Spaceflight Reimagined

howdy

i’m bob bankin a nasa astronaut and

today i’m going to talk to you about

space flight

reimagined i wanted to talk to you to

start with about the idea in general

that becoming an astronaut requires

imagination

not only to pick the destination because

you know as kids we all have

dreams of becoming something whether

that’s a race car driver or a rock star

or even an astronaut like it was for me

or something else but we need to come up

with the pathway that

allows us to achieve that that sets us

up to go along that journey

that provides the off-ramps to take us

to slightly different destinations and

then get us back on track to get to that

final location

that all takes imagination and i’m going

to talk about some examples of

how that’s played out for me over the

years and hopefully i’ll convince you

that

our entire pathway is a journey that

just truly depends on our imaginations

the last few years i’ve really focused

on something called changing

space transportation we went from a

place at nasa where we flew the space

shuttles

we assembled the international space

station with them i flew on those

vehicles a couple of times

and we’ve transitioned now to a time

where we don’t fly space shuttles

anymore we fly some new vehicles

we had to come up with commercial

partners and work with them

closely to develop the spacex vehicle

that i flew on

as well as the cst-100 boeing spacecraft

that hopefully will fly a little bit

later this year

as you all know the space shuttle

columbia we lost that

several years ago just a few short years

after i arrived at nasa and

astronaut safety became paramount even

though it was a wonderful workhorse and

got us into orbit

and built that international space

station it was a vehicle that

fundamentally had some safety issues

not the least of which was just how much

propellant

you had to put in one place to launch

both the crew and the cargo together

and how big the airframe was it had to

come back through the atmosphere

and the engineering challenges of

continuing to do

that safely at that magnitude we’re just

uh

we’re just almost insurmountable if we

wanted to achieve the safety that we

hope to have kind of going forward i

flew on the spacex dragon last summer

that was aboard a falcon 9 rocket a

rocket that

during its development flew a lot of

satellites into orbit and we were able

to leverage that experience the spacex

team was to develop a highly reliable

system

the cst-100 on the boeing side is going

to fly on an atlas rocket

again a system that’s launched

satellites uh into orbit and the

reliability is proven

by all those previous launches and the

engineering data from all those launches

informs future decisions and and that

conscious decision to move away from

where we were with space shuttles to

something completely different

took a fair amount of imagination to

come up with a way to service the space

station and i’ll talk

more a little bit later about how we do

what we did with a space shuttle with

vehicles that look

drastically different

now there are a lot of technical reasons

why we need to reimagine the direction

that we’re going and and

how we get from point a to point b but

it’s also important to take the people

along with us

as we achieve those destinations and

that takes imagination it takes your

attention to to think about what they’re

going through at any given point

kind of through the process and for me

on my third flight this one with the

spacex capsule

it’s a new vehicle certainly the

perception

if not in actuality more danger because

it was new and no one had ever done it

before and so that was definitely a

challenge

i was doing it with a new family i had a

young son

who had not seen me launch on space

shuttles and so it was important for me

to prepare him for that think you know

what he would be going through

on the day when you know i would be

laser focused on

achieving our mission of launching the

dragon capsule into space

i wanted him to have a good experience

and and i wanted to set him up for

success

so over the years we did things that

made the process of me launching in

space seem familiar to him we went to

florida

we watched the launch together i talked

about what it would be like for me

inside the capsule as i was achieving

that or going through that

and that really helped him have an

enjoyable experience that day

not not maybe fear of the unknown it

seemed normal to him and he was

truly comfortable with it in our family

it’s turned out to be

pretty great that we followed this path

because when i took him to florida

he insisted that he was i was not going

to be able to go on a rocket he didn’t

think that was a good idea

but when we brought him home i had him

convinced that i was going to go

and then my wife was going to go and

then it was going to be his turn he’d be

the third person in our family to fly in

space and

lo and behold my wife actually is

another nasa astronaut she’s scheduled

to fly on a spacex capsule here

in just a few short weeks and so that’s

why my message today actually is a

recorded one

versus one that’s live because hopefully

by the time you’re seeing this

i’ll be focused on getting her into

space and and standing on the sidelines

while she does that and

i’ll be with our son

when i talked before about the the

mission of the dragon capsule and

retiring our space shuttles i talked

about the safety of

of the astronauts the challenge was that

since space station was built with space

shuttles

it was really prepared to be serviced by

space shuttles there are a lot of

components on board the international

space station that are just big

and they’re big because they they got

there with a with a space shuttle and so

if you want to continue to maintain them

you got to figure out alternate ways in

order to do that

and so there are a lot of comparisons

that that point out a dragon capsule

docked to the front of the international

space station

they’ll show a space shuttle and talk

about hey now we can do what we did

before with that space shuttle with this

new vehicle

well it’s really true that a fleet of

vehicles does

what the space shuttle could do before

for a couple of reasons one there’s a

they all have different capabilities

there are vehicles that fly up near

space station that are grappled with a

robotic arm and then attached

there are other vehicles that are

primarily big cargo vehicles

uh there are others that that are

carrying crew that kind of split up that

mission

a little bit but it’s also the case that

the engineers on the ground had to

reinvent how we were going to take care

of the international space station as

well and so some of those large

components

we now take apart a little bit and then

replace pieces of or

we do a completely different way and so

it’s

it’s required a complete imagination

change or a shift if you will

for how we were truly going to maintain

the international space station without

a vehicle like the space shuttle to

achieve that but the team is has just

done a great job doing it and and it’s

really uh

what they used to call the the mother of

necessity is allowed them to achieve

what they’ve achieved and now that we’ve

needed to do it they’ve found a way in

addition to

all the things that you need to uh you

know pick your destination you have to

come up with a smart way to do things

you also have to be ready for the the

changes when they come

and that requires kind of a continuous

replanting

particularly in the astronaut world but

i’m sure in everyone else’s careers

or even in family lives things happen

life happens and you need to figure out

a plan to to do something completely

different in some cases

for me and for my partner doug hurley

when we flew

on the dragon capsule for years we had

planned to do

what it says there on the cover of

aviation week which was relaunched u.s

human space flight from the florida

coast

it was pretty much that straightforward

we were going to launch again on a new

rocket

from the same place we had launched

before we would check it out at space

station

and then bring it home and and kind of

sign off that capability for the next

cruise to then

rotate to the international space

station well plan b

came along in early 2020 and the

space station had accumulated quite a

bit of work that

could be done if they had a few more

hands on orbit and they looked at the

experience set

that doug and i brought to the table as

astronauts who had flown before on

shuttle missions and done a lot of that

assembly work

we had robotics or spacewalking

experience that they could leverage

and so they stretched our 10-day mission

for checking out the spacecraft

into a longer duration mission uh

between two and four months was what was

put on the

on the schedule for us going forward uh

with the primary objectives of of course

doing all the science that we could on

board the international space station

but to conduct a series of space walks

to upgrade some equipment on board the

international space station

chris cassidy the other crew member

that’s shown in the picture there and i

went out on four space walks and got to

achieve something that we never thought

was possible when we signed up for our

our flights or agreed to go on the

missions that were in front of us

again i thought i was going on a 10-day

mission chris thought he was going up

and potentially going to be the only u.s

crew member

while we did our short visit and that

turned into

both of us getting to the milestone of

10 spacewalks

together in the photo that was taken

there which was it was just something

exciting for us and and something we

didn’t think was possible but

we jumped on the plan and made it happen

given the opportunity

we also had to reimagine what it was

like to come home

um i had landed on the space shuttle a

couple of times

the space shuttle endeavour launched me

from the florida coast off that same

launch pad that the dragon capsule

eventually launched off of

39 alpha both at night time which was a

pretty cool thing to be a part of

but then rather than come home with one

and a half g’s on the on the aircraft

and and that

effect on my body after a short duration

mission i came home in a capsule

after a couple of months with four and a

half or five

g’s on the re-entry and then splashing

down in the water not a firm service and

uh bouncing around in the ocean for a

short period

until the recovery ship could get to us

and so

definitely something i i had to think

through

and be prepared for the additional

g-loading what it was going to like

be like to bob around in the water for

that period of time

which was something completely new

something for me at least

something that we hadn’t done as

astronauts in the

nasa astronaut corps for decades we got

to recheck that test box and uh

looking forward to the crew one team

that’s on orbit right now

getting the chance to be the second ones

to do that and and

several decades one of the things that i

mentioned before was

uh trying to prepare your family for

coming home

or or for or for the experiences they’re

going to go through

when you do something like coming home

and that’s a picture of my son who

even after we had done our best to make

him comfortable with what it was going

to be like when i

arrived back in houston on the

fixed-wing airplane that brought me back

from the florida coast after the ship

had brought us in

um he had a chance to come aboard the

airplane and spend some time with me

before being taken down and

and kind of the media circus if you will

that that followed

our arrival was scheduled to happen so

he had gone down and was

supposed to be waiting with his mother

as i came down the air stairs with our

our flight doc

team there but my my son you know was

just couldn’t contain his excitement

even though we had done as much as we

could to prepare him for that

and he charged the airplane and uh

wanted to give me another hug for coming

home and

probably my proudest moment is that i

didn’t fall down those air stairs

after he charged me and and nearly

tackled me at the bottom of the air

stairs in my

you know post-flight kind of weakened

state and so

uh anyway that was just something that

we did our best but we didn’t completely

prepare for him uh for that

i haven’t specifically mentioned the the

pandemic

that we were going through when we

launched into space and and when we got

back and i’ve done that deliberately

primarily because it was something that

we

recognized we adapted to and we overcame

it and in the end

it didn’t change the mission that we had

in front of us so we were able to

accomplish all of our objectives

get the dragon capsule tested out uh

accomplish those spacewalks and come

home safely

and and manage the covid risk with the

appropriate

masks and social distancing and all

those things and uh

uh i’ll just put out there that there

are challenges in space flight

uh throwing a pandemic at us was uh was

another one that we were able to

overcome to get to where we got to and

that’s really in a microcosm what i’m

talking about

at that journey that you continually

have to

be willing to to replan and overcome

whatever challenges that are out there

if you have a true destination in mind

and are going to get there

this is a sequence of photos that i that

i wanted to share with you that showed

kind of the the mindset that we had when

i arrived in the astronaut office which

was that

we were going to operate in low earth

orbit and we were going to build that

international space station and that

would be

where we we did our work as as nasa

astronauts there wasn’t the

talk of further destinations or

exploration further out

my class of astronauts was kind of a

core group that helped

accomplish the completion of the

international space station for the most

part

um to where you can see a nice photo of

that in in the middle there

but now we’re on to that third phase the

beginning of

of exploration again to other

destinations outside of low earth orbit

and i’m truly excited to be a part of an

astronaut office that has a dragon

capsule a cst-100

headed to the international space

station at the same time that we have

sls and orion and the artemis program

and and are talking about

a gateway to the moon and a habitat on

the surface and being able to go down

with a lander to to get there and so

it’s just wonderful to to think of where

we were

and and what we’ve become and you know

the limitations

it seems like are are truly only folks

imaginations

again i wanted to tell you that the

journey that you’re on

just like for me as a child to the chief

of the astronaut office and three

space missions to low earth orbit and

the international space station takes

imagination

uh use yours as much as you can

thank you

[Applause]