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You are a retried astronaut, but just because you're not actively an astronaut doesn't mean
that you no longer have opinions about this stuff about space program. So you commanded
four shuttle missions. Uh, two.
Two, and were a pilot on two. So you flew four times? We seem to be getting out of the
space business. I mean as we sit here your twin brother who is also an astronaut is about
to go into space... For a year in 2015.
So we haven't completely gotten out of the space business but more or less we are drawing
down what seems to be the nation's long standing commitment to.
It might seem like that, right. Would you correct me and correct us if we
perceive if that's the case...? You know after the Columbia accident. The
Columbia accident happened in 2003. The Challenger was in 1986. It was the second loss of a space
shuttle. After that accident, the White House, Congress, and NASA including the astronaut
office all agreed that we should retire the space shuttle. That was a decision that was
made for crew's safety. Those space shuttles, I love the space shuttle, I am the biggest
fan of the space shuttle. Yep.
They were each designed to fly 100 flights each and none of them did, but they were not
designed to do was to fly for 30 or 40 years. So we realized if we kept doing this we would
have another accident you work in a small group of people, you don't want to see your
friends killed again, and we can build stuff safer. Now the problem is, the space shuttle
program, the annual budget of that program, is about 3 million dollars cost to operate
it. Right.
To design, and test, and build a new space craft probably cost about the same amount
of money, without getting another 3 million dollars a year out of NASA the only way to
do this was to retire the space shuttle and then build a new space craft. And it takes
years to build another space craft. So you have company called SpaceEx out there right
now that delivers cargo to the space station, they plan on delivering people to the space
station. They are building a crude vehicle so were gonna see American astronauts flying
on American rockets again.