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  • 4 hours ago
What does it take to prepare for a mission to the Moon when you might have to fill any role? Backup astronaut Bob Hines shares insights into the evolving and highly complex training program for Artemis 3, the collaboration with SpaceX and Blue Origin, and the mindset required for the historic lunar mission.
Transcript
00:00The intent is that I can substitute in for anybody if they drop out at any time.
00:05So as you can imagine, that's a lot of things to cover and will require, I think, a lot from
00:12our trainers
00:12to make sure that I'm up to speed on the things that I need to be up to speed on.
00:17We're really looking at it as a crew of five and making sure that everybody's ready to go come launch.
00:24The objectives for this mission are so much more complex,
00:26and I think, therefore, the training is going to be that much more complex.
00:30What is going to be involved with the training for both the lunar landers,
00:35in addition to Orion, that differs from the mission that we just came off of?
00:40Well, I mean, it's much more integrated, right?
00:43Rather than just the Orion spacecraft team,
00:45it is going to be an integrated effort between our commercial partners of SpaceX and Blue Origin,
00:51in addition to the NASA team in mission control and the Orion team.
00:57So the training will likewise involve all of those partners in a fully integrated effort.
01:03And so we have an amazing team here at NASA that, you know,
01:07we have a chief training officer that will kind of set up that training for us
01:11to make sure that we know what we need to moving forward.
01:14But then the other piece of this is we are leveraging the skill sets of this crew.
01:19We've got Luca and Comrade as our test pilots.
01:24And that is, you know, one thing we talk about as test pilots is being comfortable being uncomfortable.
01:29And these are all developmental programs.
01:32And so some of the training happens during the development as you go.
01:35And so we'll certainly be leveraging that in this compressed timeline that we have for Artemis III.
01:39How do you see the training with the HLS systems evolving as the designs for both of those become more
01:47solidified?
01:48That's a great question.
01:49And I think that's part of the exciting part of this as we work with our commercial partners.
01:54We're watching the designs mature.
01:57And as those mature, us in partnership with the chief training officers
02:01and then the training teams at Blue Origin and SpaceX, respectively, will develop that training plan.
02:08We certainly gain really good experience from being in space.
02:11We gain a lot of experience from our training.
02:14The training is where we get all the different failure modes thrown at us.
02:18And we build those skill sets.
02:20We really learn a lot about vehicles.
02:22And we learn about how we should do our training and all that type of thing.
02:25The adage is that we preach in flight tests is the building block approach.
02:28We can refine those simulators to help us when it comes to the next step, which is docking with a
02:35vehicle.
02:35And that's the part that will be leveraged here.
02:38Those are real challenges.
02:39And so being able to test that stuff out in Earth orbit will really buy down risk for us
02:43once we get to Artemis 4, 5, and beyond.
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