Meet the astronauts: SpaceX introduces company’s first human flight crew
As four NASA astronauts took the stage at SpaceX headquarters on Monday, employees who gathered on the factory floor to greet them amid engine assemblies and giant rocket parts welcomed the crew with a roar.
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Wearing classic NASA-designed blue jumpsuits, the four astronauts – Pomona native Victor Glover, along with Bob Behnken, Mike Hopkins, and Doug Hurley – represented not only the first human passengers for the Hawthorne-based private rocketbuilder, they also represent the promise of a nation seven years after NASA’s final space shuttle mission.
The event was part of a press availability with the astronauts, nine of whom were recently selected by NASA to become the first to take part in the space agency’s next generation of manned space flights, a vision coming to fruition to partner with private companies such as SpaceX that began a decade ago.
Founded in 2002 by high-profile entrepreneur Elon Musk, the fundamental mission at SpaceX is to expand human space travel, especially to Mars.
While SpaceX has ferried 15 cargo loads to the International Space Station on a Cargo Dragon capsule, it is human space flight that targets the company’s core goal, said Director of Crew Mission Management Benji Reed.
“Human space flight was the reason SpaceX was founded in the first place,” Reed said. “It’s our number one goal and our highest priority.”
National pride
Along with the first SpaceX manned mission planned for April 2019, another set of astronauts will deploy around the same time on a Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
For the past seven years, NASA has relied on the Russian space program to shuttle American astronauts to the ISS on board a Soyuz rocket from a launch pad in Kazikstan. Returning manned space flight to American soil, Behnken said was a point of pride.
“For those of us who launched on space shuttles, it was something special for us to go through,” said Behnken, who’s flown two missions to space. “It was special for our families to see that and school kids who we try to bring our missions back to and inspire or share our missions with. It’s a little different when you can do it in your own backyard.”
Glover is the only astronaut who has not been to space yet. All four are test pilots for the armed services.
“The opportunity to go to the space station and be a part of the crew is an overwhelming opportunity,” Glover said. “To not just fly the crew vehicle but to then work and live on the space station, I’m overjoyed… It’s truly a test pilot’s dream.”
A Navy commander and aviator, Glover was first selected to join the NASA pool of astronauts in 2013. He has logged just under 3,000 hours flying 40 different aircraft. Glover, who attended Ontario High and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, made 400 successful carrier landings and flew 24 combat missions.
Making an introduction
On Monday, SpaceX officials led journalists through the factory floor where mechanics tightened bolts on the latest Merlin engines while others worked on giant pieces of the nose cone for payload missions, known as fairings, like the fuselage of an aircraft that descend in halves back to earth.
Astronauts submitted to a half-hour question and answer session with journalists preceded by an introduction to the Dragon spacecraft that will ferry them into orbit.
The demonstration included a full mock-up of the spacecraft to crawl inside and put yourself in the shoes of an astronaut with 1.7 million pounds of thrust, greater than five 747s at full power, under their seats.
Journalists also got a look at a simulator astronauts use for training about every other week along with a newly designed space suit, which looks like something from Star Trek.
The new suits are made from a combination of Nomex (a fire retardant fabric similar to Kevlar), a bleached variety of Teflon and leather. While astronauts will still use the NASA suits for space walks and operating within the space station, the new SpaceX suits will be utilized inside the craft.
While the first manned mission from U.S. soil is expected in April, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell joked that “predicting launch dates makes a liar out of the best of us.”
“Whenever we talk about dates we are always confident until something comes up,” she said.
Most important is safety, she stressed.
“We are not going to fly until we can fly these folks safely,” Shotwell said. “Safety is our top concern. I can tell you there will be about 7,000 extra set of eyes on the building and testing of this system.”
Before the first manned flight with Behnken and Hurley, SpaceX will launch the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS without crew members in November as a way of testing out the system. That mission is called Demo 1. The first manned mission is Demo 2. The third mission, technically called First Mission, will include all four astronauts.
Opportunity of a lifetime
Within the complex web of electronics and sophisticated controls on board the Crew Dragon, some of which were revealed behind the protective glass of a “clean room,” are double and triple redundancies to preserve safety.
If there is a problem mid-takeoff, the spacecraft even has backup engines that can provide the needed boost for ejecting off the rocket early and propelling it the additional distance into space.
“Carrying our colleagues here is a great honor to us,” Reed said. “So every time we sit down and think, ‘What kind of test can we run and what are we doing to make sure it’s safe?’ we always ask ourselves, ‘Would you fly on this, and even more, would you put your family on this system?’”
While it’s the same shape, there are many more components that go into a manned space mission.
Glover described the opportunity this way: “It’s another chapter in an interesting career that I would call an enchanted career.”
He said the only thing he feared was not getting home to his four daughters. “But that’s why they train so much,” he said.
“I’m looking forward to the entire ride, especially getting home,” Glover said.