If you’re fascinated by the idea of humans traveling through space and curious about how that all works, you’ve come to the right place.

“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center from Houston, Texas, home for NASA’s astronauts and Mission Control Center. Listen to the brightest minds of America’s space agency – astronauts, engineers, scientists and program leaders – discuss exciting topics in engineering, science and technology, sharing their personal stories and expertise on every aspect of human spaceflight. Learn more about how the work being done will help send humans forward to the Moon and on to Mars in the Artemis program.

For Episode 159, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley recount their return to Earth at their welcome home ceremony and crew news conference in Houston. The NASA astronauts made history in August as the first to splash down in an American spacecraft in 45 years, thus completing NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission. The audio was recorded during the events on August 2, 2020 and August 4, 2020, respectively.

Transcript

Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 159, “Welcome Home Bob and Doug.” I’m Gary Jordan, and I’ll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, astronauts all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight. Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley have returned to planet Earth. After 64 days in orbit, Behnken and Hurley splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, on the afternoon of August 2nd, 2020, concluding the Demo-2 mission and making history as the first human landing in a commercially built and operated spacecraft. Their mission was to test the capabilities of the new commercial space vehicle, the SpaceX Crew Dragon, for regular transportation of crew to the International Space Station. But they contributed a whole lot more than that on their mission during their 62 days aboard the station, they dedicated more than 100 hours to scientific investigation, working on experiments like droplet formation, electrolysis measurement, and Earth observation. Behnken performed four spacewalks with Station Commander Chris Cassidy to upgrade the station’s power system among a number of other items like routing cables and installing robotic storage equipment and is now a record holder for the number of spacewalks and among the top for total hours spacewalking. After landing in the Gulf, they were taken to shore by helicopter and immediately flew back to Houston. There they were greeted by family and VIPs from NASA and SpaceX, all who contributed to the success of the mission. They were able to say a few words before departing for some much-needed rest, but we got to hear from them a few days later for a Q&A. They shared some fascinating details and perspective about their mission. So, on today’s podcast, we’re going to replay those moments for you here. So, here is a replay of the Welcome Home Ceremony at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas, on August 2nd, 2020, just five hours after splashing down and the Crew News Conference two days later on August 4th. Enjoy.

[ Music]

Host: In this first segment, hear the words from Doug Hurley then Bob Behnken immediately after landing in Houston. This was followed by some comments from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and SpaceX CEO and Chief Engineer Elon Musk.

Doug Hurley: Alright. We’re not going to stand right now. For those of you who have done this before, you know it’s not pleasant standing for a few hours after you get back. Five hours ago, we were bobbing around in the Gulf of Mexico, so I feel like it’s pretty good that we got this far in five hours. But I think the biggest thing that we would both like to talk about is just to thank, you know, you can see Steve and Kathy here and Elon. You know, this has been a — quite an odyssey the last five, six, seven, eight years — five years since Bob and I started working on this program, and to be where we are now with the first crewed flight of Dragon is just unbelievable. We’ve said it before, just a tremendous privilege to be part of this program, to be part of NASA and to spend two months on the International Space Station with one of the greatest officers, crewmates, astronauts, Chris Cassidy just was a real pleasure for both of us. And I’m sure Bob will talk about the spacewalks, but just to see those two work out on the International Space Station, you’re not going to see anything like that again. It just was — it was just amazing to be part of that. And then, you know, the flight of Dragon on Falcon and then the reentry today, it’s a lot to process. As I said, five hours ago, we were in a spaceship bobbing around making prank satellite phone calls to whoever we could get a hold of, which was kind of fun, by the way. You can send him the bill for the sat phone. But anyway, we really appreciate all of you coming to say hi and welcoming us back. It’s a little bit overwhelming to see everybody here considering the things that have gone on the last few months since we’ve been off planet. But thank you again for coming to say hi, and hopefully, we’ll be able to share a lot of this mission with you in a few months, hopefully, if not sooner. But thank you again.

[ Applause]

Bob Behnken: Well, first of all, thank you for everybody who came out today. I know with all the challenges, everybody is wearing a mask, with the situation that we’re in, it’s not trivial to get this many people here to try to be close and celebrate what we’ve accomplished. I think for both Doug and I, the thing that we are most excited about having accomplished with this mission is, you know, it’s written right on that sign where it says Launch American, and then, of course, Land America today. As we went through our years as astronauts here at the Johnson Space Center, we got to live through a big chunk of the shuttle era and a big chunk of the assembly of the space station. When the space shuttles retired, when Doug took his final flight to wrap that up, I think it was a sad day for us [inaudible] because there’s something special about having that capability to launch and bring your own astronauts’ home. And we went through a lot of years without that capability, and I think we are both super, super proud to have been just a small part of the team that accomplished bringing those spaceflights back to the Florida coast and bringing that capability back to America. As Doug mentioned, we had the luxury of having a — just a super crew onboard the International Space Station with Chris Cassidy, with Anatoly and Ivan. They just took wonderful care of us. I can’t think of anything that we could’ve had more in place and ready for us when we arrived than what Chris set up for us. And so, we are extremely thankful for him and his work to make things look easy for us. You know, we didn’t have the full training template that was out there. We had an abbreviated flow and got to take advantage of an opportunity, if you will, to try to take care of space station as we accomplish this test mission. And so, I think we’re both really proud of that and happy that it didn’t become a distraction. We were able to accomplish the test mission objectives and work through those, kind of get Dragon certified in some sense to be ready for our return home when the time came to do that. And so, it all just worked out wonderfully. And so, today, when we got the wake-up calls from our boys telling us a little bit about what they were looking forward to, which was us coming home, and in Theo’s case getting a new dog, it was a wonderful morning, and we very much appreciated it. And so, again, I think this kind of comes full circle. It took years to get here. We brought the capability back to America, and we came home safely to our families. And it took a lot of people a lot of time to make that happen. And so, to Kathy, thank you for that. Of course, you had Steve as your right-hand man for the most recent history at least, and we definitely really appreciate the hard work that you all had to go through to ensure that the contractors in this case, on the SpaceX team really could understand NASA and what we needed to be able to have in place to have human spaceflight be safe in the way that we wanted to operate it. And I think for the SpaceX team, we couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful team to work with. I think, you know, we definitely are old dogs and like some of our old tricks because — it’s not always because lazy. Sometimes it is because we did it before and we know an easy solution, and we try to share that with folks, and that’s really — as we go forward to further activities, whether it’s in low-Earth orbit, to the Moon, or beyond, we need to figure out the best way to share what NASA knows with a contractor team and help them be as successful as possible. And I think maybe we weren’t there five or six years ago, of course, but by the time we launched, and certainly by the time we returned, I think there was a very tight-knit relationship between the SpaceX team and our NASA team, and we work together to accomplish what we accomplished. So, with that, I just want to thank you all for coming out today and celebrating this victory with Doug and I and recognize our small part of what was accomplished. Thank you all.

[ Applause]

Jim Bridenstine: I’ve been told I’m not allowed to hold the microphone, and that’s really hard for me to do. But I’m going to take my mask off for just a few seconds here and just say thank you to everybody who participated in this. You know, we just saw Bob and Doug, and I think all of us are going to have memories now for the rest of our lives when they launched. In fact, we’ll have memories of the day that they didn’t launch, and then three days later coming back and doing the whole thing again, not knowing whether or not they were going to go 50/50 on the weather, and then, sure enough, the skies opened up, and we were able to launch Bob and Doug. I want to say a few words just about what champions they are beyond just being the first crew to fly on Dragon. It goes beyond that. They knew that when they were doing this, it was a test flight. They also knew that they were going to be responsible for, you know, conducting a lot of operations on the International Space Station for a period of months to include what ended up being four spacewalks, spending that extended period of time on the International Space Station, and then flying back and amazingly coming off the jet just right now after being weightless for the last 63 days, coming off the jet, sitting down, and doing a public event. And I got to tell you, I’ve never flown into space, but from my — that’s not normally done. It’s very difficult. But they wanted to take that opportunity to connect with the American people on this momentous occasion. And I can’t say how — you just can’t put into words how important this was for our country to have access to space again from our own soil. So, again, I know they left, but congratulations to Bob and Doug and their families. What an amazing day for the United States of America. I would also say that what we just saw is the beginning of what will be a whole lot more activity in the future. Right now, when we talk about commercial crew, we’re going to go, for the Dragon, we’re going to go from development into operations. Of course, we’re always going to learn, and we’re always going to modify, but making that transition from development to operations is going to be a challenge, but the NASA team is up for it. But it goes beyond that because we still have Starliner, and we need to get Starliner flying, and then we’ve got to get Orion flying. And we’ve got to get Starship flying. And we’ve got to get — what’s that?

Unknown speaker: [Inaudible] a lot of stars.

Jim Bridenstine: A lot of stars — absolutely. So, look, there is a lot to do in front of us. But here’s what we know. We know that when members of Congress come together in a bipartisan way and they fund NASA, amazing things can happen. Right now, we have before the House and the Senate the biggest budget request in NASA’s history in nominal dollars. By the way, right now, we have the biggest budget NASA has ever had in nominal dollars. Now, if you look at real dollars, Apollo might have us beat by a little bit, but we’re heading the right direction. And next year, if we get the budget request that is before us right now next year, we are going to go up in order of magnitude, and that is necessary because today we’re flying into low-Earth orbit, and in a few short years, we want to be flying to the Moon. And not just go once or twice, but we want to go sustainably with a purpose. We’re going to the Moon sustainably. We’re going to learn how to live and work on another world for long periods of time. We’re going to use the resources of the Moon in order to live and work, and we’re going to take all of that knowledge onto Mars. That’s what we’re able to accomplish because of the bipartisan support we’ve had in the House and in the Senate for the budget that we have right now. And what I’m asking for our members of Congress to do is look at what we’ve done with what we have, and if you fund us at our budget request level, we will be on the Moon, and we will be successfully on the Moon with our commercial partners and with our international partners. So today was an amazing day. It was a historic day. It’s been nine years since America launched and landed from its own soil. And yet here we are. And the next step is we’re going on to the Moon and then onto Mars. This is about momentum. It starts today, and it finishes when we put an American flag on Mars. Alright. I’ve got the honor to introduce somebody who we are very grateful for to help us accomplish this mission. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, NASA seeks to be one customer of many customers in a very robust commercial marketplace in low-Earth orbit. And we want to have numerous providers that compete on cost and innovation and safety. And I will tell you, there was a moment maybe not even a year ago, Kathy Lueders, you can tell me how long ago it was when we had some significant challenges. We might have had a few disagreements on parachutes. We might have had maybe a disagreement on, you know, maybe we need to change the titanium because of its reactivity with nitrogen tetroxide, and I sent a tweet, Elon, and I know you remember this, and since we’ve had a number of dialogues, I sent a tweet, and I said that it’s time to deliver, and I tweeted it at Elon Musk. And I want to tell you, Elon, you responded absolutely magnificently, and you have, in fact, delivered. You have delivered beyond anything any of us would have expected. And I will also say that all of the reports I am getting from all of the teams on commercial crew is that this mission went as good as we could have hoped. And we are so grateful for the team at SpaceX, the great team at NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and all of the operators that helped us to get to this point. So, I just want to say thank you, Elon Musk. The time is yours.

[ Applause]

Elon Musk: Woohoo! Yeah! Thanks, Jim. That — I mean after these great words that were spoken, I am not sure I have much to add from, you know, Bob and Doug and Jim. But I do think what this heralds really is fundamentally a new era in spaceflight, a new era in space exploration. We’re going to go to the Moon. We’re going to have a base on the Moon. We’re going to have — send people to Mars and make life multi-planetary. And I think this day heralds a new age of space exploration. That’s what it’s all about. And this is the result of an incredible amount of work from people at SpaceX, people at NASA. Hey, Kathy! Hey — I mean, so much — 18 years. This has been 18 years to finally fly people to orbit and back. And I really came here because I just wanted to see Bob and Doug to be totally frank. It was like, oh, thank goodness! I think like my entire adrenaline was just dumped, you know. It was like, thank God! Phew! You know? I’m not very religious, but I prayed for this one. So just once again, thanks, everyone at SpaceX, NASA, FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] — everyone, Air Force, you know, that played a role in this, and key suppliers that did incredible work. Thanks again. And, you know, I think this is something that the whole world can take some pleasure in and can really look at this as an achievement of humanity. And this — these are difficult times when, you know, there’s not that much good news. And I think this is one of those things that is universally good, no matter where you are on planet Earth, this is a good thing. And I hope it brightens your day. Thank you.

[ Applause]

Host: Next, here is the news conference with Behnken and Hurley that occurred two days later. This was the first chance after splashdown for anyone to ask questions to them. So, you will hear the questions that were asked in real-time while I moderated the conference. The crew answers quite a number of them and does a great job of describing riding on Dragon and life aboard station. So, here we go starting with initial remarks from Doug Hurley.

Doug Hurley: Well, it’s great to talk to you today. We’re just a couple days removed from splashdown off the coast of Florida near Pensacola. Excited to be back. We’re already working through our exercise and rehabilitation program to kind of get our Earth legs back. We were lucky that we worked out pretty hard on space station, and I think we’ve both done pretty well up to this point. We’re also lucky in the fact that we landed in some pretty smooth waters thanks to the weather folks, and so I think that helped a lot. Just incredibly excited to be back. Incredibly excited to share the mission with all of you in another way. And just so proud of the SpaceX and NASA teams to get Dragon through its first crewed flight flawlessly. Just — we’re almost kind of speechless as far as how well the vehicle did and how well the mission went and all the things we did onboard ISS with Chris Cassidy and Anatoly and Ivan. So just glad to be back, and it’s great to see how excited everybody was for our mission and followed along, and we hope it brings a little bit of brightness to a pretty tough 2020.

Host: Thank you, Doug. We’ll now hand it over to Bob Behnken.

Bob Behnken: I think Doug pretty much covered most of the things that either one of us would say about the mission itself. I would just add that, you know, it’s a humbling experience to be a part of what was accomplished with the SpaceX vehicle, just a wonderful team on the NASA side and the SpaceX side to pull it all off. It took years in the making. I think Doug and I have been working at it for a good solid five years to get to this point, and it’s just awesome to kind of see it to fruition. I know that one of the things that we’re most proud of is bringing launch capability back to the Florida coast, back to America, and, of course, landing safely at the end of all of that, and so just, again, humbled to be a part of such an awesome team and awed by what they accomplished.

Host: Thanks to you both for those initial remarks. We’ll now open it up for questions. Let’s start on our phone bridge first with Loren Grush from “The Verge.”

Loren Grush: Hi, Bob and Doug. Good to talk to you. And congratulations on such a great launch. Leading up to this mission, the date of the launch was always so uncertain, and you mentioned you had planned your life in increments of weeks or months at a time, so I’m wondering how does it feel now after all that build up now that it’s over and you have a little more certainty in your schedule again? Thanks.

Doug Hurley: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know if certainty is the right word at this point. You know, I think for both of us, it still feels pretty surreal. And I know that’s a little bit overused, but I don’t know how else to describe it. You know, one moment you’re bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico, and, you know, less than two days later, you’re in a news conference. So, you know, it has been a time to reflect and think about a lot of the things that went on and the lead up to the mission, the mission itself, you know, the launch, the on-orbit time, the entry, the landing, but, yeah, at least we know we’re done with the mission, which, you know, we didn’t even really know launch dates until just a few months before we launched, and we didn’t know the duration of the mission until a few weeks before we came home, and so I guess it’s nice in that respect to be back with our family and our friends here at NASA and working through the post-flight activities that we have, and they are pretty well scheduled for the next few weeks for sure. In fact, there’s a lot of stuff to do over the next few weeks. So we’re hoping at some point just to take some time off and share a little more time with our family since they are the ones that really had to sacrifice over the, as Bob said, over the last five years because we were mostly in California, and we were mostly obviously the last two months in space.

Host: Next, we’ll go to Andrea Leinfelder from the “Houston Chronicle.”

Andrea Leinfelder: Thanks, welcome home. Bob, you gave a really great description of what it was like to launch in the Crew Dragon. I was hoping you could give us a similarly vivid account of what it was like to land. Thank you.

Bob Behnken: Well, thank you, Andrea. You know, the landing was — I would say it was more than what Doug and I expected. Things are always pretty smooth as you work through a deorbit burn because, of course, you are still in low-Earth orbit while you take that little bit energy out that it takes to lower you into the atmosphere and start the trip home. As we kind of descended through the atmosphere, I personally was surprised at just how quickly it all — the events all transpired. It seemed like just a couple minutes later, after the burn was complete, we could look out the windows and see the clouds rushing by at a much-accelerated rate. You know, one of the things we didn’t have a lot of time to do during our time dock to station with how busy we were is to really focus on the Earth for an extended period of time, and during free flight in Dragon we were able to do that, and probably had a pretty good feel for the rate that the Earth was moving below us, and we could definitely tell things were picking up quick after we started that burn. Once we descended a little bit into the atmosphere, you know, Dragon really — it came alive. It started to fire thrusters and keep us pointed in the appropriate direction. The atmosphere starts to make noise. You can hear that rumble outside the vehicle, and as the vehicle tries to control, you feel a little bit of that shimmy in your body, and our bodies were much better attuned to the environment. So, we could feel those small rolls and pitches and yaws, and all those little motions were things that we picked up on inside the vehicle. As we descended through the atmosphere, the thrusters were firing almost continuously. And I think just the sound that that makes, I did record some audio of it, but it doesn’t sound like a machine. It sounds like an animal coming through the atmosphere with all that — all the puffs that are happening from the thrusters and the atmospheric noise, it just continues to gain magnitude as you descend down through the atmosphere, and I think we both really, really noticed that aspect of things. All the separation events from the trunk separation through the parachute firings were very much like getting hit in the back of the chair with a baseball bat. You know, just a crack, and then you’d get some sort of a motion associated with that. Usually pretty light for the trunk separation, but with the parachutes, it was a pretty significant jolt. And a couple jolts as you go through the dis-reefing of the parachutes as well. And so, all the way down, we were talking about it. I think I took a line from an old movie that Doug and I were both familiar with at one point because, under the g-load of about 4.2 gs, I said, “Want to get some coffee?” You know, much like we had seen in an old movie that we had watched because that we really the feeling that we had, and that’s the best way to describe it. If you’ve seen an old movie that happened to have some guys who had been in a centrifuge, that’s what we felt like. When the time came to splashdown, I think we were watching the altimeter, which is a GPS altimeter, so it’s not super accurate everywhere that you are located, and so we got to below zero for our altitude on that indicator, which was a little bit surprising, and then we felt the splash, and we saw it splash up over the windows. It was just a great relief, I think, for both of us at that point. And I can’t say enough at about how well the SpaceX team trained us. You know, they provided us some audio clips of what it was like inside the Demo-1 vehicle so that we were familiar with all those sounds and reassuring is not quite the right word because we think of it more in technical terms as, you know, pilots and engineers riding along with that vehicle, but when it performed as expected, and we could check off those events, we were really, really comfortable coming through the atmosphere even though, you know, it felt like we were inside of an animal.

Host: Let’s go to David Kerley from the “Discovery Channel.”

David Kerley: Wow, Bob, what a description. Welcome back to both of you. I have a lot of technical questions, but let’s do the fun question and the big question. Bob, did you leave something for Megan? You don’t have to tell me what it is. Will SpaceX leave it there? And, Doug, you said you would talk about the historical meaning afterwards. Here we are. Big picture — what does this mean? Thank you, gentlemen, and welcome home.

Bob Behnken: Well, inside the vehicle, you know, it’s not something we don’t do is leave things behind. We do our best to, you know, keep it in ship shape. We did leave a patch inside the vehicle. There’s a Demo-1 sticker that we added, and we did give the ship a name, Endeavor, and I’m hopeful that they will be able to keep both of those things as they go forward and add their decal to the interior of Endeavor.

Doug Hurley: I guess for me from the historical aspect, I think certainly the first U.S. crewed vehicle since the shuttle, so nine years ago. Certainly, personally, it is significant because I was the last shuttle pilot and then the first commander of Dragon, and so that’s — it’s neat to think about now. You know, and I certainly maybe a year from now will think a lot more about it, but I’m more — I think what is more important to me is the historical aspect for NASA and certainly for SpaceX. It just — for a company that has only been around for a decade or a little more than that to build a spaceship that takes crew into orbit and returns them safely, just that part of the historical aspect for me is probably most significant. It’s just — and to be part of that, for me, is also by far the most important and one of the most incredible highlights that I’ll have from a professional career to just share in that journey, that odyssey, that Endeavor as we named our ship was just one of the true honors of my entire life but certainly my professional career.

Host: We’ll now go to Marcia Dunn from “Associated Press.”

Marcia Dunn: Hi. I’m wondering, did either of you realize real-time that you were surrounded by pleasure boats filled with gawkers so soon after splashdown? And if so, were you concerned? And if you were unaware of them, were you surprised to find that out afterward? And, Bob, a real quick question, when is the puppy arriving?

Doug Hurley: Well, I guess since Bob has got a really important question to answer, I’ll talk about the boaters. You know this is something that we discussed as a NASA, SpaceX group prior to Demo-1, actually. And, you know, we certainly appreciate the folks wanting to participate in the event. But, you know, there’s some safety aspects that I think, you know, as the administrator said we’ll have to take a look at because it just can’t happen like it did before, but certainly, we were not — and it’s mostly due to kind of the way the windows looked after splashdown, so, you know, the reentry is a fairly dynamic event, and you can see from, you know, just an overall view of the capsule that reentry is a pretty demanding environment, you know, with the different scorches on the vehicle. And the windows were not spared any of that — to look out the windows, you could basically tell that it was daylight but very little out. So we didn’t really see anything clearly out the windows until the SpaceX recovery crews got near us with the fast boats, and then we could see a head or two out the window, but, yeah, I had absolutely no awareness of the other flotilla that was out there until we were back onboard GO Searcher and in the medical facility.

Bob Behnken: Yeah, I just would add a little bit to that, which is folks need to realize we were delayed with actually opening the hatch for an extended period while the teams really made sure that everything was clear and that the vehicle was safe for us to exit and for them to get as many people as required to, you know, perform that extraction for us. And so just a word to the wise for folks who have ideas of coming that close again in the future that we take extreme precautions to make sure it is safe, and we do that for a reason, and hopefully they’ll appreciate that, you know, that’s required really with us required with spacecraft operations. As far as the puppy goes, we’re on about a two-week time frame where we’ll — we need to teach my son a little bit about the things that are required to, you know, have a dog in the house and make sure he’s comfortable with picking up his responsibilities associated with the dog. You know, I’ve done a lot of that with the IP [internet protocol] phone from the space station over the last couple months, but now he has got to put his work in to get the dog bed in the right location and show me that he’s ready to take on that responsibility. And, you know, he’s going to love that puppy, and he’s going to — and he needs to bring him upright, and so we’re going to set him up for success. Otherwise, it’ll be my dog instead of his.

Host: Let’s go to Robert Pearlman from “collectSPACE.”

Robert Pearlman: Hi, Bob and Doug. Great to see you back on Earth. Up until now after a historic NASA first flight like yours, it would almost be a given that something from the mission, the spacecraft or the spacesuits would be headed to the Smithsonian, but given the commercial nature of your flight, very little of your mission’s equipment belongs to NASA, and your spacecraft is already slated to fly again, so were it up to you, what would you like to see SpaceX donate to the National Air and Space Museum or otherwise put on public display? And might we see your sons agree to donate Tremor?

Bob Behnken: Well, they might make that agreement. I’m sure they would request something in trade. I don’t know. At least an opportunity to go see where Tremor’s new home would actually be. I think there’s a lot of Tremors out there as well at this point, and so I think it could be that the marketplace is saturated with Tremors. As far as what I would like to see donated, you know, I still think there’s an opportunity for the history to play out and this capsule to still end up in the Smithsonian. You know, it could be used and reused, and then find that permanent home. SpaceX has done a wonderful job. If you’ve ever visited or seen pictures inside the facility there in Hawthorne, they do have hardware that they’ve flown or hardware that they’ve tested and managed to put on public display. Right here, we do have a — here in Houston at the Space Center Houston, they do have a first stage now that was used, and it’s nice to have that in full public view. And I’m sure and confident that they are going to share pieces of the hardware with the public at large. You know, if you go out to Hawthorne, there’s a first stage sitting right there on the corner of the property line there, and it’s just awesome for people to see that hardware and be able to, you know, recognize it as hardware that was used for space missions, and, you know, take a picture next to it and be a part of it. And so, I know they’ll do it. And if it was up to me, I think all of this hardware has a home someplace in the future when it’s used up. It’s just not used up yet.

Host: Thank you. We’re now going to switch to social media for just a second. First of all, you have folks from all over the world on Twitter and Facebook saying hello and congratulations — Brazil, England, Canada, Argentina, the Netherlands, all over the U.S., just to name a few, but this seems to be a common theme. This one is from Shanika. “Who gets to keep Tremor?”

Doug Hurley: Well, I think we’re probably going to go along the lines of I believe it’s the NHL where the team that wins the Stanley Cup if you’re familiar with that, each member of the team gets to have the Stanley Cup for a day or two, and I think we’ll probably work out something along those lines where we just have a, you know, he spends some time at Bob’s place, and then he spends some time at our place. And, you know, I think that’s fair. And then I think at some point obviously the boys will, you know, they’re going to grow up and potentially outgrow Tremor, and, you know, we’ll figure out a good, a good place for Tremor as well, just like hopefully with the Endeavor and our suits and anything else that was associated with this mission. It’s just a neat memory for Bob and I as fathers, you know, to share this type of thing with our sons, and we’re just thankful that we were allowed to take Tremor with us, and it’s frankly just amazing to see the response to Tremor and how much people enjoyed that part of the mission along with some of the other things. So, we really appreciate that and thank folks for understanding, you know, that it was important to us.

Host: We’ll take one more AskNASA question. This one from Leanne on Facebook asking, “what’s the first thing you ate after returning to Earth?”

Bob Behnken: I think for both of us, the first thing we ate was the pizza that they had available on the jet that brought us back into Houston. So, we had a good pizza. We, you know, we’ve done a lot of travel on the aircraft operation folks here at Johnson Space Center’s aircraft over the last 20 years frankly whether it was T-38s or as we responded to COVID and used the larger airplanes to help us get from place to place from a training perspective, and they always have a good plan for taking care of the crews that are onboard and our landing day was no different than the other days. They had us all hooked up and set up, and the pizza was waiting when we made it onboard.

Host: Thank you. We’ll now turn to the phone bridge, starting with Eric Berger from “Ars Technica.”

Eric Berger: Hi, guys. I want to congratulate on your excellent timing. Houston in August is lovely. If I may ask a non-Tremor question, were there any surprises during the mission? It all looked so smooth from the launch to the landing, you know, to us watching on the ground. And was it really that perfect? Like did the vehicle perform that well, or was there anything that happened like maybe you went in the capsule on-orbit, and there was a funny odor? Or, you know, something that alarmed you during the two months you were up there? Or was it all just that smooth? Thank you.

Doug Hurley: Frankly, the DM-2 mission part of it as well as the docked ISS mission that we participated in, Expedition 63, but certainly the DM-2 mission, I personally expected there to be more, you know, certainly not issues with the vehicle, but some challenges or some things that were maybe not quite what we expected, I mean even on our shuttle flights, we had things that happened on both of mine, and I know, you know, Bob and I have talked a lot about his missions as well. There were things that happened that were right out of a simulator event and something that you certainly wouldn’t have expected in a real flight, but my credit, once again, is to the folks at SpaceX, the production folks, the people that put Endeavor together, and then certainly our training folks, the mission went just like the simulators, and I — honestly from start to finish, all the way, there was really no surprises, and I think for me personally, I expected the entry to diverge somewhat by what we saw in the simulator, and what I mean by that is as a capsule gets in the thicker air of the atmosphere, so somewhere around 20K, down to maybe 10K, just prior to the drogues with Dragon, I expected there to be some divergence in attitude control because it’s a real tough problem for the ship as it gets into the thicker air to maintain perfect attitude and control. And at some point, and then the design of this vehicle is for the drogues to come out potentially a little bit earlier than they nominally would come out to kind of right the vehicle. I fully expected that to happen, and it did not. The vehicle was rock solid right up until the nominal drogue deploy altitude, and as Bob described, you could feel it, you knew exactly, you felt the decel[eration], you knew the drogues both worked, and then it was the same with the mains. We felt the different stages of disreef, and right to the impact in the water, it was, you know, we kind of had a feeling it would be not as much as a Soyuz landing as it was described to us, but it was going to be a pretty firm splashdown, and then, you know, how we bobbed — even how we bobbed in the water and how the vehicle sat in the water. So, my compliments to SpaceX and the Commercial Crew program. The vehicle performed exactly how it was supposed to. And you feel really good about Crew-1 and what they should expect and what they should see when they fly their mission.

Host: Next is Chris Davenport from “The Washington Post.”

Chris Davenport: Oh, hey, guys. Welcome back. Good to see you. Two quick ones. Just looking for maybe, Bob, a description of what it was like inside Dragon when the heat was building, and that plasma was building. Were you cool? What the view was like? And then maybe, Doug, if you could talk about how many calls you made on the sat phone and who you called? Thanks, bye.

Bob Behnken: You know, as we came through the atmosphere, I think we had a pretty good view out the window until the gs started building, at least for me. My focus kind of shifted towards the display content, and the windows are down by our feet, and so being able to look at those requires kind of head motion and pushing your body around and so just didn’t seem like the smartest thing to do, you know, as the vehicle was maneuvering and starting to put gs on to be turning our heads and trying to move around in the seats. At that point, we were trying to make sure that we were good and strapped in. I do feel like I felt some warming of the capsule on the inside, and so the real notice was that when I did get a chance once the gs had come down to look out those windows again, you know, they were obscured as Doug described earlier, and so we kind of saw the clouds racing by and then the g-load started to build up, and we focused on, you know, monitoring the vehicle and paying attention to those small bobbles that we could feel as it controlled the attitude, and then there was not much to see out the windows by the time we had another chance to do it. So —

Doug Hurley: Yeah. And I think — I’ll just add, I had an entry that was a night entry and then a day entry, and it’s tough with shuttle even to see the plasma in the daytime. It’s almost just this really thin pinkish hue that you could — in the front seats of the shuttle, you could pick up just very — it was very difficult to see. So I certainly didn’t expect with a full daytime entry like we had with Dragon and then as Bob described the position of the windows relative to where we sit until the seats adjust for the — basically to get our heads more vertical than our feet after we’re under parachutes, you really have to work pretty hard to just see out the windows. And as far as the sat phone, yeah, that probably was a pretty funny to hear that you have astronauts calling whoever we can call. But there was a real reason for it. You know, Nick Hague, when he had his abort onboard Soyuz, they also have a phone where they’re able to call folks, but some of the numbers either weren’t correct or weren’t loaded. And as I think most people know, in this day and age, we know very few phone numbers by heart like we used to know many years ago, and so we wanted to get a test objective out of the way, which was to call the core station at Hawthorne and when we called to say, “Hey, we would like to do that,” they said, “Stand by.” And so, we decided we would exercise our judgment and use the phone to call some other folks. So, we called Anthony I think at the CAPCOM console — or at the flight director console here. And, you know, “Hi, this is Bob and Doug. We’re in the ocean.” And then we also called our wives who happened to be together. I think they were here at mission control, and, of course, they were excited. And as all folks know that have gone through this as a family member, you are kind of helpless until you hear the voice of your loved one on the other end, and this was a great chance to reassure them that we were in the water, we were OK, we were feeling good, and then at that point we were still waiting on SpaceX, and so we just decided to call a few other people that we knew their phone numbers to. And we got a hold of a few, but if anybody has ever used a sat phone, sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t connect. So, it was a — but it was a very successful test, and we’re confident that future crews if they need it, it’s a good option for communication.

Host: Next is Stephen Clark from “Spaceflight Now.”

Stephen Clark: Hi, guys. Congratulations on a successful mission, and welcome back to Earth. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to, you know, this by all accounts was a very successful test flight. Just based on your experiences, can I get one of you to comment on if you think Crew Dragon is ready to go for crew rotation missions to the ISS with your successful return? Thanks.

Bob Behnken: You know, I think both of us are in agreement, no questions, that the Crew Dragon, once they finish the certification process, you know, they do need to look at the data from our entry. You know, it’s not just the end-user’s anecdotes of how well it performed. They will do a very thorough review both on the SpaceX side and the NASA side to make sure that they’re comfortable. But from a crew perspective, I think that it is definitely ready to go. There are things that can be improved, just like even with the final flight of the space shuttle. I know Doug will tell you that there are things that could have been improved or would have been improved if we flew a 136. And so there will be some things that we’ll have some ideas about how we could make better to make things a little bit more comfortable or a little bit more efficient inside the vehicle for those crews, but from a crew perspective, I think we’re perfectly comfortable saying that Crew-1 is ready when they finish the engineering and analysis associated with certification.

Doug Hurley: One thing I would just like to add about that, you know, Bob and I talked many times over the last couple of years about the duration of the flight, and for a long part of that until just, you know, the — essentially the beginning of this year, you know, it was going to be the same length as the DM-1 flight, so just a few days in space. And I think, I personally feel a lot better even though there were some challenges dealing with the, you know, the duration of the flight and when all that would come together, I certainly feel much better from the Crew-1 perspective and subsequent flights of having Dragon docked to station for two months is a much better outcome for me than if we had just been up there a few days. If you’re asking the Crew-1 folks to be up there for a full up six-month ish-type duration, I think they should have a lot more confidence that the vehicle does fine in the quiescent mode, dock to station, and there wasn’t anything that maybe wouldn’t have been uncovered had we just been up there for just a few days, so and I thought that was a much better outcome.

Host: We have Gina Sunseri from “ABC News.”

Gina Sunseri: What mission would be on the books for you both next? What would you like to do?

Bob Behnken: At least for me, I think in the short-term is, I transition to a support role. As you know, my wife is assigned to a SpaceX mission, and we have a young son, and so I’ll definitely be focused on making sure that her mission is as successful as possible and supporting her just as she did for me over the last five years with the uncertainty in our launch dates and uncertainty in our return dates, it’s definitely her turn to focus on getting her mission accomplished while I take care of the things that need to be taken care of for our home life.

Host: Next is Elizabeth Howell from “Space.com.”

Elizabeth Howell: Welcome home. And I wanted to know what kind of lessons learned or kind of advice that you would be giving to the Crew-1 when they get ready to go?

Doug Hurley: That’s a great question, and, you know, we have a tag up with those guys I believe early next week, and I think we’ve mentioned before that we talked to them shortly after launch and once we were docked just to kind of while it was all fresh in our memories, a data relay to all the things that we noticed or saw, sounds, things that really can’t be emulated very well in a simulator and things that would trigger, you know, any of the other training objectives that they are going through right now as they wrap up their training. And so, I think lessons learned, you know, there are always lessons learned. You know, things that we did that maybe we could be more efficient about or that we learned or that we thought maybe would work one way or that maybe would work better for another. But generally speaking, I think it’s more just relaying the experience and what we did in those particular situations and also trying to at least imagine what it would have been like to have four people in the vehicle rather than two. And we did some docked operation evaluations with four people, and, you know, we had Anatoly and Chris act as the other two crew members, and their vast experience in flying Soyuz and spaceflight in general, they had some great suggestions, and we, at the time, pass those things on in the debrief, and we’ll definitely talk to the Crew-1 folks about that as well. But, yeah, there’s a very formal process and then an informal process, and we’ll just try to pass on everything that we’ve learned and what we think might work the best with a crew of four.

Host: We have Joey Roulette from “Reuters.”

Joey Roulette: Thanks for doing this. And, Bob, I really appreciate that description of descending in Crew Dragon you gave earlier in the call, and I was wondering, do you think there’s anything SpaceX can or should do to make Crew Dragon’s descent calmer, or is that the way it should be? And is that what you expected? Thanks.

Bob Behnken: I think from a crew perspective, you know, really, what is important is that you understand the events that the vehicle is going to go through and know what to expect. And so the thing that I found most valuable having gone through that experience was something that actually the launch team put together for us, pulled together some ascent video from both Demo-1 and the abort test that they performed to show what the sounds in Dragon were synced up with the video feed. And so being able to watch that and hear the sounds and see what they corresponded to on the video from, you know, the outside tracking cameras that were in place was just invaluable from my perspective and really understanding what the vehicle was going to be going through and be comfortable as we went through it and monitor it appropriately. And so, you know, both Doug and I had confidence like we described earlier that, you know, the drogues had come out, and that the reefing had happened according to schedule just based on being able to watch that video and hear the sounds and have it all synced up. We just knew what to expect. You know, this maybe sounds a little bit boring, and I’m going to get probably some flak from talking about movie clichés again, but, you know, there’s a movie “Groundhog Day,” where they’re sequencing through and everything is predictable, and for dynamic events like a spaceflight for ascent and for entry, it really is invaluable as you try to control your body and come through that environment whether it’s a g-loading or it is the dynamics of a pitch, yaw, and roll moving you around inside the vehicle, knowing what to expect really sets you up for success to work your way through it and do anything that you might need to do in those dynamic situations, and I think that video that the SpaceX team put together was just wonderful, and I watched it again on orbit before we came home, and I know that will be in our list of things that we recommend to the Crew-1 guys if they haven’t already watched it that that’s something that they should kind of commit to memory and consider even having available on orbit.

Host: Next is Morgan McFall from “Business Insider.”

Morgan McFall: Hi, Bob and Doug. Welcome home, and thanks so much for taking my question. I’m wondering what you would most like to see for the partnership between NASA and SpaceX going forward, and what are you most excited about in this new era of human spaceflight? Thank you.

Doug Hurley: Well, it is neat to see SpaceX is in the competition to build the lunar lander with two other companies. And we’ve had, as an agency, we’ve had a wonderful partnership with SpaceX, you know, from commercial cargo to commercial crew, and they just continue to work towards the goal of getting humanity out into the cosmos, and it’s been a great relationship. It has been very beneficial for both SpaceX and for NASA, and this, once again, the success of DM-2 proves that it should be something that we should continue, and I am excited to see that happen. It was a lot of work to get from where we started five years ago to now, but it is just — they are a wonderful company to work with, and they have some incredibly talented people, and I think there is plenty to come from the relationship that NASA and SpaceX have.

Bob Behnken: Yeah, from my perspective, it really is critical that we continue to try to build on that relationship that Doug has referred to. You know, it won’t be appropriate if we take the next step, which is to restart with a different NASA team and a different SpaceX team. We really need to leverage those relationships and continue with all the, you know, the five years of experience that we have of figuring out the things that NASA can best share with SpaceX to make them as successful as quickly as possible, and, you know, that applies to all the partnerships that NASA sets up is figuring out the best way to communicate and share information is how we’re going to all cooperate to get to our end objective. And so, I just am really excited as we go forward that the relationships and the work that’s — the groundwork that is in place is going to be leveraged to accomplish even more great things in the future.

Host: We’ll take one from Mark Carreau from “Aviation Week.”

Mark Carreau: Wondering what the primary question you’re getting from your astronaut colleagues is and what you’re telling them about the experience?

Doug Hurley: Actually, we haven’t had a ton of interaction with anybody given that, you know, when you get back from space you have a pretty compromised immune system to some degree, so we’re taking every precaution that we can to try to stay away from most folks although there is a lot of medical testing and rehabilitation that’s going on, but there will be time to do debriefs, and I think, as I mentioned before, certainly with the Crew-1 folks coming up here pretty shortly, but, yeah, we haven’t seen a lot of them because, you know, we’re just in the stage of the pandemic where we’re still I think– even the folks that are — haven’t gone to space are trying to distance and wear masks and those kinds of things, but we definitely know that there are a lot of questions. We have certainly gotten a lot of texts and emails, and hopefully, we can describe everything from memory that is pertinent. And as Bob said, you know, SpaceX will certainly have a synced-up video with audio for our ascent as well as our entry that will be passed on for multiple crews for them to use.

Bob Behnken: I would say we are still the phase where all of our astronaut colleagues aren’t asking us for information. They know now is not the time for that. They’re asking us do we need anything, are our families well taken care of, are we in good shape, and so that’s their primary focus right now is, you know, taking care of the team, which is the astronaut office, and so I — all the well wishes that come in are, “Do you need anything?” “Is there — don’t climb a ladder. I’ll change the light at your house.” All those sorts of things and it has just been wonderful how many folks have reached out to try to, you know, make sure that we’re well taken care of after the mission that we just went through. And it’s like that for every mission when crews come back.

Host: We’ll now go to social media for a few more questions there using hashtag #AskNASA. This one comes from Natalie on Twitter. “What is the reconditioning process like to get reacquainted with gravity?”

Doug Hurley: Well, we’ll spend two hours every day with our strength and conditioning specialists. And it is essentially just a walk before you run literally type process. We do some stretching. We do some aerobic exercise. We do some lifting and some agility drills. And it’s — you’re pretty tired after the two-hour process, and we just started it yesterday, so on Day 2, and it will continue for roughly 45 days. And most people really adjust in that time, certainly before you get to 45 days, but it is a continuous process to get you right back to where you were pre-flight.

Host: We’ll take one more from social media. This one from Leo on Twitter. “What is the greatest lesson that a young person can learn from this mission, especially in these challenging times?”

Bob Behnken: I think the greatest lesson folks can take from our experience is one of perseverance. You know, Doug and I didn’t get to this opportunity, and this team didn’t get to this success without years of hard effort, you know, challenges along the way. It doesn’t — doing something complicated like developing a new spacecraft and launching it, developing a new rocket and then putting a spacecraft on top of it and launching it to the International Space Station is just a — it’s a tremendous level of effort that is required to accomplish that. And it is — there are setbacks. There are challenges where, you know, a rocket performance isn’t what you expected, or a propulsion system onboard a capsule isn’t exactly everything that you thought it was, and you have to adapt to those challenges, and you have to overcome them and continue forward and maintain both optimism and paranoia as you go through that perseverance. And so those are all normal things as you try to accomplish, you know, challenging tasks, and so I’m hopeful that our experience, the entire SpaceX team’s experience, and the NASA team’s experience, one of just the focused effort for an extended period of time, you know, can lead to just awesome results if you stay focused, and so that message of perseverance is the one that I would want to share.

Host: We’ll now go back to the phone bridge, starting with Marina Koren from “The Atlantic.”

Marina Koren: Hi, Bob and Doug. Welcome back. What advice would you give to future Crew Dragon passengers who are not astronauts? And a quick second question, you’ve been close friends for years, did your friendship survive this historic experience?

Doug Hurley: Alright. What advice would we give kind of the non-professional astronaut when they are flying on Crew Dragon? Purely that the SpaceX and NASA collaborated to build a tremendous vehicle that is very capable of the mission to go to and from low-Earth orbit safely. It’s a comfortable vehicle. There are things that are just an aspect of flying in space that I think most folks don’t quite realize or understand. There are times when it’s uncomfortable. There are times when, of course, you can’t take a shower. You know, going to the bathroom is a challenge. But I think in general, it’s an outstanding vehicle, and they should be excited to fly onboard to get that experience if they’re lucky enough to do it. And I think as far as our friendship, it certainly survived. If anything, it just got stronger. You know, being part of a crew with Chris and Anatoly and Ivan, it was just neat to see the team developed. You know, as Bob had mentioned before and I’m sure I did too, we have known Chris for a long time. I flew with Chris on our first flight together, and it just was really neat to see the Expedition 63 crew develop and work through the last few months, and it was very, very rewarding. And I think for me personally, maybe I didn’t appreciate that aspect of it as much, you know, going into the flight because I think, you know, our huge concern and challenge was making sure DM-2 flew the way it ended up flying successfully. And so, it was neat, and it just was such a huge advantage I think for Bob and I that we are close friends that just the crew coordination part of it and flying Dragon was almost via telepathy sometimes. You know, we didn’t even have to say anything whether we were pointing at something or if we just at that particular moment looking at that part of a display because that’s what we knew would be the thing that was most important, and I just think that, you know, I know that doesn’t necessarily always go into the selection process, but I think, you know, in this case, when we were selected to fly this mission together, it certainly gave us a distinct advantage over some crews. And it was certainly very much appreciated by me.

Bob Behnken: Yeah, just as Doug said, being able to add Chris to our friendship and Anatoly and Ivan is really how Expedition 63 worked out. You know, it was — us focused on the mission. And Chris, as the commander of the space station, being able to shift into the support role when it came time for us to get docked and then us to shift into our support roles once we were onboard the space station, of course, the spacewalk activities have various sync points where kind of the leadership kind of moves around, and we were able to do that very seamlessly, and part of that is, you know, related to just how close and how strong our friendships were kind of across the board. And so — and, of course, when we came to the end of the mission, and it was time to undock, Chris jumped back into that support role again and helped us with the cargo transfer that we needed to put in place, some of the powered payload activities. We just — it was all very seamless. Folks understood what their responsibilities were, and we were able to, you know, cooperate and work together to make it all happen and get the mission done. And so, I would say, you know, our friendship is stronger, and we added some folks to our circle as well.

Host: Next is MaryLiz Bender from “Cosmic Perspective.”

MaryLiz Bender: Welcome home, Bob and Doug. I want to first thank you for sharing that wisdom on perseverance. You shared a lot of stunning images of Earth while you were on the station, and I really enjoyed the perspective you gave with the captions that you used. And I just wanted to ask, what compelled you to share so much, and what was your favorite location or feature to photograph?

Doug Hurley: Well, I think we can both answer that one. You know, for me, I just — every time you look out the window of the space station, and certainly, we didn’t get the opportunity that I thought we were going to get, you know, based on the description of previous crew members. Our time was used up a lot to make up for the fact that, you know, we were down to three crew members on the space station prior to us getting there, and I think — and rightly so, the International Space Station Program needed us to get to work right off the bat. But the time that we did get to do that, you know, the perspective that you have from low-Earth orbit of our planet is just one of just complete awe of, first of all, how beautiful the planet is and that there are no borders that you can see from space, that the atmosphere is so thin, and then literally every time you look out the window, you see something different and even more beautiful than the last thing you saw the last time you looked out the window, and it’s always different. And maybe more so this year than in past years that astronauts have taken photographs out the window, you know, the country, the United States, and the world has been dealing with so much chaos and drama and the pandemic, and all the things that have been going on in the world and, you know, if it were me, it would make me feel better to see these pictures from space, and so I think we just felt like it was a way to maybe have folks maybe have a distraction for a while and also to appreciate the planet that we’ve been given. You know, it is unique in that standpoint, and it is just beautiful to look at. And it’s — I personally feel it’s our obligation to share what we see because not everybody is going to get to go to space and to just bring as much of the experience to everybody back on Earth is something I thought was very, very important.

Bob Behnken: You know, I think for both of us, we didn’t expect to have a longer duration mission. We expected to have just a few short days, which would’ve really limited our opportunity to share the station life aspects or the things that you can see from low-Earth orbit or from the space station with folks. And when we got the opportunity for a longer mission, I think we both wanted to take advantage of that. You know, I think the Earth below us is a wonderful view — just some amazing things to see. I’m a little bit — I’m a physics-trained engineer background sort of a thing, and so I was really interested in the things that were examples of science or engineering or just physics below us or above us that was happening. And so whether it was lights shimmering across the ocean surface or it was sunrises or sunset in trying to figure out how to get a photo and share that so that somebody else could have the same wonder that we have when we get a chance to see it ourselves was what was really important to me. We had some interesting, you know, conditions during the flight. We had a period of time where we were in continuous daylight. We got to do a spacewalk in continuous daylight, which was just crazy to imagine, you know, being outside the entire time with the sun up the entire time. It was just a strange thing to kind of get your mind around, and we got to have that experience. And so, as a part of that, I think it took away the opportunities for us to get as many shots of the Comet NEOWISE that was rising. It kind of came in that same period. So, we had too much light to be able to see it very much. But just all those things that you can see whether it’s lightning or the cities at night or look out at the Milky Way and see the stars in the background, or just see the glow of the Earth and see that it is not dark even at night compared to the darkness of space is just imagery that we wanted to share and maybe spark an interest of the wonder that we were able to see and whether it’s a child or an adult that’s out there so that in this year and in years in the future, folks can look at that and be inspired to have the kind of careers that we have had or, you know, chase a different dream than the one that we have chosen.

Host: Next is Irene Klotz from “Aviation Week.”

Irene Klotz: Thank you. I realize you’re still digesting all of this, but if you — if the decision were up to you about when to fly friends, family, other non-professional astronauts, do you think that the system is mature enough after just perhaps another two flights to have that kind of mission?

Doug Hurley: That’s a good question. I think if it were me and it was a family member, certainly, as Bob described, there’s a certification process that Endeavor hasn’t completed yet, and it’ll likely be weeks, and I think from my experience of flying fighters and testing fighters, you know, a first flight, there’s a lot of scrutiny on a first flight, and there’s a lot of work that goes into a first flight, but you can’t let your guard down, and you’ve got to take a look at the data. You’ve got to listen to the hardware, and it is probably going to take a few flights because, you know, we certainly did our best, and I think the teams did their best to script this flight to be a full up test flight, but there are certainly things on Dragon that could be tested more. And there — just for an example, you know, we dock to the forward part of the space station. There’s certainly the likelihood that a Dragon is going to have to dock to a different docking port, either the Zenith — I think it’s the Zenith port that is likely to be next for a commercial vehicle. And that may sound somewhat insignificant, but it isn’t, and so all the software that needs to go into the vehicle trajectory analysis and the things that they need to do in order to make that possible, and for our flight that was not possible. The software hadn’t been written yet to do that docking port, so just things like that — so I think it’s going to take few flights before, and I think that’s prudent, a few flights before we can consider this vehicle completely tested, and then as we all know, you know, the space business like a lot of those technically challenging businesses is not forgiving. So, the bigger thing to take a look at is to just not let your guard down and don’t just assume because the last flight went perfectly that the next flight is going to go perfectly. You have to do that rigor and that analysis and that attention to detail, and you can’t get complacent, and you can never get complacent with a space vehicle.

Host: And that’s all the time we have for questions today. Thanks to all who submitted questions. And thanks to Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley for taking the time to discuss this historic event. The Demo-2 mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and we have more milestones coming up in the very near future. So, for the latest, please visit NASA.gov/commercialcrew. Thanks again for joining us. That will wrap up today’s Crew News Conference.

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Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed these replays of the Welcome Home Ceremony and the Crew News Conference. They had some amazing comments during these fantastic and historical moments really after the mission, and I’m glad to be sharing these moments with you today on the podcast. We have more episodes of Houston We Have a Podcast that you can listen to in no particular order at NASA.gov/podcasts. Also, some other podcasts here at NASA that you can check out while I go to that link. More milestones coming up for Commercial Crew Program. The Demo-2 mission was to test and verify the capabilities of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, and we’ve got the first operational flight coming up here soon later this year. So, go to NASA.gov/commercialcrew to see the latest updates there. We, Houston We Have a Podcast, are on the NASA Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Use the hashtag #AskNASA on your favorite platform to submit an idea to the show. Just make sure to mention it’s for Houston We Have a Podcast. The audio for this podcast was recorded during the events on August 2nd and August 4th, 2020. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Pat Ryan, Norah Moran, Belinda Pulido, and Jennifer Hernandez from the Houston We Have a Podcast team. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on and tell us how we did. We’ll be back next week