August 19, 2024 • 36 mins
Imagine taking a once in a lifetime trip to outer space only to find out you have no idea when you'll be heading home. Sounds pretty crazy, but it's happening right now.
Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell joins Amy & T.J. to break down what's going on with the group of astronauts who left planet Earth in June and provides insight as to why NASA hasn't brought them home yet.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, they're folks, say, real life Gilligan's Island is playing
out in space right now. Two astronauts were supposed to
be in orbit eight days. As we speak, it's been
two months and still unclear on when they might come home. Folks,
welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Rhodes. I'm
always and we're always fascinated by space stuff. We're always
(00:25):
in awe of it. But this time we were kind
of all scratching our heads and trying to figure out
what went wrong and when can they come home.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I'm still laughing at your Gilligan's Island reference three hour tour.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
There's supposed to be an eight day tour.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
But it turns possibly into an eight month too.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yeah, whoa, it seems indefinite and a lot of people
familiar with this story. But two astronauts went up in June,
supposed to be eight days orbiting. Something's wrong with the
orbiter that they're in, the craft they're in, so they're
kind of stranded.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, what I got was some thrusters weren't working, some
helium was leaking. I don't know what any of that means,
but none of it sounds good. And there's a question
as to whether or not that vehicle that they arrived
at the International Space Station in can actually take them
back to Earth safely. And so because there is a
question mark, and I'm sure the astronauts appreciate that scientists, astrophysicists,
(01:19):
folks at NASA, folks at Boeing are all making sure
that their safety is at the top of the list.
So how do they get back home in one piece? No,
you can't, there's not yet, and.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
There's a long wait.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
There is right now.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
And it's cramped quarters, we should point out.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
So the International Space Station, upon my big research that
I've done this morning, is usually there to accommodate about
six people, six to seven at the most. Now there
are I believe nine people there. Wow, so there's some
sleeping quarter issues. They just got a supply truck, which
made me laugh.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
It's not a truck, but they actually I was amazed.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
They actually sense apply missions up to them. So they
needed some new clothes. I mean, this is all new
to me, but it's it sounds like a movie, but
it's happening in real time, in real life.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I didn't see that part about it. We've all been
there before on vacation or somebody's house. It's it's sleep
it's a four bedroom house. But seven people are we
going to figure this out?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Or how many times have you been on vacation and
you get called to go to work to like a
work event, and you don't have enough clothes, you.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Don't have enough underwear, you don't have enough socks.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
That's happened. We're talking like a few days. This is
like months and months.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
They have a couch, there's so many crash on the
no and they.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Don't have a washer or a dryer, so there's no laundry.
There's a lot of things going on.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I'm thinking a damn about their laundry right now.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
They might care more than you think. I mean, it's
an issue.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well, that's bringing into somebody. Clearly we need help understanding
what the hell is going on. So let's bring in
somebody who knows it. He's actually an astrophysicist. He's an astronomer,
a Smithsonian astronomer, Johnathan McDowell is with us now. So
we appreciate you helping us out with what's We tried
to go through the story a little bit, and a
lot of people are familiar with it, but can you
tell us, first of all, they plan for contingencies like
(03:12):
this or is this something that nobody necessarily had a
plan for in a scenario for well, I.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Think it's a bit of a surprise, but it's within
the scope of what you know. That's that's it is
all about what happens if this failure, what happens if
the next failure? And so so they're they're they're pretty
they go pretty deep into what do we do if
By the way, I just say, I I do love
the Gilligans Island comparison. I had not thought of that.
And it's perfect.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
You can have it, you can use it.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Yea, yeah, so so uh so yeah, so so they
have this space ship, the Starliner, and you know, it's
had a bit of a rocky history. The the test
flights without a crew didn't go that brilliantly, and so
they were really hoping that this one would just be flawless.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
But no, well, Jonathan, wait a second, you can't just
hope when we're talking talk about sending people up. You're
telling me this thing had enough issues, then maybe we
shouldn't have sent them up in that thing in the
first place.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
No, No, I don't think so, I mean, I think
they thought they had solved the issues right and they
were wrong. But you know, they had done tests on
the ground. They had not, it turns out, fully understood
the issues with these thrusters. So let's talk about these thrusters, right,
is what they are. They're little rocket engines. They're not
the big rocket engines that the spaceship is going to
(04:29):
use to push itself out of orbit and land in
New Mexico. They're kind of like the steering wheel, right,
and so they helped turn the spacecraft in a particular direction.
And that's got to work right when you're coming home
because you can have the big thrusters. The big rocket
engines work fine, but if you're not pointed in the
right direction, that's not going to go well for you.
(04:50):
And so so these steering thrusters are really important. They're
also really important when you separate from the space station
and you're backing away. You don't want to bump in
to your friend's lab module or something like that. So
you really want these things to be working right. And
you know they have some what we call redundancy. They
(05:10):
have spares, right, and so you know they have I
don't know what, I can't remember. It's like twenty or
something frusters, and if you know, three or four of
them fail, okay, they can use other ones. But they're
just worried because they don't understand quite why the thrusters
have been behaving the way they have. So on the
way up, they were approaching the space station and everything
(05:30):
was going fine. And then as they started firing the
thrusts a lot, as they were steering their way in
to the docking port to the arrival place at the
space station, a couple of the thrusters stopped working and
things started going wrong, and so they had to do
some sort of fancy last minute adjustments to get in safely.
And and so you know, fine, so you look at
(05:54):
you do lots of tests, and so they've done tests
on the ground to fire these thrusters, and they're studying
a bit more detail what happens when you fire them
more than usual. It turns out that in the particular
configuration it's in. Yeah, if you fire them too much
too often, it overheats and bad things happen. And so
they got some kind of understanding, but they still don't
(06:15):
quite understand why it is that they're behaving exactly the
way they see. They did some more tests on orbit.
They said, got okay, stay docked to the space station,
but give a little sprints on the thrusters. Check. Let's
check how they're behaving. They seem to be behaving just fine. Now,
even the ones, most of the ones that were broken before,
seem to be okay. And so the Boeing folks who
(06:38):
built the spaceship is safety as we think it's fine,
bring them home. Uh. And then some of the nast
engineers are going, yeah, but you know, we don't understand
why these these thrusters are acting up the way they are,
and so what if when we fire them, they, you know,
something else happens that that that hasn't happen before, and
(07:00):
we lose a whole bunch of them. That would be
really bad. It seems unlikely. But because you don't understand
what's going wrong. And here's the thing, if they didn't
have another way to come home, right, they would go like, yeah, fine,
well we don't quite understand what's going on, but it's
probably okay, so let's just bring them home. It should
be fine. But because they have this other.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Choice, better safe than sorry.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Basically, that's right, but sometimes it's like worse to have
a choice, right, because now you go, yeah, all right, well,
so we could do this other convoluted thing of bringing
them home on the SpaceX uber and you know call
an uber. Well, they've already got a SpaceX ship docked there,
but you know that has a crew who don't want
(07:46):
to give up their seats. So there's another crew waiting
to come up in September. And so the idea is, well, okay,
so bump to people from that crew and have it
come up and arrive at the space station in September,
and you could you could then go all right and
then bring the guys home right away on that. But
(08:08):
they've said, well, you know, but it's expensive. So let's
make poor Butcher and Sonny take the places of those
bumped to crew members and do their jobs for another
few months and not bring them home until the original
planned Crew nine landing time of February. And so, congratulations, guys,
you've just got to pointed to a new crew and
(08:30):
you've got a few more months on the space.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
A lot more months.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
I'm curious do the astronauts themselves have any say in
this or is this all Are they at the mercy
of NASA, Are at the mercy of Boeing? Or do
they get to say, hey, we'll take our chances and
try and come home early.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Yeah. Typically, right, well, it's it's NASA's call. They work
for NASA. But they, you know, the NASA what they
call the control board or the decision board, consults with
the actional Hey what do you think of this? Do
you have concerns whatever, So they'll take they'll take the astronauts' concerns,
(09:07):
you know, into hand. But but yeah, you're an astronaut,
you want another flight, you know, you don't want to
be labeled as the whip and so it's gonna be
a high bar before you say no, can you bring
me home in the safeway place? So now their their
their their instinctive response is gonna be, oh, well, we're
(09:28):
ready to you know, to do this. I'm sure you
guys know what you're doing, So just make the right
engineering call.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
But Jonathan, how does that work? Can you help us
with the astronauts. I know they go through all kinds
of extensive training, but if you're telling me I'm on
an eight day trip and then I'm up here for
eight or nine months. I mean, how are they do
they get prepped mentally psychologically for this type of thing.
I mean, that's a that's not just a couple of
weeks delay or days delay. That's that's almost a year
of your life when you thought you're going to be
(09:54):
back in a week.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Miss anniversary, is miss Christmas? All of that.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
That's right, I mean, I I it is hard. They
have you know, they knew that the contingencies that could
let them be on the station longer than eight days,
So I think the idea that they might stay a
few weeks would have been in their minds. Anyway, I
don't think they were expecting it to be this long
and so and so you're right, it is, you know,
(10:20):
missing missing holidays with your family and so on. It
is tough. Now, these are experienced astronauts. They have done
you know, longery Sonny Williams was commander the ISS for
a while and so on. So so they you know,
this is not new to them. It's unexpected. But yeah,
they're they're tough, they're they they can they can handle it.
(10:40):
So I think, and you know, for National you're getting
more flight time, breaking certain records. I think it's gonna
you know, you're like, you know, you get to take
off a few extra things of like, yeah, I'm the
American nationronaut who spent you know, longest in this and
so yeah, they're actually you know, there are pol them
(11:01):
for this and career wise, and.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So I'm curious is there anything dangerous about what they're doing?
I saw somewhere someone saying something about radiation exposure. I mean,
is there any danger to being in space that long
or being at the station that long?
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Really not. I mean that there's some accumulated radiation exposure,
but that's true even if you go on like a
transatlantic plane flight, right, And so you know, we've had
astronauts stay up for years at a time, right, Scott
Kelly did. This is a year and a half mission
on the Space station. So it's not like they're doing
anything that other people haven't done before in that respect,
(11:38):
And so I'm not concerned about that. I mean, having
said that being in space is not the safest place
to be in general, right, there's always something that can
go wrong, But if you're in space, being on the
Space station with all its resources and all the monitoring
so on, that that's that's about as safe as you're
going to be while you're in space. And so it's
the launch and the landing that are always the scary bits.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
We're talking about the thrusters here, but there is a
helium link that they were aware of. Is that right
before they even launch? Can you help us understand how
important of a matter that is and why if you
knew about this problem, why you still would go ahead
and launch?
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Right, I'm not too concerned about it. So the helium
is used. They have high pressure helium tanks and what
they do is they use that to push the fuel
into the rocket engine. Because you know, on Earth, right,
we use gravity to like, you know, push things into
where we want to go. But they don't have the gravity,
so they use another gas and high pressure to push
(12:45):
the fuel into where it's going to ignite in the
rocket engine. And the trouble with helium is helium is
a tiny atom. It loves to leak out of things,
and so helium leaks are like if you work with heal,
helium leaks are part of your life. There's always going
to be helium leak. The question is how big is
it going to be? And so this was a bit
(13:07):
bigger leak than they designed for, but it's still pretty small, okay,
and they still got plenty of helium, and so it
doesn't you know. The worry is is that leak a
sign of something that's about to give that then would
give you a huge helium leak, and the all the
helium would leak out, you wouldn't be able to use
the rocket engines. That would be bad.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
But Jonathan, how can they figure this out from the
like all these problems. I know they have diagnostics and
things they can run, But can you ever get to
a point where you're comfortable enough this from on Earth
saying yeah, go ahead and hop in that thing and
come on back. It's good to go. I mean, how
can you ever reach that bar? It seems like a
high bar.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
It is a high bar. Yeah, but it's doable. I mean,
I think you know what you do, right, is you
have all of like you said, have all these diagnostics. Right.
You know the pressure in the tank, you know how
it behaves it when you do certain things, and then
you replicate that on the ground. And if you can
make a setup on the ground that misbehaves exactly the
same way that the thing in space is misbehaving, right,
(14:06):
then you go, ah, right, we understand why this is
happening now, and then and then you go and then
you can go once you understand it, then you can go,
all right, what's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
And so right now they don't understand it, and they've
said in the next week or two they're going to
make a final call by the end of this month.
So what are they That's what they're doing right now
on the ground, they're replicating what the potential problem is
to try and understand it. And only if they understand
it then will they send those astronauts back in that
same craft.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
That's right, Well, I think only if they have enough
confidence that they understand it well enough to rule out
some horrible thing happening. And it's a bit it's a
hard bar, right, because it's it's not like we're not
in the situation where we go, okay, this part is
going to do this horrible thing if so, if X happens, right,
it's like, we don't understand why it's behaving, so we
(14:57):
can't rule out that there might be some horrible thing
that would have and that we haven't thought of. And
that's harder wow, right, and so and probably be fine.
Let me be very clear. Probably probably if if they
undocked and came home in the star Liner, it's probably
just fine. And everyone and all the media will go,
what are they worrying about? You know, so and and
(15:20):
and But there's that leggling little worry. And what's really great, right,
is that that's the thing open about the fact that
you know, Okay, we have disagreement on the team. Some
of us think it's fine, some of us don't think
it's fine. And that's a big change from the days
of the Challenger explosion and the Columbia explosion, where there
it's a big management we need this to look good.
(15:41):
Shut up, don't don't, don't raise this horrible possibility, right,
and then we lost astronauts. So they're doing the prudent thing.
They're doing it appropriately. They're having open discussion and argument,
and I love to see that. And and my guess
at this point is that the odds are in favor
of them going it probably fine, but let's just be careful.
(16:04):
Let's keep them up and bring him home on the Dragon.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Okay, but Javan, nobody in that room that's making a
decision is using the word they probably will be fine,
probably can't be good enough in this scenario, I'll.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Get it, right, they got there, they're gonna use They're
gonna use words that are that that that hide that.
But that's why. And so yeah, well no, it's always probabilities, right,
there's always a risk, right, there's a risk to bring
them home on the dragon, right with with you know,
maybe the new sort of seats that they added for
(16:37):
them are gonna be you know, not quite right, or
maybe maybe there's something that is very unlike I think
it's pretty safe to bring home the dragon, but the
Dragon is not entirely risk free. And so it's you're
always balancing risks, right, You're if you wait until you
can say we're not going to launch this rocket until
it's safe, well I got use for you. You're on like,
(17:00):
you know, thousands of tons of highly explosive propellant, it's
never going to be safe. And so so it's always
which is the less risky? Which is what is the
acceptable level of risk? And that's what these guys are
paid to take, right, the acceptable level of risk? And
so you do your best, you get it to be
(17:20):
as safe as you can. But no, safer. It's you're
always taking a risk and so so so I think
that's that's that's the reality of space fight. Actually, it's
the reality of life, right though, if you want to
be safe, you know, don't go stay on your couch
even then, right, you're gonna have medical problems.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
You make very excellent points, Jonathan. I'm curious with the
world watching now and so much scrutiny on whether or
not these two astronauts come home now or in a
few months, and with the possible risk involved, wouldn't you,
I mean, it sounded like you believed that probably what
we're going to hear in two weeks is that they're
staying up until February.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
That's my guess. But I would let's put it this way,
I wouldn't be astonished if they make the other call
and they go, you know, we've done our due diligence. Yeah,
there's some issues, but we think that the risk of
something bad is pretty small. So let's bring them home
and and and and not mess up our schedule so
that that that's still very much on the table. Uh
(18:23):
and and so yeah, I'm I'm on tender hooks waiting
to see what they picked I would if I had
to bet, I think, you know, uh, three weeks ago,
I would have bet they'd bring them home on Starliner.
Now I'm starting to lean towards Yeah, they're probably going
to pick the Dragon route. But but it it it,
you know, it could go either way. Either way would
be a valid engineering decision. And it's really it's really
(18:45):
on a knife edge, I think, And that's why they're
taking so long over it.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Okay, and you keep talking about the Dragon here, we're
talking about SpaceX, SpaceX and and Boeing are have been
competitors in the space race, if you will, does it,
in your opinion factor into or Look, we're human beings.
But the idea that your competitor sent the astronauts up
and the competitors vehicle can't bring them back. Haha, SpaceX,
(19:12):
we got to give your people a ride back because
your vehicle broke down. Does that factor into Boeing's head
or anybody else's here. That's a bad look.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Yeah, it really is a bad look for moving you know,
it's not let me say this, They've got to try
and certify the star Liner for for operational flights. They
can still do that even if they bring it home empty,
as long as they get the thrusters back and can
disassemble them in the lab and finally figure out what's
going wrong. I could see a scenario where the astronauts
(19:44):
come home and the Dragon that they bring the star
Liner home without a crew. They analyze it, and they go, Okay,
now we understand what's going on. We have complete confidence
that the next flight will be flawless. Right, And so
it's not necessarily the end of the line for Starliner
if they do this, but it's a really bad look
and so yeah, and that's why it's not Boeing's call, right,
(20:08):
It's it's it's NASA's call. And I think also within NASA, right,
there's a real interesting going. You know, this whole fiasco
shows why we want two ships, right, because next time
it could be the Dragon that has a problem, right,
And so you don't want to be dependent on just
(20:28):
one type of ship. And they're not because there's always
the Russian Sawyers. But you know, politically that's technique.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Not a good time. It's really never been a good time,
but it is an especially bad time right now, right exactly.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
And so you would like to have two American ships
that to choose from in case one goes down right.
And and you know, we saw, for example, a couple
a month or so GOO, the FULC and nine that
launches Dragon had a little upsey and I had an
engine explosion that to strengthen some satellites in orbit. It's
(21:03):
the same kind of rocket that launches the Dragon. Now
they fix that quickly and they're backflying. But you can
imagine a worse accident that would keep dragging out of
action for four months or longer. And so then you'd
be really happy if you had the star Liner as
an alternate way to bring to get people to the
(21:23):
space station. And so NASA really wants Starliner to succeed
for that reason. And so I think the upper management
are going to be really hoping that they can paper
this over and make Starliner look good and may them
come down the engineering level management that's actually I hope
(21:43):
mostly making this call are going to be not influenced
by that nearly as much and are going to be
going what's the safest thing, what's the right engineering call,
and that's where the decision should be made. My only
slight concern is that Bill Nelson, the top administrator of
NASA has said the final call is going to be
his for this particular flad, and that's probably okay. I mean,
(22:09):
he is a guy who when he was a congressman
did fly on the Shuttle as a congressional junket, and
so he knows what being scrapped to a rocket is like,
and so you know, hopefully he'll be conservative too. But
I would rather it just be made at the engineering
level than not at the management level, because the management
level is where the politics starts to come.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
And I was going to ask about all of that,
because obviously this is a race to commercial access to
flying into space, to dock at the International Space Station.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Does this do anything to.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Delay where we were as a country in terms of
making that happen, privatizing in a way or at least
commercializing space.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Travel at the moment, I don't think so.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
I think this is part of the process of learning
how to deal with the balance between NASA and the
commercial providers, right, and so it'll actually be a test
case for how you make these decisions, how you balance
the interests of the commercial company with the interests of
the of the national Space program.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
I think that if they were to lose the star
Liner on descent, even even if without a cro on board, right,
if there were, and I don't think that's likely, but
it's it's not impossible. So if they were to lose
the star Line, that would raise some issues. And it's weird.
I mean, one empisodes, right, is that Boeing in its
head right, is still the natural spaceship builder for the
(23:34):
US government. They when they were North America, they built
the Apollo spaceship. Right, when they were Rockwell, they built
the Space Shuttle, and so they feel like they always
have an entitlement of being the spaceship builders. And it's
amazing how quickly that has flipped around to SpaceX being
the default, these new upstarts in Going's eyes, and Boeing
(23:59):
now being portrayed as the upstart competitor when really they
were the incumbent for so many decades.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And do have right that there's an issue. They the
astronauts that go up on the star Liner Boweling star
Liner don't have the right suits that allow them to
fly in the SpaceX capsules. They had to have a
(24:28):
different spacesuit.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Yeah, it's a different pressure suit and it's not like
a space that you go out and do spacewalks. It's
just a key, it's just a hedge against if the
air leaks out during the way down. But but it
has to connect in to the to the right spaceships
plug right, and and they, yeah, for whatever reason, they
(24:50):
didn't mandate that there'd be a separate like spaceh design
that would be common for all the you know, so, yeah,
that's lack of interoperability. Is I think a lesson to
learn for the next generation of spaceships that it's great
to have the different designs, but they should be interoperable.
(25:10):
You should be able to mix and match. And that's
not the case right now. And that's a bit embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Wow, that's that's like fascinating.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
It's like Apple chargers, right, you know, you keep getting
a new do you can't need to get a new charger.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
It's very similar.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Exactly, yeah, exactly, even two Apple things can't work with
each other. And so yeah, no, it's exactly that problem.
And so we all have had it, right and so
they but you know, the sickness cargo ship came up.
It delivered both fresh clothes and also I believe they
have the right suits or that they'll figure that out.
(25:43):
That's not a problem. And actually just this morning the
Russians launched another cargo ship that's going to arrive over
the weekend and have extra supplies. So the good news
is that they have scads of supplies to last all
this extra, these extra people for months more. So I'm
not worried about them running out of sandwiches or or
(26:04):
you know, or air or water. Right, you have to
actually deliver the air and the water on the cargo trucks.
It's not just the food.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Wow, you deliver air on the car.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
Deliver I did not know that. Yeah, yeah, they do
recycle the air, but you know that you need to
tap it at top it up and and so the
and then they deliver fuel to kind of boost you
over with the space station so on. So there's all
kinds of stuff just arrived and on their way and
so so they can they can take their time. But yeah,
(26:36):
these these little it's actually really interesting that that this
surfaces these issues of incompatibility and of how do you
swat from one to the other. Even for the Russian ships,
they have an even more weird thing, which is that
they have special contoured couches for the astronauts to lie
in because the scent is so you know, so many gs,
so much acceleration, and so each each couch is shaped
(27:00):
for particular astronauts rear end uh, and so they actually
have when they swap sawyers as they actually carry the
couches from one sawyers to the other and things like that.
So it's not just it's not quite as simple as, oh, yeah,
I got rebooked on US Air. I'm gonna, you know,
(27:20):
carry my carry on and go to the new gate.
It's it's a little more involved than that.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Can I ask We talked about the thrusters if the
star Liner comes back. They think the thrusters are working
in the operable. Now, if you start that flight back
and the thrusters start acting up after you're already on
your way back to Earth, is it possible to land
that thing? Is it? What would happen if those things
go out on the way back.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
It depends when they start going wrong. Okay, so if
you start to have issues, the most likely thing is
that you start to have issues immediately you start backing
away from the space station, because that's where you can
be firing a lot to kind of steer yourself, and
at that point I would guess as soon as they
have even a few problems, they go, whoop, snow, let's
(28:06):
go back and readopt with the space station right. So
the trick is, can you redock before you lose too
many thrusters to be able to steer, And so as
long as they don't all go out at once. If
you lose one or two and you go, that's not good,
let's let's change our minds and say you know that.
But once they've backed away a long way from the station,
(28:29):
so they can still you know, if they have if
they can keep enough thrusters working to come back. That's
one thing. Once they make the deorbit burn the big
rockets to slow the spaceship the starliner down and make
it start to fall out of orbit. Now they've got
to be steering right. They can't afford to screw up
because if you enter the atmosphere at seventeen thousand miles
(28:51):
an hour at the wrong angle with your heat shield
not pointing the right way, you know, then then you're
going to be crispy. So so that's you better have
good confidence in the thrusters at that point.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
How long is the trip like if you were backing
away from the International Space Station to head back home.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
How long is that trip?
Speaker 4 (29:11):
You know, it depends because it's like there's two things.
There's like a twenty minute period where you're getting out
of the immediate vicinity of the space station, and then
you float around for a while and you wait until
you're at the right point in your orbit where fire
and the engines will bring you down in New Mexico.
And so that depending on exactly when you do, it
(29:35):
can be a few hours, it can be a day, right.
Sometimes they undark and they I think the original time
might have been to spend a day just you know,
flying with the Starliner and checking it out somewhere before
bringing it back. They're not going to do that now,
and so probably a few hours, a couple orbits of
(29:55):
the Earth. So you go round the Earth every hour
and a half. Wow, and you're going at seventeen thousand
miles an how right, And so then a certain point
you're coming over the Pacific, you farre the engines, you
lower your orbit so that it intersects the surface of
the Earth, and then you strap in and hope the
heat shield doesn't melt and come down on parachutes and
(30:19):
then you've got airbags that inflate just before you hit
the New Mexico.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Desert, right, and to be I want to make sure
Clube very clear on this scenarios. One option is to
take the Starliner if they if they say that vehicle
is okay, they could be ready to bring them back
in what a matter of days?
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Yeah, I would. I would guess they'll plan, they'll wander
a little more planning, so probably early September something like that.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
So if they use the SpaceX vehicles, what are the
options when would they possibly be back?
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Right and there it's just a question of well, they
could bring them back in October, but they're not gonna
They're gonna use the advantage of having you know, these
guys on board to carry out the Crew nine mission
and keep them up there till February. And then the
SpaceX comes back down in a somewhat different way, and
actually they've changed the way they're bringing that This would
be the first time that they would be coming back
(31:10):
down on the West coast. They they would land in
the Pacific, just off the coast of California, and then
they you know, Chip comes up and hauls them on board.
So so that would be in February. Uh, and so
the yeah, and that's you know, that's in general a
(31:35):
well trodden pawerful. There is a wrinkle. So so the
dragon has two sections. It has the bit the astronauts
sit in, and it has what they call the trunk
where they keep the cargo. And the trunk gets jettisoned.
And they used to just jettison it into orbit and
they said, oh, it'll burn up when it re enters,
no worries. And then some poor farmer in Australia found
(31:57):
a huge shard of this thing stick out of is field,
like as big as a person. And then someone in
Saskatchewan found a similar large lump on their farm. And
the last like three or four Dragon missions have had
pieces of this trunk end up crashing near people and
(32:18):
that's not good. And so they they're now going to
keep the trunk attached until re entry, drop it off
during re entry. And that means they can't if they
did that for a Florida Ocean landing that they have
been doing, the trunk would fall in the Midwest or something,
so that would be good. So instead they're going to
(32:38):
land land over California and have the trunk re enter
over the Pacific. So I mentioned that just because it's like,
it's not like the Dragon hasn't had its issues, right,
they haven't been life threatening to the astionnauts, but they're
they're keep having to adjust for various safety reasons the
way that they do these things, and so the program
(33:00):
right now is actually really flexible, and they have all
of the years of experience on the Space Station, on
the Shuttle, and now in these new vehicles are giving
nas of the confidence to kind of change their plans
relatively last minute and try different things.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I have one last question for you, Jonathan. So you're
obviously a you're an astrophysicist. It doesn't really require any
other explanation. You know, more than the majority of anyone
that said and given everything we've seen, when commercial space
travel becomes available, would you be happy and willing to
jump on board to go up into space, into orbit
(33:37):
and come back down?
Speaker 4 (33:39):
Oh? Yeah, I mean, well, you know, I'm old, I'm
getting some health issues. I'm not sure if I would
be you know, that would be good for me. But
I always I applied to be an astronaut back in
the day. I didn't get anywhere because I'm not enough
of a jock, but yeah, no, I'd love to fly,
and I would feel you know, from a safety point
of view. I think these missions, like for example, Axiom Space,
(34:02):
which is flying tourists on the Dragon, the new one
that was just announced with this Chinese bitcoin billionaire has
bort a flight. You know, Yeah, you want to take
me along, I'm in.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Last thing for me and explain to the lay folks
when there's an emergence, what's our capability? I know they
make plans and continues to sow use this going up
in a couple of months, we have an emergency, maybe
somebody can jump on there. We got to, right, we
know that, But just our capacity if there's an emergency
in space and we need to immediately get up there
and get somebody back, do we have the capability to
(34:40):
do that?
Speaker 4 (34:41):
And how quickly we don't need to get up there
because we already have the emergency escape vehicles there. Right,
They are not so worried about Starliner that they wouldn't
quite happily put Bush and Sunny in Starliner to come
home in an emergency, right, And the Dragon crew have
a Dragon dock there to come home in. And the
Russians have asyers docked there, so you are. The rule
(35:03):
is you always have your emergency escape vehicles still parked
at the station. You never you're never there without a
seat home and so that and that's just prudent. And
so now what they had did have a while back,
they had a problem with the Sawyers and they didn't
trust it anymore. And so what they did was they
launched the Sawyers without a crew, had it robotically docked
(35:25):
with the station, and then returned the suspect one without
without anybody aboard. And so that's that's the sort of
thing that they've done in the past. But yeah, no,
you you never if anyone offers you a rite to
space and tells you, yeah, and we're going to take
the taxi and we're gonna like it's going to go
somewhere else. It's just going to drop you off the
Space station. So don't worry, we'll come and pick you
(35:46):
up some later time. That's the point of which I go, yeah, thanks,
but no thanks.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
You need a seat a guaranteed seed back home.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Yes, please.
Speaker 6 (35:57):
Jonathan McDowell, thank you so much, so much for explaining
something that was quite inexplicable to most of us so,
and we just appreciate your time and your expertise and
thank you for being on the podcast.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Thank you for having me and folks, you know where
to find us always. You can check us out our
official show page at Amy and TJ Podcast. We'll see
sy
Hey, they're folks, say, real life Gilligan's Island is playing
out in space right now. Two astronauts were supposed to
be in orbit eight days. As we speak, it's been
two months and still unclear on when they might come home. Folks,
welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Rhodes. I'm
always and we're always fascinated by space stuff. We're always
(00:25):
in awe of it. But this time we were kind
of all scratching our heads and trying to figure out
what went wrong and when can they come home.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I'm still laughing at your Gilligan's Island reference three hour tour.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
There's supposed to be an eight day tour.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
But it turns possibly into an eight month too.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yeah, whoa, it seems indefinite and a lot of people
familiar with this story. But two astronauts went up in June,
supposed to be eight days orbiting. Something's wrong with the
orbiter that they're in, the craft they're in, so they're
kind of stranded.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, what I got was some thrusters weren't working, some
helium was leaking. I don't know what any of that means,
but none of it sounds good. And there's a question
as to whether or not that vehicle that they arrived
at the International Space Station in can actually take them
back to Earth safely. And so because there is a
question mark, and I'm sure the astronauts appreciate that scientists, astrophysicists,
(01:19):
folks at NASA, folks at Boeing are all making sure
that their safety is at the top of the list.
So how do they get back home in one piece? No,
you can't, there's not yet, and.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
There's a long wait.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
There is right now.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
And it's cramped quarters, we should point out.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
So the International Space Station, upon my big research that
I've done this morning, is usually there to accommodate about
six people, six to seven at the most. Now there
are I believe nine people there. Wow, so there's some
sleeping quarter issues. They just got a supply truck, which
made me laugh.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
It's not a truck, but they actually I was amazed.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
They actually sense apply missions up to them. So they
needed some new clothes. I mean, this is all new
to me, but it's it sounds like a movie, but
it's happening in real time, in real life.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I didn't see that part about it. We've all been
there before on vacation or somebody's house. It's it's sleep
it's a four bedroom house. But seven people are we
going to figure this out?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Or how many times have you been on vacation and
you get called to go to work to like a
work event, and you don't have enough clothes, you.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Don't have enough underwear, you don't have enough socks.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
That's happened. We're talking like a few days. This is
like months and months.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
They have a couch, there's so many crash on the
no and they.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Don't have a washer or a dryer, so there's no laundry.
There's a lot of things going on.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I'm thinking a damn about their laundry right now.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
They might care more than you think. I mean, it's
an issue.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well, that's bringing into somebody. Clearly we need help understanding
what the hell is going on. So let's bring in
somebody who knows it. He's actually an astrophysicist. He's an astronomer,
a Smithsonian astronomer, Johnathan McDowell is with us now. So
we appreciate you helping us out with what's We tried
to go through the story a little bit, and a
lot of people are familiar with it, but can you
tell us, first of all, they plan for contingencies like
(03:12):
this or is this something that nobody necessarily had a
plan for in a scenario for well, I.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Think it's a bit of a surprise, but it's within
the scope of what you know. That's that's it is
all about what happens if this failure, what happens if
the next failure? And so so they're they're they're pretty
they go pretty deep into what do we do if
By the way, I just say, I I do love
the Gilligans Island comparison. I had not thought of that.
And it's perfect.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
You can have it, you can use it.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Yea, yeah, so so uh so yeah, so so they
have this space ship, the Starliner, and you know, it's
had a bit of a rocky history. The the test
flights without a crew didn't go that brilliantly, and so
they were really hoping that this one would just be flawless.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
But no, well, Jonathan, wait a second, you can't just
hope when we're talking talk about sending people up. You're
telling me this thing had enough issues, then maybe we
shouldn't have sent them up in that thing in the
first place.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
No, No, I don't think so, I mean, I think
they thought they had solved the issues right and they
were wrong. But you know, they had done tests on
the ground. They had not, it turns out, fully understood
the issues with these thrusters. So let's talk about these thrusters, right,
is what they are. They're little rocket engines. They're not
the big rocket engines that the spaceship is going to
(04:29):
use to push itself out of orbit and land in
New Mexico. They're kind of like the steering wheel, right,
and so they helped turn the spacecraft in a particular direction.
And that's got to work right when you're coming home
because you can have the big thrusters. The big rocket
engines work fine, but if you're not pointed in the
right direction, that's not going to go well for you.
(04:50):
And so so these steering thrusters are really important. They're
also really important when you separate from the space station
and you're backing away. You don't want to bump in
to your friend's lab module or something like that. So
you really want these things to be working right. And
you know they have some what we call redundancy. They
(05:10):
have spares, right, and so you know they have I
don't know what, I can't remember. It's like twenty or
something frusters, and if you know, three or four of
them fail, okay, they can use other ones. But they're
just worried because they don't understand quite why the thrusters
have been behaving the way they have. So on the
way up, they were approaching the space station and everything
(05:30):
was going fine. And then as they started firing the
thrusts a lot, as they were steering their way in
to the docking port to the arrival place at the
space station, a couple of the thrusters stopped working and
things started going wrong, and so they had to do
some sort of fancy last minute adjustments to get in safely.
And and so you know, fine, so you look at
(05:54):
you do lots of tests, and so they've done tests
on the ground to fire these thrusters, and they're studying
a bit more detail what happens when you fire them
more than usual. It turns out that in the particular
configuration it's in. Yeah, if you fire them too much
too often, it overheats and bad things happen. And so
they got some kind of understanding, but they still don't
(06:15):
quite understand why it is that they're behaving exactly the
way they see. They did some more tests on orbit.
They said, got okay, stay docked to the space station,
but give a little sprints on the thrusters. Check. Let's
check how they're behaving. They seem to be behaving just fine. Now,
even the ones, most of the ones that were broken before,
seem to be okay. And so the Boeing folks who
(06:38):
built the spaceship is safety as we think it's fine,
bring them home. Uh. And then some of the nast
engineers are going, yeah, but you know, we don't understand
why these these thrusters are acting up the way they are,
and so what if when we fire them, they, you know,
something else happens that that that hasn't happen before, and
(07:00):
we lose a whole bunch of them. That would be
really bad. It seems unlikely. But because you don't understand
what's going wrong. And here's the thing, if they didn't
have another way to come home, right, they would go like, yeah, fine,
well we don't quite understand what's going on, but it's
probably okay, so let's just bring them home. It should
be fine. But because they have this other.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Choice, better safe than sorry.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Basically, that's right, but sometimes it's like worse to have
a choice, right, because now you go, yeah, all right, well,
so we could do this other convoluted thing of bringing
them home on the SpaceX uber and you know call
an uber. Well, they've already got a SpaceX ship docked there,
but you know that has a crew who don't want
(07:46):
to give up their seats. So there's another crew waiting
to come up in September. And so the idea is, well, okay,
so bump to people from that crew and have it
come up and arrive at the space station in September,
and you could you could then go all right and
then bring the guys home right away on that. But
(08:08):
they've said, well, you know, but it's expensive. So let's
make poor Butcher and Sonny take the places of those
bumped to crew members and do their jobs for another
few months and not bring them home until the original
planned Crew nine landing time of February. And so, congratulations, guys,
you've just got to pointed to a new crew and
(08:30):
you've got a few more months on the space.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
A lot more months.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
I'm curious do the astronauts themselves have any say in
this or is this all Are they at the mercy
of NASA, Are at the mercy of Boeing? Or do
they get to say, hey, we'll take our chances and
try and come home early.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Yeah. Typically, right, well, it's it's NASA's call. They work
for NASA. But they, you know, the NASA what they
call the control board or the decision board, consults with
the actional Hey what do you think of this? Do
you have concerns whatever, So they'll take they'll take the astronauts' concerns,
(09:07):
you know, into hand. But but yeah, you're an astronaut,
you want another flight, you know, you don't want to
be labeled as the whip and so it's gonna be
a high bar before you say no, can you bring
me home in the safeway place? So now their their
their their instinctive response is gonna be, oh, well, we're
(09:28):
ready to you know, to do this. I'm sure you
guys know what you're doing, So just make the right
engineering call.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
But Jonathan, how does that work? Can you help us
with the astronauts. I know they go through all kinds
of extensive training, but if you're telling me I'm on
an eight day trip and then I'm up here for
eight or nine months. I mean, how are they do
they get prepped mentally psychologically for this type of thing.
I mean, that's a that's not just a couple of
weeks delay or days delay. That's that's almost a year
of your life when you thought you're going to be
(09:54):
back in a week.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Miss anniversary, is miss Christmas? All of that.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
That's right, I mean, I I it is hard. They
have you know, they knew that the contingencies that could
let them be on the station longer than eight days,
So I think the idea that they might stay a
few weeks would have been in their minds. Anyway, I
don't think they were expecting it to be this long
and so and so you're right, it is, you know,
(10:20):
missing missing holidays with your family and so on. It
is tough. Now, these are experienced astronauts. They have done
you know, longery Sonny Williams was commander the ISS for
a while and so on. So so they you know,
this is not new to them. It's unexpected. But yeah,
they're they're tough, they're they they can they can handle it.
(10:40):
So I think, and you know, for National you're getting
more flight time, breaking certain records. I think it's gonna
you know, you're like, you know, you get to take
off a few extra things of like, yeah, I'm the
American nationronaut who spent you know, longest in this and
so yeah, they're actually you know, there are pol them
(11:01):
for this and career wise, and.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So I'm curious is there anything dangerous about what they're doing?
I saw somewhere someone saying something about radiation exposure. I mean,
is there any danger to being in space that long
or being at the station that long?
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Really not. I mean that there's some accumulated radiation exposure,
but that's true even if you go on like a
transatlantic plane flight, right, And so you know, we've had
astronauts stay up for years at a time, right, Scott
Kelly did. This is a year and a half mission
on the Space station. So it's not like they're doing
anything that other people haven't done before in that respect,
(11:38):
And so I'm not concerned about that. I mean, having
said that being in space is not the safest place
to be in general, right, there's always something that can
go wrong, But if you're in space, being on the
Space station with all its resources and all the monitoring
so on, that that's that's about as safe as you're
going to be while you're in space. And so it's
the launch and the landing that are always the scary bits.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
We're talking about the thrusters here, but there is a
helium link that they were aware of. Is that right
before they even launch? Can you help us understand how
important of a matter that is and why if you
knew about this problem, why you still would go ahead
and launch?
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Right, I'm not too concerned about it. So the helium
is used. They have high pressure helium tanks and what
they do is they use that to push the fuel
into the rocket engine. Because you know, on Earth, right,
we use gravity to like, you know, push things into
where we want to go. But they don't have the gravity,
so they use another gas and high pressure to push
(12:45):
the fuel into where it's going to ignite in the
rocket engine. And the trouble with helium is helium is
a tiny atom. It loves to leak out of things,
and so helium leaks are like if you work with heal,
helium leaks are part of your life. There's always going
to be helium leak. The question is how big is
it going to be? And so this was a bit
(13:07):
bigger leak than they designed for, but it's still pretty small, okay,
and they still got plenty of helium, and so it
doesn't you know. The worry is is that leak a
sign of something that's about to give that then would
give you a huge helium leak, and the all the
helium would leak out, you wouldn't be able to use
the rocket engines. That would be bad.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
But Jonathan, how can they figure this out from the
like all these problems. I know they have diagnostics and
things they can run, But can you ever get to
a point where you're comfortable enough this from on Earth
saying yeah, go ahead and hop in that thing and
come on back. It's good to go. I mean, how
can you ever reach that bar? It seems like a
high bar.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
It is a high bar. Yeah, but it's doable. I mean,
I think you know what you do, right, is you
have all of like you said, have all these diagnostics. Right.
You know the pressure in the tank, you know how
it behaves it when you do certain things, and then
you replicate that on the ground. And if you can
make a setup on the ground that misbehaves exactly the
same way that the thing in space is misbehaving, right,
(14:06):
then you go, ah, right, we understand why this is
happening now, and then and then you go and then
you can go once you understand it, then you can go,
all right, what's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
And so right now they don't understand it, and they've
said in the next week or two they're going to
make a final call by the end of this month.
So what are they That's what they're doing right now
on the ground, they're replicating what the potential problem is
to try and understand it. And only if they understand
it then will they send those astronauts back in that
same craft.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
That's right, Well, I think only if they have enough
confidence that they understand it well enough to rule out
some horrible thing happening. And it's a bit it's a
hard bar, right, because it's it's not like we're not
in the situation where we go, okay, this part is
going to do this horrible thing if so, if X happens, right,
it's like, we don't understand why it's behaving, so we
(14:57):
can't rule out that there might be some horrible thing
that would have and that we haven't thought of. And
that's harder wow, right, and so and probably be fine.
Let me be very clear. Probably probably if if they
undocked and came home in the star Liner, it's probably
just fine. And everyone and all the media will go,
what are they worrying about? You know, so and and
(15:20):
and But there's that leggling little worry. And what's really great, right,
is that that's the thing open about the fact that
you know, Okay, we have disagreement on the team. Some
of us think it's fine, some of us don't think
it's fine. And that's a big change from the days
of the Challenger explosion and the Columbia explosion, where there
it's a big management we need this to look good.
(15:41):
Shut up, don't don't, don't raise this horrible possibility, right,
and then we lost astronauts. So they're doing the prudent thing.
They're doing it appropriately. They're having open discussion and argument,
and I love to see that. And and my guess
at this point is that the odds are in favor
of them going it probably fine, but let's just be careful.
(16:04):
Let's keep them up and bring him home on the Dragon.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Okay, but Javan, nobody in that room that's making a
decision is using the word they probably will be fine,
probably can't be good enough in this scenario, I'll.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Get it, right, they got there, they're gonna use They're
gonna use words that are that that that hide that.
But that's why. And so yeah, well no, it's always probabilities, right,
there's always a risk, right, there's a risk to bring
them home on the dragon, right with with you know,
maybe the new sort of seats that they added for
(16:37):
them are gonna be you know, not quite right, or
maybe maybe there's something that is very unlike I think
it's pretty safe to bring home the dragon, but the
Dragon is not entirely risk free. And so it's you're
always balancing risks, right, You're if you wait until you
can say we're not going to launch this rocket until
it's safe, well I got use for you. You're on like,
(17:00):
you know, thousands of tons of highly explosive propellant, it's
never going to be safe. And so so it's always
which is the less risky? Which is what is the
acceptable level of risk? And that's what these guys are
paid to take, right, the acceptable level of risk? And
so you do your best, you get it to be
(17:20):
as safe as you can. But no, safer. It's you're
always taking a risk and so so so I think
that's that's that's the reality of space fight. Actually, it's
the reality of life, right though, if you want to
be safe, you know, don't go stay on your couch
even then, right, you're gonna have medical problems.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
You make very excellent points, Jonathan. I'm curious with the
world watching now and so much scrutiny on whether or
not these two astronauts come home now or in a
few months, and with the possible risk involved, wouldn't you,
I mean, it sounded like you believed that probably what
we're going to hear in two weeks is that they're
staying up until February.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
That's my guess. But I would let's put it this way,
I wouldn't be astonished if they make the other call
and they go, you know, we've done our due diligence. Yeah,
there's some issues, but we think that the risk of
something bad is pretty small. So let's bring them home
and and and and not mess up our schedule so
that that that's still very much on the table. Uh
(18:23):
and and so yeah, I'm I'm on tender hooks waiting
to see what they picked I would if I had
to bet, I think, you know, uh, three weeks ago,
I would have bet they'd bring them home on Starliner.
Now I'm starting to lean towards Yeah, they're probably going
to pick the Dragon route. But but it it it,
you know, it could go either way. Either way would
be a valid engineering decision. And it's really it's really
(18:45):
on a knife edge, I think, And that's why they're
taking so long over it.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Okay, and you keep talking about the Dragon here, we're
talking about SpaceX, SpaceX and and Boeing are have been
competitors in the space race, if you will, does it,
in your opinion factor into or Look, we're human beings.
But the idea that your competitor sent the astronauts up
and the competitors vehicle can't bring them back. Haha, SpaceX,
(19:12):
we got to give your people a ride back because
your vehicle broke down. Does that factor into Boeing's head
or anybody else's here. That's a bad look.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Yeah, it really is a bad look for moving you know,
it's not let me say this, They've got to try
and certify the star Liner for for operational flights. They
can still do that even if they bring it home empty,
as long as they get the thrusters back and can
disassemble them in the lab and finally figure out what's
going wrong. I could see a scenario where the astronauts
(19:44):
come home and the Dragon that they bring the star
Liner home without a crew. They analyze it, and they go, Okay,
now we understand what's going on. We have complete confidence
that the next flight will be flawless. Right, And so
it's not necessarily the end of the line for Starliner
if they do this, but it's a really bad look
and so yeah, and that's why it's not Boeing's call, right,
(20:08):
It's it's it's NASA's call. And I think also within NASA, right,
there's a real interesting going. You know, this whole fiasco
shows why we want two ships, right, because next time
it could be the Dragon that has a problem, right,
And so you don't want to be dependent on just
(20:28):
one type of ship. And they're not because there's always
the Russian Sawyers. But you know, politically that's technique.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Not a good time. It's really never been a good time,
but it is an especially bad time right now, right exactly.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
And so you would like to have two American ships
that to choose from in case one goes down right.
And and you know, we saw, for example, a couple
a month or so GOO, the FULC and nine that
launches Dragon had a little upsey and I had an
engine explosion that to strengthen some satellites in orbit. It's
(21:03):
the same kind of rocket that launches the Dragon. Now
they fix that quickly and they're backflying. But you can
imagine a worse accident that would keep dragging out of
action for four months or longer. And so then you'd
be really happy if you had the star Liner as
an alternate way to bring to get people to the
(21:23):
space station. And so NASA really wants Starliner to succeed
for that reason. And so I think the upper management
are going to be really hoping that they can paper
this over and make Starliner look good and may them
come down the engineering level management that's actually I hope
(21:43):
mostly making this call are going to be not influenced
by that nearly as much and are going to be
going what's the safest thing, what's the right engineering call,
and that's where the decision should be made. My only
slight concern is that Bill Nelson, the top administrator of
NASA has said the final call is going to be
his for this particular flad, and that's probably okay. I mean,
(22:09):
he is a guy who when he was a congressman
did fly on the Shuttle as a congressional junket, and
so he knows what being scrapped to a rocket is like,
and so you know, hopefully he'll be conservative too. But
I would rather it just be made at the engineering
level than not at the management level, because the management
level is where the politics starts to come.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
And I was going to ask about all of that,
because obviously this is a race to commercial access to
flying into space, to dock at the International Space Station.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Does this do anything to.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Delay where we were as a country in terms of
making that happen, privatizing in a way or at least
commercializing space.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Travel at the moment, I don't think so.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
I think this is part of the process of learning
how to deal with the balance between NASA and the
commercial providers, right, and so it'll actually be a test
case for how you make these decisions, how you balance
the interests of the commercial company with the interests of
the of the national Space program.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
I think that if they were to lose the star
Liner on descent, even even if without a cro on board, right,
if there were, and I don't think that's likely, but
it's it's not impossible. So if they were to lose
the star Line, that would raise some issues. And it's weird.
I mean, one empisodes, right, is that Boeing in its
head right, is still the natural spaceship builder for the
(23:34):
US government. They when they were North America, they built
the Apollo spaceship. Right, when they were Rockwell, they built
the Space Shuttle, and so they feel like they always
have an entitlement of being the spaceship builders. And it's
amazing how quickly that has flipped around to SpaceX being
the default, these new upstarts in Going's eyes, and Boeing
(23:59):
now being portrayed as the upstart competitor when really they
were the incumbent for so many decades.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And do have right that there's an issue. They the
astronauts that go up on the star Liner Boweling star
Liner don't have the right suits that allow them to
fly in the SpaceX capsules. They had to have a
(24:28):
different spacesuit.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Yeah, it's a different pressure suit and it's not like
a space that you go out and do spacewalks. It's
just a key, it's just a hedge against if the
air leaks out during the way down. But but it
has to connect in to the to the right spaceships
plug right, and and they, yeah, for whatever reason, they
(24:50):
didn't mandate that there'd be a separate like spaceh design
that would be common for all the you know, so, yeah,
that's lack of interoperability. Is I think a lesson to
learn for the next generation of spaceships that it's great
to have the different designs, but they should be interoperable.
(25:10):
You should be able to mix and match. And that's
not the case right now. And that's a bit embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Wow, that's that's like fascinating.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
It's like Apple chargers, right, you know, you keep getting
a new do you can't need to get a new charger.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
It's very similar.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Exactly, yeah, exactly, even two Apple things can't work with
each other. And so yeah, no, it's exactly that problem.
And so we all have had it, right and so
they but you know, the sickness cargo ship came up.
It delivered both fresh clothes and also I believe they
have the right suits or that they'll figure that out.
(25:43):
That's not a problem. And actually just this morning the
Russians launched another cargo ship that's going to arrive over
the weekend and have extra supplies. So the good news
is that they have scads of supplies to last all
this extra, these extra people for months more. So I'm
not worried about them running out of sandwiches or or
(26:04):
you know, or air or water. Right, you have to
actually deliver the air and the water on the cargo trucks.
It's not just the food.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Wow, you deliver air on the car.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
Deliver I did not know that. Yeah, yeah, they do
recycle the air, but you know that you need to
tap it at top it up and and so the
and then they deliver fuel to kind of boost you
over with the space station so on. So there's all
kinds of stuff just arrived and on their way and
so so they can they can take their time. But yeah,
(26:36):
these these little it's actually really interesting that that this
surfaces these issues of incompatibility and of how do you
swat from one to the other. Even for the Russian ships,
they have an even more weird thing, which is that
they have special contoured couches for the astronauts to lie
in because the scent is so you know, so many gs,
so much acceleration, and so each each couch is shaped
(27:00):
for particular astronauts rear end uh, and so they actually
have when they swap sawyers as they actually carry the
couches from one sawyers to the other and things like that.
So it's not just it's not quite as simple as, oh, yeah,
I got rebooked on US Air. I'm gonna, you know,
(27:20):
carry my carry on and go to the new gate.
It's it's a little more involved than that.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Can I ask We talked about the thrusters if the
star Liner comes back. They think the thrusters are working
in the operable. Now, if you start that flight back
and the thrusters start acting up after you're already on
your way back to Earth, is it possible to land
that thing? Is it? What would happen if those things
go out on the way back.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
It depends when they start going wrong. Okay, so if
you start to have issues, the most likely thing is
that you start to have issues immediately you start backing
away from the space station, because that's where you can
be firing a lot to kind of steer yourself, and
at that point I would guess as soon as they
have even a few problems, they go, whoop, snow, let's
(28:06):
go back and readopt with the space station right. So
the trick is, can you redock before you lose too
many thrusters to be able to steer, And so as
long as they don't all go out at once. If
you lose one or two and you go, that's not good,
let's let's change our minds and say you know that.
But once they've backed away a long way from the station,
(28:29):
so they can still you know, if they have if
they can keep enough thrusters working to come back. That's
one thing. Once they make the deorbit burn the big
rockets to slow the spaceship the starliner down and make
it start to fall out of orbit. Now they've got
to be steering right. They can't afford to screw up
because if you enter the atmosphere at seventeen thousand miles
(28:51):
an hour at the wrong angle with your heat shield
not pointing the right way, you know, then then you're
going to be crispy. So so that's you better have
good confidence in the thrusters at that point.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
How long is the trip like if you were backing
away from the International Space Station to head back home.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
How long is that trip?
Speaker 4 (29:11):
You know, it depends because it's like there's two things.
There's like a twenty minute period where you're getting out
of the immediate vicinity of the space station, and then
you float around for a while and you wait until
you're at the right point in your orbit where fire
and the engines will bring you down in New Mexico.
And so that depending on exactly when you do, it
(29:35):
can be a few hours, it can be a day, right.
Sometimes they undark and they I think the original time
might have been to spend a day just you know,
flying with the Starliner and checking it out somewhere before
bringing it back. They're not going to do that now,
and so probably a few hours, a couple orbits of
(29:55):
the Earth. So you go round the Earth every hour
and a half. Wow, and you're going at seventeen thousand
miles an how right, And so then a certain point
you're coming over the Pacific, you farre the engines, you
lower your orbit so that it intersects the surface of
the Earth, and then you strap in and hope the
heat shield doesn't melt and come down on parachutes and
(30:19):
then you've got airbags that inflate just before you hit
the New Mexico.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Desert, right, and to be I want to make sure
Clube very clear on this scenarios. One option is to
take the Starliner if they if they say that vehicle
is okay, they could be ready to bring them back
in what a matter of days?
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Yeah, I would. I would guess they'll plan, they'll wander
a little more planning, so probably early September something like that.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
So if they use the SpaceX vehicles, what are the
options when would they possibly be back?
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Right and there it's just a question of well, they
could bring them back in October, but they're not gonna
They're gonna use the advantage of having you know, these
guys on board to carry out the Crew nine mission
and keep them up there till February. And then the
SpaceX comes back down in a somewhat different way, and
actually they've changed the way they're bringing that This would
be the first time that they would be coming back
(31:10):
down on the West coast. They they would land in
the Pacific, just off the coast of California, and then
they you know, Chip comes up and hauls them on board.
So so that would be in February. Uh, and so
the yeah, and that's you know, that's in general a
(31:35):
well trodden pawerful. There is a wrinkle. So so the
dragon has two sections. It has the bit the astronauts
sit in, and it has what they call the trunk
where they keep the cargo. And the trunk gets jettisoned.
And they used to just jettison it into orbit and
they said, oh, it'll burn up when it re enters,
no worries. And then some poor farmer in Australia found
(31:57):
a huge shard of this thing stick out of is field,
like as big as a person. And then someone in
Saskatchewan found a similar large lump on their farm. And
the last like three or four Dragon missions have had
pieces of this trunk end up crashing near people and
(32:18):
that's not good. And so they they're now going to
keep the trunk attached until re entry, drop it off
during re entry. And that means they can't if they
did that for a Florida Ocean landing that they have
been doing, the trunk would fall in the Midwest or something,
so that would be good. So instead they're going to
(32:38):
land land over California and have the trunk re enter
over the Pacific. So I mentioned that just because it's like,
it's not like the Dragon hasn't had its issues, right,
they haven't been life threatening to the astionnauts, but they're
they're keep having to adjust for various safety reasons the
way that they do these things, and so the program
(33:00):
right now is actually really flexible, and they have all
of the years of experience on the Space Station, on
the Shuttle, and now in these new vehicles are giving
nas of the confidence to kind of change their plans
relatively last minute and try different things.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I have one last question for you, Jonathan. So you're
obviously a you're an astrophysicist. It doesn't really require any
other explanation. You know, more than the majority of anyone
that said and given everything we've seen, when commercial space
travel becomes available, would you be happy and willing to
jump on board to go up into space, into orbit
(33:37):
and come back down?
Speaker 4 (33:39):
Oh? Yeah, I mean, well, you know, I'm old, I'm
getting some health issues. I'm not sure if I would
be you know, that would be good for me. But
I always I applied to be an astronaut back in
the day. I didn't get anywhere because I'm not enough
of a jock, but yeah, no, I'd love to fly,
and I would feel you know, from a safety point
of view. I think these missions, like for example, Axiom Space,
(34:02):
which is flying tourists on the Dragon, the new one
that was just announced with this Chinese bitcoin billionaire has
bort a flight. You know, Yeah, you want to take
me along, I'm in.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Last thing for me and explain to the lay folks
when there's an emergence, what's our capability? I know they
make plans and continues to sow use this going up
in a couple of months, we have an emergency, maybe
somebody can jump on there. We got to, right, we
know that, But just our capacity if there's an emergency
in space and we need to immediately get up there
and get somebody back, do we have the capability to
(34:40):
do that?
Speaker 4 (34:41):
And how quickly we don't need to get up there
because we already have the emergency escape vehicles there. Right,
They are not so worried about Starliner that they wouldn't
quite happily put Bush and Sunny in Starliner to come
home in an emergency, right, And the Dragon crew have
a Dragon dock there to come home in. And the
Russians have asyers docked there, so you are. The rule
(35:03):
is you always have your emergency escape vehicles still parked
at the station. You never you're never there without a
seat home and so that and that's just prudent. And
so now what they had did have a while back,
they had a problem with the Sawyers and they didn't
trust it anymore. And so what they did was they
launched the Sawyers without a crew, had it robotically docked
(35:25):
with the station, and then returned the suspect one without
without anybody aboard. And so that's that's the sort of
thing that they've done in the past. But yeah, no,
you you never if anyone offers you a rite to
space and tells you, yeah, and we're going to take
the taxi and we're gonna like it's going to go
somewhere else. It's just going to drop you off the
Space station. So don't worry, we'll come and pick you
(35:46):
up some later time. That's the point of which I go, yeah, thanks,
but no thanks.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
You need a seat a guaranteed seed back home.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Yes, please.
Speaker 6 (35:57):
Jonathan McDowell, thank you so much, so much for explaining
something that was quite inexplicable to most of us so,
and we just appreciate your time and your expertise and
thank you for being on the podcast.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Thank you for having me and folks, you know where
to find us always. You can check us out our
official show page at Amy and TJ Podcast. We'll see
sy
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T.J. Holmes
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