Episode Transcript
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Music. Welcome back to Today InSpace. As always, I'm your space
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science podcast host from theEast Coast, Alex G orphanos, and
today we're diving into thereturn of crew nine to Earth
after several months of orbitingEarth on the space station,
these astronauts splashed down,and even the dolphins came to
welcome them back home on Earth.It was a beautiful day for human
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space flight. And onboard crewnine were astronauts Nick Hague,
rookie cosmonaut Alexandergorbanov, and the Starliner
crewmates, Sonny Williams andBucha Wilmore, the so called
stranded astronauts in space.We'll talk more about why that's
being thrown around a lot overthe last year, and what we think
about it, but we're gonna unpackit all how long they were up
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there, the wild Starliner sagathat's finally wrapped up, and
what those astronauts must befeeling with all this gravity
again, after a little time withzero G life. So Bucha up and
let's dive in to this week'sepisode. Thanks for joining us.
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So let's talk about the crew,because after all, this is a
human spaceflight mission, firstup, we've got Nick Hague, and
he's a NASA astronaut and thecommander of this mission, he
launched on September 28 2024and splashed down on March 18,
2025 that's 171 days in space,or about five and a half months.
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An interesting note about NickHague is on his rookie Mission
to Space, his first launch, theroscosmo Soyuz actually had to
perform an abort mid flight,grounding Nick and the crew
before getting to space. It'struly incredible that Nick not
only went back up to spaceafterwards, but continues to do
so now he's a space flightexpert, and we're just in awe of
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Nick's determination and tastefor adventure into the final
frontier after his very firstmission, next was Alexander
gorbanov, Russian cosmonaut andmission specialist. He flew up
with Nick Hague originally, andwas in space for 171 days as
well. The International SpaceStation is really an important
cultural icon for humanity andpeace on earth, where for what
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we can find of it, even thoughwe deal with the madness back on
Earth with borders and the warwas over. Them, the ISS orbits
above it all, and the bordersare blurred and not visible, and
everyone on board needs to worktogether to survive and thrive
on the space station. I do hope,when the commercial space
stations replace the ISS, thatwe have more international
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partnerships that blur theborder lines and help us focus
on how we can work together tosurvive and thrive on the
adventure of orbiting Earth andbeing in space. And before we
talk about the two othercrewmates on crew nine, let's
talk about why crew nineoriginally launched with two
spare seats for these strandedastronauts now, Nick and
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Alexander originally had twoother crew members on board crew
nine to fill the other seats.But when the Starliner Calypso
was deemed to have too much riskfor the two astronauts to
return, NASA had to make the twoseats available for the
Starliner astronauts to return,the two NASA astronauts taken
off the crew nine mission tomake room for them were two NASA
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astronauts, Xena cardman AndStephanie Wilson. Xena cardman
was supposed to be the commanderon her first space mission, and
Stephanie Wilson, famous threetime space shuttle astronaut and
the second African Americanwoman in space, was to be the
Mission Specialist. But whenNASA decided to send Starliner
back robotically and uncrewedastronauts, Xena and Stephanie,
were benched to free up theseats. The two of them appeared
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on NASA's coverage of the crewnine launch, sharing their
professional astronaut takes onwhat happened. Both of them
shared how much they loved theircrew for crew nine, and that it
was really just about the twoStarliner astronauts, fellow
humans, that needed to get home.But now that the Starliner saga
is over. I do hope these twowomen find their way back on a
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crewed mission to the spacestation, and soon they've
certainly earned it. And thatbrings us to the final members
of the crew nine mission, theStarliner duo, astronauts, Sonny
Williams and Butch Wilmore.Sonny and Butch launched on
Boeing Starliner Calypso on June5, 2024, and was intended to be
Starliner first crewed flighttest for eight days total. We
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covered this extensively eachweek, as the Starliner saga
played out in real time lastsummer and we were staying up.
You can check out episodes 343episode 348 episode 350 which is
when things started to go wrongfor Starliner. Episode 351, we
did breakdown of top four mediaquestions from that press
conference. 353, 355, and 359,so plenty to dig in there, but
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Sonny and Butch ended up stayingon the space station for 286
days total. That's nine and ahalf months in space. Sonny's
new record is now 608 days inspace, and that's across her
career with three space flights.This makes Sonny Williams the
second most experienced femaleastronaut ever, just behind
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Peggy Woodson, with 675 days inspace over four missions, and
another one coming up soon foraxiom space and Bucha Wilmore
has now recorded over 464 daysin space across three missions
in his career. So the star linersaga, what happened up there?
Starliner saga has reallyevolved over the last year, and
we covered the engineeringproblems that NASA and Boeing
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had to troubleshoot on thethrusters, and how NASA
internally had enough doubt andpeople had spoken up enough for
them to have Starliner getreprogrammed to return without
crew robotically. And thenSpaceX was chosen by NASA at
that time to return Sonny andButch in early 2025 at that
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time, I believe they weresupposed to return in January
slash February. And then therewere some schedule slips that
ended up bringing the returnback to March of 2025 there was
also some work that SpaceX wasdoing to try and get a Crew
Dragon ready by itself, but theywere unable to get it ready in
time before NASA's decision, andonce the decision to have Sonny
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and Butch come back on crew ninewas made. There were also more
delays that ended up happening.So logistically, it was very
difficult for NASA to find a wayto get those two astronauts
back. But ultimately, theoriginal plan that NASA had
made, or decided to make, aboutreturning the astronauts in
early 2025 ended up being thereason they came back. Now, the
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news narrative was that NASA andBoeing stranded these two
astronauts in space, on boardthe space station, with many
people simply grazing the topicand not realizing that the
Starliner crew was on the spacestation with other crewmates. I
mean, there's plenty of peoplewho thought they were stuck in
Starliner by itself in space,which is just not true. And then
others didn't even know thatthese astronauts were also busy
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working and doing science on theISS, and there's just a lot of
people that don't know what it'slike to work and live in space
right now. And I get it, unlessyou're following it as closely
as me and some of the otherfellow extreme space nerds here,
you would never know that. Sothere's definitely a lot to
learn about the public'sperception of human space flight
from this Starliner saga, andthe way that the news made it
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seem or was choosing to discussthe story, I've had a lot of
issue with the constantnarrative of the astronaut being
stranded in space, and while, inmy opinion, the astronauts
really were never stranded inSpace, I did want to look up the
actual definition of the word sothat we could talk about that
instead of maybe just my opinionon the whole situation, which I
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wasn't a fan of, one of thedefinitions for the word
stranded is lacking what isnecessary to leave a place or to
get out of a situation. Now,Starliner landed on September 7,
2024 and crew nine docked to theInternational Space Station on
September 29 2024 so the wholestranded astronaut scenario, if
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it was ever true, was only forthose few weeks between
September 7 and September 292024 and since then, Sonny and
Butch became a part of the crewnine, thanks to the professional
astronauts, Xena and Stephanie,for freeing up those seats. And
then, of course, because theelection happened right after
crew nine was sent to space, itwas an easy political football
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for the narrative that the Bidenadministration stranded the
astronauts in space. Now, foranyone that's followed us for a
long time, we really don't likethe politicization of these
things, especially human spaceflight, and especially because
the media had such a large rolein the space shuttle launch
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pressure around Challenger andColumbia, and while the teams
involved with the decisiondefinitely held the
responsibility of what happenedto those crews, the media
pressure of having theselaunches happen when they wanted
to, as opposed to when therocket and spacecraft were
ready, added to the fire. So Iam definitely going to fight
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against these narratives thatare just putting pressure on
this human space flight missionswhen the top most priority
should be the safety of thosehuman beings. And there's plenty
of things to dive into that I'mnot even privy to, of the
conversations that happen behindthe scenes right for NASA, but
the way that Elon Musk and Trumpare framing this, the way that
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the media has framed this, Ireally don't think that those
narratives are what they were,and if the astronauts were ever
stranded again, it was onlyduring September of 2024, of
last year. So to see thatcontinuing to be used today
is irritating, and I willconcede that there. Was a period
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where the astronauts werestranded without a vehicle. I
didn't look into details. Theremay have been some spare seats
on a Soyuz. I believe theRussians helped during that
period. But this is the kind ofthing that we've seen before in
space flight. And I just wantedto go through the timeline to
set the record straight. Youknow, for me, when this gets
political and just a littlecrazy. What I like to focus on
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are the people that are involvedin making this happen, not the
people who are the figureheadsof the organization, not the
leaders of NASA, not the leadersof SpaceX, the owner of SpaceX,
with a president that's involvedat that time. I focus on the
people actually doing things,actually building the
spacecraft, checking thespacecraft, running Mission
Control and doing everythingbehind the scenes. So to me, it
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was just great that all thoseteams came together, worked
together, regardless of all themadness, and got the mission
done. So to close out, why doescrew nine and the close of the
Starliner saga matter regardlessof the political nature of this
return flight, I have heard morefrom people about this mission
and Starliner than I have onmany other historic space events
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over the last 10 years. Thetraction online is also much
more than I usually see. And ofcourse, there are politics and
madness in the comments and thechat. But this is human space
flight, and it's engaged so manypeople, and the safe return and
splash down brought peoplepreviously not watching space
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events back into the fold. So itwas a great moment for the
progress of space and humanspace flight in particular, and
NASA successfully created abackup plan right using two
different human ratedspacecraft, and brought the crew
home safely, something they'venever been able to do, sending
another spacecraft to returncrew never happened in NASA
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history, and it happened for thefirst time, successfully, even
in the space shuttle days, theyweren't able to turn around A
space shuttle, and it seemedlike the same thing happened
with Crew Dragon, where therewasn't a separate one available
and they just had to free upseats. But regardless, it
worked, and SpaceX played anintegral role in having
developed a Crew Dragon earlierthan Starliner, even though they
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started the same time. And thatway, if testing showed that
issues happened like it did withStarliner or any other
spacecraft, there would beanother human rated spacecraft,
either in the queue in themission already, or possibly one
that hadn't been used yet ordedicated to a mission so that
they could bring them home. Andon top of that, NASA and America
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did not have to work with Russiato return their astronauts when
they were stranded in September.And I worry that in that
timeline and alternate universe,it could have been used as a
political motive for Russia tostop the US involvement in
Ukraine, basically requiringthat if they were going to save
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our astronauts, that we wouldhave to stop fighting the war in
Ukraine or supplying Ukrainewith weapons. If that happened,
I worry that NASA could have, inthat scenario, chosen to send
both astronauts back onStarliner, regardless of how
risky it was, and that wouldhave been a disaster scenario.
So all in all, it was a greatday for human space flight and
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space progress and a little bitof hope and joy for those who
watched the splashdown. Sothat's all we have on this one,
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science and be well. We'll seeyou on the next episode of Today
In Space. See ya.