Polaris Dawn crew, SpaceX discuss upcoming Dragon mission - full news conference

Introduction welcome and thank you all for joining us here today at the launch Landing facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida my name is Bill gon Meer and I'm the vice president of build and flight reliability we're now about seven days away from safely launching Jared kid Sarah and Anna to space pretty amazing day today pretty amazing way to come to the cape we as we got to see them human space flight has only been around since the early 196 s and thanks to programs such as mercury Apollo Gemini the space shuttle program new technology was designed developed that helped make human space flight possible you know I've often said that human space flight is the ultimate team sport no one individual or organization can know everything one must share knowledge what you know and what you don't know and now the private sector has been added to the team who's been pushing the boundaries of what's possible for the last 10 to 15 years the Polaris crew is helping to develop Necessary Technology needed to go to Mars the suits they'll talk about the laser-based communications the spacecraft and the environment will all help us get closer to going to the moon and Mars in the future so the private sector is truly a portion of this great human space flight team you know what's special about this mission is that we have two SpaceX employees under Polaris Don crew Sarah and Anna each have individually contributed to the development of the space xh human space flight program especially the Dragon capsule and provided invaluable experience of training and supporting Crews have really contributed in a big way to this Mission but what's really special is the knowledge that they're going to gain from this Mission they can then bring back to SpaceX and share with the rest of the SpaceX team what a great partnership between Sarah and Anna and the SpaceX team will all benefit from this great Endeavor the crew is gonna share with you the details of the upcoming Mission what they've done to get ready for Monday's launch and what they plan to do on orbit but before that I'll give you a little update of where we are right now the dragon will be transported to the hangar 39a today probably sometime this afternoon uh where the teams will start to make the spacecraft or mate the spacecraft to the the Falcon 9 booster to launch Polaris Dawn safety is always our top priority and we will have final checkouts and Analysis to complete the teams have a solid plan to complete all the work prior to the launch and we will review everything to ensure we are really ready to launch as such I want to talk to you briefly about a recent development the SpaceX team's currently worked on and and and solved when we're in the vacuum with 100% oxygen in into the space suits we want to eliminate as many flammability risks as possible it turns out we discovered that in the dry environment there can be static Electric discharge and that could potentially lead to a flammability concern the teams went in to mitigate that they've changed procedures they've changed processes they've added conductive material and we are truly ready to go fly this is an example of one of the many things that we learned on this flight that really haven't been exposed before an Eva suit development so SpaceX and the teams and the crew with their help are continuing to push the envelope of what it takes to go to the moon and Mars you know we take the responsibility that we've been entrusted to us to fly the crew and return them safely home space flight is not easy our mission right now is to safely launch Polaris support their multi-day mission and return them home to their families and friends thank you to all of the SpaceX teams who worked so hard over the past two and a half years to prepare for this Mission this would be not possible without all the members of the SpaceX team and thank you to space Florida for helping us hold this hearing today this briefing today and thank you for the 45th for our help in the days to come Jared and the crew let's hear from you you thanks G appreciate that um so it's Polaris Program overview been uh it's been two and a half years since uh since we announced the uh uh plist pois program and and Polaris Dawn it's been a really exciting journey of uh of development and training and we're going to we're going to take you through a little bit of that today uh but first just thought it would be good to refresh you all on uh on what the players program is all about so it's a joint program with SpaceX as gers talked about the idea is to you know develop test uh new technology and operations in furtherance of um of spacex's uh bold vision uh to enable humankind to Journey among Among the Stars now uh our first mission which is kind of why we're all here today um we are about a week away from our our first um launch opportunity which is which is Polaris Dawn and I'll kind of update you a little bit on on some of the uh the big objectives of that shortly the second mission will build off of what we learn from the first and then the third mission will be the first crude flight of Starship I think a lot of you are already familiar with it that's s incredible vehicle fully reusable launch vehicle it's being built in Starbase Texas um have twice the thrust of the Saturn 5 uh it could very well well be the 737 for human space flight someday but it'll it'll certainly be the vehicle that will return humans to the Moon uh and then on to to Mars and Beyond now uh every one of these missions will be filled uh with a number of objectives uh that are meant to again uh accelerate spacex's Vision to make life multiplanetary uh but you can always count on uh just as it is with this mission that we will use every bit of the time available for science and research um as well as uh supporting St Jude Children's Research Hospital which we began our journey with uh during inspiration for raised over $250 million for them we've raised Millions since with Polaris Dawn and we'll continue to do so throughout the duration of the Polaris program um so with that let me uh let me reintroduce you to Polaris Dawn so uh I'm Jared isaacman and I am uh really really excited to me introduce you to uh some of my closest friends uh and crew mates we spent uh you know the last two and a half years together really becoming a family as we got ready for uh for this Mission now we all have very interesting ties back uh to inspiration for in the case of a kid even even prior to that um we built a lot of trust during that uh during that mission I think that allowed us to really hit the ground running and in combination with all the great people at SpaceX really accomplished a lot over the last two and a half years uh so let's let's start Meet the crew with uh you know kid potit he is our uh Mission pilot so he's a Air Force F-16 uh background he is a uh aggressor Commander uh a weapons officer a Fame Thunderbird combat pilot and uh and he's been uh he's been he was supporting inspiration for as one of our mission directors um you know prior to to now and then uh we have uh Anna Menan uh she is our mission uh special Mission specialist and medical officer for Polaris Dawn so she is a SpaceX engineer uh she's a mission director at SpaceX so she runs Mission Control when she's not going to space herself uh prior to that she was a biomedic engineer and supporting astronauts on Console at Nasa and we have Sarah Gillis she's also a mission specialist she is a SpaceX engineer uh she is a lead astronaut trainer she has trained many of the crews uh the NASA Crews that have gone to space including my previous instructor on uh on inspiration 4 she also works in mission control as a core or like a Capcom familiar and she's a very talented musician as well um so it takes a huge team uh to prepare for a mission like Polaris Dawn and support the broader Polaris program uh objective so uh we've got an awesome group uh many of them here and many of them actually flew in with us today so uh Todd LEF Ericson is our is our mission director Sean stroker guson uh is our Deputy Mission director um we have uh uh combo weeks she handles all of our science and research coordination we have John slick Bal he's our uh philanthropy director all the coordination with St Jude Children's Research Hospital and their important Vision that no child should ever die in the dawn of Life uh I think many of you know uh you know John Snap Krauss our uh our content director um taking all those awesome pictures we have Sarah Grover our communications director and then uh Casey Phillips and she's our our project coordinator I think more even even more importantly to emphasize there are about 14,000 names that are that are not on the screen in front of you uh those are all the uh the Space X that are that are going to work every single day trying to make science fiction a reality um it's really awesome and uh you know we're the four lucky ones that get to go on this ride but I I can't tell you how many teams have been working non-stop for the last 2 and a half years you know building building a new Eva suit to do a space walk and the operations associated with it and the vehicle changes the starlink lasers a bunch of things we're going to we're going to talk to you about in order to make this possible all you know supporting that kind of bigger dreams that you know maybe not in the not too distant future humans are going to are going to finally reach another planet other than our own um and it's awesome to see every day I've said it many times that um the journey and being uh you know the journey leading up to launch and and being a fly on thewall to the to the history of SpaceX is making is just as good as flying the mission itself okay uh give you a little bit of the mission overview uh so again we're Mission overview just about a week away from our first launch opportunity uh I think we're flying on uh booster 1083 which will be it its fourth flight uh we'll be flying on uh dragon 207 um on its third flight this is uh if you know the history of it this is what crew one went to space on this is what I flew on previously for inspiration for and now Polaris St Will Go On which is pretty cool very low time Dragon uh which is which is nice we will launch from uh 39a uh we're expecting up to a 5day nominal uh Mission duration we will launch into a 51.6 dee inclination and an orbital period of approximately 106 minutes and that does vary based on the altit udes that we will be going to which brings us to the next Point here we will uh insert uh Falcon will drop us off in a 190 by 1200 km uh initial orbit at that point we will check out the dragon uh make sure it's very very healthy uh we will pass through the South Atlantic anomaly and then we will raise apigy up to uh our Peak which is 1,400 km uh that should uh surpass the the gmany 11 record uh and then after uh approximately 10 hours we will lower apigee uh to about a 190 by 700 km orbit and from there we will we will remain we'll conduct our Eva before eventually phasing down and uh re-entering and splashing down either in the the gulf or or the Atlantic now we do have uh three launch tzer we will eventually down select uh the day of the launch the window uh first opens at approximately 0330 on the 26 and goes to approximately uh 0700 now um you know when you uh when you go uh higher into into space there comes with all sorts of potential challenges you're putting a lot of energy in your vehicle then you take it out but there's other other realities when you're up there too which is a completely different microm meteorite orbital debris environment uh obviously a different radiation environment we'll talk a little bit about that uh but Earth does a really good job as objects get closer to it to clean them up and burn them up but that takes a really long time when it's higher up so a lot of smart people at SpaceX figured out the optimal times for us to launch which is why we have that launch window uh and through um uh uh vehicle pointing so the attitude we're flying at and then that low 190 Pary we're able to uh mitigate a lot of that orbital debris risk during those launch Windows so then just to take you through the uh polaron main uh mission Mission objectives objectives so uh our first objective uh which uh should take place during the first day uh on orbit um is a uh is an altitude record uh so again we'll go up to, 1400 km this is the farthest uh humans have traveled uh since the last time humans walked on the moon more than 50 years ago and uh two my crew members sarinana will be the women who have traveled farthest from the Earth ever uh which I think is pretty is pretty cool now why why do this right um as I mentioned before um when you go into this environment you're dealing with totally different realities than for example when you would go to the to the space station so again it's a lot of energy going into the vehicle it's a lot of energy to take out of the vehicle when you come back home it is a different radiation environment it is a different microm meteorite orbital debris environment and we stand to learn quite a bit from that uh in terms of human health science and research uh if we get to uh Mars someday we'd love to be able to come back and and be healthy enough to tell people about it so I think that's it's worthwhile to get some exposure in that environment also uh it informs vehicle architecture because generally speaking Vehicles don't like uh radiation so that's why we're going to stay there for the short shortest amount of time uh that's necessary to gather the data we want and then we'll we'll come back down our second major objective is uh the first commercial space walk uh in this case we'll and we'll take you through a little bit we are going to vent the vehicle entirely down to vacuum there is no air lock on Dragon uh that means all four crew members are exposed to the vacuum space two will remain inside the vehicle and two uh in sequence will go outside the vehicle when we are out there uh we're going to make use of uh various Mobility AIDS uh the SpaceX team has engineered and it'll look like we're doing a little bit of a dance and what that is is we're going through a series of test Matrix on the suit and the idea is to learn as much as we possibly can about this suit and get it back to the engineers to inform future uh suit uh design Evolutions um and you know we do that we're super we're super proud knowing the massive amount of effort that went into to making these suits and and just shortly um uh Sarah is going to take you through what that development process is like uh but it's not lost on us that you know might be 10 iteration from now and a bunch of evolutions of the suit but that someday someone could be wearing a version of which that uh that might be walking on Mars and uh it feels uh feels like again huge honor to have that opportunity to test it out on this flight um so we we'll learn as much as we can about that suit the entire operation is scheduled to be about 2 hours uh from venting to repress we're building a lot of a lot of uh margin there for for thing anything unexpected to go on but uh actual out of uh vehicle time you know could be uh somewhere in the neighborhood of you know um you know 15 to to 20 minutes each um while we're out there um next uh our third objective is we are testing out a new Communication System uh this is using uh starlink laser link so there is a pler that is mounted in the trunk of the uh vehicle that we will be flying on and through beams of light it will communicate to other starlink satellites and uh and this is this is pretty cool it is no uh small task to have two objects going 17,500 mph uh communicating over a beam of light but it has the opportunity to open up an entirely new communication pathway uh not just for for Dragon but for armadas or Starships or other satellites or telescopes out there and kind of free up some of the burden on the you know existing tedris and uh and ground station infrastructure and then we will as I mentioned before use every bit of the time in between approximately uh to accomplish approximately 40 and science science and research experiments that uh that Anna will take you through through in just a minute uh now this slide just for uh give you an example uh of what uh depicts the various orbits uh that we'll be at relative to the International Space Station Hubble um and where we flew previously on inspiration 4 and this very cool rendering gives you and I uh a little bit of a depiction of what the uh starlink laser communication uh should look like and with that I am very pleased to turn it over to Sarah to take us through development um as Jared mentioned this is obvious l a development Mission and that's taken a ton of work across the Dragon development effort SpaceX team in order to support these ambitious objectives um so I'm going to take you through some of the modifications both to the spacecraft as well as the space suit and what you'll see throughout these slides is that much of the development effort is really been focused on safely executing this space walk um maybe first I'm just going to paint a little bit more of a picture of The Space Walk and what to expect um so actually about an hour onto orbit we'll start preparations for the Eva um where we begin a PR breath protocol and this pre breath is really designed to help mitigate the risk of decompression sickness when we actually go to vacuum in the space suits um so an hour in we'll go and depress the capsule slightly and over the course of about 45 hours we'll actually slowly drop cabin pressure and raise oxygen concentration um to help mitigate the risk and this leads up all the way to the start of our Eva on flight day two we'll get pressurized in the suits and actually go through a Mobility demo where we step through the sequence and movements inside the spacecraft and really make sure there was nothing missed in our training that we're confident before we step outside and then flight day three is The Space Walk um so that morning we'll go through system checkouts on both the life support system and the suits before all of us get pressurized on 100% oxygen we'll complete the final um pre-breathe on 100% oxygen before we bent the spacecraft once it vacuum ev1 will open the hatch before um ev1 and ev2 serly will go outside and uh complete the test Matrix that Jared mentioned of suit Mobility objectives uh once complete uh ev2 will close the hatch and then we'll proceed with repressing the spacecraft and then continue with the science and research for the remainder of the mission so stepping into some of the spacecraft side modifications that were needed to actually accomplish this um one of the more substantial efforts was upgrades to the life support systems this includes adding a lot more oxygen to the spacecraft so that we can feed oxygen to four suits through umbilicals for the full duration of The Space Walk there have been upgrades and additions to the Environ environmental sensing Suite in the spacecraft to make sure we have really good Insight both before during and after exposure to vacuum and what you can see here is actually a new addition an entirely new system a nitrogen repress system um this is kind of a closeout shroud over two redundant nitrogen tanks that will be used to repressurize the spacecraft um once we're complete with the Eva with all of these life support system upgrades obviously there's a ton of testing that needs to go into this and that's both at a component level but then also at a full- scale system level um so what you see here is the dragon spacecraft actually going into a thermal vacuum chamber um and we ran the endtoend sequence both depressing the capsule dwelling a vacuum and then repressing the spacecraft using all the software hardware and Integrated Systems that we expect to use for this flight um additionally at vacuum We performed a long duration dwell on the interior at vacuum so that we could actually bake out a lot of the materials on the inside remove some um chemicals that would off gas in the vacuum of space before we're actually in that environment there's been a lot of addition of new Mobility aids to support suited Mobility in the spacecraft so you're actually looking up through the top of the spacecraft here at what we call the Skywalker and this is a new structure that's been added outside the forward hatch that we'll use during The Space Walk um both as a handhold and footh holds uh for some of the testing will perform there's also new handholds around both around and on the forward hatch of the spacecraft for interior operations as well as some new camera views both on the mobility Aid and the nose cone to capture footage during The Space Walk um the forward hatch has also been upgraded to include a motor to assist with hatch opening here you can see the starlink Starlink tech demo Wi-Fi router inside the spacecraft um and this connects to the laser system that Jared mentioned in the trunk called the plug-in player you might think getting internet might be as easy as just flipping that switch turning on your internet but it's not um we're talking about a laser sending information to a starling satellite that is moving at orbital velocity down to earth and then back again um so it's been an incredible development effort by the SpaceX team and on a personal note I've taken um specific interest in this development effort and we have a special message that we will share with the world using this technology um so next getting into uh SpaceX EVA suits and spacewalk what I actually notic is on all of your badges which I love um development of the Eva suit so here it is first generation SpaceX Eva suit and I think it just looks so cool I know we all just feel so grateful to be able to test out this piece of technology so what you see here is a design evolution of the new um Eva suit it is a design Evolution from the Iva suit the intervehicular activity suit and it includes all sorts of Technology including a heads up display a helmet camera an entirely new architecture for joint Mobility there's thermal insulation throughout the suit including a copper and indium tin oxide visor that both provides thermal protection and solar protection um and then throughout there's all sorts of redundancy both in the oxygen supply feed to the suit as well as all of the valves all of the seals across the suit um it's an incredible suit it's been a long journey to get here and I'm uh sure as you guys know we didn't start here this isn't where we began so I'm going to take you through a little bit of the development journey to get here um so when we first started we would come in every day for training and pretty much every single day we'd walk in and there would be a different suit it would have a different glove a different elbow a different shoulder and there was this constant iteration of suit components with the suit team to test and collect data um in parallel with that though we also had to develop training for the suit so the SpaceX team didn't have the ability to put this really constantly evolving Hardware into a pool so they came up with a really novel solution of a suspension system that has kind of simulated physics that allows you to pressurize the suit put on a harness and actually go through operations as if you are weightless so it's a really cool analog environment um they created our ability to do this both kind of in a vertical orientation simulator with all of our flight software all of our vehicle interior and then also in a sideways configuration that you can see here to support manual hatch operations all of the tasks we need to perform to get in and out of the spacecraft um so it was this uh kind of constant iteration with the SpaceX team both on the training side and the suit side while we went through this progression um you we went and learned a lot frankly um you might think that we would be extremely cold out in the vacuum of space and actually uh were more concerned about being too warm so part of the learning we went through um was trying to understand quantify the thermal environments what our metabolic rates will be so what you see here is us pressurized in the suit on top of that you have an 8,000 meter down suit that you wear on Mount Everest and then on top of that is another 8,000 meter down suit um so we're really trying to create an environment that doesn't have convection looking at The Thermals looking at what we'll actually experience in these suits um another aspect of De development on this journey um as Jared mentioned since Dragon doesn't have an airlock the entire spacecraft is going to be going to vacuum and I mentioned this kind of Novel pre-breathe protocol where we're starting at about 14.5 psia a and going down to about 8.65 as the last stage of our pre-breathe over a long period of time to slowly pull nitrogen out of our body and reduce our risk of decompression sickness um to validate this test we actually spent two whole days in a vacuum chamber at NASA Johnson Space Center and we went through the entire protocol um stepping down pressure and then ultimately performing a simulated Eva on breathing masks of 100% oxygen um stepping through the full operation um so here you can see us in the chamber during the simulated Eva transitioning onto oxygen masks so this was kind of just a very cool ex uh experimental validation of this protocol the final crude test was actually wearing these incredible suits into the vacuum chamber so we returned to Johnson Space Center and uh we were in the front Cham or the front airlock of the chamber B and we went through basically a full deess sequence dwell at vacuum and repress um looking at some of the manual hatch operations in the chamber but really getting to see firsthand what it'll feel like in the suits as we go to vacuum um so at this point the suit has gone through an incredibly extensive testing campaign um some of them have been mentioned but we've covered everything from life cycle testing pressure testing mmod testing extreme hot and colds testing an entire campaign on ESD inflammability testing um it's it's been a really impressive amount of work by the SpaceX team to test this suit for flight um as a crew we've spent probably more than a 100 hours in this suit at this point um and here is actually a picture of the final checkout of our flight suits in the flight spacecraft at our test drive we're really looking forward to testing this first generation of suit and this is a great visual to kind of show you what to expect for The Space Walk so with that I'll hand it over to kid for training hello hello I'm kid potit the mission pilot for plon and as gers and uh Rook mentioned Training for Polaris Dawn we've been at this journey for two and a half years preparing for this historic Mission uh on a personal level uh flying fighter jets in the Air Force for 20 years uh combat experience operational test experience uh leading mini red flag exercises uh fighter weapon School uh I can tell you without a doubt this has been some of the most challenging training that I've ever experienced and I I could not imagine a more qualified crew than these three individuals uh leading the charge getting prepared for this Mission um we've been put through the ringer by Melissa who is our lead trainer in row three uh and it's been an awesome Journey preparing for this Mission um and it also took as as G and Jared mentioned uh an entire organization 14,000 employees and some of the brightest and smartest Engineers I I've ever met um have been a part of this and and we're just so thankful for what uh the resources and and the time and effort they put into this Mission uh as far as the training uh there's more or less three uh objectives first off uh to get us qualified in the operation of the spacecraft uh secondly um it's about adaptation to the environment that we're going to live in for 5 days in space it's very austere and we got to get ready for that and there's ways that we do that uh and then third experiential learning um uh setting up those uh experiences that kind of put us in a in a scenario that is uh uh allows us the opportunity to get comfortable and in uncomfortable uh environment and I'll talk about that um to accomplish these objectives more or less have three categories procedural training uh physiology training and practical training as far as the uh procedural training uh we spent a majority of our time roughly about 2,000 hours in the simulator uh we went through extensive academics uh uh all the systems uh knowledge of the spacecraft um crew Resource Management Communications amongst the crew as well as with uh Mission Control uh nominal procedures contingency operations emergency procedures all these things uh culminated with the the 2,000 hours that we spend in the simulator now to put this in perspective I I flew Fighters for 20 years uh I I accomplished about 15500 hours in the simulator training for combat um and and that's over 20 years this is uh two and a half years in the making and over 2,000 hours so it it's been very extensive uh and it's a Reliance upon these three individuals to get me through this progam uh this is a picture of us in in the buck uh our home away from home a replication of the capsule and and we spent a lot of time going through the nominal and the contingency operations uh for our mission uh we do that uh in our normal clothes and we do it in in the in the space suit to replicate what we'll experience on orbit and this is obviously uh Rook interacting with the with the systems uh more pictures of us in the capsule and then as far as the uh physiology training adapting to the environment that we're going to live in uh we accomplish this training through the centrifuge through the altitude chamber the vacuum chamber zerog G flights and it's all to provide you know it's it's very challenging to replicate space on Earth uh but there's certain tools and resources that we can utiliz to kind of get a feel for it and adapt and build our confidence uh for those stressors the centrifuge similar to what we do in the Air Force just a slightly different orientation uh based on the sensation of the g-forces that we'll experience on the way up and the way down um and and we'll accomplish that in the in the centrifuge and it's about 4 and a half 5gs on the way up various transitions as we go through Mo and SEO uh ultimately arriving on Space uh and that Zerg experience uh the altitude chamber um we spent time in there getting familiar with our symptoms of hypoxia uh there are various uh PSI uh pressures that will experience throughout the um the preb protocol the five-phase preb protocol um anywhere from atmospheric 14.7 working our way all the way down to when we're at vacuum we'll be at uh 5 PSI in inside our suit uh all the while we have different um oxygen concentration levels uh anywhere from 20% all the way up to uh 100% uh on the pre-bath we did the Zerg flights which are a lot of fun but again it's it's hard to replicate these are 30-second intervals so we utilize this opportunity to to accomplish some of our science and research to see what that would feel like and we got to stay healthy and these two are going to keep us healthy uh because they're the smartest of the of the of the group so they went through a very extensive uh medical training um at uh participating in partnered hospitals uh to get fully qualified to take care of us on orbit and so the fun part so we did a lot of practical uh training getting comfortable and uncomfortable uh scenarios um scuba diving very difficult to communicate uh when you're underwater um temperature you got to deal with uh uh but it also provides that uh buoyancy that uh can help us train for uh microgravity when we're on orbit figh Jets that's probably the easiest thing I I was able to do uh throughout this two and a half years um why is that important well again it's it's a a little more stressful environment uh communication can be challenging when you're communicating over radio uh close proximity we're going to build the trust uh and the confidence that we have in each other uh uh and then we climbed Cod epoxy um just shy of 20,000 ft down in Ecuador uh so why is that important well when it's a multi-day journey to get to the summit you're dehydrated you're hungry you're grouchy cuz sleep is so sucks uh and and you learn a lot about yourself under this stressful environment and you learn a lot about each other uh so that was a really good training experience for the team and we did the skydiving uh we went to the US Air Force Academy and went through their very rigorous uh program the only program in the world where your first jump is solo freef fall uh so again that that kind of took us through this uh very uh demanding um uh training syllabus in order to uh Skydive and jump out of an aircraft and this was just uh some uh supplemental training jumping off the uh High meter platform at the Air Force Academy because we could so with that I'm going to pass it Science and research off to Anna for uh science and research thanks Kate so as Jared mentioned science and research is our fourth major mission objective we have partnered with approximately 30 institutions around the world to execute a series of approximately 40 science and research experiments as a part of this mission they generally fall into three categories the first category is human health we are born into 1G when you go into zero g whether it's for five days or a 9month trip to Mars things change you have bone density loss you have vision changes you have severe motion sickness and we don't have answers for all of that the second category is research that can take advantage of the unique Mission profile that we are flying for example we are doing a spacewalk and when you you do that you reduce the pressure with that just like when you open a can of soda bubbles are released so we are using ultrasound to monitor for those bubbles the third category involves Pro you know there's problems that we Face here on Earth and including when astronauts come back from space they face challenges Upon returning to Earth's gravity for example astronauts often experience disorientation and balance issues Upon returning to gravity and we are testing out ways to help with that so what you see here is that pressure chamber that we're living in for two days that Sarah mentioned but what's really neat about this is that we had the opportunity to practice a lot of the experiments we will do in space but while we were also experimentally validating our pre-bath protocol for our Eva you might this think that this looks like a flight simulator but really what it relates to is cognitive abilities by the time you get to your destination on a mission be it moon or Mars you want to have retained the the skills that you trained when you left back on Earth so we are T testing out training techniques to help with this this is a device that uses Blood Flow Restriction to help improve the efficacy of exercise in space and also helps improve the effects of fluid shifts that astronauts experience when they go to space we have a number of experiments looking into those eye changes that I mentioned occur for astronauts one you can see here uses this contact lens that we will wear and it measures intraocular pressure for extended periods of time and so we can hope to better understand the mechanisms Behind These eye changes now as we look into a future where there are hundreds or thousands of people living in space for long durations of time it is only a matter of time time before there is a medical emergency that requires intervention so we can help prepare for this through experiments like the one you see here this uses an endoscope or a camera that we will insert through our nose into our Airway to gather imagery and look for challenges like inflammation now I mentioned before those balance issues that astronauts face when they return to a gravity environment here you can see us testing a tool that might help with this it uses electricity shot between the inner ears to simulate that disorientation and teach more rapid adaptation skills and then finally looking into the future artificial gravity is one thing that could help make all of these issues go away but it comes at a cost and that is severe motion sickness but scientists think that when you go to space you might be less impacted by that disorientation that comes from spinning required for artificial gravity so we will test that hypothesis now this mission is testing technologies that contributes to our Collective future in human space exploration but we also believe it is important to address the challenges that we Face here on Earth today and one of the ways we are doing that is by raising funds and awareness for St Jude Children's Research Hospital this is a continuation of what was started on inspiration for they raised over $250 million for St Jude and we are continuing that the difference here is that we are taking our message all around the world because starlink goes all around the world we took starlink to the Philippines we distributed starlink terminals to hospitals around the world to help support remote medicine capabilities we are helping to build a new facility to help patients who are undergoing treatment and then on a personal note I authored a book named kisses from space and the proceeds from that will go to benefit St Jude Quarantine to launch to splashdown so here we are sitting seven days out from our first launch opportunity what do the days ahead look like so our major goal is to stay healthy but we are lucky in that we have a lot to keep us busy and our minds focused and sharp in those days that includes science and research prep data collection some flying and some of our official duties including launch Readiness review and a dry dress rehearsal of launch day in our capsule you probably most care about what we will actually do on orbit so we get to launch launch we get into space in about 10 minutes about an hour after getting there we will start our that pre-bath protocol that Sarah mentioned we will soon there after raise to our Peak Apache and while we're there we will be passing through the inner ra inner regions of Earth's Van Allen radiation belt that brings us to flight day two flight day two I will read the book I authored to my family as well as some of the Brave patients of St Jude Children's Research Hospital and then we will lower to our cruise orbit at that point we will begin our spacewalk preparations we will perform that Mobility test we will check out our space suits and we will configure the cabin flight day three is Eva day we will wake up have several hours of preparations including final cargo configurations EAS checkouts and preparing biom medical monitoring devices for The Space Walk we'll da our space suits do a suit leak check and then perform the Eva this entire thing will be live streamed so please join flight day four is the starlink demonstration day so we will have some checkouts and then perform a series of demonstrations as a part of that test you'll want to stay tuned for this and then flight day five is our final full day on orbit this we will be wrapping up all of that research that we I mentioned earlier we do have research weaved in every single day of the mission but this will be our last day to gather as much data as possible for the scientists back here on Earth then we will begin our re-entry preparations and that brings us to flight day six we will Dawn our space suits re-enter through Earth's atmosphere and then splash down off the coast of Florida at one of spacex's seven sites when we get back we will be recovered by the SpaceX recovery vessel and then we will owe some time to science and research and reconnecting with our families and then we will be looking forward to talking with all of you again so with that we will take any questions you have right so if you could uh please come up to the microphone uh State your Q&A affiliation and who you'd like to address your question to we'll take one or two questions from each each reporter um hi uh can you hear me yes Marsha AP um NASA has long considered space walks through the riskiest part of any space flight after launch and entry and Bill so as a former NASA guy what do you see as the riskiest part of this space walk the world's first private spacewalk with brand new suits um Jared if you could also add on to that and do you see a time when someone with minimal training could just go up and do it for fun um what's the future of that besides planning for mors and all that thank you I think as you heard from the through how much work went into the suit and the preparation and to make sure that this was going to be as safe as it possibly could you're right Eva is a risky Adventure but again we've done all the preparation we did the capsule testing we did the suit testing we did the hyperbaric chambers we did all the work to really get ready for this you know we kind of built off of what NASA's Heritage was but I think we've also extended NASA's Heritage a little bit further some of the joints in the suits are much better than than we've had had in the NASA World some of the other capabilities the heads up display is also a new a new thing that's coming into the spat suit world so I think it's really a tribute to this team that they Advan the state-of-the-art and we're going to do it as safely as we can and we've got the right protocols we've done the right testing to get ready to go do it go ahead Jared yeah I guess just a layer on to it um I mean the the Eva is is a probably makes up the majority of the development uh for polaron um I mean in Absolut extensive amount of time has gone into it uh so much so that I I was actually far more concerned and and it and is rightfully why why would it be the riskiest part because you're throwing away all the safety of your vehicle right and it now comes down to your suit becomes your spaceship um I'd say personally I was almost concerned to some extent that that we are way too focused on the Eva what about all the other things and that's where you know in the in the handful of months uh approaching uh you know your certification for flight SpaceX begins all of their paranoia reviews as as you would call it where they look at everything I mean start essentially all over again um we we participate in every single risk briefing um you know some of which was covered in gir's initial remarks like you know flammability related concerns we were we were brought out to wh Sands Missile Range to see where they do the mmod testing so I mean the the the communication the transparency with SpaceX from the beginning all the way through the end especially when I said like they literally start all over again to look at every piece of the mission not just the Eva is what inspires so much confidence and in terms of like can can anyone you know do this someday I would actually say like it the the training in the suit was was super fun and exciting I think actually where where it might not be for everyone is the uh is the development side of it when we're trying different suits out and they're saying let's let's try today to see how hot we can make it and put on two 8,000 meter suits that's probably you know uh I know we all found it enjoyable I don't know if every everybody would or like you know let's see how cold we can make it with liquid nitrogen um so the development side which is I I think very appealing to us is is maybe not necessarily for everybody but once your suit is good and you're ready to go um I imagine you know a lot of people someday in the future are going to be you know maybe even families bouncing around on the lunar surface in their in their Eva in their SpaceX Eva suit certainly possible and one quick followup is SpaceX did they cover the whole cost of the space suit development I mean is that all in-house all the tech that went into that all the research I think it's shared across the the players team along with SpaceX but again you know our company vision is to make us multiplanetary in the future so this is an investment in the future so the company is willing to make those R&D Investments to to get us ready to move human presence Beyond low earth orbit Jeff boun to space news a question for Mr Mr isaacman when you announced the play program two and a half years ago you were looking at flying this Mission perhaps by late 2022 um you talk about what things caus the schedule to slip um was it just the space suit development or other factors and what gives you confidence that you are ready to go now at this point yeah well I think actually the fact that it has taken two and a half years is where you get confidence um if it perhap if it was the initial 9mon time frame I think we'd probably all be wondering how how we were able to work that quickly um I would say that this is a one of the many kind of um you know philosophies that I've observed at SpaceX that gets people very motivated is you set some very very ambitious deadlines up front uh to get people working really hard in the right direction but there's lots of good sanity checks along the way to say are we are is this now right or or should we move it out so I think it was right in the in the beginning to say we're going to we're going to try and achieve this at like you know light speed um and uh and it you can't just point entirely to the suit being a part of it I mean the briefings we received from the engineers on the Starling side were I mean incredible uh you know the the amount of work that goes into it and I I think um you know during the launch webcast they're going to show some behind the scenes from the engineers cuz I'd never want anyone to just think it is just throwing you on switch on on say the internet that was uh a massive engineering challenge to solve as was the suit and the operations to even support the suit having a good suit's fine but you still have to vent the vehicle and repress it uh so that you don't need to remain in the suit through the duration of the mission so I I think there's just a lot of things that there ambitious objectives these are all and those ambitious objectives came with real engineering challenges and it and it took a big organization effort to get there but as I mentioned before we were briefed extensively in the months leading up to this through all the par paranoia reviews the um flight Readiness review that happens a decent while ago and you're hearing from every engineer you know green yellow red how we're looking and being kept informed right up the end so that's where you get all the confidence that we're ready and just to quickly follow up um can you give sort of a ballpark estimate of how much money you've invested into this program so far not a chance good question though hi Richard sh Orlando Sentinel I really um curious about uh the danger of opening up this spacecraft in space not only just the idea of going in vacuum and what are the contingency I mean Scott talked about this the uh contingency and emergency things I mean how many simulations you go through is there a a a timeline for if there's a major emergency getting back to Earth safely and is a 700 km uh orbit uh more dangerous with micro meteorites and whatnot so just uh if any of you could speak to that thank you they like it sure concy oh sorry um so throughout the Eva program um and the development of this that that's really where they started with is what are the contingencies we need to plan for and how do we ensure crew can get home safely um so there's some um really interesting operations that have been developed both to ensure we have a good Landing site that's within reachable Target at the start of the Space Walk for instance um but we have spent so much time drilling contingency responses drilling all different flavors of responses we might need to have on the spacewalk um it's as a trainer I actually think we have used up all the ideas I had at the start of this for what I might want to throw Melissa's done an excellent job kind of sprinkling in everything she could throw at us at this point um but there's been a lot of work just to ensure we have the right response for any scenario we can think of uh what about the 700 km altitude I think that our our orbit was designed uh to be uh highly elliptical where at least you know approximately half of the orbit is going to benefit from being a very low Pary um you know of 190 km um 700 km at apigee certainly has more mmod than 190 or 400 but again the the t0o times that were picked um you know for this mission is what uh gives us you know the um the the best uh the best uh window to minimize the impact of of mmod uh so we feel pretty good about it and maybe just to add on that for the spacewalk itself we'll be orienting the vehicle in a way that Shields the crew members so it's kind of a really clever way of both providing shade through the nose cone and then also additional protection of spacecraft um just one quick thing how long is the tether this a this is a good question long enough to to get the job done not long enough to do you know the original uh you know depiction of us floating in space so hello uh Anthony Le respecting news uh with all the training that you guys have done was there any part where it made you the most uncomfortable and maybe dread a little bit or maybe make changes to when you're ready to do it for real next week I'm not sure everyone initially loves skydiving but we got there some of us aren't used to throwing away a good [Laughter] airplane yeah I I don't think that anything stands out as causing us to change our plans I think they actually just contributed to our learning our preparedness um taught us a gave us a toolbox of skills that we will use throughout our mission and I think what's really cool about the development effort is we started with an idea of the operation and then we started testing it and iterating on it and it was like okay we very clearly need a Mobility Aid to go here otherwise we're not going to be able to do what we need here so it's I'd say as we went through training we were just working hand inand with the SpaceX team to modify the vehicle and add what we needed when we ran into issues so it's been a really cool Evolution over time and I think I mean spending thousands of hours in the simulator is what helped build our confidence for dealing with any scenario that Melissa decided to throw at us I mean it was very challenging like like I highlighted in my my portion but um experiencing those and trying to identify what is wrong and then how do we work together to solve those issues is is certainly built our confidence to be able to handle that uh very low probability but be able to handle that on orbit thank you hey everybody I'm James I'm from Channel 6 I'm a local reporter here in K canaval I was wondering for Anna and Sarah from your early days of working on developing Dragon did you always want to fly on it too and is your confidence in your spacecraft why you're willing to take the risk of going to space thank you I think for me I dreamed of going to space from a very young age I grew up inou another space City and I was exposed to space on a field trip and got to experience a day in the life of an astronaut and a flight controller and Mission Control and I fell in love with the industry um and so I have dreamed of going to space from a very young age but I've also just been so happy and grateful to contribute to it in any way um I think working at SpaceX gives me a tremendous amount of confidence going to space I see the way they do development I see the way they handle risks handle change handle every piece of the mission and that just gives me tremendous confidence going forward I was recently sitting in the simulator and just remembering the entire development effort that went into it and you've spent I think an and I can both agree that you spend a huge amount of your job pretending to be an astronaut and thinking through what they would care about you know how the design should come together on the interior um so I think I cannot wait to actually test this in space and bring back knowledge to the engineers from all these little design decisions that we made along the way of what worked well what doesn't work well what we should consider for future space flight um but I completely agree with Anna with respect to confidence and flying in the vehicle the whole process and the the infrastructure at SpaceX for how we do human space flight is immensely confidence inspiring um for me my husband is actually also a SpaceX engineer and he helped build the propulsion system on our spacecraft so um I know exactly what goes into the testing and the design and the rigor behind absolutely everything in the spacecraft so very very excited to fly on my favorite Dragon spacecraft hi Irene CLS with Aviation week in space technology um speaking of your dragon spacecraft I think this question's probably progressed um do you expect to be able to reuse this Dragon after it's been depressurized and orbit and for you and for Jared what do you consider the riskiest parts of this Mission thanks yeah we we definitely will be able to use this spacecraft again after it's been exposed to vacuum you know we initially didn't have the uh the chamber test that you got to see in the video but again part of our due diligence was well what really happens we took an earlier Dragon to vacuum and we wanted to see what happened but we said why don't we take the current version of dragon to vacuum and see what happens and that test turned out that it was pretty benign to the spacecraft it's fine it'll be able to be reused again and and I'll let Jared kind of answer the second part well I I I mean I think you know G already covered it previously certainly if you're going to vent the vehicle down to vacuum and open the hatch that you are taking on a lot of risk at that point I think it just goes into the preparations for that risk that I I believe have been well mitigated you know we we have manual ways to open the hatch we have a hatch motor to open or close the hatch we have redundant seals those seals have been um you know uh um they've been placed in the hatch with uh like a a greater amount of sealant than they they normally were on say like inspiration 4 um you know you have redundancy with uh two different nitrogen systems either one of us either one should one fail can get us back up to a uh a habital environment you have two different Pathways for oxygen I mean look way you know it's like at some point or time or another if we are to unlock this this last gr Frontier and people are going to venture out in space which by the way whatever risks associated with it there is it is worth it we have no idea what it could do to really you know um you know again change the trajectory of of of humankind um so like at some point somebody you know kind of there has to be some First Steps in this direction but they are really well thought out well mitigated um you know for the benefit of of of those that will follow that will inevitably be doing space walks to you know build construct repair uh discover um so um yeah it I I think you know objectively would be the riskiest part of the mission it's also the one that's received rightfully probably the majority of the last two and a half years of attention hi thank you I'm Ken Kramer from space up close uh Jared I want to ask you um first I want to thank you for what you did for St Jude I'm a pharmaceutical research scientist for many decades making Madison so I know how important that is and I know what you contributed and keep doing it because you know the public needs it this not a lot of understanding in the public for science so thanks for doing that so my question is looking a little bit in the future for science you worked on maybe doing a Hubble repair Mission that bill was involved with the launchers and the and the repairs um are you thinking about that any more any new ideas you might about that you might be able to share with us also want to ask you about the Viper NASA has just canceled the Viper Mission very sadly and they're it up is that something you might be interested in taking on it just needs a little bit of testing and uh any other robotic missions to the moon or Mars these are critical missions to help us get to the moon and Mars so what are your thoughts thank you um um appreciate the questions and the the comments on on St Jude and that that's a huge team effort by the way I mean I think over a million people donated uh during uh inspiration 4 which uh it was that process that ultimately brought us uh Chris and braski who who joined the inspiration for crew so it's a team effort inside of Polaris and uh it's team effort for everyone who's contributing to uh to that important cause um and it's a team effort that goes into everything as it as it as it relates to uh to this Mission so we're going to we're going to learn an awful lot um you know from uh from Polaris on uh there big very ambitious objectives will come back with a lot of data and that's what will ultimately inform uh you know the the second mission I I I think that this journey of creating you know uh affordable uh Eva suits that can be scaled up into mass production is a very worthwhile one uh you know there's going to be an armada of Starships arriving on Mars at some point into the future and there's people are going to have to be able to get out of it and and walk around and and do important things um and that shouldn't those suits themselves shouldn't cost uh hundreds of millions of dollars and the risk associated with things like DCS should be as close to zero and that's that's a very ongoing effort by a lot of people um yeah I I can't say that I am um I'm familiar uh I've seen some of the news about the Viper cancellation and such the last honestly um handful of months been pretty concentrated on what what we're trying to do here today but I will say like it it's a good question because um you know there is a lot that we stand to gain out there and I think that the private sector um you know investing Capital uh kind of accelerating this whole world of commercial space is a really is a really good thing if we want to have a hope of kind of figuring out some of those those an you know those questions that we've been thinking about for for a very long time in our lifetime so governments aren't always the greatest Capital allocators we can absolutely cheer them on in their great efforts but it's great to cheer on the private sector too and Investments that they can make in order to you know unlock this last frontier so so anything about hble or maybe other robotic science missions you might be interested in I know we'll come back from this one and uh and see where we go from here but we we definitely have a Polaris 2 that'll that'll be up next okay I hope you think about it thank you thank you Bill Harwood CBS News I think for Sarah can you give us a little bit more insight into the suit a lot of us are you know remember the NASA Shuttle suits you know the water cooled undergarments and the 30 minute oxygen supply on the leg and all of those things what are the thermal constraints that your suit can handle can you go out in sunlight uh could you go out in in debt of night um and how do how do you mitigate that the thermal extremes you see in space and how does that figure into when you decide to go stick your head out great question one more let me stick in one more before I'll walk away uh Jared you mentioned the longer tether and all that we're all you mentioned Ed White's for Space Walk with greatest Eva picture ever taken I think sure is um just for the record why not go all the way out yeah so you know we are um we really started looking at the lessons across the NASA's incredible portfolio Eva development over time and have built the Eva around the objectives we really want to get out of this suit um maybe giving you a little more description of the suit itself so the suit is fed from oxygen supply in the spacecraft using the umbilical to the suit and there are two redundant paths within that there's a primary path and a secondary path for oxygen um but really the the suit has been tested for any environment it can see from sun exposure to um extreme dark there aren't restrictions on when we can actually go outside the spacecraft um we will kind of serially be progressing ev1 go outside come back in then ev2 go outside come back in um so I would say at this point the amount of testing is bounding of pretty much any condition we could see in space as well as much beyond that um so they've tested really really extreme temperatures both on the hot end and the cold end in this in this development effort hi Josh dinner with space.com uh I'd love to hear from the whole crew this will be spacex's first crude launch uh since its return to flight after its uh mishap last month what was it like to witness that happen knowing you had a flight coming up uh won't went through your head and as SpaceX Engineers what was it like to know about the problem see that problem and and kind of see how it went about getting solved I would say SpaceX did an incredible job of keeping USS inform formed every step of the way you know within seconds of it happening we were talking to SpaceX um and then we're kept in the loop every single day as SpaceX addressed the problem dug into it tried to understand what was going on and very quickly thereafter resulted so um you know I would say that that was really confidence inspiring I think you know as a space xer it didn't even surprise me at all I this is the way SpaceX does business and they make sure to look at all of the data get to the root cause and then devel all of the fixes necessary to to get to the other side um and so I think it's it has just been a really confidence inspiring Journey actually yeah and over the process first it was let's address this problem and solve figure out what's going on but then after that it was let's do a scrub across everything across the entire Falcon vehicle across the entire Dragon spacecraft and think ahead on what could be future failures that we want to think about like what are the other things we might be susceptible that we haven't thought about recently um so completely agree with Anna it's been incredibly confidence inspiring um as they've gone through this effort and kept us informed every step of the way communication confidence completeness and crew is what I can come up with first off communication GST uh the briefs that he provided us were extremely thorough um and competence it was his team that that solved it um uh and he was providing us the information all along the way completeness they they made sure every single element it just wasn't the issue it was it was everything else they went and dug around in the uh the rocket in the in the capsule itself and then uh lastly it's the crew it's relying on these guys expertise to interpret and provide uh me some Elementary explanation of what's going on I gu just to later on uh we received phone calls within I don't know 30 minutes of the anomaly um now I think most of us were watching it anyway uh so there were already some some text messages going um when we saw some of the The Ice forming on it I think what was in you know instantaneous like was uh you know how would uh how would the launch Escape system that's built into uh you know the vehicle have responded and the reality is we we we would have been dropped off in orbit just fine this became more of an issue on the second light which isn't applicable to you know a typical human space flight mission and then from there just the insights we were on the anomaly calls I mean spacex's ability to recreate a situation is uh is really mind mindblowing uh I mean you know we've all have access we all see some of the various camera footage that they make available on every single launch they have you know a hundred others and reconstructing down to the diagram level to the millisecond of exactly what happened um and then the visuals associated with it and then retracing all the steps that led to that point and you're in the loop of that enti so that it's like there's no Mysteries as to the cause and then what the fix is and what's the associated rationale with it um and obviously that's got to be good enough for us it's got to be good enough for the FAA it's got to be good enough for every one of the space exors that knows that you know they don't want setbacks on the road to Mars right um so I I'd say like it was all uh very confidence inspiring it didn't matter from from our perspective whether we were the first launch you know after the anomaly when they were cleared to return to flight or the fifth or 10th like we were you know would' have been equally as was there any discussion uh about delaying the mission and if I could ask also Mr isaacman uh this will be your second time going to space did you bring anything from that experience into the training uh for this mission that didn't that you didn't go through the first time um well I think there I mean obviously the SpaceX did stand down for some period of time so there there was a delay um you know but I I think you know considering this you know the situation they got back at it with their missions very quickly and and we're back at it now with a human space flight Mission um uh and again I think that's really just the amount of data they gather and you know the footage they get of it just left no Mysteries as to the cause and if you if you know the cause then you can put a fix in place and a lot of smart people were working on it I also want to just uh emphasize um the point that Sarah raised too you know being on some of those calls and you I think most people here know Kiko who is vice president of um you know launch recovery operations he he volunteering up the organization I've got a few thousand people that are happy to go and check everything else that we think could potentially go wrong in the future while we have this time so not just staying laser focused on the one particular issue but what else could potentially Hawn us let's get ahead of it so that again all really um you know confidence inspiring in terms of like uh I I had a lot of takeaways that are similar to like when you go mountain climbing or whatnot it's like should pack less um on everything and uh and just I I think the idea that you know space adaptation syndrome impacts you know 50 to 60% of astronauts throughout 600 plus people to orbit doesn't matter if you're hardcore fighter pilot or not you're just as V you know just as susceptible to it so um we didn't have a physician assistant traveling on this one so you had two really really awesome individuals that logged I think a few weeks of emergency room uh time uh in addition to academic training and such to be prepared uh you know from the medical side because we want everybody really happy and healthy and we go into day three when we're uh we're conducting the EBA thank you hey Max Evans with NASA space white.com uh question for the whole crew um considering how much has been invested from each and every one of you personally and professionally over the last couple years uh and also with the uh historic goals that this Mission has for commercial space how do you think this Mission might affect you personally I guess you know I think it will without a doubt impact me I it already already has um these last 2 and 1 half years have been absolutely impactful in the most incredible way um but I think one way that I am really looking forward to to being impacted is is the learning I think that like Sarah said you know I've spent years trying to put myself in the seat of astronauts in space and I am really looking forward to learning what firsthand what that experience is actually like learning as much as I can about our operations the the crew experience um and bringing that back to SpaceX and human space exploration Endeavors man that's that's a tough question to answer on a personal level level and I think that's exactly it because anyone could be in the seat um you know that I'm I'm sitting in right now it's it's it's a collective effort and it's bigger than any individual um and it took an entire team uh to get to where we're at in this Mission um and I think that's what makes our our future so bright with space exploration is that it will be someone else sitting in these seats in the future um and I'm just thankful to be a part of it with this crew I I think there are very few things as impactful as the realization of how many people it takes to do this and how many people we are bringing with us on this journey every piece of software every piece of Hardware um it it is a team effort is an entire city of people to make this happen um and I think as kid said any of us anyone could be in these seats and we're incredibly fortunate to be here but really just hoping to bring back as much as we can to the team and really bring SpaceX Along on this journey um it is firsthand learning as Anna said um in support of really ambitious object objectives for the for the company so I'm sure we cannot possibly know all the ways it will impact us um but very grateful to be here and very excited to bring that back with the team and I I feel incredibly lucky to be here as well uh with a great team and surrounded by so many awesome individuals at SpaceX every day I find it all quite inspiring I found it very inspiring when you know my journey began which actually was it was November 2020 was the first time I went to SpaceX for for medical checks and uh I tried to come away from all of that experience essentially those first couple years of just uh our first year um you know being inspired by all the amazing people that I think work at the most Innovative organization in the world and say how do I take that back and professionally grow from this too and learn from all that magic that they incorporate every single day and then being in space and you know an unexpected moment where you know the moon uh Rose uh while I was looking at Earth I didn't expect to see it and it was just man we uh we got to just keep this thing going uh you know my I wasn't alive when humans walked on the moon I'd certainly like my kids to see humans walking on the moon and Mars and venturing out and exploring our solar system cuz think as we all know if we're here like we we've barely dipped dipped our toe in the ocean barely I mean we haven't even scratched the surface yet and now you know with reusable rockets and Starships on the horizon it's like there is so much to go out and explore and discover uh along the way so I found it I found the experience here on Earth uh on this you know Journey I've been on for about four years to be very inspiring and equally so uh in space I imagine it won't be much different coming back from this one Hi Well Robinson Smith with space flight now good to see you all again um question for Bill and Sarah I think that I have a follow up for Jared um with this Mission and its profile is there anything particular that will be able to Port over into the further certification of crew Dragon Beyond its current five flights and if so what specific Dynamics are those there's a couple things the High Altitude will give us exposure to this High radiation environment which will test a lot of avionic systems and their ability to recover we build a lot of Auto sequences to take care of that for us but we'll see how it really works we'll also get a chance to see the laser communication which I think is a big deal moving forward and then I think a lot of the suit activities even though know they're not you know they're geared more towards Mobility so some of the joints and some of the motion and activities are more geared towards walking on another terrestrial body than they are just doing the Eva so we're going to learn all that as we move forward so I think there's a lot of neat technology that this crew has already helped us learn but now we're going to actually see them demonstrate in space so I'm pretty excited about this Mission and what we're going to learn yeah and I think just to add one thing there's one of the things I'm most excited about from this development effort is all of the learnings that are going to go back into Dragon Operation new software features new like how the suits are constructed there is learning across every single team materials engineering you name it there are there has been development and there has been Lessons Learned um one of my favorite things training crew over crew is seeing how every single flight gets better and that's what SpaceX does they take the lessons learned and they immediately incorpor it into future vehicles um so I'm I'm actually really looking forward to the debriefs to just see that comprehensive look at all the lessons we going to be moving into future human space flight thank you and to Jared um you mentioned the obviously the tether is the length that the tether is but is there an operational reason why you and Sarah are not going fully outside of the dragon that you can expound upon oh we will be fully outside Dragon um I mean our we might move up and down uh as part of a a translation test but um like we'll be well above where the hatch is um we're just maintaining at least I think uh we have a hands-free demonstration where it'll only be our feet engaged in a Mobility Aid um we're just not going to be just floating around which I I think the picture was very cool and it's it's inspirational and certainly you know the the Ed White uh uh photo was is is historic but I think as um you know Buzz Aldren taught us that that's not the right way to do an Eva um you uh you know it is it takes a lot of effort uh to move in the suit um you know when it's pressurized I mean it it what it what looks like really you know like heavy clothing when it's unpressurized becomes super rigid uh when it's pressurized so you you want to like be very deliberate with your movements you want to make good use of Mobility AIDS um it was actually a lot of that pioneering work from from Buzz Aldren that you know set up um a lot of future Evas for Success so uh looks cool inspirational um which is always part of every one of these missions but I think we want to learn from um from history on this one and try and always maintain at least one point of contact with the mobility Aid thank I think this will be our final question hi there Kristen Fischer with CNN and my question is for GST uh G you've spent so many years working in human space flight at Nasa you know all too well uh that NASA astronauts are still using the same Eva suits that they've been using for about 40 years NASA is trying to get new ones but it's proven to be a challenge for the space agency and so I'm curious now that you've shifted over to the private sector what it's been like for you to watch this rapid evolution of uh an Eva suit by SpaceX in just under two years again I think it's it's super fun being at SpaceX and and as they described we're really a team so we leverage off of what we learned from NASA in some ways and then we push it a little bit further in other areas and then we share with each other what we know what we don't know and we really test and evaluate and make sure we're going forward and doing things the right way this pace of development that we get to do at SpaceX is very much like the pace of development that was required back in the early Apollo days we're getting a chance to do that again where we're really starting to push Frontiers with the private sector and learning new things that we would not be able to learn by staying in the risk-free environment of here on Earth it's time to go out it's time to explore it's time to do these big things and move forward bam let's go next concludes our press event again Conclusion thank you for your attendance and I think you got to meet an extremely special crew follow them during their mission follow what they're doing and learn and and explore just like they're the Explorers moving forward thank you thank you thank you everyone