#287 Butch Wilmore - He Was Stranded in Space for 286 Days

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Start to dance and test on how to tune in an oral promonat of Shopify.de/recorder. But you're well more. Yes, sir. Welcome to the show, man. I pledge it to be here.

Thank you so much, John. You're welcome. It's an honor to have here. The whole team is looking forward to this one. A hundred be here.

Four hundred and sixty-four days in space. Yes, sir. One plan to be that long, but here we are. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, I'll show it. It's a privilege to serve your nation. You know that. Whatever capacity it is. And things, you know, I got extended on deployments.

I'm sure you did as well. And even through that, you know, it's a privilege. That's really the baseline. That's the foundation. And so when things don't go as planned and you're continuing to serve,

even if it takes a couple of extra days, weeks or months. I mean, in the big scheme of things, it's a privilege.

“And I said that four times now because that's what it is.”

And that's really worth, you know, the stark conversation.

Where it all stems from is that that's why I first joined the Navy.

I felt that patriotic tug of my part from my country. And I really, really wanted to do that and the Lord allowed it. And here we are 40 years later. And again, like I say, it's been a privilege. Well, so you were a test pilot.

You've been to space. I'm just curious. What do you like flying better? You're like, or where do you like flying better? Are you like flying on earth?

That's a great honor. That's a great honor. Maybe that's a great question. So within the atmosphere outside of it. So for all of our fellow Americans that have served our nation in the military,

NASA has its high highs. It certainly does. There's no doubt about it, right? I'm grateful for every moment. All the 25 years I've spent with NASA.

But if I could live one life, and I could be a naval aviator operating off aircraft carriers, or I could be an astronaut. What would I choose? There is nothing like operating from and training

for the point out of the spear on the aircraft carrier and all that's associated with that. Today, today, my personal level of job satisfaction is higher when I was a fleet aviator. Not to say anything negative about NASA.

That's, I don't mean that at all. But if I got one life to live, I'm going to serve my country in the Navy, fly an aircraft of carriers. Why?

Because I imagine it's a major rush to matter. Well, it's not the rush. You know, I joined the Navy. The reason I joined because I had the patriotic tug. I'd grown up in this country, grew up in Tennessee.

I went to state schools. And as I near the end of my college years, what am I going to do? I mean, I was electrical engineering major. I'm not going to go into design circuits.

That would have been fantastic. But I had that patriotic tug. Do my part. And at that time, of course, I didn't know what that would entail.

And in my mind's eye,

“I thought maybe the best way I could use this harder”

and degree I had was to maybe fly. And it wasn't easy. Life is tough. Every fades of life is tough. It wouldn't take me necessarily, but perseverance continued

to go forward. And finally, I warmed down at whatever you would say. And they took me.

And the journey has been amazing.

And if it had ended in the Navy alone, known what I know now, it would have been more than thrilling, more than satisfying. So, doing your part for your country,

potentially going to harm's way, which you're familiar with, is there's nothing better from a patriotic tug. And that's one of the things I respect the most about individuals that I know.

There's a handful of individuals that I would say are great Americans. And that I've known personally. And I respect those individuals as much or more than I have anyone in my entire existence.

“I think you've heard I'm a man of faith.”

And Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. And from that respect, my Lord is everything. I can't separate that who I am from what I do. But as far as the world goes and the issues that take place in our lives,

if I were to just look and say, these are the people that I respect the most. Some of the guys, Andrew Lewis, Woody, Lewis, and others, great Americans who have had the privilege of serving with and watching them.

Watching them honor their families, their wives, their children.

I got the greatest respect for those individuals

than anybody I've ever met. Right on, man. Right on. Ready for an intro? Ready.

But you will more. A recently retired NASA astronaut and retired U.S. Navy captain. A combat naval aviator and test pilot with over 8,000 flight hours

and 663 carrier landings. One of the rare astronauts

“to have flown in five different spacecraft.”

Space shuttle, Soyuz International Space Station, Starliner and Crew Dragon. A total of 464 consecutive days spent in space, 286 of those days came unexpectedly and are the subject of your new book,

stuck in space, and astronauts hope through the unexpected. A husband, a father, and most importantly, a Christian. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

But before we get too far into the interview here,

I got a couple of things we got a crank out of here. Let's do it. That's all right. We've got a Patreon account. It's a subscription account that we've turned into

one hell of a community, and so they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. Okay. This is from Scott R.

You've flown combat missions, tested advanced aircraft, and commanded spacecraft. What aspects of leadership turned out to be the same in all of those environments,

and what had to be completely different in space? Leadership and all of those environments are predicated in that I am not the expert, and I know that in each of those situations. In leadership entails,

circling yourself with individuals that can do various jobs and various requirements, that I'm not gifted enough to do, and empowering them to do their job well, without micromanaging.

I hate being micromanaged. We've all had leaders that do that, and I will not micromanage someone. I will try to challenge them to do better if they're not doing well,

but micromanaging no. And if they can't perform the job, you get somebody else.

“I think we live in an age where we don't do those type of things.”

It's not to say bad on you. It's to say this is not where you're gifted. Let's find a place where you're gifted. Let's get somebody's gifted here. And I think in all those different areas,

that's the common denominator. Regardless of what you're doing, I'm not the expert. I can't do it all. Surround yourself with the right people to good people,

and going forward,

because what's most important?

The mission. This whole thing about Starliner, my focus from day one was Mission Mission Mission Mission. A lot of different events are important, but the focus is the mission.

I can deal with a lot of events, but my focus needs to maintain on what's the most important thing. And that's all aspects of leadership. That's great advice. Thank you.

Thank you. Everybody gets a gift. Yeah. You probably would have come a lot more handy in the 464 days,

but I love the gummy bearer. How do you hate to never wreck? Fantastic. Fantastic. Can I give you a gift?

Absolutely. Yes. Let me give you a couple of minutes. These are all of the same kind of denominator. This is Fly Navy.

Oh, man, that's cool. I flew it in space. I have washed it. It has been launched. So it was with me on this last mission.

I wanted to have that. Thank you. This. I mean, you got to have the naval aviator of the astronaut pilot wind.

You can see I'm wearing them. This is naval aviator wings. And the center is the astronaut symbol. It's got a three three prongs swoosh with a star at the top and a circle around the center.

“And that's what designates it is a naval aviator pilot wings.”

And I haven't checked the exact number, but it's only in the order of 70 individuals that have had these wings in the history of human spaceflight. So I want to give you that. And this one.

Awesome. Well, this one, this next one is fairly special. That's not the next one. This one's got not special. Fluent space patch from starlighter.

I saw it on the back. Oh, man. This one, however, I think is the special one. But I want, I want you to have. Because of what, you know, you're back around your experience.

There are only a handful of items. Fluent space, all of those fluent space. There are only handful of items, however, that have touched the vacuum of space. And this is the American flag that I wore on my left shoulder,

on my last piece of paper. Just over a year ago. You know, the Lord's blessed me in many ways, Sean. And I have so many meaningful momentos. I have so many meaningful momentos over the course of 40 years of

sermonization. And these, this is very meaningful. And I want you to have a few moments in your experience.

I want you to have a few moments in your experience.

“I want you to have a few moments in your experience.”

And this is very meaningful. I mean, the chance to go on a space walk, and serve your country in that fashion. And the dangers that are potentially involved in those types of, you know, precarious situations could be.

This is special. It's, it's our nation, right? It's our American flag. It's our nation's flag. It represents resiliency over the course of decades.

And it means one of the most meaningful items in the flesh. I think that, for me anyway. And maybe men and many across this nation. This is one of those meaningful items that exists. And to wear this, have the honor of wearing this into the vacuum of space.

It's something that I cherish and always will.

I'm grateful for my Lord for giving me the opportunity. And so I only have a couple of these. But I wanted you to have this one. And from last year, like I said, January 30 last year, I was on a space walk.

This was with me.

“And because I'm honored for what you do for our nation, even in this role,”

and what you've done in the past. And so for you, sir, to have that. Nice, sir. Man, that is a, that's getting framed. That's getting framed.

And this, this has been in space, but it's a, Naval Aviator wings on the chest. It's a little astronaut, blue astronaut, and it's got a big bottom. So you know it's me. It's a book.

That's awesome. Thank you. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Very cool.

Yeah, this is like this. Yeah, that's, that's, yeah. I mean, I only have three. And now I have two, once from my two daughters, my daughters each get one. They don't, well, they know this now.

But I was going to give it to him when they graduate college. It's been, it's in a safe at home. Those two are. And that's the third one. So yeah, for you, my friend.

Thank you. Indeed, sir. That's amazing. Yeah. That is amazing.

Yeah.

“You know, something that, something that everybody kind of wanders is.”

What you guys, what you guys are carrying up there. And so, from outside people see space flight is rockets and launches. But they really understand the actual technology astronauts live inside of. Can you walk us through the most advanced space tech you personally relied on. Your suit on board systems and any gadgets or tools that are incredibly engineered.

But the public almost never hears about and explain how they actually function during a mission.

I'll give you a couple of quick examples. Perfect. Space shuttle launch. It's the first launch. 2009, number of 16, 2000, I was my first launch into space.

Launched on the Space shuttle land is there are literally hundreds of items that have to go right. Exactly right every time you launch. At the base of the force, the two solar rocket boosters, there are four bolts. They're 30 foot 30 inches long with big O nuts on top of them that are holding the space shuttle on the path. At the time of launch, there's power techniques that fire that take the nut on top of the bolt.

This huge nut and they break it in half. The bolt falls eight of these four on each solar rocket booster and then the rocket goes. That's one example of things that have to go right. If those solar rocket boosters fire 3.3 million pounds of thrust each 6.6 total, just from the solar rocket boosters, once they fire, if those bolts don't drop, you're taking part of the pad with you.

Wow. That could be a very bad day. So that's one example of one of hundreds of things that have to take place every time that you see a launch. Those type of items that are taking place.

The space suit itself, you know, I don't know the exact cost, but it's in the range of five to seven million dollars.

Of course, you've got to realize these are one man space capsules shaped like a person. They're all self-contained. It's got the air, the pressure, maintaining the pressure, CO2 removal system. We have water that circulates to keep us cool in the vacuum of space. The temperature is very plus or minus to several hundred degrees depending on if you're in the shade of the sun.

And so they're very, yeah, they're not cheap and they got to work. You can't be on the spacewalk. And we do train for failure scenarios where we have issues with our suit. And some of them are, okay, let's go inside. Let's make our way and get inside.

And some of them are abort. Let's go now. We got to get inside now. So that's part of that. And then, of course, the drill that we carry.

We got a drill on our hip. It's connected. We pull it off. It's about two million. Once it's got to work every time.

And of course, there's only a few of these, right? You don't, you don't make hundreds of these drills. There's only like 10. Or even, they're not even that many on space station. So they've got to work.

You don't want to get outside all the way to all the prep. Something else people don't realize. You, you start getting ready for a spacewalk. The very first thing you do.

So you've already worked a full day.

And you have it even opened the hatch yet. Yeah.

“Because you have to purge nitrogen out of your system.”

Just like if you were diving in the ocean. You have to be aware that, you know, possibility of bends in certain situations. So you've got to go through that whole process. Making sure all the procedures, the, everything's connected correctly. Doing sleek checks, all of that.

Anyway, that whole process takes about five hours before you even open the hatch. So a lot to go on with spacewalks and suits. And of course, as the crew on board. If you're, when I'm training, the suits show up. I climb in and off we go and the sit tools are set up.

When we train and do all that in this large pool. To try to simulate zero gravity. You can't fully do it because you're weighted in gravity's pulling it down inside the suit. But at least the suit can be neutrally buoyant in the pool. But it's all done for you.

But in space, there are, there are no texts. You are the tech. Yeah. So we're doing maintenance major. I mean, I've done what I would say is major surgery on some of these suits in space.

They weren't designed to be done in space. But because of certain failures in the suits before you take them out. You got to fix them. And so literally pulling out fan pump separators and doing all this major surgery on the suits. And you got to make sure you get it right because either you're getting in it or your buddies getting in it. And it's got to perform and you don't want something to fail in a suit that you've worked on, right?

So you got to get it right. And so the ground teams are all, you know, cameras on, making sure everything's done correctly. So this is not trivial business. Obviously, you're right. We sit back and we watch a launch and we go, woo, success. But there are thousands of individuals passionate about human spaceflight going deep in their level of knowledge.

You know, as a national out in your very broad and go deep where you can. But these individuals go deep in their level of knowledge in their various systems. And they passion to put in their all into it.

“And that's what makes spaceflight so wonderful because seemingly very few things happen.”

Where the public notices. And that's what we want it to be. But realize there are significant, significant issues, things, Engineering, all that going on behind the scenes to make all these things look easy. I would imagine. You get to keep your suit.

That'd be great. I mean, it's got to be.

Would you say three to five million dollars?

Yeah, five to seven million dollars. Five to seven million dollars. So it's going to be fitted to you, right? Well, we have ways to change the length of legs, the length of the arms that we, you know, so where they're not one size fits all.

So we have those capabilities plus their own space station. Well, it'd be great to keep a suit. I get to keep my flight suits, the blue flight suits that we fly T38s. Yeah, we get to keep those. But that's about the extent.

Not the helmet. No. Oh, man. Now my flight, my flight helmet. You know, my flight and that fly the T38 in.

“Yeah, I've got a couple of those from there.”

Oh, that I, you know, got over the years. One gets old, gets beat up a little bit and you get a new one. But those helmets now, those are, you know, that I'm told the gold visor that comes down. It helps to protect from ultraviolet radiation.

I'm told it has literal gold, you know, flakes in it. So they're not going to give. There's no 10 of what that, that one helmet costs. All right. Probably $700,000.

I'm guessing. Did you go to the bathroom and those things? I'm just curious. It's a great question. Yeah.

I'm, I'm one of those people. I got to pee every time I get nervous. So we got to wait none of helicopter to go on and off. I got to pee like twice. Of course.

Yeah. So that's, you, you wear your diaper. Yeah. Right up. Just go.

Yeah. That's part of the process. You know, before I launched every launch, including the starliner, you get to the top of the launch pair where you're about to walk into the spacecraft itself into the white room into those spacecraft.

I go to the restroom. There's a restroom right there.

I always go pull the space suit all the way down to my knees.

Go, you know, do my business because I've got the diaper on. And I know I'm going to use the diaper three times before I have a chance to take the space suit off anyway. So I'm as well going dry and prepare. Yeah.

That's part of it. Right on. Yeah. Let me tell you about my morning routine. I wake up.

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and you need to go to bobsnattrolls.com/SRS and use code shon for 20% off your order. Again, that's bobsnattrolls.com/SRS and use code shon for 20% off your order. Astronauts also train for off nominal landings. Water survival and wilderness survival in case a capsule comes down in a remote or hostile environment. What is that training actually look like?

And what are you realistically preparing for during those scenarios? You're realistic preparing to come down in cold weather. You're realistically preparing to come down in water. To come down in as an area where it's heat. Because you figure, you know, the space station,

explain this clearly. The space station is orbiting on an inclination from the equator at 51.6 degrees. So it's not orbiting around the equator. It's orbiting to plus 51 to minus 51.6 degrees as the earth spans underneath it. And the reason for that is you can't launch into a lower orbit lower than your latitude.

And the Russian launch site, which goes to space station, is just below 51.6. We fly to 51.6 because we don't want to overfly China.

“So the orbit is at 51.6 degrees going around, right?”

So you see a large portion of the planet as you're orbiting the planet because you're going plus or minus 51.6 degrees. Say the question real quick. Again, it makes sure I answer the right question. That was just, what are you realistically preparing for during those scenarios?

So since you're going that part of the planet, you're over water, you're over desert, you're over the Himalayas. And there are certain scenarios where you could come down anywhere. You're a plus or minus 51.6 degrees.

Now that's never happened, but it could in any number of failure scenarios

where you could, you don't know where you're coming down. You just got to burn, you got to burn now. You got to come down now. And let's hope you're coming down. We would try to target a landing site, something's close to recovery forces,

someplace, you know, certainly with a space shuttle, you didn't have options. You had to land on a runway. And we had certain runways around the globe where we targeted. Otherwise you'd be bailing out. So Soyuz, give you the example for Soyuz.

We did co-word the survival, because you could come down anywhere. But you're on launch. During launch, you have a failure, you abort, you could come down on a mountain, and you'll high altitude. So you got to be prepared for that.

And so we trained for that. You know, learn how to just standard survival. You've done it as well. How to survive off the land, make fire, and snow, and all of that. Water survival.

The capsule comes down in water. You know, they made us in the heat of summer. They made us swallow temperature sensors. So they could watch our body temperature remotely while we're inside this little bit of capsule.

So the capsule, the Soyuz capsule, the inner side diameter is less than seven feet.

I mean, I could reach over and touch the third person.

It's very, very small. And it's small, because the smaller the capsule, the smaller the thermal protection

“that you have to have when you return, the smaller the rocket.”

The bigger the capsule, the bigger the rocket has to be to launch it, more propellant, all of that. So the soy the Russians designed it well. Very small decent module with an extra habitation module on top, which goes away and doesn't come back to earth.

Only the little gum drop we call it. The gum drop comes back. And it's very small. So when you do our water survival, we have to take off our space suit, put on a survival suit to get in the water.

And you have to do that in this very close small capsule with no room. There's not enough room for three people, but they stuff three of them in there. And then now you've got to get into a position to change your clothes, and help each other change clothes. And it gets super, super hot.

So this is all part of the training processes for all spacecraft, whatever you're flying, cold weather, warm weather, hot weather, water survival, and it's just a part of the process. You got to know in all those scenarios. Yeah.

Did you bring anything with you to remind you of your family and anything like that? Any, any, any, I'm just curious. What did you bring with me? What I brought with me over the course of the three missions I flew.

you know, I don't watch typically watch movies in space unless I'm working out

and something to pass the time when I'm working on the treadmill. The things I try to do off the planet, the things that I can't do on the planet, try to focus on that. So I try to do things with intent.

“So, and when I think that I brought within intent,”

something I thought would be meaningful for my girls. You know, my daughters are the legacy that I will leave behind and instilling in them the truth of Jesus Christ. His Lord and Savior is paramount and other issues of life. Being responsible, being good patriotic, you know, good Americans.

Part of what I try to train them for. And as a part of that, a symbol of their dad that I wanted them to have is I flew a ring, a wings that I had shaped like a ring, naval astronaut, pilot wings, shaped like a ring. I flew one from my wife for my mom and my wife's mom

on the shuttle mission. And my mom is now gone. My wife's mom still was, and they were going to pass it to my two daughters, which they have, that they would have that. And then a pair of gold, normal size wings.

Again, they don't know they're getting these until they graduate college until this. And so, a pair of those gold, a flumin space, something that they would have to remember their dad, their mom, because, you know, yeah, their dad wears the wings, but their mom is a big part of it as I am.

Because, you know, the family is the wife's sacrifice. I mean, when I was in space, everything broke. Hurricane came through, I had a new roof and my wife handled it all. I dryer that I bought in 1989, chuck it along for 35 years.

Finally, said I'm done while I was in space.

So she's got to go through that whole process. So this, these wings represent what I do, but this is as much my wife involved as I am. So this is a moment or an emblem of their dad and their mom, service to the country that I hope they will cherish.

“And that's so, that's what I took with me for my family.”

That take a couple pictures sure. Yeah. But that's the really, the meaningful family. Yeah, that is really cool. Yeah.

That is really cool. And so, what would happen if you, what would happen if, I mean, you landed in Russia, China, some kind of a hostile environment, maybe, you know, somewhere in the G-Wad,

when I was going on. Yeah, they would, do you guys talk about that? The powers that they would try to get us immediately.

This is, of course, national significance.

This would be up to the highest levels in both the Russian government and our government and whatever other nation that was with us, you know, we have a collaboration of nations in the international space station program, many European nations and such. That would be involved at the highest levels immediately.

And, of course, the search would be on if that certain situation worked to occur. Because of the, you know, the visibility to all the geopolitical implications and all that, as you know, as you're aware. Yeah.

“There's a historical documentation that some Soviet cosmonauts”

carried firearms in their post-landing survival kit after, of course, landings and remote areas. Modern astronaut missions today do cruise carry any form of weapons or defensive tools in their survival kits, or as recovery technology made that unnecessary.

The weapons, yes, the Russians did fly pistols. Did they really? They did. For survival, siege scenarios where you would need them. But they don't anymore.

Yeah. And in aliens. No, it wasn't for aliens. No, it wasn't for aliens. But they cancel that before I flew the Soyuz.

Okay. So that was, that was done before I flew the Soyuz. I'm like, hey, man, we don't know where we're coming down. We might want one of those, but they're not, no, no, no. We don't do that anymore.

So, man. But yes, we did. They did. But not anymore. Well, we got you a little something.

Oh, my. So, yeah, I got a buddy over at sea. Snape Jason. And I told him you were coming. Yeah, yeah, hold it up.

Told him you were coming on. He wanted me to present you with one of these. Oh, my. So maybe the next time we go up. Oh, my.

Yeah, if I go up, I'll put this on the dock. That's, that's, that's, that kind of looks like a space gun. It's just a two, eleven GTO. A lazy. It's got a compensator on the front.

I'll have to read up on this one. New optics line nine. I can see that. Amazing. Maybe if it quits raining and we got time, we can break that damn thing in before he leave.

But thank you, Sean. And thank the person that you said that gets him for you. Thank you so much. I will. That's amazing.

Glad you like it. Oh, I love it. Love it. Thank you. My pleasure.

But, um, well, I want to get into the interview now and, um, and, um, do, do a bit of a life story on your soul.

Born and raised in God's country, which everybody, of course, knows is Tennessee.

A Mount Julie, Tennessee is where I grew up. And stable family. My parents thankfully took me to church because I was the most mischievous kid. I guess, uh, in the county, probably, maybe in the state. And I needed, I needed some stability.

And my church, the word of God actually provided that for that kid that really, really, really needed it.

“Um, so grateful for, you know, I think about back to my college coaches.”

I, you know, I wrote about them a little bit in the book. Not as much as I would like to have, but, uh, because they, they were trying to mold these kids into men. And the way that they went about that and some of the things they instilled, you know, that you'll see in the book, it says, you know, you got to want it. Whatever it is in life that you're striving to do, you got to want it because it's not going to be easy.

Life is tough. And I remember my coach Sam's, my ninth grade position coach. We're out there in the back, practicing football. They had built a new, new junior high.

And when they built interstate 40, they taken a lot of the top sore from the area as they built the interstate.

And so where we practiced football had no top sore. It was clay and rock and a whole lot of rock. And we called it the Tundra. And we'd go out on the Tundra and sweating and, you know, stinking together out there, hitting each other and doing what we do.

And in the heat of the late summer and I can still hear Coke Sims. You got to want it. You got to want it. And that little, that kid hearing that with my friends doing all this together made me want to want it. And I have carried that with me, that kind of mantra.

I mean, my Marine Tour grill instructor, get this. Gunner sergeant, type birdiest, carehard, and training,

“United States Marine Corps, what in the aim for a wooden instructor?”

I mean, how fortunate was I to have a drill instructor with that name? And he, you know, his nickname was, we found this out, was the evil one. And oh, my, he was not evil. He was tough.

And he instilled discipline in me that I didn't even realize I had.

And took me places physically and mentally and emotionally that I didn't know I could go. And, you know, I think he's gone. I've looked him up on the internet. And I think he passed away a couple of decades ago. But his family doesn't know what he did for this guy in those 14 weeks that I was there.

And just the, the grit determination that just that, that he displayed that gave me that motivation to do it as well. And so those type of things, events, and I can name others as well. You know, we're growing up in Tennessee here, and instilling in that young kid and growing up and eventually into college here in the State School of Tennessee Tech. Imagine electrical engineering, played football at the, at the school. And those are, that was not easy as well.

I mean, it's, you know, football is a, college football is a full-time job. And electrical engineering is a full-time job. And you only got one day, and I was not able to do them both. But by God's grace, he gave me the, the determination. You know, the playing football, I'll share this with you.

I mean, you see me, I'm small. I was slow. And I was weak. Small, slow and weak is not a great combination of football. No, it's not.

It's not at all. But what the good Lord gave me and immense amount of is determination. I mean, over the top of them. And so, and, and I think part of that, he, he didn't just give it to me. He showed it to me as I was growing up through those coaches that I mentioned.

You got to want it. Those type of things, my parents, challenging me, growing up. My, my Sunday school teachers challenging me, growing up. You got to want it. And that kind of set the, the, the course and develop that level of determination that continue to grow.

“And so, that's why I was able to play football in college, small, so and weak.”

Determined to do so. Imagined and electrical engineering, determined to do so. Because, again, the Lord is the one that provides all of that. And it set the foundation. I talked a lot about foundation, set the foundation for the rest of my life.

Going forward from there. And some of that, I tried to, I tried to display in the book as well. You're trying to, you know, be encouraging to people. In life and the challenges and tough times and tough situations that come. Right on.

Right on. What, what, what age did you start going to church? From, from the beginning. From the very beginning. My earliest recollection of life.

Was at my church in the sunny square room. It was, are you serious? It was a Sunday, I can remember. It was a Sunday night. We were at church.

I was in the. C B's or whatever they called us. I don't remember exactly. I might have been three or four years old. And root off the Reynolds reindeer was on TV.

That is my earliest memory. In church. Yeah, in church. Yeah. Thank the one.

I needed, like I said, Ms. Chevious kid, I needed that foundation. I did. That godly foundation. I thought that thought when you were talking early.

I thought you meant that they, you went to church because you were.

No, my parents loved Jesus.

They loved the Lord. Hard.

“My mom when she passed the most content person I've ever seen.”

She had brain cancer. We didn't know what she didn't either. And she, the Lord took her quickly. Thankfully. But when she left, she was content.

She knew her Lord. She knew her savior. Her only concern was that her grandchildren and her grandchildren. If this brain cancer thing was her editor. I don't know what she cared about me.

My brother Jack so much on that. But her grandchildren, she did. She did. And that's, that's comforting to me. To see the life that she lived, knowing Christ is Lord.

Her sins are forgiven. Eternal hope.

You know, we did with this book.

And I talked about the book. Preparation preparation preparation. You know, God doesn't, let go and let God. As a mantra I've heard that I don't see in Scripture. The Lord is sovereign.

He's in control. But he also, we have requirements. And our part of the, of the, the deal is well preparing for all. That's why I'm for starliner. I mean, I spent hundreds of 1,000 hours in the simulator.

Preparing for things that I didn't know what would happen. And that's kind of the, what's been instilled in me from those early years on is preparation preparation preparation. Because life's coming.

“So I think there's two things about the book.”

I think encouraging, I hope it's encouraging. And the now dealing with life and the preparation required that goes into that. And I hope that it points you to what truly matters is the everlasting eternal hope. That comes only in Jesus Christ our Lord. Because we got to deal with the now.

But we're, we're going to exist forever. And in, in, in one form of the other one place the other. And Jesus Christ came here to this planet with the purpose of dying, incurring the wrath of Almighty God that we deserve for our sins so that we would not have to. And embracing that truth is what I pray this book will do.

Dealing with the now, encouraged for the now preparing for the now. But also, focus on what, what is to come. And that is now as well embracing Christ's Lord. I'm curious, did your faith change in any way when you reached space? I did not need to go to space to learn anything about my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The word, his word, the Bible is sufficient. I didn't need it. Did it change? I wouldn't say it changed. But certainly it brought in my exposure to this Almighty God that we served.

His created power.

“And I looked down at the planet and I see, as a 45/18, this is the planet he designed and created to be inhabited.”

And you can see the life and the colors and the variety as you circle between 51 and +51 and +51.6 degrees latitude in the earth's going by below you. You can see it. And that does give you a specific appreciation that I wouldn't have had otherwise. But did I need it? I didn't need it.

Am I grateful for? Absolutely. Absolutely. Right on. Yeah.

Right on. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So we've got you into aviation.

But both electrical engineering and then aviation, that patriotic tug, do my part from my country. How can I best do that? Going to the nuclear program? I had my mind's eye. I saw a jet.

And I thought maybe doing that. I didn't know what the jet was. I didn't understand military. I didn't know a lot about it. But in my mind's eye there was a jet.

Turns out the jet once I gained a little knowledge was an F-16 in my mind's eye. That's Air Force. I didn't go Air Force. I have flown an F-16. I'm grateful for that too.

But the challenge of landing aircraft on ships on boats. That's something I thought, wow. And maybe eventually I could use this really hard-earned technical degree that I've had and use it in some fashion in the future. And maybe aviation's the way to do that.

So that's really what it was. I had never flown. I hadn't done taking any flight lessons. None of that. I'd flown once or twice in an airliner at the time.

Wow. But just, you know, again, prayerful that the Lord would lead me. You know, there's a couple of things I was a goal center, like many as a young man. As things that I wanted to do in experience.

But I always, because the Lord, the, you know, my parents,

God's word had given me a good solid foundation there too. I always wanted to Lord for my Lord whatever it was. With those goals in mind. And so prayerful and, and it was, I'd tell you, Sean, it wasn't easy. Yes, I wound up flying jet aircraft off aircraft carriers.

But there was stumbling block after stumbling block after stumbling block. That the Navy wouldn't take me. I had reconstructed knee surgery from a football injury. My freshman year in college.

And then they finally said, after I kept pushing back,

like they finally said, okay, we'll take you. And then the paperwork went down to Naval. Aviation, medical institute, Nami, and Pensacola. When they called us the Nami, Nami, Nami. They got the paperwork.

They wham in me. They said, nope, this qualified. I came back again. Back and forth. And so it took almost two years to finally get, even my eyes.

I had 2010 vision. And they came back and said, you're disqualified because you don't have 2020. What I know now, there was, I know. What I know now is that there was some, you know, an administrative person in the Navy is called a Yemen. There was some Yemen that's looking at the qualifications.

“It says 2020, you have to have 2020 vision.”

This guy doesn't have it. Therefore, he's disqualified. I know that now. I didn't know that at the time. I'm like, how can you have better than 2020 vision and be disqualified?

So I petitioned back again. Again, this is what back and forth. Finally, they said, go to an automatorist in your, in your local area. I was in school at Cookville. I went to the local automatorist.

And I said, hey, I need the paperwork. It says I'm 2020. He said, no, no, no, no. You're 2010. I'm like, I don't care.

Please put 2020 on the paper. Make the Navy happy. And he did. And so the Navy took me. So anyway, every step of life is like that for me and this life.

And so that, you know, looking back, I'm grateful.

“You know, James tells us and kind of, you know, can't all joke.”

When you come through trials and tribulations. Because it's growing us and it's good for us. You know, iron sharpens iron. You don't get that unless you touch each other. You know, metal, how do we make metal stronger?

We burn it. We burn it. Cool it, burn it. That's, that makes you stronger. So in this life, I'm grateful looking back.

At the time, I didn't know. I was, you know, struggling. You know, my faith, my understanding of things was not what it is today. But looking back, I'm grateful that it was difficult to get in the Navy. And every, like I said, every phase of everything I've ever done has been just the same.

And I'm sure that I'm not unique that other people experience the same. Yeah. I think a lot of people do. Yeah. So why did you pick the Navy?

Landing the challenge of land airplanes on boats, ultimately.

“So before you even knew what any of the stuff was, you just wanted to tell you the position”

of aircraft. So I talked, I did talk to the Air Force. I talked to Navy recruiter, Lieutenant goddess. Oh, you're great. We want you to come on.

Come on. Well, Navy love to have you come on. I talked to an Air Force recruiter. I don't remember his name. He's like, the Air Force only takes the best in the brightest.

And I'm like, that probably ain't me. We're going there. Oh, shit. So many factors again, the Lord staring me down up the path that I was to go. And Navy was there.

Well, where did you want to go on? I went to initially, Aviation Officer, Canada School in Penn School of Florida. Gunnery Sergeant, Tiberdius, Gerhard, Ninth States Marine Corps.

And well, I can, again, I keep a limb back to the book because there's several amazing stories

about him. And I even referred back to him even when I was in Starliner. Things that he had instilled in me. One thing he, it's in the book, too. But he's killing us one day.

We're out on right next to the bay on this flat asphalt area. And we're messing up marching. Just not doing well. And he sits us down and points us towards the bay with his back to the bay. And he starts.

He lectures us for 30 minutes. Well, the benefit of being disciplined, of focusing on what the task is. He said, the things you are hearing from me now may save your life in the future. And he was not right about once. He was right about multiple times.

It's saved my life in the future. Things that he was instilling me then. The whole time he's talking, there are dolphins in the bay. Spending dolphins jumping and spinning behind him while he's talking. I couldn't have written a movie scene better than this.

This man giving his all to these group of knuckleheads, maybe in one of them, instilling in things that a mindset that would benefit them for the rest of their lives. If they would listen, he hadn't seen those dolphins. You know, we don't, we're not looking anything but what we're doing while we're marching. He had to have seen them, sat us down facing them and gave us that gift.

You know, the evil one, he was tough.

But he obviously had a little soft side because he gave us that lecture while seeing this amazing,

of course, of God's creation, spinning behind him. You know, this is Lord's Providence. Wow. And I'm grateful for that man. I'm grateful for that system.

And now, flow on has been a fit to my family. Wow. What did you end up flying? Well, that's another story. You keep asking the right question.

You've done this before, haven't. I go through flight school. I did really well. The Lord gave me the ability to fly.

“Well, I'd number one of my class in all three phases, primary,”

intermediate, jet, advanced jet, and matter of fact accelerated. And got congratulated with some individuals that didn't start with me. So when I got to the point of winning, there was a guy very talented aviator. He had done, had 2,000 hours coming in the Navy.

And he had done very well in primary flight school. But my grades and intermediate and advanced jet were better than his. Though he did very, very well. Like I said, very talented. So when it came to the point of being at the end,

we, they give all those grades, put them all together from all phases of flight, give your aggregate score. His was, I think, 1. higher than mine.

Therefore, only the first person gets their choice.

He got his choice. And I got an airplane that I did not even have on my list. I was assigned to the A7 E Corsair II. Single set, a tag, single seat, a tag aircraft. It was, eventually, you know, when new, it was being phased out.

But that was my assignment. And I was, I was bombed because I had given my all in flight school and done, done well. And then I get a jet that's going out of, out of commission.

“And they didn't have a point in nose, had around nose.”

And it was, it was a bummer. Yeah. I was just being honest. It was a bummer. Again, life stuff.

I didn't have a choice though. In matter of fact, the commanding officer of the A4 squad, pulled me into his office, which he wouldn't have done otherwise. They make the announcement of what you're flying in a group. Group setting.

He pulled me into his office and told me ahead of time. And said, I even went and talked to the admiral to try to get them to change this. And they would. Why would they put you on a fucking, I was number two. I was number one.

Quality spread. It was the lead. They're decommissioning it. What? But they had needs to put new fleet aviators into various airframes.

And that was one of them. But Sean, the story continues. I was distraught.

I finally get out to Lamor, California, and ask Lamor.

I checked into VA122.

“And it was the best thing that could happen to me.”

That airplane flying it. The people, the single seat guys. What was became vice admiral. Woody Lewis. Guys I met in that community.

Great Americans. It was the best thing that could happen. I loved flying the A7. I mean, loved it. 60, 70% of our training was down in the weeds.

I mean, low altitude. Oh, man. And it was fabulous. I had no idea. I didn't know what I didn't know.

And that's a recurring thing in my life as well. I didn't know that I didn't know.

But when I got there, these guys were amazing.

They're telling their single seat stories. And oh, in those first two deployments on desert storm. I was in the A7 during desert storm. Okay. Yeah, flew that.

And only two squadrons left in the Navy off the USS Kennedy. And we were flying combat in the A7. It was thrilling. Again, not knowing what I didn't know. The Lord, you know, he's directing our paths.

It says, "A man plans his way, but the Lord directs his paths." That's what Proverbs does. And it is true. I am so grateful that I got A7s and did not get anything on my list as it turned out. It was fantastic.

What's the point of the A7? It's a light attack. They visual bomber. We bombed at night, too. We didn't have night vision goggles.

That wasn't a capability, but it was the first aircraft with a heads-up display. So we had a HUD, a bombing symbology, all of that in the heads-up display. And it was, it was thrilling. It was great to fly aboard the ship, or the ship, challenging to fly aboard the ship.

It had an engine that, a little bit of a slower spool-up time. So it wasn't instantaneous as far as adding power when you needed it. Amazing. Really? Love it.

Why were you flying so low? Well, we're flying low because you might be down there. That was part of the training. So we had certain deliveries that were classified with certain capabilities that were classified that we needed to be down in the way.

It's not detected. And so that was a big part of the training because of that. Classified missions with classified weapons. Trying to maintain without being detected. Yeah.

Yeah. In these deliveries, I do talk about one of the deliveries in the book.

Fly over target. Let's hear it. Fly over target. Low altitude. Designate.

As you fly right over your target.

So your system tightens up. You know, the onboard and National Navigation System. Start a pull to the vertical. About 125, 135 degrees. No, it's high.

The bomb comes off. It goes up. And you continue your pull. It goes up. 30,000 feet.

Don't know. Turns around comes straight down. And one of my hits was 20 feet. Whoa. From that.

Oh, we call it over the shoulder delivery. 20 feet. The tightness of the system.

“Maintaining right on the exact, you know, symbology that you have to fly.”

Releasing the bomb comes off. You know, just keep your thumb on the pickle. You know, the thumb on your your pit. You're going to say the pickle. I say that like you know what I'm talking about.

People know what I'm talking about. There's the the designate button where you the bomb comes off. Mm-hmm. The bomb will come off until the system says release in this mode. So you keep your thumb on it.

You pull right up the line. Stay on the line. Exactly on the line. The system calculates when the bomb should come off to impact the target. And I got a 20 foot here once over the shoulder.

Bomb going up the, I don't know, 30,000 feet. Way up there. As you continue, then you go back that low off to your egress. Thrilling. Sean thrilling.

Absolutely thrilling. What did your bomb? Well, what we're just hitting the target here. We're just we have a target out in the. No, this is a desert of El Centro.

El Centro California. Loon lobby targets that we're out to.

“I'm sure they even have those targets anymore.”

This is a long time ago. Well, we're the targets. Conarchs boxes or they just have you. Yeah, they put it sometime they put a tank out there. You know, they got triangulation where they can give you the hits.

The bomb is just a little blue training bombs. Okay. And then when the bomb impacts, it blows a white smoke out the tail. Yeah, it impacts the ground. Now, we also train with some live weapons as well.

But yeah, different different different cases, different scenarios.

I never launched a live weapon over the shoulder.

But somehow, you know, because that's part of the training process. I just didn't, you know, they're divvy down. These good deal actually drive live live weapons. I never got one over the shoulder, but I got live weapons in many different scenarios. Obviously in combat as well.

So let's talk about taking off and landing on a carrier. I've never, I've never even been on a carrier. Really? Ah, never even been on one. We need to get you a trip out to one even for a day.

Right on. Okay. So the aircraft carrier flight deck, one of the most dangerous places on the surface of this planet. Really? You got jet aircraft that are taxing, turning, exhaust going into afterburner.

Jet black defectors coming up to deflect the jet blast. Wires, you know, the cables on the landing cables are getting pulled out. Sometimes in the history, the story, I never, I never saw the video. But I heard there was a video from like way back in 1940's. Desert, I'm sorry.

World War II timeframe. Where, maybe it was a little after that. And aircraft hooked down, hits the cable, the cable snaps. And of course, it's whipping across the flight deck, the cable with high energy because it snapped with this high energy imparted into it.

And one of the chiefs is grabbing his belt and starts pulling it off as he's jumping over the cable because he knows it's probably going to impact some people's legs. And maybe he'll need to have a turn ticket. And he's getting a turn ticket ready in his hand. No way.

Jump up over the top. Turn you get in hand. Starts running to somebody that was impacted by the cable.

I never saw a cable snap.

Never snapped while I was on board. But I have heard of it happening. And like I said, the energy of a jet aircraft landing imparted into a cable that snaps. That energy, I mean, that thing is whipping at very high speed. So anyway, I heard about that video never saw it.

I do have videos of cold catapults where the catapult is doesn't give you the inspeed that you need and it's called a cold cat. So the aircraft settles off. The pilot in this case pulled the nose up too high. It was an A6.

Didn't have flying speed. Try to jettison his external fuel tank. Leave some weight. And maybe could keep flying couldn't eject it. And I don't think one of them didn't survive.

Oh man. But so those these type of things. It's just part of the environment. It's part of it. It's a dangerous, dangerous place.

And so landing on aircraft care. It's challenging. That's one of the things in life.

“I think a lot of people appreciate that there are challenges in life.”

Maybe in one of them. And landing on that's one of the things I dreamed about doing. When I decided to join a military landing on aircraft carriers. And then at night. Oh my.

We talk about the challenge wrapping up. You think about seeing here right now. You're looking at me. But your peripheral vision sees everything off the side, right? And in daytime, you can see the ground coming up.

You can see, you know, if you get a little angle of bang, you can see that peripherally. And your brain is processing all that. And you're making corrections all the way down the glide slope.

If there's a four, four wires out, they're targeting the three wire.

Most likely in most scenarios. And they all do this with how they roll the visual landing aid system, the Fresnel Lands, which is what you're looking at. Looking at line up out of your peripheral vision. That's daytime.

Not easy. But that's what you do. You get accustomed to it. Night time. Turn all these lights out.

The peripheral vision is gone. You're just got the ball. We call it the ball. The visual landing aid system. It's a amber lights.

It's mirrors that have an amber light in the center. And it's got green lights. It's called the date of the side.

“And you want to keep that amber ball in the center of those green lights, right?”

Okay. So you go a little high. You take a little power off. Get it. You go low.

If you go too low. It's red. You don't want to live. There's no life.

The term is those green lights.

There's no life below the datum. That's bad. You don't want to be low. You certainly want to be real low. Red.

Because that's hit the back end of the carrier. You're dead. Yeah. You don't want to do that. So at night, you don't have the peripheral cues.

It's all visual on the landing aid system. And then there's also. There's lights that go right down the middle of the air. And there are drop lights that drop off the back end of the carrier. So if you're online up, that's a straight line.

You get offline up. What do you see? You see an angle. Right? So you can out of your peripheral vision.

You're looking to make sure you stay. Keep those lights straight. If you get off angle, you see the angle. And the lights, you know, you're not on center line. And you're correcting back.

And doing all that without peripheral cues, it's very challenging. At night. And especially, you got a little moon. You got a little peripheral cues. You got no moon.

You got overcast. It's challenging. Oh, I'm just curious.

“How much smaller is a carrier runway than what you're used to?”

Yeah. On the ground. I'm just trying to get. Yeah, you get like 300 feet. Roll out.

You touch down. Boom. 300 feet. It stops you. So when you touch down an aircraft carrier, you go full power.

Every single time. Because if you're. You could have a hook skip. Skip the wires. You want to have full power on the jet.

So you take off. Even when you land, you could land pass the wires. Full power. So you go full power. The wire grabs you.

You hold full power until the yellow shirt runs out and says throttle back. Throttle back. Throttle back. And then you pull power. If you were to pull power early or pull power when you touch down,

that's called a cut pass. And every pass is graded. Different scoring. A cut passes a zero in the grading scheme. And I don't know anyone.

Maybe it's happened. But I'm not familiar with anyone. That has had two cut passes in a career. That continue to fly around the aircraft here. It's that big of deal.

Wow. You have to be ready. Power on. And if you're that guy that. You know, the the brain fart issue and you pull back.

Instead of adding the power, we can't have that. Man. Yeah. How long. So 300 feet.

How long is the rough typical run line? I would say the the landing distance is probably. You know, and we could look it up. It's probably 600 feet of distance. But the distance from where you touch down until you stop.

3 350 feet. Yeah. It's it's not it's not even quite the length of a football field. So yeah, you're forwarding your straps. Which you grab the wire full power.

Um. No more normal landing and F 18. How short could you stop landing stop. It depends on your feel weight. How much fuel you have.

You could probably do it. And maybe 2000 less than 2000 feet. But our runways are 7,000. Plus. Holy.

Yeah, like an 38, which I flew the last 25 years with NASA. We're not allowed to go a run to a runway less than 7,000 feet. Yeah. So the difference. Yeah.

And the carer landing in a normal low very different. Wow. Very different. That's that's 300 feet. Yeah.

Roughly. Yeah. And that's what difference. That's such a part.

I mean, this is, you know, there's always that, the Air Force.

You know, controlling if you will with the Air Force. You know. You've got long runways to land on. Yeah. It's easy.

We do that too. But they can't do what we do as far as landing on a carer. Damn. Do all Naval Aviators do that. What's that?

“Do all Naval Aviators do all Naval Aviators have to land on carers?”

No. No, it's just yet. Yeah. No, it's also some propellers. There's the E2 Hawkeye.

The dome's got the dome on top of it. It's a propeller airplane. And it lands on carers. There's a carry on delivery systems that used to be a C3. I think it was called the Cod.

A big fat looking plane that landed aboard the aircraft carer. But there are also, that's the thing about initialing flight school. The number one guy gets his choice.

one because the Navy called it a spread from that first primary timing.

“They will send you to propellers or the send you to helicopters.”

Based on the needs of the Navy. The only one that's guaranteed the jets is that number one guy. So you don't even know if you're going to helicopter. No. I joined the Navy wanting to fly.

You know, 20, 20 knows aircraft, all aircraft carriers. But even that first phase of training dictates whether or not that would happen. And it's not to say that if you're number 10 in the class, the graduating class that you wouldn't get jets. But you're not guaranteed it unless you're the number one guy.

Wow. That's the only one guaranteed it. Wow. Yeah. Did you fly anything else during your time?

So yeah, flew F-18s mostly. I flew more than the A7. F-18 another goodness. Amazing. F-18 you air to air mode.

Select it on the throttles and the stick. Air to air mode. Fight your way in. Switch to air. Switch to air.

Pardon? It's single seed. F-18 seed. Fight your way in. Air to air.

Switch to air to ground mode. Bombs on target on time. Pull off target. Fight your way out. Air to air mode.

“That's why, you know, earlier I said that if I had one life to live,”

I'd, NASA, astronaut, it has high highs. But if I can only do one, knowing what I know now, I'd be able to live here in the heartbeat. Fight your way in. Bombs on target on time.

Fight your way out. There's nothing like it. Going out to Fallen. There's actually other naval aviators playing the bad guys in airplanes. F-5's and other aircraft.

And simulating. You've got these pods on your aircraft where you link up to a ground station. All the aircraft have pods. And so you can actually go back and replay the fight and actually see where you shot. Did the weapon impact?

Was it within the weapons envelope when you shot? You can replay the whole thing. And to go in and fight your way in. Bombs on target. Fight your way out.

Really doing it with real aircraft. And this real, you know, you train like your fight. Train in the real life scenarios. There is nothing. Nothing like it.

Honor off the planet. Man. Nothing like it. So when I, when I, you know, I talked about earlier about some of these great Americans that I have served with. That master this capability that our government has provided them to protect our nation against all enemies foreign and domestic.

There's not a higher level of appreciation for those individuals that I can imagine finding anywhere. And then those guys that do that and do it well sacrificing for their countries and their families doing the same. Because I'll tell you another. How stupid I was. I got many out of stupid stories.

I met my very first squadron.

We have a squadron function. Everybody's together at a, you know, just Friday night. You social. And this commanding officer, the, the, the executive officer's wife. I heard her talking.

And she was saying, yeah, when we finished the command tour, we're going to do this. And we're hoping to get this orders. And we, she was we, we, we, we, we, we, and I'm like, I'm single. At the time, I'm like, we, it's not, we, it's his career. What do you mean we, as she's saying all this?

I'm thinking this. I didn't say it. You were. What was that stupid? I'm stupid.

Because this is a family unit sacrificing for their nation. Because when I say sacrificing, they're significant sacrifice. I mean, they're separation. There's challenges of emotional separation. Because of what the individual that's, you know, on the point of the spirit is doing.

And the hazards associated with that. And this is the, the family unit doing this together. And when she said we, she was absolutely right. And I was dumb. Stupid, new.

Didn't know. Didn't know what I didn't know. But I learned it pretty quickly. Thank you.

Can you talk about your first mission?

First real world mission. I might be better if I talked about the first real world night mission. Okay. Yeah. I had a couple of day missions.

So set the scenario. John F. Kennedy. CB67 is in the red sea. We would launch like 42 aircraft on a strike mission into Baghdad country, which was desert storm at the time.

Into Iraq. We would launch. We would launch 42 aircraft at a time. We would launch 42 aircraft off the carer. We would run to view.

All these aircraft would run to view on tankers.

“Whoa, how long does it take to launch 42 aircraft off an aircraft carrier?”

I wouldn't think the first one. We got a fuel by the time the 40 second. Well, that's what I'm saying. We would launch. We would run to view with Air Force tankers.

And think about this at night.

Eight of them.

And they're stacked up in 1000 foot.

These Air Force tankers. Casey 130 five's are Casey Tans. They're stacked up from 18,000 feet. All the way up to 26,000 feet. Wow.

No detail. And you can see their lights. This isn't a night time.

“And you're rendezvousing on your tanker.”

You're designated tanker. And you have to be level. You can't be low because now you're in somebody else's airspace. That is rendezvousing on another tanker. A thousand feet below you.

So we're rendezvousing 42 airplanes on these tankers. To refuel. You stay on the left wing. Someone goes in, plugs the tanker, fills up. They go to the right wing.

And they stay there. The next guy comes. He goes outside the next one. Next one. Next one.

And tail. Everybody's got gas. And then the ones that started. They go back a couple.

Maybe the first two go back and top off again.

Then you leave the tankers. You're going country lights on. And until you get close to the border. And then you separate with altitude and timing splits. To going country lights off at that point.

You don't want to be, you know, the enemy to look up and see you. So your lights off 42 aircraft going in to prosecute a target. Lights out. So you can't see anybody but you know they're there. And this was my first night mission.

I've had a couple of day missions. We crossed the border. Something launches. I learned the end at day time. A missile launches. You got to be looking at it or you don't see it.

Triple A and aircraft artillery fired. You got to be looking at it. You don't see it at night. Your peripheral vision gets it all. It's dark.

And you see the light. And you don't have to be looking directly at it. Something launched in the distance. I at least thought it was a distance. I didn't know because that perception's hard at night.

And it's a missile. I hadn't seen a missile launch at night. This was pretty eye-opening. And it launches and it goes higher and higher and higher. I'm at like 27,000 feet, 23,000 feet.

It goes above me. And it seems like it's way out there. And scud missiles. It's the NATO designation for the missile that their rackets had. They had launched a couple of scuds before this.

And this turned out to be one as well. And it was going towards the west towards Israel.

“I don't know if you remember anything about the conflict.”

But they were launching some against Israel trying to get Israel engaged. Because if Israel got engaged, they may be the rest of the air of nations. We're getting engaged as well. But Israel wouldn't. They wouldn't engage with them.

Anyway, it goes off that way. And so this gets your heart pumping. Well, but let me fast forward to the issue. That's what happened. So I wound up kind of a little bit in front of the strike package.

It's the had a different role. I wasn't a bomber. I wasn't bombing the ground or the target. But I had a different role, which put me out a little bit in front of the strike package. When it came time to turn and head back and leave, an SA8 gets launched.

And my radar warning receiver, the raw gear, it's going nuts. Which is an SA8. SA8 is a surface to air missile. Surface to air missile. And it's got a designation.

Some NSA2 is like a telephone pole. And it's not real maneuverable. But it'll go further because it's got more propellant. Because it's really big. NSA8 smaller, more of a tactical, close-in, but very maneuverable.

After about eight miles, 25,000-ish feet. And we knew that they were there. We got into it. We know they're there. This part of what we're targeting is to target them.

But they fire. As I'm turning, and my raw gear lights up, and it's visual. It's got eights on the display. And it's also oral. So it's going to do different sounds for different types of something.

What are different types of, you know, radars or whatever that is locking on to you. So my radar gear goes off. I see a, I look off my left wing. And I see a light come up above the cloud. It's just a puffy cloud, small one.

Come up above the cloud. And it looks like it's targeting me. If it's not targeting me, it'll start moving on the canopy. If it is targeting me, it's going to stay right in the same spot coming at me. And it didn't, it didn't move on the canopy.

It's coming right at me.

I had never had a missile shot at me at night before.

And so training, the, what you try to do is try to time it such that you pull Max G into a missile so it can't have to turn and get you. That's kind of what the mindset is, what you're trying to do. But at night, the depth perception is not there. I don't know how close this thing is.

I have no idea. So I'm, you know, maybe racist through my mind. How long has it been going?

“How long, how fast is it travel in, in six seconds?”

Is it going three miles and six seconds? You know, it's only really viable. SA8s. I knew we were only viable. Their heart of their envelope was, you know, two to three miles.

You know, get to four or five six. It's going to be, have less maneuverability. And so when it got to a point, I pulled and it wound up going below me. Did it break lock?

Did it run out of juice? I have no idea.

I just know I didn't get hit.

“And so I reached down and I, we had, and this, it's kind of a rudimentary computer system.”

But it had a thumb wheel where you would punch in a latitude longitude, lat long. And you'd have a route that you could have on your system. So I flipped the thumb wheel to the egress target. I mean, the egress destination back into, into, into Saudi Arabia. And I just put the needle on the nose.

What I mean by that is on your heading situation indicators got a needle. And I turned until the needle was directly vertical. Needle on the nose. I am heading towards my egress heading. As I do that, and I start to turn.

Another missile gets locked. War gear goes off. I turn. I see another missile coming. This one didn't, it stayed on my canopy for just a couple of seconds.

And then it started fading. And it wasn't, not a factor for me. And of course, people are hearing these missiles. And you hear on the radio, missile in the air, missile air. And so it's, it's not quiet.

I turn. I put the needle on the nose. And I am screaming. It's fast as I say for seven will go. I am, given it all she's got.

Full power. Full grant we call it. And off we go.

“Again, I think the little Lord put it into my mind.”

I'm like, something's not right. I don't know what's not right. Something's not right. What's not right. And I start looking.

I'm looking out, of course. My heads on a swivel looking for other missiles. My raw gear's quiet. But I'm still looking for missiles. But something's not right.

I don't know what it is. It wasn't, it was just below a half moon that night that we launched. And the moon, as I'm going in, was behind me. So as I'm coming out, it should be right in front of me.

And some, finally, I got the wits about me.

And I look. And the moon's not in front of me. Like I thought it was. And it's over here. Like, oh, I look at my system.

I'm needle on the nose. I look down. It's destination number 16. The target was destination number 14. My egress heading was destination number 15.

I had put destination in destination 16. I'd put the alternate target.

“If you're going to get 42 airplanes in the air,”

over bad guy country, five hour missions, tanking all these assets. You don't want to get there in the weather be bad. You can't, you can't do your business. So you have an alternate target just in case.

And I'd punch that alternate target into destination 16. When I reached down to flip that thumb wheel, I went from 14. It went to destination 16. I didn't check it.

I'm just needle on the nose. I look down. I realize it. I flipped the needle. I mean, I flipped the destination up to 15.

The needle goes here, which is, of course, now really. So I'm heading towards the alternate target. And don't know it. Fog of war, we call it, right? And if a target is worthy to be targeted by us, then it's probably worthy to be protected by them.

And it was. Oh, they had essay. I think they had essay 2s and 3s. So I get an essay 2 indication right on my nose. And I see a light in the distance.

I don't know how far, but it's pretty far. And I'm like, oh my. So now I got a third missile shot at me. I learned at this point and I put the moon right in front of me. And I really didn't look, but I did dispense.

We have chaff and flares. Chaff is a little shootout. Radar deflective material where the radar will hopefully go on to that. Flair, of course, is a really hot flare that goes out. If it's a surface layer, a heat-sinking missile.

And I had forgotten about it on the first two and the missile engagements. I didn't even ever enter my mind. And then think about dispensing chat. But this time I remembered it. I spent a loaded chaff.

It's a program. It spits it out of a certain way for certain threats. Which we had loaded pre pre. I spit out chaff as I turn.

And I keep needle on the nose and never look back.

I have no idea what happened to that missile. Did it come close? Was it far away? I have no idea. I just know it didn't get me.

Lessons learned, right? So what put me in that position was a tactic early in the, and then was a tactic early in the, the conflict that we wanted to keep the aircraft all together for the fighter picture, the air to air picture.

If all of our aircraft are together, the fighters that are looking for bad guys, they know where we are. It keeps, it keeps the, the chance of, we call it blue one blue.

Blue is good. Red is bad guy, right? We don't want to be blue one blue. Good on good. So you keep them together.

So this tactic we use kept me in a position. I should already have been gone. But because of this tactic we were using. We stopped that after this mission. Once you finish whatever you're doing,

you leave. We got transponder codes. We got altitude. We can fly, which can de- conflict. The air to air picture.

And we use that instead of trying to just keep them physical. Keep the aircraft physically in close proximity. You know, let's learn the hard way, at least for me.

So, you know, fog of war. That's, and that's hold on. That's your first night. First night mission. Yeah.

Yeah. I had a several after that word. And I try to, you know, again,

“the purpose of putting them in the book is not to say, hey, look what I did.”

I don't care. It's to see the progression of what the Lord situation you put me in. And preparation for the next preparation for the next.

Which, you know, ultimately, this, this wrapped around the starliner story,

which is a baseline for that. And it all. The purpose is to glorify him. Truly. Truly is.

As we tell this again, encourage people. And dealing with the now, being prepared for the now. And also focus on things that are eternal, which is only through Jesus Christ our Lord. Yeah.

Did you drop any ordinance? Oh, yeah. My lot. Do you want to anything stick out there? Yeah.

Night mission. Again, no air to air threat. 887's going into a target area. Just does. We call them kill boxes.

Just a latitude longitude. 10 by 10 mile box. You go into in the bad guy country before the ground war, before there were any ground troops there. And anything you see in the kill box, prosecuted.

We would drop a flare. Lute two flavors. The lead would drop a flare. The flare would fall. A parachute would open under the flare.

The flare would light up. And it would illuminate the ground.

“And anything you saw in the under the ground.”

Wow. Crosscuted it. Again, long enough. There's only eight of us. We lost.

We hit. As was one tanker for all eight of us. I'm last. I'm junior. I'm pretty junior.

You know, I went on deployment. I had decent landing grades. Got back. I've been back only three months. It's Saddam who's saying invades Kuwait.

And then they send aircraft here. It's kind of like they are right now over to the over there. And the Kennedy was one of them. And they were short on pilots. So I was at home in Tennessee.

And my ex-O calls. I mean, since books I need you to come back. I can't tell you why. Well, my. One of my pistons in my.

Nineteen eighty four four Ranger had blown on my way up there. It was in the shop. So I called the guy said, hey, you got to put my truck together. Now I got to go. I got back found out that they're sending me to another squadron on the Kennedy.

So basically, I had almost two years where I was at sea.

You know, extended unexpected deployments. Wow. Kind of the theme of the life here. So I've been home for three months. Right to see.

And this one was at eight month deployment. That's a shield. That's a storm. Excuse me. So I'm in the squadron that it's not my squadron.

But I've assimilated into it. We're on this mission. And the flight lead. I'm sorry. We're rendezvous on the tanker.

I'm dashed last because I'm junior. That was kind of why I told that story. I'm junior. I come up. I go to plug.

I plug in and the tanker says tankers dry. Tankers dry means he can't get me to gas. So seven aircraft are off to the right. He's dry. I got no gas.

I got to have gas. And the flight lead tells me to go rendezvous with the tanker that was going to give us fuel after we got out of country and get my gas. And they went in country without me. So they dropped the flair.

Did the in the kill box prosecuted whatever they saw. I went and got gas.

I finally make it up to the border.

I'm actually 50 miles south of the border. They're checking out. And I'm assuming that he's going to have me just join up and come back to ship. I can't land on the aircraft care with my weapons load out because you can only.

“You have to have a certain amount of, you know, extra fuel.”

In case you have trouble getting bored. And you can't have sufficient fuel and the weapons weight. The aircraft cannot land at that heavy of a weight. So I would have had to have, you know, jettison, we call it pickle, jettison some of my weapons into the red sea, unfused.

Which we don't want to do. So he tells me to go in country. He said there's no threat. Go into country drop your bombs. I'm thinking.

So I even asked him. I said, you want me to go. I think crank was the call. The code word. You want me to go to crank and deploy weapons.

He said affirmative. So he told me to go in country alone. Wow. Overbagged country alone. It does not seem like a good idea.

I didn't think so either. But I'm in the junior. I'm junior. I'm, you know, he's a flight late. I don't do what he says.

So I go in country alone. You know. When, when you get in situations, fear can be detrimental. It can be detrimental to performance. And this is part of what happened with Starliner when I got to that point.

I don't talk about that now. But fear can be very detrimental. When I got all these missions that I flew. When I get 20 miles south of the border. There was apprehension.

But when I got 20 miles south of the border. Gone. Focus. This is a job. I got my responsibility.

My. My.

Uh, you know, and they're a craft.

They're depending on me. And there was no fear. It is time to go. On this mission. I'm going in country alone.

There's fear. I mean, if the stick between my legs. If I didn't have that stick there.

“My knees would probably didn't together because I'm going in country alone.”

I've been in country. Lights are out. You don't see the other airplanes at night. But you know they're there. Mutually supportive.

But this time I'm going in alone. Why? Because my flat Lee told me to. And he said, just drop your bombs. What be 52 style.

Be 52 means straight level. Whatever out to 27, 23,000 feet, whatever. I was just drop them. Come on. Come this year.

So I go in country and I thought, OK, if I'm going to do this. I'm going to drop my bombs pointing outbound. I'm not going to drop them inbound and then turn. I'm going to go turn, drop them as I'm leaving. So when they hit, I'm going to be way down there.

As I did the turn, looking back, they started shooting at me. Triple A. I'm way above it. Realize these flares have already gone out now. I can't see the ground.

It's black. The flares that they had that they used to see the ground to prosecute targets. You know, that flair had gone. But them shooting at me gave me a target. So as I do the turn, they start shooting.

They give me a target. So I rolled in and deployed my weapons. And of course, they impacted and the shooting stopped. People have asked me, how do you rationalize that with what God's horse says about not killing and all that murder and I say, well, this is not murder.

This is Romans 13. This is an extension of the governments that he has instituted to keep evil at bay. Go read Romans 13.

“I mean, if you do evil, you should be fearful.”

And that's what we are as military members. We are extension of our government. And I trust my government to do the right things for the right reasons, because that's what we've done historically. And as an extension of my government.

I'm not Murray. And in that light, I am Romans 13. As an extension of my government. And I have no problem with that. Because evil needs to be held at bay.

Because if it's not, it will overtake everything. And we know that. Wow. So anyway, prosecutors of the target, they stopped shooting. And I went back to ship.

You know, at the ship, I was. You ever heard of Barney Clark?

I have never heard the name Barney Clark or I have not.

Barney Clark was the first recipient of an artificial heart back in like 1980 something. Maybe 1980. He lived, I think, for three months after he got this artificial heart. So on the ship in his 100, we named.

You have four meals on a ship on an aircraft carrier. Breakfast lunch dinner and midnight rations. Midrats. So you're flying at night. You come back.

Midrats is, you go to the board room. To the, you know, go to midrats. And one of the options to order was the Barney Clark. And the Barney Clark was the double meat. Double cheese, double leg, double bacon hamburger.

Full of cholesterol. So named his and his honor. So back to the ship. Go get a Barney Clark and then you can go to debrief. Right on.

Yeah. Damn. Damn. Wow. Yeah.

With you. And then question about refueling. So they stack them up. Right. If you've got a lot of aircraft.

You know, you don't. You don't want blue on blue. You don't want aircraft hit an aircraft. And so that's why we did it. The aircraft.

The aircraft. It was quite a sight to see. Especially in the daytime. You see eight huge airplanes stacked up a thousand feet. They're following the lead down at the bottom.

And then you get it to time as you're cycling through. And then you're getting off to the right side. And eventually get the whole air. Air wing. You know, those 42 plus aircraft off to the side.

And then you go in country day time. It's quite a sight.

“I mean, I think to be on the ground seeing this coming at me.”

I mean, it's quite a sight. And it's a formidable force as well with the weapons load out. And, you know, the air aircraft protecting the the strikers. And the strikers focused on their task of putting bombs on target on time. And that's why I said the F-18.

You're all of that. You do it all yourself. You're fighting your way in. Bums on target on time. Fight your way out.

Multiple roles. Multiple capabilities. And that aircraft. Wow.

It is an amazing platform.

The sea models are no longer in. That's what I flew. They're no longer in the Navy. When I flew them initially, we had brand new. They had new car smell.

I mean, brands making new from St. Louis. The facility in St. Louis where they put them together. Now there's no more in the Navy. The Air Force, I see me, the Marine Corps still flying some sea models. But they're all the newer ENF models now.

Top Gun Maverick. Maverick was flying in the brand new, you know, the email.

I flew the sea models.

But there was nothing like a sea model.

It was amazing. Did you go to Top Gun? I did. That's Fallon, right? It is.

It is now. It was. It was at Miramar in San Diego. And they moved it to Fallon.

“Many years back when I was, you know, active duty.”

I didn't go the long course.

But I went to what was called the short course, which was a couple of flights.

I just didn't have time in my training flow with it. The test pilot school and all that stuff to do the long course. I would have loved to. But I didn't do that, but I did do the short course. What is the point at Top Gun?

What is that? You take certain percentage of aviators and you give them this high level training, elite training for tactics. Realize the Air Force pilots. They're not aviators, naval aviators, Air Force pilots.

Their primary job is tactics in flying the airplane. The Navy, we can't take a whole bunch of people aboard the aircraft here. So naval aviators, their primary purpose is flying the aircraft. But we also have division officer jobs in charge of the troops and various, you know, the guys that work on the avionics officer and we have different roles and responsibilities that all the pilots have.

Department hands when you get more senior. So we have to feel feel all those administrative jobs and fly. The Air Force, they have some administrative jobs, but not like that we do in the Navy. So Top Gun is to focus on the tactics. As the tactics change, you want to get that into the fleet.

So you send some fleet guys a couple of, I got your two from your squadron. And then you send those back to the fleet and we have a weapon school at the different locations like the, the east coast F-18 rags, track fighter wings at Lannick, has a weapon, at least when I was there, had a weapon school. I was the opso for a period of time, operations officer of the weapon school. But the top gun graduates go into the squadrons, fly with the squadrons, train them, check rides with their,

their people to make sure that their tactics are acceptable up to the level of stuff of what, the most current tactics are various weapons employment, air to air, air ground, all of that. So that's the purpose of Top Gun to keep our tactics at the Supreme level.

“I think Top Gun actually kind of says that at the beginning of it.”

Why I was instituted initially, the movie, the movie Top Gun, and Top Gun Maverick as well. So that's the purpose and we're making sure the fleet is trained ready to fight, if called into that action. Right on, right on. We'll book, let's say, quick break, break top. Most gear looks good until you actually start using it.

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“The host of vigilant salutes the watch floor where we highlight what matters.”

It became a premise of state, explain to you why it matters. And then aim to leave you feeling better and form than you were before you hit play. Tarras, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime, not everything is urgent. But this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know. All right, but you're back from the break.

And as much as I want to dive into your Navy career in all the missions that you want on,

Sure. And so why did you leave the Navy?

“So the Navy has a process, obviously, the test pilot program.”

And this is one of the things that, before I ever entered the Navy, how can I use my defoundation, I built, intensity tag, engineering, and go forward with that. And I even then thought maybe I could eventually get into the test pilot program.

So once I got back from my second deployment, which was, like I said, two years at sea almost, a desert storm,

I had a unique resume, if you will, and that I was fairly junior to deployments. Combat time. And so I made the application to test pilot school. And that was one of the, one of the few easy things in life. I'm not easy, but I didn't have to apply multiple times.

I just applied that one time. I had a decent resume at that point, and so they took me initially. And so going to the school, go through that process. As a part of the school training, we won a couple of field trips. One of the places we went was Johnson Space Center, where the astronauts live in train in Houston, Texas.

And when we were there and seeing what they did and what those opportunities were, and there were some people that I knew friends that I had that were there. And I began to think, wow, man, this might be something that would be interesting to maybe see if I could maybe go that way. I didn't have a master's degree at the time. I was in the process of working on it and wound up. It wasn't planned, but I wound up getting two master's degrees.

“One from Tennessee Tech, electrical engineering, and other from University of Tennessee aviation systems.”

With both of them, it turned out to be very beneficial as a process of eventually getting selected by NASA. So I made four applications in the ensuing years. There was every two year they were selected. That's overnight in your period.

I actually got called down for an interview on the third application.

And went through the interview process. Head four days notice before I went. Wasn't thrilled with my interview. They did a background check, which is encouraging because those aren't cheap. Several thousand dollars to the background check.

Go through that process. Looks like I'm going to get selected. Got a background check done, but they didn't select me. And so three days after I found out that security clearance background. Everything.

Okay. They're checking everything. The SF86 type probably way better than that. I've got a super secret clearance, but still they're doing that type of background check for NASA. To make sure the interview.

This is after the interview. If they're looking at you after you go down for the week and trust me, the week is medical. It's mostly medical and you get one hour with the board. Are you serious? You get one hour.

Yeah.

And basically, they set the room up in a tea.

So, and they set you in the corner of the tea. So, you got people here. You got people behind you.

“And I think they did that just to give you a situation.”

You need a situation because you're talking to, you may ask me the question. But I'm talking to the room. And I've got to address everybody in the room as I'm talking in that tea scenario. And the chief of the selection board, the two years I interviewed, was John Young. John Young is one of 12 men to step foot on the moon.

And from an aviator standpoint, the astronaut of astronauts. The premier astronaut is John Young. He flew in Gemini. The first Gemini mission. He flew in Apollo twice.

Went stood on the surface of the moon. Apollo 16. He flew the first Space Shuttle. He had flew later in space. He had flown six times.

The only person at the time to fly four different spacecraft. One of lunch was the lunar module to and from the moon. And so, he's sitting on the board. He's the chairman of the board. And, by the fact, my second interview.

I go into the room. Sit down at the corner of the tea. He goes, "Okay, butch. You know what? We want to start talking."

That's what happened. It did kind of set me at ease, though. It did. The first interview, I uneugh, you know, and said, I had four days to prepare. And as I'm sitting there talking, kind of like the day I'm talking about me.

That was the first time I had talked about me ever out loud. I thought what I wanted to say. I didn't make it out loud. But I'm sitting there talking to complete strangers around the tea about me out loud. And I'm like, as I'm doing, I'm like, this is hard.

Talking about me. This is hard. And so, they did the background check. I didn't get selected. The next time, two years later, I thought I'll try one more time.

I put the application in. I got three months notice, because I was transitioning moving from the fleet. I was going to short duty from C-duty. I was in Virginia Beach, Virginia. That's where they moved all the F-18 squadrons.

And I was going to be the exchange pilot instructor, Navy Exchange pilot at Air Force Test Policy School. I mean, Air Force Air Force Base in California. So I was making that transition. I couldn't come initially when they called me.

I said, well, we'll pinch a land.

“Penciled you in for, you know, it was three months from that point.”

So, I spent the next three months, like, driving across the country. My wife, bless her heart. I talked about me out loud constantly. Just to get accustomed to it. Because the first time it was so hard.

Yeah, so I'm talking to her. We're driving.

And I just, I talked, I told story she had never heard.

I couldn't, I'm surprised I remembered of. Just to get used to talking about me, which was not easy. I went into that interview. When I've at least the first interview, I, you know, and I'm thinking back, I shouldn't have said that.

I'm a, and you know, I shouldn't have said that. The second interview, I didn't feel like I, and you know, I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say.

I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say.

I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say.

I didn't know what I was going to say. I said, this was my last time I'm going to try. I got selected. And then, of course, the NASA 25 years later, here I am, just left NASA. Looking back.

I don't know what I said this earlier.

“But, you know, this whole thing, it's, it's a privilege, right?”

It's a privilege to serve. And, and I look back at those early years. Those desires that kid had. And, and where the Lord allowed my path to go.

And, just the fact that the Navy finally took me.

That was hard. It's a privilege. Serving our nation in conflict is a privilege. I think back to all those people that didn't come back from those conflicts. I mean, Memorial Day is a, is a, is a huge day for me.

And, and yourself and others as well. Because, you know, we enjoy what we enjoy because of them. And, I am patriotic. And, I know you are, too, and those are other individuals I've mentioned earlier. And, a privilege to serve and then to serve your nation in its space program.

What a, what a privilege there as well. Beyond my abilities of really adequately articulate. Day in and day out. Not to say or things. Easy enough and easy.

It's life's tough. But, overall, all of it, a privilege. Regardless of what the situation is. So, to get selected. This is something as a kid.

I mean, my mom and dad got a freezer and had a big box. And, my brother and I made a spacecraft out of it. Made cardboard helmets. And, you know, we've imagined and, you know, drew a black crayon. Made a window, poked holes in it.

So, the light would shine through, look like stars. And, you know, we did this as kids. Not because I was trying to want to be an astronaut. But, I want to be an astronaut. But, I want to be an astronaut.

I want to be the first thing I wanted to be. It was a garbage man. Because the garbage man was strong. He could pick that can up and put it on the shoulder. And, that's what I wanted to be first.

“But, that's what I got to be an astronaut.”

And, something was in it. You know, your mind's out your dream.

But, never think that would happen.

And, here I am. Wow. My nation select me to do this. Wow. What a privilege.

And, then, moving whole new lifestyle. And, you know, all of that. Though my wife loved the fleet. She loved it. The camaraderie in the squatters.

The other spouses. Just a special bond. And, those people may not be aware of. The squatter in life is fabulous. Serving with these individuals.

These patriots are fabulous. It's just such a privilege like I said. But, anyway, that's kind of the process. Just, it wasn't something I dreamed of. It is a kid.

Not something I'd strove for. But, of course, the time, you know, you grow case again. You got wicked you go through. Eventually, as a lie, I look back at life. I'd gone through all these wickets.

And, those are the wickets you got to have to. The eligible to be selected by NASA. So, I made application. Eventually, we wore them down. And they took me.

Right on. What, yeah? Where do you start when you get in? You go right into astronaut astronaut candidate training. Ask him.

I was your an ask. And, at the time, we went through. Instead, we learned everything we could about the space shuttle. What a complex spacecraft. Probably the most complex spacecraft ever designed to build.

Because this spacecraft wasn't a capsule. It had to launch like a capsule. Or a bit like any other spacecraft orbits. And then fly back in the atmosphere to a runway. And, you know, quadredundant computers.

And all interacted with a reaction control system. Jets and auxiliary power units that power the moving components to fly in the atmosphere. And all their actual ecosystem jets. Like I said, they're maneuvering space. It's super, super complicated spacecraft.

You have a single task trainer. And you single system task trainer SSTT. And we'd go into that. We learned system. And eventually put them all together.

And you integrate them all. And you learn all that. And then, of course, we're also learning the space station. Which was new and coming online. We're building at the time.

And all of that process.

And it's by one of the first instructors that we have was an astronaut.

A current astronaut that gave us a brief. And he said, OK, guys. Here's your task. No everything and perform it well. And I'm like, I may not be here long.

“If that's what the expectation is out of me.”

I may not last. My brain didn't have that capability. But honestly, why would you set a lower goal? Right? To do great things.

Takes great preparation, great energy, great endeavors. Take that. And if you're going to set a goal. No most things and perform them OK. That's your goal.

That is not this business. No everything and perform it well was the right thing to say. I can't do that. Nobody can. But that's what you're striving for.

Again, you're going to be very broad in your knowledge. And you want to go deep as deep as you can in that broad knowledge. Realizing, I can't go super deep in all of them. There's some people may have that capability I don't. And that's where the team comes together.

The trust and the team, the mist control team and all the people that are passionate about this business. Going deep in that knowledge is what makes this work for our nation. It's a mighty thing and a mighty wonderful thing to be a part of and take part in. Especially when, you know, there's a whole lot of people that are much smarter, much more passionate maybe about this business in me. But as the guy that climbs into capsule on the pointy end, you mean you get a little bit of visibility that others don't get.

But you represent them.

“And that's why when I was out in public and I'm representing NASA.”

I'm not represented. I'm not butchable more. I'm not just me. This is, this is our national, you know, international, global, significant human spaceflight program that there's only a handful of them around the globe. Nations that have this capability and we're one of them.

And I mean, privilege enough to be a part of that and be kind of visible in that light because of the position. Wow. Wow. I'm grateful to my Lord. I'm grateful to my nation for allowing me to have that.

To be a part of that.

One was your first time in space.

STS129. Space shuttle Atlantis. I can tell you land on your back for three hours-ish after you get strapped in and the countdown is going. And you're saying, I mean, taking it all in. This is really happening.

I'm really, I mean, this is, this is somebody coined this phrase. I don't remember who it was. I heard it from first, but you're literally leaving the planet.

“And at the time, when I launched on the space shuttle,”

I was the 500th person in the history of human spaceflight to leave the planet. And I know that because NASA keeps records and they told me. I didn't look it up. The guy sitting behind me, our MS2 was Randy Brasniks. He was 506 because I was a nanosecond before him getting to space.

And we had another guy on the mid-deck. He was number 507 getting to space. And to think about that in light of history and billions of people that have survived on this planet, millions of which current day would have loved to be sitting there. And it was me sitting in that seat.

Showing that, that's very humbling to take all that in and realize. And I remember those thoughts vividly. Training for it, preparing for it, this is a lifetime. You know, my wife sacrifices and all that goes into that. My daughters were born, though they were young, five and two at the time.

And realizing they're out there watching all of this as we land our backs and get ready to go. Wow. And then when I got to space and, you know, the solar rock and the launch went well. The solar rock and booster separate. About two minutes in.

You got another six minutes of power flight. And then you separate from the external tank. And that's all, all these events are jarring. And the power of technists are firing.

Well, there's blast going on. I'll share that. So we're, we finally got all that.

We're in space. We're separated from external tank. And I look out the front window on the pilot. Best seat in the house, right? I'm still strapped in. But we're zero gravity.

So my, my, your, In zero gravity, your muscles, your tendons. Everything goes to a neutral position. Hmm. It's because there's not gravity pulling it down.

Like you said here, like this, your gravity's pulling your arms down. Pulling your legs down. But in space, if you don't have tension on your body, it's going to go to whatever that neutral position is for your tendons and muscles. And feeling that for the first time and looking out the window,

Sean, looking out the window.

And they blast. It's like explosion.

“And there's orange blast going up as it's maintaining its attitude.”

Eventually, in the space shelter, you would transition to the Verneir thrusters. In comparison, eight hundred and seventy pounds of thrust. In comparison, there are twenty four pounds of thrust. You didn't even feel them or hear them.

But initially, when you first get there, these blasts are going off maintaining attitude.

When you separate from the external tank, water vapor separates from the tank, crystallizes into ice, and there are thousands of diamonds floating out the window. The sun's behind us, so it's coming this way. These diamonds are out there. I'm feeling this weightlessness.

Diamonds. Wow. That was my first experience of space. And they look out my right window. And there's the earth in the most magnificent brilliant colors I could ever imagine.

And I'm like, "Lord, why me?" That was the first space, Lord, why me moment. I've had many. But that was the first. Why me?

How did I get here?

“And for anybody who's watching to try to relay that and the appreciation,”

this is our nation that gives us this capability. This is what freedom brings. Going back to our forefathers, George Washington, Thomas J. All those individuals, not envisioning something like this, is they're building the foundation of this country. But realizing where we have gone from those days, and appreciation all the way back for centuries,

as you sit there in this situation, taking it in, and the Lord, you know, is the one that allowed you to be in the seat, and there's millions of what it would have been there. I can't humbly. And just, wow, special, special memory, special moment. I'm grateful that you give me the opportunity to share it, because it's not about me.

It's about our nation, about our Lord's providence, and allowing things to happen, allowing our nation to prosper and do the things that it has to this point. And what a privilege we all have. I've talked about privilege with me. What all privilege we all have to be a part of this country, with its current leadership,

and throughout the history, and where we have come from, where we were, in comparison to other nations, we are indeed privileged. Man, I can't imagine just looking out and seeing the plan up.

I never could have either.

That's what made it so special.

“My first sight of the planet, as soon as I finally did answer it.”

As I'm sitting there, just to continue real quick, Mike Foreman, our premier spacewalker, was strapped in on the mid deck. There's a ladder, over here comes up from the side of the ladder, where we would climb up all the time. Well, you don't need a ladder in space. Mike, I look over.

He levitates up. I'd seen him videos. I never seen him own eyes. He levitates up. Just levitates up from the mid deck.

It was the strangest thing I've ever seen. I'm like, wow, because I'm strapped in sale. I'm not worth floating. Come with me later. I look back.

Leeline Melvin. You know, the external takes separates. You remember Columbia tragedy. There were external tank issues. They impacted.

I'm sorry. Yeah, external tank issues impacted the shuttle. Damage the wing. Columbia broke up on entry back in 2003. So since that time, this is 2009, we took pictures of the external tank.

To see if there was anything with the tank that might have impacted the shuttle that we couldn't see. So he's floating back there in the windows in the back. I look back. He's levitating floating horizontal, taking pictures out the window. Video on pictures of the external tank as it floats away.

My mind is like, this is not normal. Now, within time, we're all doing it. It became absolutely normal. And every mission after that.

But the first time I saw it, it was amazing.

Absolutely amazing. And then a space, of course, you're Superman. People say, what's great about space? You're Superman. You fly.

You're getting a pool in your float. You feel the pressure around your body. And space, there's none of that. And you literally push off and pull the fly. Like Superman.

Amazing. That is wild. It is wild. It is. It truly is.

I mean, does it feel empty? Out there? I mean, once you get over the initial hole issue. Look out, you see the vastness. And you realize how far the universe goes and how far the stars are.

You don't need to go to space to note to realize that. But you see it from that vantage point.

Yeah. It feels very empty.

“And you feel like, wow, we're just a little speck in all this big, everything.”

And we actually left the planet there.

It goes zip in Bible, though. Just, just unseen. It didn't seem right. But here we are. What was the point of the mission?

We were installing. We were in the process of building the space station. The final phase of the building the space station. And we took up several elements. Trust elements that we actually took the robot arm and attached an element.

This trust to the trust segment. And it was full of spare parts. It's just external parts, you know, pumps and gyros and new name. And everything that you might need to, to replace on the outside of the station. Because things fail, right?

Things are not in the last forever. And so in the subsequent years, we installed two of them. The ELCs are recalled. Express logistics carriers. We installed a couple of them.

And in the sewing years, you, thanks, Phil. We go out.

“They've gone out and grabbed them off these ELCs and installed them.”

So that was what our mission was. As we built the space station. So you did the final phase of the space station. We were in the very final phases. I wasn't the last mission.

I was the capsule communicator. The Capcom for the last two missions, where you're talking to the crew during launch and during entry, which is a very challenging position as well. But I don't know. We were like, number six to the end or something like that.

But the very final phases of building the space station before the space shuttle program ended. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The thrilling mission.

The flight of the space shuttle. I mean, I fed. I've asked people this. You think, okay, I get one chance to fly in space. You get one chance to fly in space.

What are you going to do? Are you going to fly a spaceship? Are you going to do a space walk? You only get, you can only do one. Which do you choose?

“And I said, what do you think I would choose?”

And they all invariably, 99, 98% will say space walk. I'm like, oh no. I'm a naval aviator. You give me a choice. I've done both now.

But if I can only do one, I'm going to fly that spacecraft. That's the way I'm wired. Don't get me wrong. Spacewalks are amazing. And that one person space capsule, you know, shape like a human, inside that 180 degree,

you know, bubble helmet, looking and doing all that. And you're out in the vacuum, you know, no air, vacuum of space. It's, it's special. Don't get me wrong. But if I can only do it once, hands on controls.

I'm going to fly that spacecraft. No, shit. Yeah. What is the first time you did a space walk? It was the second mission.

You know, ironically, the pilot's never did spacewalks.

Ever throughout the space shuttle history. Because we had the skill train skill to have landing the shuttle. And spacewalks are a little more risky of an endeavor. So they wouldn't risk the pilots going out and doing the spacewalks. So we never had the opportunity.

It wasn't even in our training flow. But the space shuttle program was coming to an end. They had an open window in the training, new people to do spacewalks. In 2008, they said anybody want to do it. And I'm like, I'll do it.

So I was actually, there were early, early early in the space shuttle space station program. Some of the early astronauts that went up two of them were pilots. But they had been doing MS mission specialists type jobs for quite a while. And they went in and they did a couple of spacewalks. But as far as the space shuttle pilot, not involved in those early stages,

I was the first pilot to do a spacewalk. Yeah, and it was special. It was wonderful. I did four. I mean, I did three.

I did one in November of 2014. And then I did three like three days three day centers. And end of January and February and March of 2015. Go do a spacewalk. But you're about to heal for a couple of days.

Because you know, you get beat up in these suits. I mean, it's you get bruises and everything else because it's just that environment. Get three days to recuperate. Do it or do nothing. Get three days recuperate.

Go do another one. It's great. It's great. Again. Wonderful.

Great. But if only gets to do one, I'm flying. I mean, how I mean, the anticipation of exiting the shuttle. So I got 32 hours outside in the vacuum of space in a spacewalks. 32 hours total in five different spacewalks.

Showing there's not a single hour that went by that I didn't think two things. I can't believe we do this. We actually put a human inside of us. One man space capsule, shaped like a person. And we go out into the vacuum of space and work.

I can't believe we do this.

And the second thing was that I always thought was, don't get famous.

If you're on a spacewalk and you get famous during a spacewalk, something probably didn't

You know, we have procedures where you have a tether, 85 foot cable. You put two of those together.

“You've got 170 feet of cable that you can go from wherever you anchor your cable.”

Right outside the airlock. We typically put the anchor down. And I can go 170 feet from that point. We have other ways. We have to go further 170.

We'll take and we'll extend our cable various ways.

So you've got your safety tether always attached.

And when you get to a work site, you have a local tether. So you actually, local tether's about three feet long and you local tether. You never let go until you were a local tethered. Even though you've got a safety tether, you know, some of the commercials I see, they go off and they're just out there, you know, off the space station.

You don't want to be that. Oh, but because there's a chance you could become a satellite. And if you become a satellite, meaning that you're out there on your own, separate from the space station, you get famous. You don't want that.

So spacewalks are so mental. There is not a passive movement on a spacewalk. Everything is active. I grab my hand. I grab my hand.

I don't let go until this hand is told. I don't. And it's all active thoughts. My safety tether is clear. Keep going.

My safety tether is clear. When I get to a work site, I put my local tether down.

“And I'm a try check kind of guy because this is a spacewalk.”

And I don't want to be famous. Put my safety tether down. I'm sorry. My local tether down. My safety tether is clear.

My local tether is down. I've still got. I'm still holding on. Okay. My safety tether is clear.

The second time. My local tether is now. Third time. My safety tether is clear. My local tether is now.

Okay. Now I'll release. Because I'm not going to go floating off. You know, off structure. You don't want to be floating off structure.

So you have no control. You have. The next thing. If you float off structure. We have a jetpack.

There's attached to our spacecraft. Our our space suit. It's called safer. SAFE off.

“I get with the neckroom and stands for survival.”

Something something.

In fact, basically you reach back here.

You lift the handle. It's way back. It's hard to reach in the suit. You lift the handle. And then window spring opens.

And there's a controller. You grab the controller. You put it on your chest. You turn it on. And now you've got a small gases bottle of liquid nitrogen.

And you control yourself. And you try to fly yourself back to the space station. With with the controls on this little controller. And the jetpack is going to try to. Or engine do that.

And we have virtual reality simulations where we put on a headset. And we train for this. But before we launch, we do it. We actually do the same thing in space. We have computers.

We connect all the system to software. Put the helmet on the headset on. And I practice flying back to the space station before I look right out of gases nitrogen. And it's got a little counter 93%. 85%.

7%. Until you got none. And if you're not back at the station. And you got no gas. It's nitrogen.

You're a satellite. See you later. See you later. And we train for all of that. I can't believe we do this.

Don't get famous constantly in my mind. Damn. Yeah. Because it's like I said, most people aren't watching when you do a satellite. Most people aren't watching when you do a spacewalk.

But I did one of my first spacewalks. I came in. I got an email from somebody that was traveling in Europe. And they had it in the airport on the screen in Europe while we're doing the spacewalk. So it's something that's globally visible.

And it certainly will be if you do something. And you get famous for it. What you don't want. You don't want to do. Man.

Yeah. Yeah. So good of this. Are you out there all by yourself? Never.

Hardener.

Always go with one or the person.

The first person, actually, Leonardo, Leonardo. He went out by himself. He had an actual, this is the Russian, the first spacewalk ever. They actually had an inflatable airlock where they inflated this airlock. He crawled into it.

She'll close the hatch. Deflated the inflatable airlock and went out into the vacuum of space. He did it by himself. There were two people on the spacecraft. He went out by himself.

And why? The first person in the gym and I did do a spacewalk. They depressurized the cabin. Open the hatch. He went out.

I forget who is with. That escapes my memory. But he went out. The other person's in his space suit. Exposed to the vacuum of space because the hatch is open.

But he didn't go outside. So technically, he did. They did the same thing on Apollo. They depressurized the cabin. One person on the way back from the moon would go out and do a spacewalk.

Do various things. The other two guys are inside in the space suits exposed to vacuum. But they didn't count that as being a spacewalk for them. Since they weren't outside the spacecraft. Extra of the vehicular activity, EVA.

Because your extra vehicular outside the spacecraft doing activities. So they didn't technically go outside.

“So they don't get the check as being on a spacewalk.”

Even though they're inside their suit. Exposed to the vacuum of space inside the spacecraft. Man. So after doing, do you see five spacewalks? Three, two hours?

Three, two hours. Oh, a little bit. Thirty-two hours. A total. What a most, what a most.

I mean, is that a lot for the profession or it is. Sunny, who I was with on Starliner and with on the space station. I wound up with this last mission, excuse me. It was two long-duration space flights that I've done.

The first one was planned.

And I was the commander of the space station. That's when I did four spacewalks. Sunny, this was turned out to be her third long duration. So she's got six hundred nine days in space or something like that now. Because she did three long durations.

And because she was up there more, she's done nine spacewalks. She's got the most hours of any female. The most anybody's done is nine to ten total. But the majority, I mean, if you get one, you're privileged. But the majority is probably three or four.

Five back in the shuttle air. If you got five, if you got six, you've really done many. Space station, there's more people that have more. But five is, yeah, that's pretty amazing. You can think that I would get one.

But being a pilot, I was selected. There was no chance of me doing spacewalks. But here we are, 25 years later. And thanks, changed. We've all seen it.

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I mean, I'm just curious, you know, with all the time you have in space 32 hours, where the space walking. I don't know how many days in total you have in space, but 464, 464, okay.

“What do you think when you hear about Elon Musk saying we were going to Mars?”

We're going to the moon. Yeah, I don't want to detract from anything anybody thinks are saying Mars is hard. Really, really, really hard. It's hard because, again, when Mars and their earth on the same side of the plant,

the same side is a sun on the same side, you're like 35 million miles.

The transit time of communication is like three to six minutes. You speak before that you get something back, it's like six minutes. When Mars, when earth, I say earth, and Mars is on the other side of the sun, that's like 250 million miles. And the transit time for communication is 42 minutes. So you're basically autonomous because it takes, you know, sound, or sound.

The speed of light is 186,000 miles a second to traverse that far and go all the way out, communicate, come all the way back. So you're autonomous, you have to be. And that makes it very difficult. Thanks, break on the space station. We can fix it.

We can go outside and fix it. We can fix them inside. Thanks for going to break on any mission that goes to Mars. So additive manufacturing, 3D printing. It's got to be robust.

You're going to have to print a part. You may have to print a tool to install the part or both.

I was actually the first person to do 3D printing in space back in 2015.

Just having to be the timing.

“I was there when that experiment was going up.”

And this was just plastics. But we're, you know, polymers get more, you know, get stronger and what we're using. And we're maybe stepping our way into trying to do that. Because we're going to have to be able to do those type of things when you think about going to Mars. You think about the food.

How much food? You're going to rely on a crop that you're growing. What if you have a bad crop? And it didn't produce. You don't have options, right?

So just nourishment of the astronauts and all how that plays out. And so for many, many reasons Mars is hard. Mars getting to the surface is hard. Nobody knows this, but I was, I was on a, not nobody, but very few people understand this. I was on an interplanetary landing evaluation team.

And this is, this is many, many years ago. And we surmise that get to the surface of Mars. So let me real quick, give you a little background. The Earth has a certain mass. A heavenly bodies.

A gravitational pull. Is based on its mass.

That's 9.8 meters per second squared at the surface.

32.2 feet per second squared. That's the acceleration we feel sitting here in this chair towards the center of the earth. Mars is about 0.384 tenths the size of the earth. It's smaller, right? So it's got less mass.

It's mass is less. So it's got less mass. Therefore it has less gravity at the surface. Mars has just enough gravity to hold an atmosphere. You go to the moon.

It's even smaller. It's got 1/6 the gravity at the surface. It doesn't have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere. So there's the surface of the moon. So let me tell you a little bit about it.

But you go back to Mars. The Mars atmosphere is about 1/100th the density of our atmosphere. We use our atmosphere to slow down. Friction builds up. You saw the video earlier.

It's got 3,000 degree. You know, plasma ball that says you're coming in, slowing you down. The Mars atmosphere. The mass that we're taking to the surface now slows down in the atmosphere the same. But it's only 1/100th the density of ours.

It's harder to slow down. And so you take the mass of what we're taking to the surface now. Compared to the mass we got to take to go to the surface with humans. It's exponentially more mass harder to slow down. It's almost impossible to slow that amount of mass down to get safely to the surface of the moon.

To the surface of Mars. We surmise that it would take 6 supersonic pairs of supersonic pairs. The parachute's the size of 6 footma fields to slow down enough. And we would look at balloons inflatable to these acceleration devices. And the math, the physics just doesn't work out.

It's hard to do. So getting the amount of mass of the surface that it requires to support human life. And then leave the surface. It is tough. I applaud people like Elon Musk.

It says we're going to figure out a way to do it.

“Because the only way we're ever going to do it is to have that attitude.”

Know everything in perform it well, right? Have that attitude. We're going to figure it out. But it is a very, very lofty endeavor. What do you think about it as a Christian?

I'm just curious. As a Christian? Should we be leaving the earth? Should we go into that other planet? The Lord created this planet to be inhabited, right?

But he also has given us insight into gaining knowledge. Lord has all knowledge. He knows everything. And he is according to his plan in his purposes. He has parsed out his knowledge throughout time.

More and more. More so now a abundance of knowledge coming to come into light, right? A abundance of knowledge. And that's all because the Lord is enlightening us, so to speak. And he's the one that gave us the ability and enhanced our capability to go to the moon,

which we've done.

“And so do I see a problem with enhancing and growing knowledge?”

No. We don't know what we don't know. And the Lord has given us this ingenuity, this mind, to go forward. I don't see an ethical problem with trying to go and explore and do these things. I don't see that in Scripture at all.

I see just the opposite, actually. I see going forward. What was it? Jubalcane, tubal and Jubalcane.

Initially were the first ones in Genesis, chapter, four, whatever.

That first worked in lead. And then first, you know, stringed instruments and loot. And music and all those things, it started somewhere. And we've grown as we go. And that's obviously, I think, in the Lord's will and going forward.

So I don't see a conflict with that at all. Yeah. Good question. And I mean, just from being out in space, you were just talking about how you get the shit beat out inside those spaces.

How are we going to get massive amounts of people there? Is it just, I mean, lower th orbit. Lower th orbit. We've done a lot.

“We've learned a lot about how to live and operate lower th orbit.”

We have suit technology that's continuing to progress. So the suits that we have now will be replaced. You got to realize the spacewalk, the suit that I went on in spacewalk. Thirty January of last year, just over a year ago. I think it's 35 years old.

I mean, that's pretty old for a space suit. And all the, you know, advancements and even that technology, we're trying to bring on board for future programs. So that will be, that will be better as we go forward without question. And we're working on that now and have been and continue to do so.

So that will improve. But all of it is difficult. You know, flying in space. Starliner, we had an issue, right? We had problems.

Spaceflight is hard. And sometimes, if you don't dot all your teas and dot all your eyes across all your teas, you're thanks to another turn out the way you hope. And that's why it's imperative, testing, evaluating, using our capabilities, God, given capabilities, learning grow, it's challenging.

This is a very, very, very challenging business and very, very difficult to do well. I think by and large, we do it well, but there are going to be issues going forward as well. And we just got to prepare for that.

“That's why it's important when we have issues.”

You got to figure out what happened. If you have an anomaly, what happened? Once you figure out what happened, then you got to go back. Historically and say, why did it happen? And you got to figure that out.

If you don't do those things, you are falling for sure to what's required in this business. What happened? Why it happened? And then you got to have a process to fix it, to get it right. Because in this business, you can't have these type of significant issues. If you're not doing a full-up process, it's going forward to rectify it as we continue to move forward, because there's too much at risk.

Human lives are literally at stake. Yeah, and that's important, of course. Let's move to Starliner. Great. Where do we start?

Oh, my. Where do you want to start? I can explain what happened. Let's start with, what was the point of the vision?

Starliner was the sixth first crude spacecraft in the history of the U.S. space program.

Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle, Space X Dragon, Starliner. Number six. It was the first crude flight. I was a commander. And the only reason I was a commander, because we talked about the test pilot stuff background.

I had that background. And for a first flight, it's a first flight. It's a test flight. All space flights are test flight. But certainly the first one is significant in that you're trying out new capabilities.

You're certifying capabilities, what you say, see on paper, what you see in the engineering, how you put it all together, you're certifying it all works as and goes as designed. So that's the mission. We're going to launch. We've got a list of test parameters that we're going to do prior to affecting the rendezvous

and docking. We're going to do the rendezvous and docking test as we go through that process. Doc, we're going to have. Quiet isn't docked evaluations of the spacecraft thermal implications. So all this other stuff, while it's docked for a period of days, we're going to undock.

We're going to leave the vicinity of the space station. We're going to set a test setting up for the deal with burn, evaluating, again, the capabilities of the system. Things that we have designed in the system, do they really work as planned as designed. Do the deal with burn, end of the atmosphere, all the way down to parachutes deploying and landing.

Hopefully on the spot that you intended. That's the mission. It's a test flight. Specifically, all missions have to test test portions in them.

Any time you find any space, but certainly this one first flight is a full-up test mission.

And that's the purpose of the whole thing. How many people were up there with you? They're two on Starliner. Me and Sineeda Williams, Sunny Williams.

“Is that the least amount of people you've gone to space with?”

Oh yes. In the reason, there weren't more. The spacecraft can carry more. It's a test flight. Right.

There's no reason to put anyone else at risk. And in this scenario, there's no reason for that. And so I even lobbied for that. They talked about maybe more. We had as many as three assigned at some point.

Again, it was a long, grown-out process. We had years where we had several different individuals scheduled on the mission.

I was not the first commander scheduled.

I was a backup. I was actually initially selected to back up the first two missions.

On the first mission and the second mission.

One guy backing up four positions. That was my role.

“Eventually, the first guy, the commander of the first mission decided to step aside from any reasons.”

And that's when I went in. It's the commander of the first mission. So original, I was a backup. And I hadn't been back. You know, it's kind of the hacker time.

You go on space. You go to space. You come back. You go to the bottom of the pile. And you work the way up.

To get back up to the top. You get assigned again. If you stay, you know, come back and you go back. So that was me. I went to the bottom of the pile.

I got back in 2015. Worked my way up. Had specific qualifications as test background. But I wasn't in that position in the hierarchy of assignments to be assigned to a mission. But I was I had the skill.

There wasn't many people that could back up all those positions. But I had that that experience is why they put me in the backup role.

And eventually, that evolved into, of course, the commander role for the first mission.

Do it a lot of different circumstances. I went wrong. What went wrong? A lot. Yeah.

There was. I mean, when I came back, I said it.

“I didn't see a lot of discussion about those issues from NASA or Boeing while I was in space.”

But when I got back, every press conference we had. We had several on orbit. And even getting back, I had four goals in mind when I spoke to the media. And the nation and the, and the world. I want to honor my, my administration.

That's our leadership of our nation. Because this is a national endeavor. I wanted to honor NASA. My direct, you know, the ones that I'm, I'm a slave to. And I say that not in a bad sense in a good sense.

I'm, they're part of, you know, the hierarchy of where I work for. I want to honor them. I want to honor Boeing. And I had to honor my integrity. And those four things were the driving forces in every time I opened my mouth.

Every time I said whatever I said. Honor my nation, honor NASA, honor, honor Boeing and maintain my integrity. So when I got back, I was very open. I said we had some failures. It's obvious we did.

I mean, you don't have this play out the way it play out. And say nothing happened. We obviously had some failures. But obviously didn't have sufficient assessment of some of the spacecraft capabilities. It's obvious.

I mean, I don't know why we wouldn't say that, but we did. And like I said earlier, we're going to find out why it happened. We're going to find out what happened. And then we're going to put steps in place to rectify it. That's our plot.

That's our process.

“That's what has to take place or we're not doing it right.”

So what happened?

Coming up, day one was amazing.

We launched. We had all this several multiple tests where I'm hands on the controls, manual flying in space and open space, testing out the capabilities. And this spacecraft was precise as I can imagine.

If I were to give an example of what the spacecraft I flown or like, I hope nobody. The space shuttle is a cat-lack. Big, sturdy, go. It's super nice.

The Soyuz is like one of those buggys that are racing in the desert. They're bouncing. But they're great capability, sturdy. Not as sleek, necessarily looking, but so capable. And you know, if I'm going to go racing the desert and do bouncing all that,

I want to be a Soyuz. Starliner. Sportscar. I mean, that day one precise. Manual flying.

I mean, if I wanted to, that's, you've got a flag on the wall, American flag on the wall behind you. If I wanted to point a dot at one of those stars, I felt like I can do it. Precise.

Sportscar. Dragon. I don't mean this detrimental. But as a kid, we had a Volkswagen, a beetle, a bug. It was different.

Engine's in the back. It's air cooled. It's not as sleek as some of the other other cars. But my goodness. You talk about sturdy and reliable.

Did everything you wanted it to. One of the sports car. You don't get into dragon. A space extra dragon and control. It doesn't have that capability.

It has some rudimentary type of control. But most of it's automated. So it is a Volkswagen beetle. Capable, sturdy. I'd have one in a heartbeat.

And we did it. Like I said, the kid growing up. But Starliners of Sportscar. That's what they wanted. It was unreal.

I mean, it was. We were over the Indian Ocean. But one of our tasks was to see if I could point my velocity vector, the vector in which we're going.

Could I point it directly in line with how we were orbiting the planet? Without any other cues. And the displays or anything. Just looking after window. And we were over the Indian Ocean.

No moon.

“Minimal stars because I'm looking down at the earth.”

So that I can't hardly see the earth. I can only see very vague impressions of clouds that are going back. So we're traveling. 17,500 miles an hour.

That's five miles a second.

Right? Boom second. We just went five miles. So you're orbiting the planet every 90 minutes. At this phase, we're over the middle of the Indian Ocean.

No ground lights. No lights on it. It's nighttime. No ground lights. No moon.

And I'm trying to orient the spacecraft to see if I can get it exactly in line. Because you think about it. If you lose your computers. And our thermal, you know, our solar array.

Basically how we gain our electrical power is on the back of the space shuttle. And so back of the starliner. And I want to point that at the sun. If I've got no system, how am I going to ensure that I pointed at the sun

directly.

So I can maximize my ability to gain power.

If I got no system. What about if I lose communication? And I don't have a system.

“How do I point my antennas at the satellites out there?”

So I can regain communication. How do I do that? These are part of the test that we were doing. If I'm in a rendezvous scenario where I need to get away from the from the space station, I need to make sure that I'm in line with the

velocity vector of which the space station and we are going. So I can make sure that I've made the correct control inputs to make me leave the station and not run into it. So this was we weren't at the station. But we're doing these tests.

In case we get in a scenario to make sure we can do these things. I almost nailed it. I was a couple of degrees off. But with no visual, no light, no nothing. I almost nailed it.

Exactly. On line with that velocity vector. Just looking out the window. That's a sports car. That's a sports car.

So capable. So capable. Day two, we're coming up. We lost a thruster. So try to describe this briefly.

“You've got thrusters located or five on all on the spacecraft.”

Top bottom, starboard import. And there are seven thrusters at each location that call dog houses. Kind of stick out on the sides of the service module. So top bottom, starboard import. And these thrusters point in different directions.

So you can control the spacecraft. Six degrees of freedom. Pitch, roll, and y'all. That's attitude, right? Translation, forward and aft up and down.

Left and right. That's translation. Put them all together. Three and three. Six degrees of freedom.

You're flying. Six, that's what you do in space. So we have eight aft firing thrusters. Two at each location. To affect the ability to do some of the attitude control and pitching y'all.

And also to translate forward, right? To affect that maneuver. We lose an aft firing thruster on the starboard side. We had lost some thrusters on the service module in the previous uncrewed test flights. We'd had two.

There's on supposed to be one. But we had two. We lost some on both of them. But the bad thing about the service module itself. You got the crew module on top where the crew is.

You got the service module on the bottom. You do your DRB burn. Use the service module engine. So do your DRB burn to slow down.

You go from 25,000 feet per second to about 24,700.

So now you start to come back to earth. Once you do your DRB burn, you detach that service module. And it burns up in the atmosphere. Don't think comes back as the module. So you don't get these thrusters back.

The ones that failed on the first two uncrewed missions. We don't get them back. We can't inspect them. We just know they failed. You're downlinking as much data as you can.

You take the data. You do your best engineering assessment of what happened. Because you can't inspect the thruster. So we had failures on the previous two missions. So we lose this thruster.

I'm like, that's not good. But fault tolerance. We build multiple, let layers of failures into our systems, our capabilities. So dual fault tolerance, what most of our systems are.

I can lose two things and whatever the system is. And still be able to affect whatever someone to do. For control, we build dual fault tolerance. I lose this one thruster. I still have two fault tolerance.

I'm still dual fault tolerance. So not a big deal. Not good, but not a big deal. We start to get closer. We get the velocity vector of the space station as it's orbiting the planet.

which is part of the round of the process.

And we lose the second thruster.

Now I'm thinking, okay, now we lost the level of fault tolerance. We went from dual fault tolerance to single fault tolerance. And it was a bottom thrusters. Still at firing. And I'm thinking, oh, this isn't good.

This has happened. You gotta realize what's going through my mind. I've got thousands of iron simulator. I know the spacecraft is good or better in anybody. In an integrated fashion.

Not as deep in certain areas as some others. But broadly. And I'm thinking. Automation. We're under the automated sequences.

This automation. Have something to do with this? Should I take over manual?

“How are we going to get these structures back if we need them?”

How are we going to do that? All this is going through my mind. I may actually take over manual. And a ground calls up. Take over manual control.

So I take over manual control. We're on the V bar. The velocity vector of this space station. 260 meters out.

And we'll lose the third thruster.

Now we're zero fault tolerance to maintaining 60 degree of freedom control. This 60 degree. We're zero fault tolerance now. And the control, even with three thrusters down, is not what it was the day prior.

No, we're near. It's sluggish. I'll pause here to tell you what we think where it's happening before I continue. When we did our tests after the fact, there's a piston basically.

I'll just try to do it just very basic. There's a piston that keeps the propellant and the oxidizer from entering the combustion chamber. These are hypergolic fuels. Meaning there's no ignition source. These two chemicals meet boom.

They fire. So there's a piston in there. And the piston will pull back, let some fluid through. It gets in the combustion chamber and the fire takes place. The thruster curves.

And then it closes, right?

There's a Teflon seal on the end of that piston that we surmise was deforming due because it got overheated. So it's, it's not the same shape. It actually deforms. And when it pulls back, it's not allowing sufficient fluid to flow

into the combustion chamber. It's restricting it some, so we're getting less thrust. Reduce thrust in these thrusters. Okay. So we surmise.

“That's what's happening when the thrust level goes below a certain level.”

The computer goes, huh? You're not operating, right? Let me take you out of the mix. It's called Fitter. Flight, default detection, indication response.

Fitter. So Fitter says, nope, you're not working. You got below that level. You're out. You're done.

So Fitter is what's taking these thrusters out. And we don't know why. I have no idea in the real time. I just know that control is not what it was a day prior. It's challenging.

I can't prove this, but I would have to say that other thrusters were reduced in their capet, in their thrust level. Because of what the control was like, but not low enough to fail. So we've got eight air firing thrusters. I would say they were all reduced thrust.

We gave an example, audibly, what we were hearing. You could hear, they prior that day as the piston would move. You know, sound doesn't travel in a vacuum. It has to have air to sound to travel. But it's travel through the structure of the service module.

Into the air, this in the crew module. And we could hear the thrusters fire. Meaning, you could hear that piston move. And the day prior, and up until this point, we could hear. Now, what we're hearing is like a machine gun.

Oh, man. And that probably looks funny on camera, but that's the way it sounded. Yeah. We're hearing machine guns fire, which we had heard before. So the spacecraft is laboring.

We've down three thrusters. We're zero fault tolerant now to maintaining six-toff control. I'm on the controls manual, trying to maintain control, and then we lose the fourth thruster. And we're already in the process with the ground to get the thrusters back.

To try to work a plan to come back with the thrusters. But now, we've lost four. We're past six-toff. I don't have six-toff control. We went past zero fault tolerant.

Now, we lost six degree of freedom control. That's not good. That's why not good. And the control, in my hands, was very challenging. I'm to the point now of I mentioned orbital mechanics, how spacecraft flying proximity to each other.

“Now we're in that area of what if I make this control input?”

What's that going to do with respect to orbital mechanics and my ability to maintain position? I have to maintain my distance. I have to maintain my attitude because we have sensors on the spacecraft that see the space station. Cameras, infrared sensors, radar, they're seeing the space station, and they're building a digital picture. That's how you can rendezvous and dock manually.

It's based on these sensors, and it affects the docking.

Daniel, I mean, automatically. If I lose that attitude, if I lose and can't see the station, it's going to dump all that. And we can't get it back. So now, this is, I just share what I'm going through my mind. Sunny and I didn't talk.

We didn't talk about it. I mean, we were just, I'm completely focused on maintaining control. She's working the procedures and the systems, and we did not discuss it. I didn't discuss it with the ground. The ground didn't talk to me because I know they're busy, and they know we're busy.

When we operate the spacecraft, no-no-ops, the crew supports mission control and the operation of the spacecraft. That's the way I view it. I'm supporting the ground as we operate the spacecraft. When it comes to flying it, and this like this scenario, the ground is supporting us.

Because we are hands on where the ones that are going to make a break. And so my focus, and again, this is what we talked about earlier, decades of preparation, various scenarios that I've been through, preparing me to be able to focus, forget about everything that's happening. In aviation, we call it "beware of the snakes in the cockpit."

They're not physical snakes, but in that mindset, things happen. You cannot let the snakes in the cockpit, the issues that are taking place, overshadow your responsibility in the moment. Because, as a commander, I'm responsible for the spacecraft.

“My crew, and this is of global significance, right?”

I mean, it's international importance. And it's a great deal of responsibility. And so, at that moment, my focus is on flying the spacecraft. Sunny is doing a wonderful job with everything else involved. Because my focus is fully where it has to be.

You know, aviation, navigate, communicate. That's the order in aviation that we talk about. It's like flying, navigate, figure out where you're going, communicate last. I'm aviation, that's all I'm doing. Sunny's doing the navigate, communicating.

Wonderful, oil. So, focus, loss of sixth off control. What does this control input going to do with ordinary canics? Can I maintain my position? If I lose attitude, I'm going to drop this lock.

We won't be able to dock autonomously. Don't want that. Very challenging. What if we lose a fifth left thruster? It's going through my mind.

“If we lose a fifth thruster, will I be able to control?”

I don't know.

We never even dreamed up this scenario.

I just know what I feel in my hands. And losing a fifth thruster, I don't know what's going to happen. Because this is the mindset of the way it's bred into us. In aviation and certainly in NASA, we're always looking to the next worst failure. What if?

And I'm even thinking, what if we lose calm? What am I going to do if we lose communication with the ground? Because we have to dock. We're in that window of, if we don't dock with the control I feel, I'm not sure we can do or deal with burn.

And get back to earth. In the moment, I'm not sure we can. These are the thoughts that are going through my mind. We have to dock. If we don't dock, I'm not sure we can.

This is going to turn out well. And then what if we lose calm? That comes in my mind too. I decided, even in this situation I was in, leaving is not an option. Unless we just, unless I'm going to endanger the station.

So I'm going to fly all the way in to ten meters. That's when we set up our docking mechanism, hold there, and then come on in. As I fly into ten meters, I'm going to evaluate the capability to control the spacecraft. Can I do it? I get to ten meters.

“If the answer's no, I can't do it enough to where I think I can safely dock.”

I'm going to leave because I can't, I can't endanger the space station. But if I do, even if I can't talk to them, if I think I can do it, I'm going to dock. That's really the only option we had. Even thinking back on it, there was not another viable option. It was this, or, or, you know, like I said in the moment.

We have many options. I know we have many options. We have different capabilities. We have a backup mode in the spacecraft. If you don't have a computer, you go directly to the thrusters.

You know, inputs go directly to the thrusters. To maintain control. I know all of this. But in the scenario at the moment, I'm going to emphasize this. I don't know why we're losing thrusters.

I just know what I'm filling in my hands. And how challenging it is. And I'm just trying to think next, where's failure? What am I going to do? And so it was, it was in the moment.

It was, it was very trying. And what if we lose another one? I can't control it all. I don't know. I have no idea.

Better fact, I even asked the flight director.

Vince of the court after I finally got on the phone.

He's like, I don't know. Anyway, that's anyway.

So anyway, this is all going through the mind.

So the what happened. So we get to the point where we've lost four, we're lost three, six to off control. But maintaining the attitude in the position. Like I just shared and challenging as it was.

“The only way to get these thrusters back is to send test firing.”

So these failed thrusters. But to do that, I got to be off the controls because I'm putting a control input in to a thruster that fires when this test signal is sent. It's going to, it's going to corrupt the data. And then I'm going to be able to tell if this thruster fired sufficiently

to bring it back in. So I've got to maintain my position, maintain my attitude, or we'll mechanics, all this going through my mind. And don't touch the controls. It's pretty challenging.

Wow, they go off the controls so they can send this test firing.

But my God's grace, again, decades of preparation. I didn't even know existed. This is looking back inside now. I can see it. I get a little bit of drift, a little bit of drift,

a little nothing. Okay, and I'd say hands off. Sunny would say hands off. They sent the signal to the thrusters. I came back on too quickly.

Initially, the story goes on.

“But we, in that process, very challenging.”

Like I said, we got two of the four thrusters back. I moved in from 260 meters to 200 meters. I asked me to move it in. I did that. Sunny says, go slow.

That's the one thing she did say. Go slow. Because I'm like, get it done now. What kind of guy? She knows that. We've been together for years. And I'm like, I agree.

So I crept in. I didn't add any extra, you know, closure rate. You know, range rates, what we call it? I didn't add any extra. I just slowly, slowly, slowly brought it into 200 meters.

Stop it 200 meters. We lost the fifth thruster. We lost the fifth thruster. Fortunately, like I said, though, we've gotten two of the four original four we lost back.

So now we're only three thrusters down. We're not five thrusters down simultaneously. Back, we're still zero fall tolerant to six degree of freedom control. But we're back to zero fall tolerant. Same thing, maintain your distance, maintain your attitude.

Don't touch it. Not easy, get in the position, drift as minimal, hands off, send the test firings. And we've eventually got two of those three backs. So now we're only down one. We're back to dual fall tolerant.

But the spacecraft is still laboring. Eventually, I had told the flight direction several times. You know, this is this is developmental test. This is what we're doing. This is development of a new capability.

“And that's what you know, it's developmental experimental.”

It's experimental test too. And when you're in the test pilot, test pilot jargon, developmental experimental test, that's what this is. And so in that process, you understand what's taking place in the moment and how to affect whatever needs to be affected.

And so we expect to have failures in the process. It's brand new capability. There were a couple of situations in the simulator where I had to go to manual mode out of automatic mode. Again, these are scenarios we're testing.

And then I had to go to backup mode because manual wasn't sufficient. And after we went through the process of trying to rectify the problem, I tried to go back into automatic mode. I couldn't. And then I couldn't also get into manual or backup mode.

So we perish in the simulator. I got no mode I can get into. I can't get into automatic. I can't fly manually. And I can't get into backup mode.

So we perish. And that happened more than once. And because of that experience in the simulator, again, you expect to find things that you go through this process. I told the fight directors, I said,

if I'm on the controls and I'm able to control, and you want me to give it back to automation, I might not do it. Because you support me in flying the spacecraft. And that scenario, like I was mentioned earlier.

So when they said, okay, it's time to give it back. All these assessments during test were software hardware-related problems. I did not feel like this was a software hardware-related problem. When we brought those thrusters back in, we had to cancel the Fedor, the fault detection and the case response.

We had to cancel those thrusters.

So basically, a little bit you're hanging it out.

They're not going to be pulled out.

If they go to no thrust, if they get a fail leak, whatever, they're not coming out. They're going to be in the mix regardless. We had to do that to safely God. Anyway, so I go back.

I knew they were going to ask me to give it back on automation when we got down to, when we got back dual fault tolerance. But still, the spacecraft, I can still hear the same sound. So I know there's thrusters or something's going on. I don't know what the time what it is.

But it sounds different still. And I'm able to control, and it, a moment from a moment, I'm like, I'm not sure I want to give it back to automation. Because of, like I said, all that had transpired in the past. But that was the grounds assessment.

They had more data than I do. I did not feel like this was a software issue, because of how the failures had happened. It wasn't like a blanket, a whole area of a system failed. It was individuals that went out simultaneously.

I didn't feel like it was software hardware related. Software related. I didn't know what it was. But because of that, I said, Roger that. And I gave it back to automation.

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“What did you feel like when you found out that you weren't coming home?”

And I'm like, well, I got to tell you the whole story. Because one of the other things I thought, even before we docked, this is spacecraft to sick. I mean, it is. Tell it, say what it is.

If we dock successfully, we probably aren't coming home in this spacecraft. Because I knew how difficult it is to bound a problem like this. You can't go out on a spacewalk and inspect the thrusters. They're not designed to build that way. Where we can do that.

And so it's going to be an assessment on the ground, based on whatever they have capabilities to test, to see if we can figure out what happened, and then bound the problem of what happened, enough to get us back inside to come home in it.

So even before we docked, I'm like, this chance is a very slim of us coming back in this spacecraft. So I knew that earlier. I didn't tell my family that. And so we, this was June six.

The decision to come back or not come back on Starliner was laid August. It was probably early July that I told my family. I said, I didn't say anything in this life.

Finally said, you know, the most likely scenarios.

We're going to be here about 2025. This was July of 2024. And so 2025 was six months away. We're probably going to be here till at least 2025.

“That's what I'm guessing the most likely scenario is.”

Just because I, again, I knew it before we ever docked. That it was, it was chances were slim just how difficult these,

And that's obviously the way it turned out. How'd your family react? I tried to build resiliency and that type of, you know, mindset into my daughters from day one. A couple of things I've told them.

Rule number one in our family. Since they could speak and understand. You will not disrespect your mother. That's the first. And the second thing is I've tried to teach them to be responsible.

And being responsible is understanding that life comes at you.

“And that you have to flex with how life preserves our Lord of sovereign.”

It doesn't reduce our responsibility in preparation, like I've said. But I Lord of sovereign, he's in control. We can be content in most difficult situations. Because he is working out his plan and his purpose for his glory and your good. Ultimately, if you will believe.

And we got to believe that. That's what God's worth says. And so I'm not saying there weren't tears. There were. My youngest daughter was going to be a senior in high school. I was going to miss it.

Her final year of playing volleyball.

We always go to the tournaments and travel and do all that.

I won't be there. I knew that. People miss those type of things. And this line of work and other lines of work. Those things happen regularly.

And not just us. But it was unexpected, right? It wasn't in the plan.

“And so we had the shift and she did too.”

And I'm proud of my daughters for how they flexed. My wife was apprehensive from the beginning. She's, you know, there's a lot of things that happened. Starliner had 30 scheduled launch dates until we finally launched. That is never happened before.

Dating back to 2018. And we'd lived failures, fine and stuff, slips. We'd lived it for years. And so she was skeptical anyway about the whole process. So us not coming back on Starliner.

She was absolutely fine with it. Because of that. Because of the history that we shared. And that's just the loving wife, right? Concerned about her husband and those.

You know, situations of life that we find ourselves in with specific. Task and roles and responsibilities. And so she was she was she was fine with that. That's the one her tear to. But because the reality of it sets in.

This is really really happening. But persevering through it all. We track our sleep, fine tune our macros and try every biohack under the sun.

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Go to armoura.com/SRS or enter SRS to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's ARMRA.com/SRS. Did Boeing know about the helium leak before launch? Yes. We did.

We have eight manifolds. And one of them had a very, very small leak. There is debate on this, but I'll say it anyway. Realizing that some people may push back. But leak a leak is a leak.

Even if it's for a little bit of tiny leak, a leak is a leak. Right? Before we return, by the time the spacecraft returned, seven of those eight manifolds had a leak of some sort in it. Seven of the eight.

They're small. They're manageable. But a leak is a leak. Right? There was only one that was leaking prior to launch.

And we've been through so much.

And there's always, there are always issues.

I want to caveat that and put this in the right light. There are always issues. But we're always going through the process of trades. What's assessing engineering assessment, what the data's telling us hardware assessments.

We're always doing that. That's constant. So for one system to have a leak and say, let's go ahead and launch with it. Once we think we've bounded the problem, like I said earlier, is not uncommon.

Would you have launched it? No. Now, obviously, I didn't object. You got to realize the mindset from the beginning. Growing up in NASA, I was in my 24th year at this point.

There's a lot of smart, passionate individuals that are involved in this process.

“And they want what's best without letting external factors invade their decision making.”

And so as a part of that, you know, when I came as commander, we were originally, we're supposed to launch in May of 2020. May of 2020 was a launch day. We had a failure on the test flight in December of 2019, where the Starliner did not make it to the Space Station.

And we got it back, but there were significant issues.

A timing issue with the, basically the cock system, software.

And we didn't make it to Space Station, but got it back. Had that not happened, we were launching crew in May June, you know, five, six months later. That was the plan. I came in as the commander, late summer of 2020. It was obviously going to be delays because of what happened on OFT, the original test flight.

And other things were happening. Like I said, the guy, the gentleman that was a commander stepped aside. I came in as a commander. And from that point forward, we went into full test evaluation mode. As I started building a little bit of a team.

With engineers, we didn't have those. The SpaceX had a whole crew of engineers. They trained out at Thought Hall Thorn, California. Hope army of people would go out there. We had nothing.

We had 20% of a couple of. Of engineers. And I went and asked for them. It was not easy.

I finally got a couple of built a team.

And I couldn't get, I couldn't get tests because we were seeing things in similar. I didn't, I didn't understand. And I wanted to test it. And the, you have a simulator. Similar does what you tell it, right?

Just to be just for basically level of understanding. You do this simulator. And it does it. If you have an iron bird, meaning you have the real avionics boxes. The real wiring, the real cockpit, all connected together.

Integrated together. That's where you really test your, and your iron bird. Everything that you can on the ground. Then you can't have an iron bird connected the thrusters. And actually fire thrusters.

You can't do that on the ground. But you can have an emulator that emulates the firing of the thrusters. Connected in the system and evaluate it. So we wanted to get in the avionics software integration laboratory. And do some testing.

But we could. It was hard to get. I won't go into all the, all the nitty-gritty details.

When we finally did get in there.

And it was, it was a struggle initially. When we finally didn't get in there. We found several lethal failure modes in the software. Again, this is part of the developmental experimental process. But realize we were launching in May of 2020.

If that OFT had gone well, we were launching crew. And the thing with any, any aircraft, spacecraft. You want to find everything that there's a problem before you go. And what you don't find, you hope your preparation is got you in a place where you can handle it. Well, we found multiple lethal failure modes in the software.

After the fact, by pushing for tests. And my wife knows all this, right?

“That's why in the question earlier, she was fine with it.”

Because we originally posted launch already. And I come in as a commander, push for this stuff. And the story is long, but I don't need to go into all those details. But fortunately, this process, the most mental test, we found a lot of stuff. But we don't have, we don't have, it's a long, long answer to your question.

As a crew, we don't have, we don't have insight into hardware. Like helium seals and thrusters. You know, those evaluations for those capabilities are outside of our purview, and we basically trust the process, right? Trust the process, trust the process.

People that are taking care of all that, just got to trust that those are sufficient. Whatever it's saying, because we don't have purview of that. We found a lot in what we had purview over, thankfully. But that stuff, we just trust, you got it, that's all we can. That's what this business is about.

Trust is imperative. Absolutely has to be there in this business. And that's where we were in trusting. I can guess what your next question is. Then what happened?

“I said earlier that we obviously had some, we had some shortcomings, right?”

And we had some shortcomings in our evaluation, our assessment, our testing. We didn't catch some things we should have. Again, those are failures that we got to fix. That's the what happened, the why it happened, why did we not test them? Those are questions that if you're not already in process of being answered, they have to be answered.

And I know that you and probably others are aware that NASA has changed its stance on the classification of the mission. You're aware of that?

Yeah, they initially, they called it a high visibility close call.

And I was vehemently against it. How can this be? And I'm going to share this thought. I mean, this is this is part of the process. It's not right.

This classification is based on the NASA procedural requirements document in PR. And in the NPR, it talks about controlability of the spacecraft as part of the assessment of

“the mission, is it a close of high visibility close call or is it a type of a missile?”

MISSAP classification gives it a completely different avenue of assessment. And it was a long time before they gave it this high visibility close call. And from the beginning, I was like, this is a missile. Of course it's a missile. And they gave it this, and I'm like, if the NPR, if the NPR says,

it has to do with controlability of the spacecraft. Who controlled the spacecraft? That would be me. Don't you thank you. You'd ask the guy that was controlling the spacecraft about the controlability of the spacecraft.

If you're trying to make an assessment of classification, you'd talk to that guy, right? When you? I would. Yeah, this is part of the sadness of processes and culture and all that that they didn't. Wow.

And I even voiced that up the chain. I'm like, how do you make this call without talking to me? I mean, I'm not that I'm special. But I'm the guy that was on the controls. How do you make that assessment?

Um, what was the answer? It was the wrong answer. Because that's what's happened now. They've changed it. It is now a type A missile.

“In line with the other missiles we've endured, where we lost life,”

Jones earned Columbia. It's the same classification. And it should have been from the beginning. And this is part of what the administrator Isaacman was saying the other day, and it's announcement about this, that we, this business is built on trust,

what I was saying earlier. And we cannot have situations occur where our trust is not at the forefront of our concerns. And if we're making decisions where we're losing trust, and Sean, this is, you know, it's a long story. I'm not going to go into it here.

Um, that's just one of the points that just, it just, it's can't happen. When you, when you have an NPR based on controllability, and you're saying, well, we lost six off control, but we got it back. But you don't talk to a guy that's on the controls to tell you about how difficult it was to control, or if it was difficult, then we can't have that.

And I, and I hate to say that, but it's true. Um, but we're on the right path now. We weren't, I voiced it, and, but now we are. Now we are. And I'd love to nine and a half months.

It did. Extra time and space. 286 days stranded. You packed for eight. Yeah.

We did. I wore the same shirt for two months.

“What the, what the, what do you, I mean?”

It was okay. I mean, so many questions, so I'm any pack for eight. You're there for six days. Well, there's 36 days. What do you even eat?

You know, the Lord's provision. I'm telling you, it's everywhere in the story. I keep saying it, but it's true. I got up there. There were four and a half bags of food that had been.

I say trashed, set aside. Cruise before us didn't want it. So they put the food in these bags. And eventually they will go into cargo. Air space craft that don't return to Earth, they burn up in the atmosphere.

It's just put away trash. Because we got new food, right? So these bags of food were there. They had me parse it out into the different categories, you know, meats, vegetables, whatever. And that's really basically what I ate for the first four months.

There's always a surplus.

We planned for four months contingency. That was there. But we also had this extra food that wasn't accounted for. And that's basically the one eight. So people say, you ate trash for four months?

No. I like ship food on aircraft care. I'm probably one of the rare people that do that. So I like ship food. So no, I thought it was great.

I was fine with it. Because I don't have a very discerning pallet. I don't need anything. So it was perfect for me. Timing was perfect for me.

So that's basically, I mean, that's not all I ate.

And I go to that area where that food was stored. And I just fill up my mesh bag and stick it in the location. That's what I ate on that week.

“Is there a real point where you thought you're going to die up there?”

Uh, no. No. No. No. I didn't.

Two hundred and eighty six days. Yeah. No, you got to realize that. I'm not going back to earth. Yeah.

We know that there's a plan. We're working a plan to get us back. We didn't know what it would be initially. But, you know, when we first got there, when we first docked. And we did our hugs in front of the camera and, you know, all that.

As soon as the cameras went off, I went. We had KU band coverage suitable. And I called the flight director, Vincent McCourt. I said, Vincent. What do we do in this emergency situation?

We trained for you got to leave space station now. It's never happened. But in a scenario where there's debris coming at the space station, we can't maneuver the station, you got to leave. Maybe you have a depression of depressurization event.

You can't fix it. You got to leave. Maybe you have a fire.

“And you can't access most of the keep parts of the station.”

You got to leave. I said, what do we do in those situations? And we run into this. Or we have to leave. We had a six spacecraft here.

What do we do?

We said, but it's never happened.

I'm like, yeah, I know that. The chances of it happen are slim. But if it does, starliners, you're option. That's the option you got. Because to go and get, there's not enough room in a Soyuz.

We had a Soyuz there. There's room in a dragon. There's excess room in a dragon. But there's no seats. There's no environmental control e-clist to support,

where I could plug in my suit and get air. None of that. So starliners was our best option. And for the first several months, that was our only option.

That was our safe haven. And we even had the scenario where a satellite broke up, and they were afraid to breathe was going to come. And we woke us up in the middle of night. We went into our spacecraft.

You know, the Soyuz, the dragon, and our starliners. Close the hatches. Waiting to see if we got to go. So we're actually in that scenario. It wasn't optimal.

Obviously the spacecraft we were still didn't know what had caused the problem. And would it be sufficient. But that's all you got. That's all you got.

And that's the way we were for several months. But eventually, we built seats. We built pallets in the dragon that was there. The ground space accident. Great engineering.

But what we had on board. And we built seats for us. You built seats. We built seats in the bottom of the dragon. Yeah.

And that was then when we had that sufficiently done, that became our safe haven. Now we didn't have the ability to plug in the eclist and all. And I don't know. I mean, sure, when we had the ability to plug in the communication.

I don't think we did. But at least we had a seat that we could strap into. Made out of foam and everything else. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Barrett, medical doctor.

He worked wonderfully well with the ground and basically built these seats.

While the rest of us are doing space station stuff. And he did too. But as a as a side job, he did a lot of extra work on his own to get these seats built for us. So we would have a viable way to return other than starliner. Yeah.

Holy shit. Yeah. So you had to build your seats. We built seats. We sure did.

And it was a great feat of engineering. It's type of stuff happens. And again, the world doesn't know that. So these all it's essentially there's three aircraft. Yeah.

Connected to the space station. What is the space station like? Do you get in there? Think about. Think about five or six buses connected in the end.

Okay. As far as volume. The Russian segment's a little smaller.

“Yeah, I think the I think the outside diameter is 14 feet of the of the volumes.”

The lab, the node two, node one, Columbus, the Japanese experimental, experimental module. I think it's 14 feet. And of course, inside that we've got racks, which brings it smaller. Makes it squares that have around on the outside. And there's a lot of volume.

A lot of volume. And then of course, the spacecraft coming and going. There's only so many docking points. And the US segment right now. We have two with the forward and the zine at the top one.

The dragon was on the top one. We were on the forward. And of course, the Russian segment docked to the Russians. The Soyuz docks to the Russian segment. And so it's it's back there.

And so yeah, three spacecraft. It's pretty amazing. And also then we have a cargo spacecraft. The sickness is as attached below node one.

Yeah, it's a pretty amazing.

When you think about all that's taking place in lower orbit with a space station and the choreography and the orchestration of all these spacecraft coming and going, it's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing. It's very amazing. Yeah.

What kind of effects does it have on your body being, I mean?

we touched down in the desert of Kazakhstan and Permafrost. It was March of 2015 and it was hard.

“The Soyuz has what they call soft landing thrusters.”

Basically, it's like getting hit in the back of the sledgehammer as they fire.

They fire about 10 feet from the ground and then you hit the ground. So it's boom, boom. And it was the harsh thing I've ever felt. I'm laying in a bucket, basically, that's molded like my body. Because that's the seat liner that we launched with was molded to my body.

And I didn't get knocked out of breath. I was pretty surprised because it was that hard. I didn't feel any pain. Everything was great. It was just a very, very hard landing.

Within a week, there was something in my right side of my back that I felt. It's never going away. Don't know what it is. They've even arrived it, they've exaggerated. I have a constant forever pain, a thorn in my side, if you will.

Oh man, since 2015 when I was in space this last time, it's gone. You get no pressure on your system, your gravity. And all your joint aches and pains are gone. Yeah, I'm noticed, but I don't turn my head to the right pulling G's for 40 years almost. My neck is just not what it used to be.

So it's hard for me to turn to the right. Not as bad to the left, but I can't turn to the right hardly. No pain. No pain. No pain in space.

I got back when you splashed down in the Gulf of America. And within 10 minutes before they even gotten us to the boat, my neck had already started hurts. And that pain was back. And now, so what does it do to your body's your question?

I don't know what it is, but that pain is there. And some days it takes my breath. I don't know what it is. So that's one of the leftovers from space flight. Is it worth it?

Absolutely. Neural vestibular, your balance. You're not stimulated by gravity. All of a sudden you are. Takes a little while to come back.

“That's why you kind of get, you know, I've never gotten sick.”

Going to it is seamless for me. No issue at all. Some people get space sickness. The transition from gravity to nothing. Because the fluids, as we sit here, our fluids are gravity pulls it to our lower extremities.

In zero gravity, fluids just go all over. You'll see, look at my face. My face is puffy. The whole time I'm on orbit. Because the fluid is shifting into my head.

A lot of people, I've just learned this, have a vein that helps drain fluid. Some people, you can't tell it. But some people's veins, maybe it's a little smaller. It doesn't drain the fluid like.

And so my face always puffy.

You come back to space. From space. Because we come back from space. Now the gravity is pulling you out of the stability of your balance. Your body, your structure is not used to holding up your structure.

You know, we've got muscle. We work out two and a half hours a day. Even the day I did a space walk, I worked out. I got up early and worked out.

“You got to keep your muscles from art, from actor fame.”

You got to keep the calcium from the calcifying. You got to do all of that. And every single day, you got to do it. And so, and it feels good to put some stress on your body. Mm-hmm. But coming back, your little muscles we can't work out.

Your body, I've sent a house out of your structure. And those little muscles go, oh my goodness. And oh my. When I came back to last time, we didn't have any massages or anything. But now we do.

Since then, some of us said, hey, we got to do this.

The rest is always happy.

Always give massages every other day to help those muscles get back in tone. And so now we do. And it's great, except this one, whatever this issue is with me. I guess it's going to be with me. It's just me now.

But it started with the Soyuz mission. Again, I don't think it was the impact. It just was my body in space and in transition to gravity. It just something happened and not sure what it is. What's your daily life like for 286 days?

Busy. Is it? Yeah. I mean, what are you working? Stuff breaks.

I mean, to think of your head and the seat. Yeah. Stuff breaks. Body ops. You know, you got it.

There's life issues on certain aspects of various components throughout the space station. Have to be changed out. Things break. You got to fix it. Science.

We're doing science every day. 200 and something different science. Stem cell research. DNA sequencing. Capitalary flow.

I mean, just the list goes on and on. You know, we, you know, we give ourselves. Take our own blood. We get trained to do all that. So lobotomy.

I do it myself. Take my own blood. It's assessed. We freeze it. We send it down on the cargo space.

Rath that returns. There's a, there's a space like dragon that returns in the atmosphere. Or we take it down with us.

A number of different things.

“You know, peeing in a bottle, freezing your pee.”

And that's all. I mean, it's just, there's all kinds of that. That's constantly going on. Just every every element of life. Every element of life.

Every element of life. And the space station. Think of it your house. It's breaking out of fix it. And because it's the space station.

And it's not because it's the space station. But because of the environment. Things do break. More so than what you would think they would.

And we're always launching spare parts.

So have them there just in case when the next thing breaks. Matter of fact, we took a pump for the potty. UPA. And the structure of one was good. And the pump and another was good.

So we took it. The pump out of one and put it into the structure of the other. Called it the Franken pop. Because we put two and made one out of it. And it lasted for a couple of months.

Which was great till they launched another one. Those type of things are ongoing. Always always doing those type of things. It's a significant engineering. Marvel.

It truly is. How are you maintaining contact with your family? Actually very easily. Very easily now. If I lost in the shadow way back when.

The last time I launched on the Soyuz 2014 2015.

When we had the right coverage, I could make a phone call through my computer. And they would set up video calls once a week, holidays. Now with capabilities, I can do a video call myself. I could call you video from space. Starlink.

I don't know if we're using Starlink or not. But you know, into the iPad, make a video call through whatever satellite system we're using. And right there, almost feels like it's real time. I mean, I tied into my church. Every Sunday, I read that.

Yeah, I'm tying into my church. And I, you know, I have learned over the course of this life. If I want to live worthy, I mean, what's my goal? What's my goal in life? In the flesh, I want to live worthy of my Lord.

What he's called me to. If I'm going to do that, I have to have continual influence of the truth of his work. And I have to have the fellowship of the local body of the church. I need it. And I've learned that.

If I want to be, if I want to be the man that the Lord would have me be. And that's what people say. Hey, what? What kind of pray for you? And I'm like, well, pray that I would be the man that I say.

I am, even when nobody's watching. Because that's the true integrity of a man, right? It is. I mean, if I'm going to be a different person when nobody's watching, that's not integrity. And I want to be, I want to honor my Lord, walk worthy.

And that means when nobody's watching either. And so that's something that's paramount for me personally. And I can't do that alone. I need the influx of my local my church. And it was wonderful.

I told you earlier that I was in the corner of a module. They didn't have a place for me to stay. And I just took up residence in the corner of one of the modules out in the open. And I've tied to my church. I'd sing with them.

And I never asked whatever everybody thought of that.

“But I think you can hear as a lot of sound on Space Station, ambient noise.”

But I'd sing with them, worship with them. Felt apart as much as you can when you're not physically there. And it was vital. I loved it. I still do.

Celebrate Christmas up there. They did. That's great. The crew, you do what you can. You know, we sticky.

You try to get a substance put on a pan. Maybe peanut butter, stick a muffin on it. Make some type of frosting. And we made cakes and did all that kind of stuff. You know, using sticky type of food.

So it won't float away. And we did all kinds of that kind of thing. Birthday cakes. All of that. Celebrated at all.

You know, we, they have space station been up there 20, 25 years, right? So we've got different things that have been launched over the years. Santa hats and reindeer noses and those type of things. We made a reindeer. We went up bull, you know, we got big old ML, ML.

They all huge bags full of food and a smaller bag full of food. And we developed a way to tie the smaller bag. Make a head. Actually put some clips on it. Made it look like horns to a face.

And we wrote it. Tatch it to bungee's over one of the kind of low places. And we wrote it like a bunking broccoli. The bunking broccoli deer Christmas time. Put it, you know, a Santa hat on and everything.

You know, if that counts, if you got to do that stuff. But what about, I mean, I don't, I keep bringing up your fantasies. Your family think you're coming home. They understand that the process is there that we're working on that.

“You got to realize in September, what was the plan?”

Yeah. Well, there was no plan initially, right? Because this wasn't expected. But the plan eventually was developed. There was a crew launching in September to relieve the crew that was already there.

Not us, but the crew that was already there. The other space crew. They pulled two of those crew members off.

So it launched in September.

“And when at launch, we knew we were going to be six as much.”

The normal increment expedition time frame. That the next one would launch. And when they got there, and we did a handover, then we'd come back. So that was the plan. And what changed in the plan is that there were some issues with the Dragon spacecraft.

There was two of them in process. And there were some issues with them. And the timing of when they would get those fixed. And with the other cargo spacecraft coming and going, which covers up one of these docking mechanisms. If there's a cargo spacecraft there, you can't dock anything else to it.

The timing of all that. One of the most likely scenarios is that we'd be back about the June timeframe. But the administration got involved. And what they wound up doing is swapping the two spacecraft that they were working on.

And the one that they were working on, they did some extra man hours on it.

Got it rectified, whatever the issue was. And that's the one that launched in March. We used to have a weekend over. We took it down to a day, did a day handover real quick with that crew. And that's when we came back. So the most likely scenario would had us there about a year.

Because of how everything, you know, these spacecraft issues. But when the administration got involved. They rectified that swap the spacecraft and they came and got us. Well, they came and relieved us. They didn't get us. We already had our spacecraft there.

And this is the one that most people talk to me that they launched in came and got you. Well, they did, but they launched in September. And it was a normal, normal flow of entire mission. Normal six month mission that was going to be extended because of these issues I just mentioned. That wound up coming back over right about on time in March.

Because the administration did get involved. And so how did you want to get involved? Well, on that dragon, the dragon came up in September. We climbed aboard. It's at our final farewells.

And undocked 17 hours later. We did our deal a bit burn. How was, I mean, what do I feel like to undock? Oh, what do I feel like?

“If you're going to get stranded stuff, whatever the term is, did we feel stranded stuck?”

Not necessarily, but were we? Because many definitions that we were.

Ultimately, I've said it several times, Sean, our Lord's in control.

He's the one who had us. You don't sound like you were actually that stressed. Why am I not getting stressed? Because you're stuck in space for an extra nine and a half months. I'll tell you this, Sean, I've learned.

I'm not going to fret over things that I can't control. That is not beneficial to me or anybody around me. If I'm going to sit and go, oh, my goodness. There's no benefit to that. That's not, I don't think that's, you know, walking worthy, like I said earlier.

So I'm not going to do that. I'm going to take it, do what I can to affect what I can. I might get frustrated over some of the processes that are going and going in place. Or maybe some of the reasons why we got there. But as far as, for adding over something, I can't control.

No way. I'm going to do that. I said that long before we have this situation ever happened.

“I mean, I got, you ever got to stand in on a deployment?”

Uh-huh. Yeah. Did you fret over it? No. You may be, may be initially, but I can't change it.

I can't do anything about it. And therefore, I'm not going to fret over it. I'm not going to put myself through that. I'm not going to fret over it in front of my family and put them through that. Because, you know, it was a leader.

You know, my number one God given responsibility in the flesh is as a husband to my wife. My number two God given responsibility in the flesh is as a father to my daughters. And I'm, you know, I think the word is clear that I'm, I'm called to protect them to provide for them and to pass to them. Help them in the truth of God's word. And I take that responsibility greater.

And I know that if I'm going to fret, they're going to fret. And there's no reason for me to put me through that and put them through that. It's the leader of my family. So, no, fretting? No, I wasn't fretting.

I was, I was concerned about some of the things that were taking place as far as why we got there and all of that. But as far as being there, I couldn't change it. I'm not going to fret over it. I'm going to press forward and do what what I'm called to do. My government has done so much for me for so long.

I'm going to do what I can for it these days. What however many it is in this situation that I'm in. And that's really, really the mindset. I mean, there's no benefit in any other way. I don't think God's glorified in that.

You know, what does it say? Matthew says, worry not. You know, Philippians 4 or 6 and 7, be anxious for nothing, but everything by parents' supplication with things, giving what your request be made known into God and the peace of God,

And if you look at the details of what that passage is,

that is exactly what happened.

“It's not to say that I wasn't concerned about things,”

but I go to Him in prayer. It takes over. The peace of God in Christ Jesus. It is true. The word is true.

I've experienced it not just that, but many times in this life. That's why I'm grateful to Him. He's the one that gave me life. John 3, 27, a man cannot receive even one thing, unless he's given to him from heaven above.

I'm breathing air right now, given by my Lord that I can do that. And my whole existence is wrapped around the truth that my God is in control. People say, there was a little bit of notoriety from the faith standpoint, and I didn't orchestrate it. I don't proselyte from my position as an astronaut.

I never did. I only answered questions. And there was one reporter about midway through, maybe before midway through, in a press conference, we're just looking into a camera. We're not, we don't see anybody, but there's reporters across the nation.

They throw up questions. This one guy says, I don't know who it was. Captain Wilmore.

“What is your number one biggest takeaway from all this?”

And I can't separate who I am from what I'm doing. I'm saying, well, that's easy. I am content. My Lord is working out his plan and his purpose for his glory,

and ultimately my good, if I believe, in that breach contentment.

And what I was thinking that I didn't say that I'll share with you now, may go to Corinthians and Paul talks about, I was whipped five times, 40 lashes minus one, 39 lashes, five times. I was beat with a rod, three times. I was stoned and left for dead.

I was shipwrecked, and then as it's see a day and a night. And then you go to Philippians and he says, I understand how to be about a bound and how to be a based, how to be full and how to be not. And he says, I am content. And the reason he's content, and all of that, he's not like,

give me another lash. That's not, that's the one that means contentment. He's content in the situation because he knows he's right. Exactly where the Lord would have him be. He's attempting to walk worthy with his Lord, with his God.

And that breeds contentment that passes all understanding. Is that passage I just quoted says, and it's true. Passes all understanding. And I think I said it early, I'll say it again, this book. We can talk about the book, but that's the reason I published the book.

I didn't write the book to publish it. I wrote the book for my daughters, my wife and I. Had them when we were in our 40s. We did have the life. I wanted to give them a record of their our lives before they were born.

I'd written some chapters. But as all this played out, publishers contacted me while I was still in space through my brother through my church, all kinds of different things. And I gotash. And I don't already publish one other book with a guy that's starting to publish in company.

And I'm like, I'm going to go with him. If we're going to have on a publish, I wrote it for my daughters. But I published it because of two words. I could bring in two words, encouragement and perspective.

“If events in this life could be an encouragement to people that this life is about preparation,”

commitment and preparation, we've got also what you're doing. And situations that don't go according to plan. If you're seeking to be worthy, walk worthy of the Lord of our Lord and Savior, who went to the crossing incur the wrath of God for your sin. If that's what you're seeking and whatever situation you're in, being encouraged that you can be content.

So that's dealing with the now. And to point people to what really matters. And that's the eternal everlasting perspective that only comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. And that's why the book is sitting here on the shelf in a published format. To share that message.

The Lord's given me this opportunity. I wouldn't have published it otherwise. It's wasn't written for that purpose.

But ultimately, it became that purpose for this opportunity to share him.

Be encouraged in your life. Things aren't going to go right. Continue to prepare. Give him the glory and the good and the bad and press forward for his glory. Share the blessed truth of Jesus Christ is Lord.

Whenever you get the opportunity. And that is what the Lord has made on me to be passionate about. And I'm not different from any true believer. We all feel the same way because he and dwells us. And he transforms us into his image.

And but we also have responsibility. That's part of it.

That is a good way to end this.

So I'll ask you one more question. Sure.

“Very obvious how much of daughters in your life mean to you.”

And so do you have any closing remarks that aren't in the book. But you want them to know. Oh, my. I hope they already know. I've heard so many people say my dad.

He just wasn't a passionate guy. He wouldn't tell me. He didn't really say love me. I've tried to be the opposite. I want them to know how much they mean to me.

They are a gift from my Lord to my wife and I.

They're not ours. But he's given us responsibility over them. And to know that regardless of what happens, you're daddy loves you. And regardless of what happens.

“You know, this right here, that's my wedding ring.”

It's not round anymore. This wedding ring has saved my finger many times over the years. And it's got the dense to show it in various scenarios. But that's my, that's my most prized possession. Because that's representative of my union that the Lord gave me the gift of my wife.

And she not perfect, bless her heart. And she would say the same about me, bless my heart. But together, trying to glorify him in this life. You know, James says it's but a vapor tear and it's gone. And but what this life does, it sets the tone for all eternity.

And I'll, let me give you this. Let me give you a one sentence summary of the Bible. The whole Bible summarized in one sentence. Before the foundation of the world. God, the Father, determined to present God the Son with a redeemed humanity.

That what honor, worship, and glorify him for all eternity.

“And if you believe, and your sins are forgiven, you have repented and turned from sin.”

And you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, and he incurred the wrath of God for your sin. You have met the responsibility for why you were created. That's the honor, worship, and glorify him forever. And it doesn't start after we die. It starts at the moment that he transforms us.

And he forgives us, and he saves us. That's what a loving Father does.

And I can never be loving like my God is loving.

But for my family and answer to your question, I can incorporate what this word tells me that my responsibilities are. Provide, protect, and pastor, and my family. And I would hope I wouldn't have to say anything more that they would know that. But I thank you for the opportunity to say it anyway.

You're welcome, because they are. My daughters are the legacy of William behind. That's really it. And that's the big scheme of things. Life and existence and eternity, glory from my Lord.

And what do I lead behind? A lasting eternal legacy in my daughters. If I were to admit something amazing, that's wonderful. It's great. I'm grateful for the opportunity to Lord give me a mind.

And admit something many people have. That's wonderful. But nothing is everlasting except for Jesus Christ and him crucified. And paying the price for our sin. And my daughters know that.

Praise him for it. Man, I love that. Hey, man. But. Brother.

It's an honor. Honor that. Honor is mine. Thank you. Thank you.

God bless you, brother. [Music] No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything. Please like, comment, and subscribe.

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