Blasting Off Into the New Frontier with Col. Doug Hurley
Retired astronaut Colonel Doug Hurley takes center stage alongside Sandy Winnefeld and former colleague Dr. Sandra Magnus, marking the monumental 40th episode of The Adrenaline Zone podcast. Together, they embark on an enthralling voyage, tracing Col. Hurley's awe-inspiring journey from upstate New York to the vast expanse of space. As a recipient of the esteemed Congressional Space Medal of Honor, Col. Hurley paints a vivid and personal portrait of his spaceflight experiences, unraveling the captivating challenges, triumphs, and rewards that shaped his remarkable career.
With our hosts, he delves into the rigorous training program that hones the skills and fortitude required of an astronaut, from mastering orbital mechanics to honing public speaking and photography skills. Recounting the exhilarating moments of launch and landing, he shares his unique insights on flying the space shuttle, commanding the first crewed commercial orbital spacecraft for SpaceX, and the cultural differences that exist between NASA and SpaceX. He also emphasizes the profound impact visual documentation has on scientific research and the exploration of the cosmos, and shares his thoughts on the future of manned spaceflight. Filled with personal anecdotes and unique perspectives, today’s 40th installment of The Adrenaline Zone podcast offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore the wonders of space exploration that will leave you with a profound appreciation for the wonders of the universe and the heroic individuals who help us all learn more about it.
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Transcript:
Dr. Sandra Magnus: A lot of people grew up wanting to be astronauts and fly in space, including me. But it is something only a very few people have actually done.
Sandy Winnefeld: Now, we've talked with a science fiction author who wrote about it, a flight director who manages the missions, and an engineer who designed the rockets that make it all happen. But we've always wanted to include someone who's actually done it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And, yes, Sandy could just interview me about my space flight experience. But as the hosts, we prefer to talk to others about their experiences, even relating to our respective fields. So today, on our 40th episode of The Adrenaline Zone, we're talking to a friend and colleague of mine, retired astronaut Colonel Doug Hurley, who I flew with on my final flight, STS-135.
Sandy Winnefeld: He also commanded the first crewed commercial orbital spacecraft for SpaceX and received the prestigious Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And we caught up with Doug while at home relaxing over Memorial Day. We're delighted to welcome to The Adrenaline Zone this week, a friend and colleague of mine from the Astronaut Office, Doug Hurley.
Doug, we're excited to have you on board with us this week.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, it's so good to be here and, selfishly, a great chance to catch up with you, Sandy.
Sandy Winnefeld: It's great to meet you, Doug. We are really looking forward to this conversation. So we're going to start off like we always do by asking our guests where'd you come from, what made you want to be an astronaut, and what was your path to actually getting into the astronaut program.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, I grew up in upstate New York, so really small town, but had just an incredible fascination with science fiction and astronomy and then planes. And then it kind of came together. As I was in high school, we had a college information night. We had a Navy OTC recruiter come, and this was on the heels of my folks telling me I needed to figure out a good way to pay for college. And when the recruiter said, “Hey, full tuition scholarship.” These different universities, which were incredible universities, and you might be able to fly jets for the Navy of the Marine Corps.” It kind of clicked in my 16-year-old head to give it a shot and a leap of faith and was lucky enough to get the scholarship to next year and was off to Tulane to start my career.
Sandy Winnefeld: Very cool. And then you were a Marine Corps pilot, got your wings of gold, flew Hornets F-18s, went to test pilot school, and entered the program. That's a great track with a lot of fun on the way with what's called MAWTS-1, which is kind of like the Marine Corps Top Gun in a way. So we got something in common there, but really neat.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So for, as many people, and people might not know, we have a lot of what might be considered basic training when we come into the Astronaut Corps our ASCAN year, how does that compare to what you went through in pilot training as your sort of basic training in the Marine Corps? I always wondered how– I mean you learned–
Col. Doug Hurley: I kind of feel like the NASA training program was very similar to flight school. It felt like it was just flight school, maybe on steroids because certainly, as you remember in our class, we started out doing the shuttle systems. And each shuttle system, at least at that point, it felt like to me was as complicated as learning an airplane, frankly. And so you were kind of putting that together. And then, of course, we had the station training started with our class. So we were getting some formal space station training at that point, even though we basically just had a couple of modules up there when we started. But it really did feel like that it was get the brief on a system, then do a single system trainer with a classmate or two, and then throw a few of you in the simulator together to go through nominal procedures and then emergency procedures. So very much like what we did in flight school.
Sandy Winnefeld: What other kind of training did you do, though? Obviously, you're talking specific training on the shuttle because that's the program you went into. But physiology of space flight, keeping yourself in condition, and orbital mechanics, I would imagine there's a lot more than just the systems involved.
Col. Doug Hurley: Oh, gosh, yes. Yeah, you had photography, orbital mechanics, which, of course, I could hardly spell when it started. And then you have these 50-pound brain people in your class that have Ph.D.s and the dissertations that they did. And it's so impressive that's one of the things that everybody you meet in the astronaut office has just this incredible story. But anyway, we had folks come in to teach us how to do public speaking and presentations and gosh, I mean, you name it. We really had a lot of different things besides learning the space shuttle.
Also our classes, we had the T-38, so we started training in the T-38. And you had a number of classmates that had never flown in airplanes before. So they went off to Pensacola for a little while and then for our class, which I think worked out really well. And they did really kind of a six or eight-week short course like we did as pilot training as we worked our way up to a solo and got familiar with flying an airplane that maybe flew 150 or 200 miles an hour, whereas throwing them in the back of a T-38, which went significantly faster than that. So it was kind of a crawl-walk-run for those folks. And then they got integrated into the T-38 training and then started flying with us. The pilots also did STA training, the shovel training aircraft training as well.
And then the other part, and Sandy will remember this very well is we started these essentially road shows where we would go as a class and visit each one of the different NASA centers. And you got to be exposed to that and what each NASA-specific center did either to support you or to support spaceflight in general. And then kind of the other part of it was you got to know your classmates a little better. You spent a lot of time with your classmates and did some healthy bonding, I guess we would put it that way.
Sandy Winnefeld: And then at some point, I guess, you cross a threshold, where, okay, the basic stuff is over. Now you can get an admission specific.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah. So typically the way it works, and still to this day, the way it works is it's roughly a two-year process of instruction and evaluation and training is what they call it. And then you are blessed to be promoted or your title changes from Astronaut Candidate to Astronaut and you get your silver pin. Those graduations, I guess, is probably the best way to say it, had changed drastically over the years. Our class, it was pretty much Charlie Precourt said, or maybe it was even Rommel, I don't even remember. Kent Robbinger, who was the chief, basically was like, “Oh, come on up and get your pin,” kind of thing. And they've been a little more formal than that or a little bit more where they've involved families and stuff like that in our class, and then you're off to the races.
And so that was about for us. We started in the late summer, early fall 2000. And then that took us basically to 2002. At the beginning of 2002, we were released into the wild to do our technical assignments, which is astronauts beat for your ground job.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I'm a little jealous of your class because you know that we only had a two-week training session for those of us who never had anything to do with airplanes before. And the fact that some of your mission specialists got to spend six to eight weeks really learning the flying in a broad way was great.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, I think that was part of it was feedback from previous classes. It was like you're sticking me in the back of an airplane, potentially with a guy or gal. I think just guys. Well, there were a couple.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We had a couple, Susan.
Col. Doug Hurley: We had a couple. We had Pam and Susan and Aileen and you put them in the backseat of an aircraft that goes several hundred miles. Or a jet, a high-performance jet trainer. And then the other part was is many of us, I had kind of time in both, but many of the pilots were single-seat pilots so they have a lot of time flying with somebody in the backseat anyways.
Sandy Winnefeld: A lot of people on those first back seat flights end up not coming home with their breakfast. But I guess you get used to it.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah.
Sandy Winnefeld: That's your story and you're sticking to it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: No, it was.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, I think the feedback was just from previous classes. It's like, hey, if you could just kind of give us an opportunity to maybe learn the basics at a bit of a slower pace, and then it was a good fit. Because we were able to send folks to Pensacola, down to Corpus Christi, which is where the Navy does their primary flight training, which is where you start. As far as I know, we still do that. I think for our class, it was four people. So it was obviously my future wife Karen got to do that because she'd come from an academic and engineering background, but no aviation. Drew Foistel, who was a geophysicist, and then Steve Bowen submariner, and then Megan MacArthur also. They had come from backgrounds where they didn't have a lot of flight time, and they spent some time over in Pensacola.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, I think they learned a lot from our class, just getting thrown in after only two weeks. But let's talk about the mission-specific stuff. It's completely different, right? You go from this general training, which was fun because you got to learn a lot about a bunch. But then you go into your mission-specific flight, and you had a great commander on your first flight, our dear friend Mark Polanski. And I know that makes all the difference. And I want to ask you about your second flight because I'm biased, but that adjustment to mission-specific, how was that as you came in as a rookie into your first flight?
Col. Doug Hurley: Well, as you remember, a lot of us, when our class came in, the astronaut office was as big as it's ever in history. And so if you combine that, those numbers with the Columbia accident and a lot of folks in line, because I think when we showed up, there was probably two-thirds of the astronaut office hadn't flown in space yet. Many of your class was still waiting to fly. And so it was a fairly long wait, I think, for us. And so getting that call into the office and having the chief say, “Hey, I assigned you to SDS 127.” I had just gotten back from Russia. I'd been over there for a little over a year, almost a year and a half, actually. And it was so great to hear. And then I didn't know Mark that well. And then, of course, getting a sign for the first time, you're just over the cliche wise, over the moon. But it was just amazing. And Mark absolutely did an incredible incredible job. He's an incredible leader, and he managed the crew. We had four rookies.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's a lot for an audience.
Col. Doug Hurley: And two flown folks, Julie Payette and Dave Wolf. And those two are incredible personalities. Let's just put it that way. And so, Mark, he had his work cut out for him, for sure.
Sandy Winnefeld: How long was it from the time you entered the program? From the very beginning, Doug, until you actually flew?
Col. Doug Hurley: Until I actually flew was nine years.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow. And that was one of the deterrence for me, frankly because I was going through the same kind of decision process you were, and it's like, “God, I got to wait for nine years,” but I really respect you for toughing it out and then you got to fly. So I want to hear about riding that great candle up as the cliche goes from the pilot seat viewpoint. Our listeners have never done this. So is it loud, a lot of G, vibration? Well, what's the whole thing feel like as you're going up in the shuttle?
Col. Doug Hurley: I think yes to all those, Sandy. To set the table a little bit, we scrubbed five times on SDS 127 over the course of about a month and a half. Two trips to Kennedy that we had a hydrogen leak a couple of times. And then, of course, we were then launching in July and Florida in the late afternoon, and of course, thunderstorms. It's always like this. The day we walked out that we actually flew, it was raining.
Sandy Winnefeld: Here we go again.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah. It's literally Groundhog Day. You're just like, “Oh, here we go, here we go.” And you lay on your back for three-plus hours, and then you come out of the nine-minute hold, and it's like, ‘Holy cow, we're going this time.” All that stuff, the vibrations after the APUs have started with the engines doing their gimbal checks, and then certainly you feel the engines start, and then as soon as the booster is light, then it's– I've told people this before. There were two times in my life in a flying vehicle where I felt like I didn't have total control over the machine. And it was the two ascents on the solid rocket boosters for the shuttle. You are along for the ride, and it really is. Because as a pilot, you pride yourself in knowing the vehicle, knowing the system, and knowing you can handle anything. But the physics of the ascent were just incredible for those first two minutes.
Sandy Winnefeld: So it's not like the acceleration of a catapult shot off an aircraft carrier, but it's much more extended acceleration getting you up to how many G's sustained as you're going up.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah. With shuttle, you think of it this way. It's just this constant increasing acceleration, and it was a pretty good jolt off the pad when the boosters lit. Maybe certainly not one of a higher weight catapult shot would have been, but it was pretty significant noticeable. But you're burning that liquid hydrogen and oxygen. I mean, you're Olympic swimming pool, every second kind of thing, so you're getting that much lighter as you're ascending. And then, of course, the solid rockets burn really rough. It's just like teeth chattering, almost. If you watch the crew cabin video and we had some you can just see everybody's head just kind of bouncing around. And I remember at 135, we had it flashed on our video flash to the crew, and all you can see is Rex's giant smile, but you're kind of doing this and then accelerating, accelerate.
And then, of course, then the boosters get you through that first thickest part of the atmosphere, and then their work is done and they come off. There's a big flash even in the daytime, there's a big flash in the windows where the booster separation mode is fire, and then it's just smooth as glass. And then you work your way up to towards the last. About two minutes, the engines begin to start throttling as you reach 3 Gs. And that was a design profile for the shuttle because it's a 250,000-pound vehicle, and you're not going to pull 6 Gs with a vehicle that big. So engines would throttle as you were getting closer to main engine cut-off, and you'd peak it right at 3 Gs, but you sustained it for a couple of minutes at the end of the profile.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You know, Doug, I had completely different experiences every time I launched the three times, but I was sitting in different seats each time. And you were, of course, pilot seat twice. How did the two launches compare from that viewpoint?
Col. Doug Hurley: I think the difference was both for ascent entry. I just felt like I was a little farther ahead on STS 135 than 127. Your first flight, it's just the sensations and the actual moments as you're ascending, especially after scrubbing five times, you're just like, what the heck is going on? And you've done these simulators so many times, and you're focused so much as a pilot. You're focused primarily on the motors, on the engines, among other things. But you're going through that cadence as you're going up and focusing on your job. But it's just the sensations.
And I remember Mark as we roll because we roll on your back. You do your roll program on your back. And so the pilot's window is looking towards the East Coast. And I remember Mark going, “Look out the window, look out the window.” And I'm like, why is he telling me that? But I thought I was supposed to look at the motors, but I think he wanted me to just take that experience because it's so unique. It's your first time. It's just one of those things. It's a life-changing one of those big life moments.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah. But we had a little bit of excitement on 135, so it wasn't like we had everything under control right away. We had malfunctioned just before we launched, and then we had the cabin pressure thing. So that was a little bit sporty, too.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, almost had to do an RTLS on the last flight.
Sandy Winnefeld: I was sitting in my seat going, “We're not doing an RTLS.”
Sandy Winnefeld: That’s Return to Landing Site?
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, we had a cabin leak indication, and it was a sensor. And the phenomenon is what's known as cabin stretch, which Atlantis was somewhat well known for. Because Rex is kind of looking at the number, going, “Well, this is kind of RTLS rate.” And then I think, wasn't it Butch Wilmore was our captain and Butch comes back and goes, “Okay, it's just cabin stretch.”
Sandy Winnefeld: And you're sitting there going, Well, my ears aren't popping, so we must still have pressure.”
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah. Exactly. It didn't feel any different. We're in our suit.
Sandy Winnefeld: So on the way up, you're kind of on automatic. You just said you're kind of out of control. But as a pilot, you actually do get to fly the shuttle on a couple of occasions, maneuvering around the station, rendezvous wing, docking, I would imagine you got some control and then, of course, coming into land. So talk us through a little bit of what it's like to maneuver that thing around the space station, and then I want to hear about what it's like to land it.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah. So for the pilots, traditionally, and this came along later in the process because there was a time when the pilots did not touch the controls on the shuttle, and then they're sitting there going, well, how does that make sense? Because this is going to be the person that's actually going to be the commander and do the lion's share of the flying, or at least a significant portion. And so when I flew on both flights, traditionally, it was the pilots would do the undocking and fly around, and then you would do some portion of the approach. And then on 135 and this is another story that maybe we should talk about a little bit. There was a real unfortunate happenstance on board ISS that almost led to me actually flying the entire coming home because Chris had a little issue in the MPLM, which we maybe will talk about a little bit later.
On STS-127, Mark actually let me do some flying as we were coming up to the space station. Which was standard, Mark, and then you fly the undock and fly around. And both of those were unique for me because it was the traditional way the first time, which is up and over the center portion of the ISS on 127. And then on STS-135, they rotated, we backed out to 600 meters, and then they rotated the ISS 90 degrees. And so we went up over the long, so up over the solar arrays and did the fly around that way.
Sandy Winnefeld: So tell our listeners what the fly around is all about. Why do you do that?
Col. Doug Hurley: Well, what we typically did those for was to image the space station as it aged. And the imagery folks on the ground and, of course, folks on the ISS program wanted to just see how things were weathering as the ISS was in orbit. And so that was a great opportunity to get a chance to do that. And it was certainly fuel based. So if for whatever reason, on ascent or during the rendezvous, we used more fuel than we needed, then sometimes those fly-around were cut short. But at 13, folks had the idea. In fact, I think Chris was one of the advocates, was, hey, let's do a fly around a truss system rather than the habitable parts of the space station. And it was interesting because our equipment didn't work as well from a range and range rate perspective. So Rex was having to do a lot more with the manual gun. We had a little range meter incorporated into it because our normal tracking system wasn't hitting any radar reflectors on the truss segments as well. But that was the other bit of advice Mark had given me during the fly-around was don't hit the space station.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah. Important safety tip.
Col. Doug Hurley: You can do anything else, but just don't hit the space station. And you'll have–
Sandy Winnefeld: You don't want to be that guy.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah. You do not want to be that guy.
Sandy Winnefeld: So when the shuttle comes, when you bring it home, and now you're lined up on this gigantic runway, you've trained extensively in training aircraft and everything like that to actually stick and rudder land the thing. But is that what you're doing on a real mission, or is it landing itself, or are you actually flying it down to touchdown?
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, you're hand-flying it. The shuttle had the capability built in for it to land automatically, but there was never a lot of confidence in the system.
Sandy Winnefeld: Sounds like an F-14. We would never do that.
Col. Doug Hurley: I don't know if you remember ACLs on the boat.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah.
Col. Doug Hurley: Nowadays, almost everybody pushes the button in the cockpit and the airplane lands itself magically. In fact, when we were developing it, we called it the magic carpet. But ACLs, it was like you're taking your life in your own hands.
Sandy Winnefeld: It was an emergency procedure to use ACLs, which is Automatic Carrier Landing System for our listeners.
Col. Doug Hurley: Oh, that’s right. Thank you. So the normal ML for the shuttle missions that I was training for and did, the commander would get the shuttle on the heading alignment circle which is you will fly a circle. Some portion of anywhere from about 98 to 180 degrees around this circle as you’re descending to linthee up on particular runway you were going to land on. So the command, we get on the hack, heading alignment circle then the pilot will take it, fly it for a while, and that was just a chance to once again to be in that environment with the vehicle and actually fly the shuttle.
And I remember the first time I flew the shuttle, I may have used an expletive, “I’m flying the [blank] shuttle.” I looked over at Mark, Mark looked back at me and he was just beaming, huge smile on his face. Then the command, we take it back usually to intercept final, and then you’re kind of in that normal chains of altitude, airspeed, all that stuff. And the commander’s flying somewhat what we did in the Navy-Marine Corps the ball bar. We called it the ball bar, not the ball, and you flew it the same way. It was a visual landing aid and then you’re shooting for a 205 or 195 touchdown about 30 ft. over the threshold, and then the gear comes down very late with the shuttle like 300 ft. And then a touchdown, chute comes out, hopefully, a successful landing. WIthing our case, both times, commanders did awesome.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, I want to go back to a reentry because I remember on STS-135, nighttime reentry, and actually I was on the flight deck and that was the first time I'd seen the plasma glow through the window. And I remember looking at it going, that's lasting a little bit longer than I thought it would.
Col. Doug Hurley: I had the same feeling on 135. I was like, man, this is lasting forever. And then all of a sudden, we pop out and you can see the peninsula of Florida because we were coming in from over kind of the Yucatan, that particular. So we're kind of coming southwest to northeast, up towards KFC. And, yeah, I felt the same thing because we had extended one day. We were actually supposed to land on the I think on the 20th of July, which would have been an anniversary of the moon landing. But we extended one day because the folks had done well managing power on while we were docked, and it helped us get everything transferred.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Thank goodness we had that extra day.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, but anyway, I felt the same way. I was like, gosh, but that was my only dark entry as well. So maybe that was what it was. But I was the same thing. It was just these orange and pink and yellow over the windscreen. We were in the plasma for a long time, and then all of a sudden, it was like breaking out on an approach, Sandy. Breaking out at like, 300 ft. All of a sudden we were in the clear. You could see Florida, the lights of Florida. And then probably wasn't five minutes and we were on the hack and turning final.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You know, on my first mission, it was a day landing. I remember looking out the window and one of the banks thinking, oh, that's what Mach 25 looks like. Holy crap, we're moving. Did you have one of those moments, too?
Col. Doug Hurley: I absolutely did. It was like I equated to flying a low level because you come in typically if we were going to Florida, we would deorbit somewhere over the Indian Ocean, and then about 55 minutes later, you would land in Florida. And, yeah, as you're descending down to where you're relatively close to the clouds, so you're, I don't know, 100,000 ft., 150,000 ft. descending and the clouds are just whipping by. And that's really the first time you realize holy cow, we are really going fast.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, it's kind of like going supersonic at 20,000 ft. Isn't that exciting? Until you get near a cloud and you go by, it's like, whoa.
Col. Doug Hurley: That’s right. It's all relative.
Sandy Winnefeld: So you've had a really unique career in one particular sense. There aren't a lot of people around who have piloted two different types of spacecraft, and you were on the first crewed SpaceX mission. So tell us about the differences between that and flying on the shuttle as a crew member.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, in about every way possible it could be different. It was different and not necessarily in a bad way. It was just first flight of a vehicle as a test pilot and my crewmate, Bob, and probably one of my closest friends, the way he said it's, the generational opportunity as a test pilot getting the chance to fly a new vehicle. And we were fortunate as test pilots. Bob, he was one of the test conductors for F-22 during its EMD. I was doing EMD on Super Hornet. So we had the unique opportunity of maybe taking those lessons learned and going through that process, which even within the astronaut office, we did not have. Certainly in the mid-20-teens, we didn't have a lot of people that had been on EMB programs for aircraft. And so we were lucky enough to get put together for a lot of reasons.
But I think that really helped us because SpaceX, certainly in that 2015, 2016 time frame, were learning a lot. They had a lot to learn, not only about just flying rockets and cargo, but they had never flown people. And just learning that aspect of it, it's basically going in at the ground up. Whereas with the shuttle program and Sandy can tell you this, the training program was etched in stone. Everything was just so rote and laid out. And the things you had to do, the blocks you had to check, the simulators you had to do, the different things. The evolutions you had to do was a well-traveled path at that point. Whereas with Dragon, we were coming up with the training. We were coming up with the displays, we were coming up with– And not just Bob and I, obviously, it was a huge team effort. But, yeah, from the ground up, and each system and how you wanted to operate the vehicle and how they envisioned and how Elon wanted the vehicle to be. And so all those competing priorities.
Oh, by the way, in those four or five years or six years, whatever it was, those guys blew up a few rockets, blew up the DM-1. They blew up the DM-1 capsule after an extremely successful uncrewed test flight. Six weeks later, it was in a million pieces at Kennedy. So working through those challenges, relearning how to develop parachutes for spacecraft, we certainly didn't remember at NASA SpaceX, didn't know to a degree with which they needed to know. Boeing certainly underestimated that. So the challenge with developing a spacecraft with a reliable parachute system because it had to work, frankly.
Sandy Winnefeld: For sure.
Col. Doug Hurley: So just all those challenges and a lot of time in Hawthorne. But it was an incredible way to end my career, flying career, my NASA career. And then to actually splash down off the coast of Pensacola, where it all had started in 1989, was pretty poetic, frankly.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You know, I remember I was at the ground floor setting the station for training, and stuff up. I remember the crews having a lot of bumps in the road just because the system around them was so new as well. What about cultural differences? There's a big we could probably go on for hours, but maybe speak a few words about the cultural differences.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, I think it would be fair to say that the culture of SpaceX in 2015, 2016 probably was not a lot different than NASA during the 60s, as we were doing the Apollo program. You had a bunch of incredibly talented, smart, but very young, relatively inexperienced space people, but working on a common goal, and almost with fanaticism, frankly. And then you had NASA, which was post-end of the shuttle program, heavily reliant on the Russians, a bureaucratic beast, night and day, yin and yang, hugely. And I think, frankly, working with Boeing was a little bit more like working with NASA than it was with SpaceX.
So in some ways, it was pretty refreshing. You get out to SpaceX on a Monday or Tuesday morning, which was our typical, we would leave on Monday or Tuesday and spend most of the week out there with them and then fly back to Houston Thursday or Friday. And you could just feel the electricity in the air and the enthusiasm. Certainly, those last couple of years, as we were getting ready to go fly, totally different. Totally different.
Sandy Winnefeld: So among the very many differences between the SpaceX program and the shuttle program is the fact that you're taking non-professional astronauts up with you. I mean, people who are entering the program on a completely different path. What's that like? You met these people, you flew with them, or at least they were in the program with you.
Col. Doug Hurley: Well, for me, I think at the point with which we were doing this, there was talk about tourism and there was talk about this, and talk about that. And it's amazing that we're in 2023, and Peggy with Axiom Two is up there now, and that's the 10th crewed flight of Dragon in three years. Our anniversary for launch is what, tomorrow, or, I don't know, the 30th. So it's in a couple of days. So literally three years later, we've flown ten crewed flights on Dragon. But I think for Bob and I and the NASA part of this, it was how do we have a spaceship that is flyable by, maybe not a tough fly. I think that's really was our goal. How do you make this vehicle that certainly any professional astronaut is capable of being the commander and being able to handle all the situations and design the vehicle such that for the most part, it is automated, just like an airliner? I mean, if you talk to an airline pilot now, especially some of these newer aircraft, like an A330, it's pretty much just push the button, you're in the air and the thing flies you to Singapore. And Dragon is very much that same way, and so is Starliner, and I think, to a degree, so is Orion. So you become more of a system manager than the diagonal, steely-eyed test pilot. And it's embracing the technology, but it's also embracing the dream, I think, of SpaceX.
And I think, frankly, all of us, it's like making space accessible to just not a test pilot or a professional astronaut. It's all these things. And then what you do with that gift to get to go to space? We could talk hours about that. There have been several people that have flown in space that it's been an ego trip or it's been, look at how much money I have. But for the most part, it can be very inspiring for somebody who maybe wouldn't have otherwise, ten years ago, had the opportunity to get in space, to go into space, and then to experience it through their eyes is pretty neat.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah. And if they do it right, they can spread sort of the good messages about manned space.
Col. Doug Hurley: Absolutely.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's what most of us try and do.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah. And I think we feel like that's important for us to do that, but I think we're in those days where it's a little hit or miss right now. I would say that there's some things that I think have been incredibly inspiring, and I think other things have been, really?.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: But it’s still new though, everything when you knew–
Col. Doug Hurley: That's it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So we're going to come back to the Dragon in a minute because we have a bunch of more questions. But I want to talk about your month on the ISS because you were there for two months, and I was just curious what your impressions were because you were there long enough to experience that next-level adaptation to space, and it's not easily noticeable when you're there. I knowingly noticed that I had done that when 119 came to pick me up and they kind of flew into the space station I'm looking at, I'm like, oh, my gosh, you guys are flying around so gingerly, just like rookies. So did you notice that you had adapted and what are your thoughts about your stay there?
Col. Doug Hurley: Absolutely. It was one of those things that I never expected to happen. So to set the stage in the early part of 2020, we were down to one US crew member on ISS. And so the smart people in the station program were like, hey, we got a couple of guys going up to space station that have flown to space a few times, and we could really put them to work in different ways, and we've got a bunch of EVAs we need to get done. And Chris Cassidy was up there by himself on the US side. He had two Russian crewmates, so there was a lot of stuff stacking up, and he's a super astronaut, but he can't work 24/7.
Early in 2020, it was pretty much decided that, hey, you guys are going to go up there for at least a month, maybe as long as four or five months. And so in a sense, it was like, awesome, we're going to get to experience that actually living in space. Because the shuttle flights were just such a sprint for it was two weeks of just full throttle, and when you got back, you were exhausted and they got every bit of work out of you that they could possibly get. And so, yeah, it was really– Although I will tell you this, Sandy, we had 10 weekends on space station, and we worked eight of them.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, you were in sprint mode for just the longest time.
Col. Doug Hurley: It felt like a little bit more of a shuttle mission than it probably should have. But we were able to still get some time to look out the window, spend some time in the cupola, and experience. Like every weekend, we would have dinner either in our side of the space station or the Russian side of the space station with our two Russian colleagues. And the five of us became, I think, a great functioning crew, and everybody was pulling in the same direction, and we got to experience that. And I would say, I don't know, it's probably at the three-week or four-week time frame where I kind of felt like I became a space creature, where you're not banging into walls and you're not knocking stuff over in your effort to push off within that error band where you just can float through without hardly touching anything else. And every maneuver is efficient. It was kind of in the lead-up to the flight. It was unexpected, but I'm really glad I actually got to be a member of Expedition 63 for a couple of months and we think we made a difference. So it was it was really rewarding to be able to do that.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You know, back to the Dragon a minute. I recall in my Soyuz training that the Soyuz has multiple downgrades in the event of loss of control of various kinds. And does the Dragon have something similar? I was just curious.
Col. Doug Hurley: It does. It has some, but depending on the mode, it was all an automated down mode. There wasn't a lot of opportunity to fly the Dragon manually in a downgraded mode — pretty much just for in and around in space, around the Space Station, certainly free flight, but for ascents and entries — ascent, really, the only manual intervention we could do was an abort. We couldn't pilot the vehicle. And frankly, the scheme for piloting was touchscreen. So you're not going to fly a vehicle dynamically with a touchscreen.
Sandy Winnefeld: So let's talk about landing. We talked about landing the Shuttle and you're actually sort of flying an airplane down in a way, a glider. But Dragon, it's almost like a Mercury or a Gemini-type landing, right? I mean, you've spun around and you burn your way through the atmosphere and land with parachutes. How did that feel compared to the Shuttle?
Col. Doug Hurley: As Sandy will tell you, we had to depend on the folks that had flown Soyuz because that was our only real-time experience. The base that we had in the Astronaut Office at that time was the Soyuz flyers. And it was, by all accounts, a pretty similar, I guess, profile. In that, it's a higher profile coming back than Shuttle. Much higher. I mean, Shuttle you were on the order of a G and a half is probably the most G you pulled out of the entry, whereas you were four or five G nominal entry G's coming in on Dragon. Our concern, or my concern, coming back in was the way Dragon is designed. It's got a pretty– With the SuperDracos, they kind of bulge out on the side of the vehicle. So control, as you're coming down through the atmosphere, is a little bit maybe–
Elon had some concerns. Some of the aero folks had some concerns that the vehicle wouldn't have control authority as it got into thicker air because it was all this different wind resistance over those what we called the mud flaps that covered the SuperDracos. And so I was half expecting to lose control authority — the automatic control authority. And, of course, the solution at that point was to put the drogues out early. But the vehicle did great, and once again, steeper G profile.
And then, as our Soyuz flyers had told us, it's like when the chutes come out — it's going to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride for 30 seconds to a minute. And that was the thing with Dragon that differed so much with Shuttle — was just the noise coming back in, going up, too, but coming back in because you're sitting so close to the reaction control system. The wind noise. You can hear and feel the parachutes as they kind of streamed out above you. You can hear the rope rubbing against the hatch. You can just see everything. And then, of course, you can feel the G-cell because you're hypersensitive to G after being in space a few months. Even when the drogues came out, I didn't have to look at the displays to see the G-cell on the display. I could feel it.
And then all of a sudden, then you feel the drogues cut away and then the mains go out. And then when they start deploying, they do that in stages. You can feel all of that very distinctly, but you're spinning and you're almost like a pendulum. And then–
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow, thing’s like an amusement park ride.
Col. Doug Hurley: It very much is like a roller coaster ride there for and then you hit the water.
Sandy Winnefeld: And then you hit the water.
Col. Doug Hurley: And the thing I recall about the water was it was a harder impact than I expected it to be.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, really?
Col. Doug Hurley: I don't know. Whatever expectation it was, it just felt like it was a little bit harder hit. And then you see the water go up over the windows and you're like, okay, hopefully she floats. And then you hear the pyros. Once again, you feel and hear the pyros as the shoots get disconnected from the vehicle. And then you're kind of bobbing. And then, unfortunately, with Dragon, the windows were so pitted from the reentry that they really were only — we only had two windows in Dragon and they were kind of as you're sitting, they were crossed the other side on each side of the main hatch, the side hatch. But they, at that point, just became day-night indicators because they were so covered with soot and the byproducts of the reentry and the heat shield ablating that until one of the SpaceX guys had got on the side of the vehicle and then he kind of put his face in the window and we're waving to him. But it was much more dynamic entry than what you would experience with Shuttle. And I think Sandy has the added bonus — well, yeah, you landed in the Soyuz, right? You came back on Shuttle.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Every time I was on the Cadillac.
Col. Doug Hurley: My wife tells me that the other, obviously, big ticket item is the soft landing jacks. And the actual landing on the ground is a pretty noticeable part of the flight.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Sometimes with a bounce, bonus bounce.
Col. Doug Hurley: And then a rollover on the side. And sometimes they've been dragged by the chutes a little bit. The chutes drag them along the steps of Kazakhstan.
Sandy Winnefeld: I think they call that Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yes, sir.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So I heard there were — I remember your landing, there were a lot of boats and tourists doing tourist things in there when you guys were getting retrieved, almost to the point where it was adding risk to the effort. It was a big deal. You remember that?
Col. Doug Hurley: I absolutely do. And it was funny because, like I said, we weren't aware of it when we were in the water because we couldn't see out the window. And I remember distinctly let's just say it was six or eight months prior to the actual flight, sitting there with the SpaceX folks, and we're talking about recovery. And I remember Bob saying something about — because Bob is the smartest guy in any room — and he said something about, you know, people are going to want to see it, blah, blah, this. And then SpaceX was like, yeah, we've never had any trouble with any of our cargo missions. And then that's where I said, it's different. People on vehicle is different.
And then the fact that we landed 25, 30 miles off the coast of Pensacola, everybody looked at that restriction that was put on the nautical, whatever it was, and there were a bunch of boats. And Sandy, you'll understand this one. When I first saw it, we were on the boat. We got out of Endeavor and we were in the room. They've got on the recovery ship. They've got four different beds and medical set up, and there are curtains between them and there are windows on one side. And Joe Dervey was my flight surgeon. We had some of the nurses were there, and there are people everywhere, and they're trying to get you out of your spacesuit. I'm like, Joe, I got to pee. I had to stand up. So I said, help me out. And so I stood up, and I'm looking out the window as I'm doing this, and I'm like, “Where did all those boats come from?” And he's like, “You guys didn't see them?” I'm like, “Joe, we can't see out the windows.” And I just laughed. And then it was like, somebody said, well, it must be the Redneck Navy and this, that, and the other thing. And I mean, they just went on and on.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: No, it was dangerous.
Col. Doug Hurley: I saw some video later, and I was like, man, they got pretty close and with all the hyper galls and off-gassing and all this stuff. So SpaceX very quickly, and the Coast Guard very quickly learned their lesson. And I know they have a much bigger exclusion zone now around the landing area when folks are coming back.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, it was something.
Sandy Winnefeld: We're getting close to the end here. I'm really interested with all the experiences you've had; it's just pretty amazing to be able to talk to you. What are your thoughts on the future of manned spaceflight? There are a lot of ambitions out there: go to Mars, go to the Moon, that sort of thing. Where do you come down on where we're headed?
Col. Doug Hurley: Well, I'm excited. And Sandy could tell you this too; I lived through two or three moon programs as an astronaut, and it's good to see one stick. Because I think the common misconception is we landed on the Moon, and in fact, I remember somebody saying, that might even have been one of the presidents, say, "Oh, we've already done that." And it's like we have barely scientifically scratched the surface with the Moon. So the science part of it I think is certainly way valid for continuing lunar exploration. I think just the inspiration it would provide for this, whatever our next generation of STEM field kids that are like my son's age, kids that are 12, 13, 14 years old, what are they going to do? And when we see Nicole Mann plant the flag on the Moon in the not-too-distant future. She's probably one of my favorite astronauts if not my favorite. She's super. Hopefully, she'll be one of them.
I just can't imagine that type of inspiration not–
Sandy Winnefeld: Infectious.
Col. Doug Hurley: We're going to need that. It is; it's what did it for me. I'm sure it's, to some degree, what it did for Sandy. That's what got us into these roles to start with. So I think it's science, it's the inspiration, and then it's like, this is what the United States should be doing. I mean, we should be putting astronauts on the Moon. And then purely from a test pilot perspective, and to me, it's like we need to figure a lot of things out before we send people to Mars. And the nearest analog we have is two days away, and it's called the Moon. And Sandy will tell you this because she's got a lot more time on space station than I do, but stuff breaks up there, we ship more.
In fact, I replaced an avionics box, I think it was for the treadmill that Sandy and I had taken up on 135, that replacement equipment. Five or six years later, whatever, ten years, nine years later. But my point being is you can't have stuff break when we go to Mars, or we've got to have a way to manufacture it while we're there. And so that analog, using a lunar base or using the lunar missions that we currently have on the books, that's where we're going to figure those things out and have that confidence that eventually will lead us there.
So from a test pilot perspective, I think, for no other reason, if we think, and it's not just going to be the United States, obviously; if we think as humanity we want to go to Mars and put people on Mars, we have got to kind of run every scenario through and concept and the way we want to run a mission to a human mission to Mars. We've got to run it all like a dress rehearsal on the Moon because then we're only two days away, not six months away from getting something to the crew.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So as we wrap up here, Doug, why don't you let our listeners know what you're up to these days since you left the office?
Col. Doug Hurley: So, about a year and a half ago, I started working for Northrop Grumman out here in Utah. And so this is the part of Northrop Grumman that builds the solid rocket motors. And so they were the ones formerly Orbital ATK and ATK before that, who built the solid rocket motors for space shuttle. One of our former bosses, Charlie Precourt, was the vice president, general manager out here. And in fact, it was you, Sandy, who suggested we maybe chat, and we did, and Charlie was like, "You really need to come out here." Charlie Precourt, former chief of the office who hired me. Was he the chief when you got hired?
Dr. Sandra Magnus: No, it was Cabana.
Col. Doug Hurley: Bob Cabana. So Charlie has hired me twice for two great jobs. So I'm funneling money to him every day, but he said, "You should come out and see." And I had been out here many times as an astronaut. We come out to give out awards or just to see what's going on with the boosters, and it just ended up being a good fit, I hope.
Sandy Winnefeld: I hope if you're in Park City, you're a skier.
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah. In fact, my son learned how to ski this winter. Very cool. And I got on skis for the first time, and I don't even know if I want to say how many decades, but it was more than two.
Sandy Winnefeld: But you got to get your adrenaline somehow, so why not find another way?
Col. Doug Hurley: Yeah, so it was great. Both my wife and I wanted to live in the mountains, and it just kind of seemed like a good fit. And so far, so good. We've really enjoyed living out here and getting the change of seasons, although we picked one heck of a winter. This last winter was incredible out in the Mountain West, but we got to do a lot of skiing. I skied in April and May for the first time.
Sandy Winnefeld: And they said it was going to be a terrible season, and it ended up great.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Doug, this has been a fantastic experience, I know for me, and I know it's been for Sandy to have a reunion with you and certainly for our listeners. And this is a great way to close out our fourth season. This is our 40th episode. We've done a flight director, and we've done a rocket designer, and now we've done somebody who actually gets to fly the things. And it's really been a fun conversation. I think we're going to get a lot of good comments from people who really want to know what it's actually like to be an astronaut. You don't really get that inside look. And we really appreciate you spending time with us today.
Col. Doug Hurley: It was my pleasure. And as I said at the beginning, it's just always great to get to hang out and catch up with Sandy. We've just had such a great experience. In fact, when I first kind of really got to know Sandy, I was the DOR over in Russia, and she and Peggy were coming over as you guys were getting ready to train for your mission.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Well, we were getting all of the service module FGB stuff set up to fly. That's what we were doing over there first.
Col. Doug Hurley: Fly first, yeah. And then, of course, flying with her on 135. So it's always nice to get an excuse to hang out with her.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We had fun at 135.
Col. Doug Hurley: And great to meet you too, Sandy.
Sandy Winnefeld: All right. Well, thanks again, and good luck to you in the future.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That was veteran NASA Astronaut Doug Hurley. I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld. That's it for season four. It's hard to believe we've completed our 40th episode, so join us next season for more episodes of The Adrenaline Zone.
