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]