00:00This is the farthest that any human astronaut will have flown.
00:05Maybe.
00:05Maybe, maybe.
00:06In the 21st century, right?
00:08Truth.
00:09And so I'm really curious how you get yourself and the crew comfortable.
00:14I mean, the heat shield is one aspect, but I mean, there's a lot of things that have to go
00:17right with the risk involved in this compared to an ISS mission.
00:21And then how you also, I guess, discuss that with your family so that they understand how it's different from
00:26what they've seen before.
00:27One of the neat parts on this mission is it's just a series of burns to increase our distance from
00:33Earth, really.
00:34It's really just three kind of primary burns.
00:37And we've developed a little checklist inside the crew that, hey, we are setting up for the Apogee Rays burn.
00:42This burn is going to commit us to 24 hours in orbit.
00:45And then we go through all of our vehicle systems and our own, like, how are we feeling?
00:50And then we inject our go into mission control.
00:53And the big one is translunar injection.
00:55We are setting up for translunar injection.
00:56This is committing us to eight days away from planet Earth.
00:59And are we ready to go?
01:00And we talk about that as a crew because the crew matters in that technical decision of are we go
01:05or not go.
01:06So that is a neat way we've broken down this thought process.
01:09And then when you really get into the nuts and bolts of it, though, we are operators.
01:14And we know what is coming.
01:15And we know the risks.
01:16And we are ready to go take on those challenges.
01:19How do we prepare our families for that?
01:21It's difficult.
01:22I mean, it is definitely difficult.
01:23We are dealing with numbers that are very unique.
01:27We are going to be going Mach 39 when we hit Earth's atmosphere on reentry.
01:30We are going to go 250,000 miles away from planet Earth.
01:34We're going to be completely lost calm with Earth for 45 minutes on the far side of the moon.
01:38Those are big deals.
01:39And, you know, I'm an only parent with two daughters and they they're teenagers.
01:43They understand the risk, but they also understand the value of human exploration, human ingenuity, that drive of humanity to
01:50go see what is on the other side of that mountain, to go see things that no human has ever
01:55seen before.
01:55Right now, there are only four humans on planet Earth that have this opportunity.
01:59And I'm lucky to be one of them.
02:00And I'm flying with three of the best people I've ever met, Victor Glover, Christina Cook, and Jeremy Hansen.
02:04And to get to be a part of this, no one can say no to that.
02:07I'm just curious because people are going to learn, I guess, more about you on this mission as the months
02:15go by.
02:15We get closer to launch.
02:16But is there one surprising thing that you would like people to know that maybe they're not going to get
02:22from your NASA bio?
02:23And is there a secret Easter egg in this mission that, you know, people might be surprised to look for
02:29or that they should be looking for on the flight?
02:33I will just say yes to the second one.
02:35So let's see.
02:36But my crew loves Easter eggs.
02:37There are some Easter eggs in our patches.
02:39Some of the folks online have already discovered that the Earth in this is the Apollo 8 Earthrise cloud formation.
02:46So some astute folks have picked up on that on the Internet, which I really love.
02:49I love that people actually recognize that.
02:51It was very intentional that we put that on there.
02:54I think when people – I try very hard in my professional career to remind people that we are humans.
03:03We are not these exceptional beings.
03:06We are sometimes careless.
03:08We're sometimes foolish.
03:09We sometimes make the wrong decision.
03:11When it comes to the end of the day, we try to execute with absolute professionalism and excellence.
03:16Like that is what we are aiming for.
03:18And I'm seeing my crew get to that point.
03:20And it takes work.
03:21But we're humans.
03:23I mean, like just come sit down and talk to me.
03:24Have a cup of coffee with me.
03:25Like hopefully I can make you laugh and hopefully you can make me laugh.
03:28And we are very much more alike than people would understand.
03:32And I think that comes from my military service, from being in the Navy and traveling the world on aircraft
03:37carriers.
03:38I think some people think that the flying was the best part or defending the country was the best part.
03:43But for me, honestly, the best part was pulling into these various ports in the Middle East, in Europe, in
03:49Japan, in Australia.
03:50And when you go out and meet these people that you think were your enemies or you think you're in
03:55conflict with, if you meet them in their environment and you meet them as human beings, maybe with their family,
04:01you realize we all are the same.
04:03We're all fighting for the same thing.
04:04We really all just we love each other.
04:06We love our families.
04:07We love our friends.
04:08That is what it is to be a human.
04:10And so the more that I have worked around the planet, the more I realize like this is us.
04:15This is who we are.
04:15I'm just curious.
04:17So you will be at the moon.
04:18You'll have this precious few hours as you circle around.
04:22And I'm just I'm wondering what if there's one thing you want to make sure that you either see or
04:28that you register in that moment that you've been preparing for to to try to really make the most of
04:33like those precious moments as you circle the moon to get the most possible.
04:38Yeah, as an astronaut, we are rehearsing this, right?
04:40We we have procedures and we have roles and we're swapping roles and we have all of our products there
04:46that we need to get done.
04:47We have this amazing lunar observation program that the science team has made us to show us a look at
04:53Jackson crater now.
04:54But don't forget in three hours, you're going to look at Jackson crater again because the sun angle illumination will
04:58be totally different.
04:59We want to see what this is like from all these different angles because we don't get to see that
05:03with MRO.
05:04We don't get to see that with other observation platforms.
05:06So that is a well oiled machine, but I'm a human.
05:09And so there's really two things that I have found very profound, which is we did a simulation the other
05:15day and Earthrise occurred in that simulation.
05:17And it doesn't look quite like Apollo 8 because they cropped and zoomed in that picture.
05:21But the Earth is small.
05:23The Earth is really small and it's really gorgeous.
05:25And so just being able to process that from the human side, you can hear it in the Apollo 8
05:31transcription of their audio or if you listen to their audio that we've recorded, you can tell that was fascinating
05:36and unexpected to them.
05:37So I can't wait to feel that.
05:39But then the other thing, when I stand on the surface of Earth now and I look at the moon
05:43at night and I might see a waxing gibbous, but I know now on the far side that's a waning
05:48crescent.
05:48And just understanding that it's going to be, I'm flipping my brain around to all of those things and just
05:57understanding that.
05:58I've never spent time in my entire life thinking about that, but now it's the, I cannot see it now.
06:03It's all I think about.
06:04And then when I, when I think about that and I think about what is the illumine on the far
06:07side right now, is Oriental in shadow?
06:10Is it, is it in illumination?
06:12What are the shadows doing coming off the ridges of those canyons in Oriental?
06:16And then I think about Jackson and Ohm and I think about Tsiolkowski and Moskowiansk and all these places that
06:21we've learned.
06:22And I'm just imagining it.
06:23Every time I look up the moon, I'm imagining what do they look like on the far side.
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