flawless.
Speaker 1: But no, well, Jonathan, wait a second, you can't just
Speaker 1: hope when we're talking talk about sending people up. You're
Speaker 1: telling me this thing had enough issues, then maybe we
Speaker 1: shouldn't have sent them up in that thing in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 4: No, No, I don't think so, I mean, I think
Speaker 4: they thought they had solved the issues right and they
Speaker 4: were wrong. But you know, they had done tests on
Speaker 4: the ground. They had not, it turns out, fully understood
Speaker 4: the issues with these thrusters. So let's talk about these thrusters, right,
Speaker 4: is what they are. They're little rocket engines. They're not
Speaker 4: the big rocket engines that the spaceship is going to
Speaker 4: use to push itself out of orbit and land in
Speaker 4: New Mexico. They're kind of like the steering wheel, right,
Speaker 4: and so they helped turn the spacecraft in a particular direction.
Speaker 4: And that's got to work right when you're coming home
Speaker 4: because you can have the big thrusters. The big rocket
Speaker 4: engines work fine, but if you're not pointed in the
Speaker 4: right direction, that's not going to go well for you.
Speaker 4: And so so these steering thrusters are really important. They're
Speaker 4: also really important when you separate from the space station
Speaker 4: and you're backing away. You don't want to bump in
Speaker 4: to your friend's lab module or something like that. So
Speaker 4: you really want these things to be working right. And
Speaker 4: you know they have some what we call redundancy. They
Speaker 4: have spares, right, and so you know they have I
Speaker 4: don't know what, I can't remember. It's like twenty or
Speaker 4: something frusters, and if you know, three or four of
Speaker 4: them fail, okay, they can use other ones. But they're
Speaker 4: just worried because they don't understand quite why the thrusters
Speaker 4: have been behaving the way they have. So on the
Speaker 4: way up, they were approaching the space station and everything
Speaker 4: was going fine. And then as they started firing the
Speaker 4: thrusts a lot, as they were steering their way in
Speaker 4: to the docking port to the arrival place at the
Speaker 4: space station, a couple of the thrusters stopped working and
Speaker 4: things started going wrong, and so they had to do
Speaker 4: some sort of fancy last minute adjustments to get in safely.
Speaker 4: And and so you know, fine, so you look at
Speaker 4: you do lots of tests, and so they've done tests
Speaker 4: on the ground to fire these thrusters, and they're studying
Speaker 4: a bit more detail what happens when you fire them
Speaker 4: more than usual. It turns out that in the particular
Speaker 4: configuration it's in. Yeah, if you fire them too much
Speaker 4: too often, it overheats and bad things happen. And so
Speaker 4: they got some kind of understanding, but they still don't
Speaker 4: quite understand why it is that they're behaving exactly the
Speaker 4: way they see. They did some more tests on orbit.
Speaker 4: They said, got okay, stay docked to the space station,
Speaker 4: but give a little sprints on the thrusters. Check. Let's
Speaker 4: check how they're behaving. They seem to be behaving just fine. Now,
Speaker 4: even the ones, most of the ones that were broken before,
Speaker 4: seem to be okay. And so the Boeing folks who
Speaker 4: built the spaceship is safety as we think it's fine,
Speaker 4: bring them home. Uh. And then some of the nast
Speaker 4: engineers are going, yeah, but you know, we don't understand
Speaker 4: why these these thrusters are acting up the way they are,
Speaker 4: and so what if when we fire them, they, you know,
Speaker 4: something else happens that that that hasn't happen before, and
Speaker 4: we lose a whole bunch of them. That would be
Speaker 4: really bad. It seems unlikely. But because you don't understand
Speaker 4: what's going wrong. And here's the thing, if they didn't
Speaker 4: have another way to come home, right, they would go like, yeah, fine,
Speaker 4: well we don't quite understand what's going on, but it's
Speaker 4: probably okay, so let's just bring them home. It should
Speaker 4: be fine. But because they have this other.
Speaker 3: Choice, better safe than sorry.
Speaker 4: Basically, that's right, but sometimes it's like worse to have
Speaker 4: a choice, right, because now you go, yeah, all right, well,
Speaker 4: so we could do this other convoluted thing of bringing
Speaker 4: them home on the SpaceX uber and you know call
Speaker 4: an uber. Well, they've already got a SpaceX ship docked there,
Speaker 4: but you know that has a crew who don't want
Speaker 4: to give up their seats. So there's another crew waiting
Speaker 4: to come up in September. And so the idea is, well, okay,
Speaker 4: so bump to people from that crew and have it
Speaker 4: come up and arrive at the space station in September,
Speaker 4: and you could you could then go all right and
Speaker 4: then bring the guys home right away on that. But
Speaker 4: they've said, well, you know, but it's expensive. So let's
Speaker 4: make poor Butcher and Sonny take the places of those
Speaker 4: bumped to crew members and do their jobs for another
Speaker 4: few months and not bring them home until the original
Speaker 4: planned Crew nine landing time of February. And so, congratulations, guys,
Speaker 4: you've just got to pointed to a new crew and
Speaker 4: you've got a few more months on the space.
Speaker 3: A lot more months.
Speaker 2: I'm curious do the astronauts themselves have any say in
Speaker 2: this or is this all Are they at the mercy
Speaker 2: of NASA, Are at the mercy of Boeing? Or do
Speaker 2: they get to say, hey, we'll take our chances and
Speaker 2: try and come home early.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Typically, right, well, it's it's NASA's call. They work
Speaker 4: for NASA. But they, you know, the NASA what they
Speaker 4: call the control board or the decision board, consults with
Speaker 4: the actional Hey what do you think of this? Do
Speaker 4: you have concerns whatever, So they'll take they'll take the astronauts' concerns,
Speaker 4: you know, into hand. But but yeah, you're an astronaut,
Speaker 4: you want another flight, you know, you don't want to
Speaker 4: be labeled as the whip and so it's gonna be
Speaker 4: a high bar before you say no, can you bring
Speaker 4: me home in the safeway place? So now their their
Speaker 4: their their instinctive response is gonna be, oh, well, we're
Speaker 4: ready to you know, to do this. I'm sure you
Speaker 4: guys know what you're doing, So just make the right
Speaker 4: engineering call.
Speaker 1: But Jonathan, how does that work? Can you help us
Speaker 1: with the astronauts. I know they go through all kinds
Speaker 1: of extensive training, but if you're telling me I'm on
Speaker 1: an eight day trip and then I'm up here for
Speaker 1: eight or nine months. I mean, how are they do
Speaker 1: they get prepped mentally psychologically for this type of thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a that's not just a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks delay or days delay. That's that's almost a year
Speaker 1: of your life when you thought you're going to be
Speaker 1: back in a week.
Speaker 3: Miss anniversary, is miss Christmas? All of that.
Speaker 4: That's right, I mean, I I it is hard. They
Speaker 4: have you know, they knew that the contingencies that could
Speaker 4: let them be on the station longer than eight days,
Speaker 4: So I think the idea that they might stay a
Speaker 4: few weeks would have been in their minds. Anyway, I
Speaker 4: don't think they were expecting it to be this long
Speaker 4: and so and so you're right, it is, you know,
Speaker 4: missing missing holidays with your family and so on. It
Speaker 4: is tough. Now, these are experienced astronauts. They have done
Speaker 4: you know, longery Sonny Williams was commander the ISS for
Speaker 4: a while and so on. So so they you know,
Speaker 4: this is not new to them. It's unexpected. But yeah,
Speaker 4: they're they're tough, they're they they can they can handle it.
Speaker 4: So I think, and you know, for National you're getting
Speaker 4: more flight time, breaking certain records. I think it's gonna
Speaker 4: you know, you're like, you know, you get to take
Speaker 4: off a few extra things of like, yeah, I'm the
Speaker 4: American nationronaut who spent you know, longest in this and
Speaker 4: so yeah, they're actually you know, there are pol them
Speaker 4: for this and career wise, and.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious is there anything dangerous about what they're doing?
Speaker 2: I saw somewhere someone saying something about radiation exposure. I mean,
Speaker 2: is there any danger to being in space that long
Speaker 2: or being at the station that long?
Speaker 4: Really not. I mean that there's some accumulated radiation exposure,
Speaker 4: but that's true even if you go on like a
Speaker 4: transatlantic plane flight, right, And so you know, we've had
Speaker 4: astronauts stay up for years at a time, right, Scott
Speaker 4: Kelly did. This is a year and a half mission
Speaker 4: on the Space station. So it's not like they're doing
Speaker 4: anything that other people haven't done before in that respect,
Speaker 4: And so I'm not concerned about that. I mean, having
Speaker 4: said that being in space is not the safest place
Speaker 4: to be in general, right, there's always something that can
Speaker 4: go wrong, But if you're in space, being on the
Speaker 4: Space station with all its resources and all the monitoring
Speaker 4: so on, that that's that's about as safe as you're
Speaker 4: going to be while you're in space. And so it's
Speaker 4: the launch and the landing that are always the scary bits.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the thrusters here, but there is a
Speaker 1: helium link that they were aware of. Is that right
Speaker 1: before they even launch? Can you help us understand how
Speaker 1: important of a matter that is and why if you
Speaker 1: knew about this problem, why you still would go ahead
Speaker 1: and launch?
Speaker 4: Right, I'm not too concerned about it. So the helium
Speaker 4: is used. They have high pressure helium tanks and what
Speaker 4: they do is they use that to push the fuel
Speaker 4: into the rocket engine. Because you know, on Earth, right,
Speaker 4: we use gravity to like, you know, push things into
Speaker 4: where we want to go. But they don't have the gravity,
Speaker 4: so they use another gas and high pressure to push
Speaker 4: the fuel into where it's going to ignite in the
Speaker 4: rocket engine. And the trouble with helium is helium is
Speaker 4: a tiny atom. It loves to leak out of things,
Speaker 4: and so helium leaks are like if you work with heal,
Speaker 4: helium leaks are part of your life. There's always going
Speaker 4: to be helium leak. The question is how big is
Speaker 4: it going to be? And so this was a bit
Speaker 4: bigger leak than they designed for, but it's still pretty small, okay,
Speaker 4: and they still got plenty of helium, and so it
Speaker 4: doesn't you know. The worry is is that leak a
Speaker 4: sign of something that's about to give that then would
Speaker 4: give you a huge helium leak, and the all the
Speaker 4: helium would leak out, you wouldn't be able to use
Speaker 4: the rocket engines. That would be bad.
Speaker 1: But Jonathan, how can they figure this out from the
Speaker 1: like all these problems. I know they have diagnostics and
Speaker 1: things they can run, But can you ever get to
Speaker 1: a point where you're comfortable enough this from on Earth
Speaker 1: saying yeah, go ahead and hop in that thing and
Speaker 1: come on back. It's good to go. I mean, how
Speaker 1: can you ever reach that bar? It seems like a
Speaker 1: high bar.
Speaker 4: It is a high bar. Yeah, but it's doable. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think you know what you do, right, is you
Speaker 4: have all of like you said, have all these diagnostics. Right.
Speaker 4: You know the pressure in the tank, you know how
Speaker 4: it behaves it when you do certain things, and then
Speaker 4: you replicate that on the ground. And if you can
Speaker 4: make a setup on the ground that misbehaves exactly the
Speaker 4: same way that the thing in space is misbehaving, right,
Speaker 4: then you go, ah, right, we understand why this is
Speaker 4: happening now, and then and then you go and then
Speaker 4: you can go once you understand it, then you can go,
Speaker 4: all right, what's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 2: And so right now they don't understand it, and they've
Speaker 2: said in the next week or two they're going to
Speaker 2: make a final call by the end of this month.
Speaker 2: So what are they That's what they're doing right now
Speaker 2: on the ground, they're replicating what the potential problem is
Speaker 2: to try and understand it. And only if they understand
Speaker 2: it then will they send those astronauts back in that
Speaker 2: same craft.
Speaker 4: That's right, Well, I think only if they have enough
Speaker 4: confidence that they understand it well enough to rule out
Speaker 4: some horrible thing happening. And it's a bit it's a
Speaker 4: hard bar, right, because it's it's not like we're not
Speaker 4: in the situation where we go, okay, this part is
Speaker 4: going to do this horrible thing if so, if X happens, right,
Speaker 4: it's like, we don't understand why it's behaving, so we
Speaker 4: can't rule out that there might be some horrible thing
Speaker 4: that would have and that we haven't thought of. And
Speaker 4: that's harder wow, right, and so and probably be fine.
Speaker 4: Let me be very clear. Probably probably if if they
Speaker 4: undocked and came home in the star Liner, it's probably
Speaker 4: just fine. And everyone and all the media will go,
Speaker 4: what are they worrying about? You know, so and and
Speaker 4: and But there's that leggling little worry. And what's really great, right,
Speaker 4: is that that's the thing open about the fact that
Speaker 4: you know, Okay, we have disagreement on the team. Some
Speaker 4: of us think it's fine, some of us don't think
Speaker 4: it's fine. And that's a big change from the days
Speaker 4: of the Challenger explosion and the Columbia explosion, where there
Speaker 4: it's a big management we need this to look good.
Speaker 4: Shut up, don't don't, don't raise this horrible possibility, right,
Speaker 4: and then we lost astronauts. So they're doing the prudent thing.
Speaker 4: They're doing it appropriately. They're having open discussion and argument,
Speaker 4: and I love to see that. And and my guess
Speaker 4: at this point is that the odds are in favor
Speaker 4: of them going it probably fine, but let's just be careful.
Speaker 4: Let's keep them up and bring him home on the Dragon.
Speaker 1: Okay, but Javan, nobody in that room that's making a
Speaker 1: decision is using the word they probably will be fine,
Speaker 1: probably can't be good enough in this scenario, I'll.
Speaker 4: Get it, right, they got there, they're gonna use They're
Speaker 4: gonna use words that are that that that hide that.
Speaker 4: But that's why. And so yeah, well no, it's always probabilities, right,
Speaker 4: there's always a risk, right, there's a risk to bring
Speaker 4: them home on the dragon, right with with you know,
Speaker 4: maybe the new sort of seats that they added for
Speaker 4: them are gonna be you know, not quite right, or
Speaker 4: maybe maybe there's something that is very unlike I think
Speaker 4: it's pretty safe to bring home the dragon, but the
Speaker 4: Dragon is not entirely risk free. And so it's you're
Speaker 4: always balancing risks, right, You're if you wait until you
Speaker 4: can say we're not going to launch this rocket until
Speaker 4: it's safe, well I got use for you. You're on like,
Speaker 4: you know, thousands of tons of highly explosive propellant, it's
Speaker 4: never going to be safe. And so so it's always
Speaker 4: which is the less risky? Which is what is the
Speaker 4: acceptable level of risk? And that's what these guys are
Speaker 4: paid to take, right, the acceptable level of risk? And
Speaker 4: so you do your best, you get it to be
Speaker 4: as safe as you can. But no, safer. It's you're
Speaker 4: always taking a risk and so so so I think
Speaker 4: that's that's that's the reality of space fight. Actually, it's
Speaker 4: the reality of life, right though, if you want to
Speaker 4: be safe, you know, don't go stay on your couch
Speaker 4: even then, right, you're gonna have medical problems.
Speaker 2: You make very excellent points, Jonathan. I'm curious with the
Speaker 2: world watching now and so much scrutiny on whether or
Speaker 2: not these two astronauts come home now or in a
Speaker 2: few months, and with the possible risk involved, wouldn't you,
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounded like you believed that probably what
Speaker 2: we're going to hear in two weeks is that they're
Speaker 2: staying up until February.
Speaker 4: That's my guess. But I would let's put it this way,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't be astonished if they make the other call
Speaker 4: and they go, you know, we've done our due diligence. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's some issues, but we think that the risk of
Speaker 4: something bad is pretty small. So let's bring them home
Speaker 4: and and and and not mess up our schedule so
Speaker 4: that that that's still very much on the table. Uh
Speaker 4: and and so yeah, I'm I'm on tender hooks waiting
Speaker 4: to see what they picked I would if I had
Speaker 4: to bet, I think, you know, uh, three weeks ago,
Speaker 4: I would have bet they'd bring them home on Starliner.
Speaker 4: Now I'm starting to lean towards Yeah, they're probably going
Speaker 4: to pick the Dragon route. But but it it it,
Speaker 4: you know, it could go either way. Either way would
Speaker 4: be a valid engineering decision. And it's really it's really
Speaker 4: on a knife edge, I think, And that's why they're
Speaker 4: taking so long over it.
Speaker 1: Okay, and you keep talking about the Dragon here, we're
Speaker 1: talking about SpaceX, SpaceX and and Boeing are have been
Speaker 1: competitors in the space race, if you will, does it,
Speaker 1: in your opinion factor into or Look, we're human beings.
Speaker 1: But the idea that your competitor sent the astronauts up
Speaker 1: and the competitors vehicle can't bring them back. Haha, SpaceX,
Speaker 1: we got to give your people a ride back because
Speaker 1: your vehicle broke down. Does that factor into Boeing's head
Speaker 1: or anybody else's here. That's a bad look.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really is a bad look for moving you know,
Speaker 4: it's not let me say this, They've got to try
Speaker 4: and certify the star Liner for for operational flights. They
Speaker 4: can still do that even if they bring it home empty,
Speaker 4: as long as they get the thrusters back and can
Speaker 4: disassemble them in the lab and finally figure out what's
Speaker 4: going wrong. I could see a scenario where the astronauts
Speaker 4: come home and the Dragon that they bring the star
Speaker 4: Liner home without a crew. They analyze it, and they go, Okay,
Speaker 4: now we understand what's going on. We have complete confidence
Speaker 4: that the next flight will be flawless. Right, And so
Speaker 4: it's not necessarily the end of the line for Starliner
Speaker 4: if they do this, but it's a really bad look
Speaker 4: and so yeah, and that's why it's not Boeing's call, right,
Speaker 4: It's it's it's NASA's call. And I think also within NASA, right,
Speaker 4: there's a real interesting going. You know, this whole fiasco
Speaker 4: shows why we want two ships, right, because next time
Speaker 4: it could be the Dragon that has a problem, right,
Speaker 4: And so you don't want to be dependent on just
Speaker 4: one type of ship. And they're not because there's always
Speaker 4: the Russian Sawyers. But you know, politically that's technique.
Speaker 3: Not a good time. It's really never been a good time,
Speaker 3: but it is an especially bad time right now, right exactly.
Speaker 4: And so you would like to have two American ships
Speaker 4: that to choose from in case one goes down right.
Speaker 4: And and you know, we saw, for example, a couple
Speaker 4: a month or so GOO, the FULC and nine that
Speaker 4: launches Dragon had a little upsey and I had an
Speaker 4: engine explosion that to strengthen some satellites in orbit. It's
Speaker 4: the same kind of rocket that launches the Dragon. Now
Speaker 4: they fix that quickly and they're backflying. But you can
Speaker 4: imagine a worse accident that would keep dragging out of
Speaker 4: action for four months or longer. And so then you'd
Speaker 4: be really happy if you had the star Liner as
Speaker 4: an alternate way to bring to get people to the
Speaker 4: space station. And so NASA really wants Starliner to succeed
Speaker 4: for that reason. And so I think the upper management
Speaker 4: are going to be really hoping that they can paper
Speaker 4: this over and make Starliner look good and may them
Speaker 4: come down the engineering level management that's actually I hope
Speaker 4: mostly making this call are going to be not influenced
Speaker 4: by that nearly as much and are going to be
Speaker 4: going what's the safest thing, what's the right engineering call,
Speaker 4: and that's where the decision should be made. My only
Speaker 4: slight concern is that Bill Nelson, the top administrator of
Speaker 4: NASA has said the final call is going to be
Speaker 4: his for this particular flad, and that's probably okay. I mean,
Speaker 4: he is a guy who when he was a congressman
Speaker 4: did fly on the Shuttle as a congressional junket, and
Speaker 4: so he knows what being scrapped to a rocket is like,
Speaker 4: and so you know, hopefully he'll be conservative too. But
Speaker 4: I would rather it just be made at the engineering
Speaker 4: level than not at the management level, because the management
Speaker 4: level is where the politics starts to come.
Speaker 2: And I was going to ask about all of that,
Speaker 2: because obviously this is a race to commercial access to
Speaker 2: flying into space, to dock at the International Space Station.
Speaker 3: Does this do anything to.
Speaker 2: Delay where we were as a country in terms of
Speaker 2: making that happen, privatizing in a way or at least
Speaker 2: commercializing space.
Speaker 4: Travel at the moment, I don't think so.
Speaker 5: I think this is part of the process of learning
Speaker 5: how to deal with the balance between NASA and the
Speaker 5: commercial providers, right, and so it'll actually be a test
Speaker 5: case for how you make these decisions, how you balance
Speaker 5: the interests of the commercial company with the interests of
Speaker 5: the of the national Space program.
Speaker 4: I think that if they were to lose the star
Speaker 4: Liner on descent, even even if without a cro on board, right,
Speaker 4: if there were, and I don't think that's likely, but
Speaker 4: it's it's not impossible. So if they were to lose
Speaker 4: the star Line, that would raise some issues. And it's weird.
Speaker 4: I mean, one empisodes, right, is that Boeing in its
Speaker 4: head right, is still the natural spaceship builder for the
Speaker 4: US government. They when they were North America, they built
Speaker 4: the Apollo spaceship. Right, when they were Rockwell, they built
Speaker 4: the Space Shuttle, and so they feel like they always
Speaker 4: have an entitlement of being the spaceship builders. And it's
Speaker 4: amazing how quickly that has flipped around to SpaceX being
Speaker 4: the default, these new upstarts in Going's eyes, and Boeing
Speaker 4: now being portrayed as the upstart competitor when really they
Speaker 4: were the incumbent for so many decades.
Speaker 1: And do have right that there's an issue. They the
Speaker 1: astronauts that go up on the star Liner Boweling star
Speaker 1: Liner don't have the right suits that allow them to
Speaker 1: fly in the SpaceX capsules. They had to have a
Speaker 1: different spacesuit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a different pressure suit and it's not like
Speaker 4: a space that you go out and do spacewalks. It's
Speaker 4: just a key, it's just a hedge against if the
Speaker 4: air leaks out during the way down. But but it
Speaker 4: has to connect in to the to the right spaceships
Speaker 4: plug right, and and they, yeah, for whatever reason, they
Speaker 4: didn't mandate that there'd be a separate like spaceh design
Speaker 4: that would be common for all the you know, so, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's lack of interoperability. Is I think a lesson to
Speaker 4: learn for the next generation of spaceships that it's great
Speaker 4: to have the different designs, but they should be interoperable.
Speaker 4: You should be able to mix and match. And that's
Speaker 4: not the case right now. And that's a bit embarrassing.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's that's like fascinating.
Speaker 2: It's like Apple chargers, right, you know, you keep getting
Speaker 2: a new do you can't need to get a new charger.
Speaker 3: It's very similar.
Speaker 4: Exactly, yeah, exactly, even two Apple things can't work with
Speaker 4: each other. And so yeah, no, it's exactly that problem.
Speaker 4: And so we all have had it, right and so
Speaker 4: they but you know, the sickness cargo ship came up.
Speaker 4: It delivered both fresh clothes and also I believe they
Speaker 4: have the right suits or that they'll figure that out.
Speaker 4: That's not a problem. And actually just this morning the
Speaker 4: Russians launched another cargo ship that's going to arrive over
Speaker 4: the weekend and have extra supplies. So the good news
Speaker 4: is that they have scads of supplies to last all
Speaker 4: this extra, these extra people for months more. So I'm
Speaker 4: not worried about them running out of sandwiches or or
Speaker 4: you know, or air or water. Right, you have to
Speaker 4: actually deliver the air and the water on the cargo trucks.
Speaker 4: It's not just the food.
Speaker 3: Wow, you deliver air on the car.
Speaker 4: Deliver I did not know that. Yeah, yeah, they do
Speaker 4: recycle the air, but you know that you need to
Speaker 4: tap it at top it up and and so the
Speaker 4: and then they deliver fuel to kind of boost you
Speaker 4: over with the space station so on. So there's all
Speaker 4: kinds of stuff just arrived and on their way and
Speaker 4: so so they can they can take their time. But yeah,
Speaker 4: these these little it's actually really interesting that that this
Speaker 4: surfaces these issues of incompatibility and of how do you
Speaker 4: swat from one to the other. Even for the Russian ships,
Speaker 4: they have an even more weird thing, which is that
Speaker 4: they have special contoured couches for the astronauts to lie
Speaker 4: in because the scent is so you know, so many gs,
Speaker 4: so much acceleration, and so each each couch is shaped
Speaker 4: for particular astronauts rear end uh, and so they actually
Speaker 4: have when they swap sawyers as they actually carry the
Speaker 4: couches from one sawyers to the other and things like that.
Speaker 4: So it's not just it's not quite as simple as, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I got rebooked on US Air. I'm gonna, you know,
Speaker 4: carry my carry on and go to the new gate.
Speaker 4: It's it's a little more involved than that.
Speaker 1: Can I ask We talked about the thrusters if the
Speaker 1: star Liner comes back. They think the thrusters are working
Speaker 1: in the operable. Now, if you start that flight back
Speaker 1: and the thrusters start acting up after you're already on
Speaker 1: your way back to Earth, is it possible to land
Speaker 1: that thing? Is it? What would happen if those things
Speaker 1: go out on the way back.
Speaker 4: It depends when they start going wrong. Okay, so if
Speaker 4: you start to have issues, the most likely thing is
Speaker 4: that you start to have issues immediately you start backing
Speaker 4: away from the space station, because that's where you can
Speaker 4: be firing a lot to kind of steer yourself, and
Speaker 4: at that point I would guess as soon as they
Speaker 4: have even a few problems, they go, whoop, snow, let's
Speaker 4: go back and readopt with the space station right. So
Speaker 4: the trick is, can you redock before you lose too
Speaker 4: many thrusters to be able to steer, And so as
Speaker 4: long as they don't all go out at once. If
Speaker 4: you lose one or two and you go, that's not good,
Speaker 4: let's let's change our minds and say you know that.
Speaker 4: But once they've backed away a long way from the station,
Speaker 4: so they can still you know, if they have if
Speaker 4: they can keep enough thrusters working to come back. That's
Speaker 4: one thing. Once they make the deorbit burn the big
Speaker 4: rockets to slow the spaceship the starliner down and make
Speaker 4: it start to fall out of orbit. Now they've got
Speaker 4: to be steering right. They can't afford to screw up
Speaker 4: because if you enter the atmosphere at seventeen thousand miles
Speaker 4: an hour at the wrong angle with your heat shield
Speaker 4: not pointing the right way, you know, then then you're
Speaker 4: going to be crispy. So so that's you better have
Speaker 4: good confidence in the thrusters at that point.
Speaker 2: How long is the trip like if you were backing
Speaker 2: away from the International Space Station to head back home.
Speaker 3: How long is that trip?
Speaker 4: You know, it depends because it's like there's two things.
Speaker 4: There's like a twenty minute period where you're getting out
Speaker 4: of the immediate vicinity of the space station, and then
Speaker 4: you float around for a while and you wait until
Speaker 4: you're at the right point in your orbit where fire
Speaker 4: and the engines will bring you down in New Mexico.
Speaker 4: And so that depending on exactly when you do, it
Speaker 4: can be a few hours, it can be a day, right.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they undark and they I think the original time
Speaker 4: might have been to spend a day just you know,
Speaker 4: flying with the Starliner and checking it out somewhere before
Speaker 4: bringing it back. They're not going to do that now,
Speaker 4: and so probably a few hours, a couple orbits of
Speaker 4: the Earth. So you go round the Earth every hour
Speaker 4: and a half. Wow, and you're going at seventeen thousand
Speaker 4: miles an how right, And so then a certain point
Speaker 4: you're coming over the Pacific, you farre the engines, you
Speaker 4: lower your orbit so that it intersects the surface of
Speaker 4: the Earth, and then you strap in and hope the
Speaker 4: heat shield doesn't melt and come down on parachutes and
Speaker 4: then you've got airbags that inflate just before you hit
Speaker 4: the New Mexico.
Speaker 1: Desert, right, and to be I want to make sure
Speaker 1: Clube very clear on this scenarios. One option is to
Speaker 1: take the Starliner if they if they say that vehicle
Speaker 1: is okay, they could be ready to bring them back
Speaker 1: in what a matter of days?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would. I would guess they'll plan, they'll wander
Speaker 4: a little more planning, so probably early September something like that.
Speaker 1: So if they use the SpaceX vehicles, what are the
Speaker 1: options when would they possibly be back?
Speaker 4: Right and there it's just a question of well, they
Speaker 4: could bring them back in October, but they're not gonna
Speaker 4: They're gonna use the advantage of having you know, these
Speaker 4: guys on board to carry out the Crew nine mission
Speaker 4: and keep them up there till February. And then the
Speaker 4: SpaceX comes back down in a somewhat different way, and
Speaker 4: actually they've changed the way they're bringing that This would
Speaker 4: be the first time that they would be coming back
Speaker 4: down on the West coast. They they would land in
Speaker 4: the Pacific, just off the coast of California, and then
Speaker 4: they you know, Chip comes up and hauls them on board.
Speaker 4: So so that would be in February. Uh, and so
Speaker 4: the yeah, and that's you know, that's in general a
Speaker 4: well trodden pawerful. There is a wrinkle. So so the
Speaker 4: dragon has two sections. It has the bit the astronauts
Speaker 4: sit in, and it has what they call the trunk
Speaker 4: where they keep the cargo. And the trunk gets jettisoned.
Speaker 4: And they used to just jettison it into orbit and
Speaker 4: they said, oh, it'll burn up when it re enters,
Speaker 4: no worries. And then some poor farmer in Australia found
Speaker 4: a huge shard of this thing stick out of is field,
Speaker 4: like as big as a person. And then someone in
Speaker 4: Saskatchewan found a similar large lump on their farm. And
Speaker 4: the last like three or four Dragon missions have had
Speaker 4: pieces of this trunk end up crashing near people and
Speaker 4: that's not good. And so they they're now going to
Speaker 4: keep the trunk attached until re entry, drop it off
Speaker 4: during re entry. And that means they can't if they
Speaker 4: did that for a Florida Ocean landing that they have
Speaker 4: been doing, the trunk would fall in the Midwest or something,
Speaker 4: so that would be good. So instead they're going to
Speaker 4: land land over California and have the trunk re enter
Speaker 4: over the Pacific. So I mentioned that just because it's like,
Speaker 4: it's not like the Dragon hasn't had its issues, right,
Speaker 4: they haven't been life threatening to the astionnauts, but they're
Speaker 4: they're keep having to adjust for various safety reasons the
Speaker 4: way that they do these things, and so the program
Speaker 4: right now is actually really flexible, and they have all
Speaker 4: of the years of experience on the Space Station, on
Speaker 4: the Shuttle, and now in these new vehicles are giving
Speaker 4: nas of the confidence to kind of change their plans
Speaker 4: relatively last minute and try different things.
Speaker 2: I have one last question for you, Jonathan. So you're
Speaker 2: obviously a you're an astrophysicist. It doesn't really require any
Speaker 2: other explanation. You know, more than the majority of anyone
Speaker 2: that said and given everything we've seen, when commercial space
Speaker 2: travel becomes available, would you be happy and willing to
Speaker 2: jump on board to go up into space, into orbit
Speaker 2: and come back down?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, I mean, well, you know, I'm old, I'm
Speaker 4: getting some health issues. I'm not sure if I would
Speaker 4: be you know, that would be good for me. But
Speaker 4: I always I applied to be an astronaut back in
Speaker 4: the day. I didn't get anywhere because I'm not enough
Speaker 4: of a jock, but yeah, no, I'd love to fly,
Speaker 4: and I would feel you know, from a safety point
Speaker 4: of view. I think these missions, like for example, Axiom Space,
Speaker 4: which is flying tourists on the Dragon, the new one
Speaker 4: that was just announced with this Chinese bitcoin billionaire has
Speaker 4: bort a flight. You know, Yeah, you want to take
Speaker 4: me along, I'm in.
Speaker 1: Last thing for me and explain to the lay folks
Speaker 1: when there's an emergence, what's our capability? I know they
Speaker 1: make plans and continues to sow use this going up
Speaker 1: in a couple of months, we have an emergency, maybe
Speaker 1: somebody can jump on there. We got to, right, we
Speaker 1: know that, But just our capacity if there's an emergency
Speaker 1: in space and we need to immediately get up there
Speaker 1: and get somebody back, do we have the capability to
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 4: And how quickly we don't need to get up there
Speaker 4: because we already have the emergency escape vehicles there. Right,
Speaker 4: They are not so worried about Starliner that they wouldn't
Speaker 4: quite happily put Bush and Sunny in Starliner to come
Speaker 4: home in an emergency, right, And the Dragon crew have
Speaker 4: a Dragon dock there to come home in. And the
Speaker 4: Russians have asyers docked there, so you are. The rule
Speaker 4: is you always have your emergency escape vehicles still parked
Speaker 4: at the station. You never you're never there without a
Speaker 4: seat home and so that and that's just prudent. And
Speaker 4: so now what they had did have a while back,
Speaker 4: they had a problem with the Sawyers and they didn't
Speaker 4: trust it anymore. And so what they did was they
Speaker 4: launched the Sawyers without a crew, had it robotically docked
Speaker 4: with the station, and then returned the suspect one without
Speaker 4: without anybody aboard. And so that's that's the sort of
Speaker 4: thing that they've done in the past. But yeah, no,
Speaker 4: you you never if anyone offers you a rite to
Speaker 4: space and tells you, yeah, and we're going to take
Speaker 4: the taxi and we're gonna like it's going to go
Speaker 4: somewhere else. It's just going to drop you off the
Speaker 4: Space station. So don't worry, we'll come and pick you
Speaker 4: up some later time. That's the point of which I go, yeah, thanks,
Speaker 4: but no thanks.
Speaker 3: You need a seat a guaranteed seed back home.
Speaker 4: Yes, please.
Speaker 6: Jonathan McDowell, thank you so much, so much for explaining
Speaker 6: something that was quite inexplicable to most of us so,
Speaker 6: and we just appreciate your time and your expertise and
Speaker 6: thank you for being on the podcast.
Speaker 4: It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me and folks, you know where
Speaker 1: to find us always. You can check us out our
Speaker 1: official show page at Amy and TJ Podcast. We'll see
Speaker 1: sy