B (148:49)
I know that probably looks funny on Camera, but that's the way it sounded. Yeah, we're hearing machine guns fire, which we hadn't heard before. So the spacecraft is laboring. We're down three thrusters. We're zero fault tolerant now to maintaining six dolph control. I'm on the controls manual, trying to maintain control. And then we lose the fourth thruster. 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 dof. I don't have six DOF control. We went past zero fault tolerant. Now we lost six degree of freedom control. That's not good. That's way not good. And the control in my hands was very challenging. I'm to the point now of I mentioned orbital mechanics, how spacecraft fly in proximity to each other. Now we're in that, that area of what if I, 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, my distance, I have to maintain my attitude. Because we have sensors on the spacecraft that see the space station cameras, infrared sensors. Later they're seeing the space station and they're building a digital picture. That's how you can rendezvous and dock manually. Because the system builds a visual picture, comes in using this visual picture. It's built based on these sensors and affects the docking manual. 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, what's going through my mind. Sonny 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. Normal ops. The crew supports mission control in 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. We're the ones that gonna make or 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, you know, as a commander, I'm responsible for the spacecraft, my crew, and this is of global significance, right? I mean, it's, 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, aviate, navigate, communicate. That's the order in aviation that we talk about. Aviate, fly, navigate, figure out where you're going, communicate last. I'm. I'm aviate. That's all I'm doing. Sonny's doing the navigate and communicate wonderfully well. So focus. Loss of 6 DOF control. What is this control input going to do with oral mechanics? Can I maintain my position? If I lose attitude, I'm going to drop this lock. We won't be able to dock autonomously. I don't want that. Very challenging. What if we lose a fifth thruster? Is going through my mind. If we lose a fifth thruster, will I be able to control? I don't know. I've never, 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, the way it's bred into us in aviation and certainly at 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 a deal with Burn and get back to Earth in this, you know, in the, 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. And 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 10 meters. That's when we set up our docking mechanism. Hold there and then come on in. As I fly into 10 meters, I'm going to evaluate the capability to control the spacecraft. Can I do it? I get to 10 meters. If the answer is no, I can't do it enough to where I think I can safely dock, I'm gonna 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 gonna dock. That's really the only option we had. Even thinking back on it, there was not another viable option. It was this or. 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. You don't have a computer. You go directly to the thrusters. Inputs go directly to the thrusters to maintain control. I know all of this, but in the scenario at the moment, I want to emphasize this. I don't know why we're losing thrusters. I just know what I'm feeling in the. In my hands and how challenging it is. And I'm just trying to think, next words, 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? Can I control it all? I don't know. I have no idea. Matter of fact, I even asked the flight director, Vincent Lacourt, after I finally got on the phone. I said, hey, what would happen if we lost fifth one? He's like, I don't know. Anyway, 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 lost three, three, six. DOF control. But maintaining the attitude and the position like I just shared, challenging as it was, the only way to get these thrusters back is to send test firings to these failed thrusters. But to do that, I gotta 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 corrupt the data and they're 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, orbital mechanics, all this going through my mind, and don't touch the controls. That's pretty challenging. Wow. To go off the controls so they can send this test firing. But by God's grace, Again, decades of preparation I didn't even know existed was this is looking back inside now. I can see it. I get a little bit of drift, A little bit of drift. Little nothing. Okay? And I'd say hands off. Sonny 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. They 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 a get it done now 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. Stopped at 200 meters. We lost the 5th thruster. We lost the 5th 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 to. We're still zero fault tolerant to six degree of freedom control, but we're back to zero fault tolerant. Same thing. Maintain your distance, maintain your attitude. Don't touch it. Not easy. Get in the position, drift is minimal. Hands off. Send the test firings. And we eventually got two of those three back. So now we're only down one. We're back to dual fault tolerant, but the spacecraft is still laboring. Eventually, I had told the flight director 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, developmental, experimental. It's experimental test too. When you're in the 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, I can't get into automatic, I can't fly it manually and I can't get into backup mode. So we perish. And that happened more than once because of that experience in the simulator. Again, you expect to find things as you go through this process. I told the flight 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 at this, in that scenario, like, like I was mentioning 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. Me back up. When we brought those, those, those thrusters back in, we had to cancel the fitter, the fault detection indication response. We had to cancel it on those thrusters. So basically a little bit, you're hanging it out. They're not going to drop, 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, in the mix regardless. We had to do that to safely dock anyway. So I go back, I knew they were going to ask me to give it back 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 dead, there's something's going on. I don't know at the time what it is, but it sounds different still and I'm able to control and it a moment, for 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 have 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. On the Sean Ryan show, real stories are always front and center and life's ups and downs are part of the conversation. That's a lot like how meals work these days. Sometimes you're cooking from scratch, sometimes you just need something quick. Marley Spoon gets that with over 100 recipes each week. There's always something for every mood. Whether you want a classic dish or something new. Marley Spoon adapts to your schedule so you can eat well without overthinking it. Everything is chef designed and made with fresh, quality ingredients. It's like having a personal chef who does the hard part so you can enjoy the good part. Go to marley spoon.com offer pod 45 for 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's right, 45% off your first order and Free delivery. That's marley spoon.com offer pod 4. 5. Through this whole process, like I said, we got a dock. I'm not sure what our options are if we don't. And people have asked me, 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 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 and built that way where we could 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, chances are very slim of us coming back in this spacecraft. So I knew that early. I didn't tell my family that. And so we. This was June 6th. The decision to come back or not come back on Starliner was late August was probably early July. That I told my family, I said, I didn't say anything initially. I finally said, you know, the most likely scenario is we're going to be here till 2025. This was July 2024, which, 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 to figure these things out are. And that's obviously the way it turned out.
