#287 Butch Wilmore - He Was Stranded in Space for 286 Days

15:15Barry E. Wilmore:$5 to$7 million?

15:16Shawn Ryan:You've got to realize these are one-man space capsules shaped like a person. They're all self-contained. It's got the air, the pressure, maintaining the pressure, CO2 removal system. We have water that circulates to keep us cool in the vacuum of space because the temperatures vary plus or minus several hundred degrees, depending on if you're in the shade or the sun. And so they're very, yeah, they're not cheap, and they've got to work, right? You can't be on a spacewalk. And we do train for failure scenarios where we have issues with our suit, and some of them are, okay, let's go inside, let's make our way and get inside, and some of them are abort, let's go now.

15:56Shawn Ryan:We've got to get inside now. So that's part of that. And then, of course, the drill that we carry, we've got a drill on our hip. it's connected we pull it off it's about two million um because it's got to work every time and of course there's only a few of these right you don't you don't make hundreds of these drills there's only like 10 or even there's not even that many on space station so they've got to work you don't want to get outside all the way do all the prep something else people don't realize you you're you start getting ready for a spacewalk the very first thing you do from that point until you finally open the hatch is roughly five hours.

16:34Shawn Ryan:So you've already worked a full day and you haven't even opened the hatch yet because you have to purge nitrogen out of your system, just like if you were diving in the ocean. You have to be aware that the possibility of bends in certain situations. So you've got to go through that whole process, making sure all the procedures, everything's connected correctly, doing leak checks, all of that. Anyway, that whole process takes about five hours before you even open the hatch. So a lot to go on with spacewalks and suits. And of course, as the crew on board, when I'm training, the suits show up. I climb in and off we go.

17:08Shawn Ryan:And the tools are set up when we train and do all that in this large pool to try to simulate zero gravity. You can't fully do it because you're weighted and gravity's pulling you down inside the suit. But at least the suit can be neutrally buoyant in the pool. But it's all done for you. But in space, there are no techs. You are the tech. So we're doing maintenance, major. I mean, I've done what I would say is major surgery on some of these suits in space that weren't designed to be done in space. But because of certain failures in the suits, before you take them out, you got to fix them. And so literally pulling out fan pump separators and doing all this major surgery on the suits.

17:44Shawn Ryan:And you got to make sure you get it right because either you're getting in it or your buddy's getting in it. And it's got to perform. You don't want something to fail in a suit that you've worked on, right? So you've got to get it right. And so the ground teams are all, you know, cameras on, making sure everything's done correctly. So this is not trivial business, obviously. Yeah, you're right. We sit back and we watch a launch and we go, woo-hoo, success. But there are thousands of individuals passionate about human spaceflight going deep in their level of knowledge. You know, as an astronaut, you're very broad and go deep where you can.

18:17Shawn Ryan:But these individuals go deep in their level of knowledge in their various systems, and they're passionate putting their all into it. And that's what makes spaceflight so wonderful, because seemingly very few things happen where the public notices. And that's the way we want it to be. But realize there are significant, significant issues, things, engineering, all that going on behind the scenes to make all these things look easy.

18:40Barry E. Wilmore:I would imagine. Do you get to keep your suit?

18:42Shawn Ryan:That'd be great.

18:44Barry E. Wilmore:I mean, it's got to be, what did you say,$3 to$5 million?

18:47Shawn Ryan:Yeah,$5 to$7 million. $5 to$7 million. It's got to be fitted to you, right? Well, we have ways to change the length of the legs, the length of the arms, so they're not one size fits all. So we have those capabilities. Plus, they're on space station. Boy, it'd be great to keep a suit. I get to keep my flight suits, the blue flight suits that we fly T-38s. Yeah, we get to keep those, but that's about the extent. Not the helmet? No. Oh, man. No, my flight helmet, I fly the T-38 in. Yeah, I've got a couple of those from NASA that I got over the years. One gets old, gets beat up a little bit, and you get a new one.

19:22Shawn Ryan:But those helmets, no. I'm told the gold visor that comes down, it helps to protect from ultraviolet radiation. I'm told it has literal gold flakes in it. So there's no intent on what that one helmet costs. It's probably several hundred thousand dollars, I'm guessing.

19:42Barry E. Wilmore:Can you go to the bathroom and those things? I'm just curious. That's a great question.

19:45Shawn Ryan:Yeah.

19:46Barry E. Wilmore:I'm one of those people. I got to pee every time I get nervous. So waiting on a helicopter to go on an op, I got to pee like 20 fucking times.

19:55Shawn Ryan:Yeah. So you wear your diaper. Yeah. Right on. Just go. Yeah. That's part of the process. You know, before I launched, every launch, including the Starliner, you get to the top of the launch pad where you're about to walk into the spacecraft itself, into the white room, into the spacecraft. I go to the restroom. There's a restroom right there. I always go pull the space suit all the way down to my knees, go do my business because I've got the diaper on and I know I'm going to use the diaper three times before I have a chance to take the space suit off anyway. So I might as well go in dry and prepare.

20:25Shawn Ryan:Yeah, that's part of it. Diaper is part of it.

20:27Barry E. Wilmore:Right on. Yeah. Let me tell you about my morning routine. I wake up. I have decisions I need to make. Am I going to train? Am I going to go to work? Am I going to be stressed out all day? and what kind of tea am I going to use? Usually I use a chai. Now, what I do every morning is I put Bub's collagen peptides into my tea, along with some MCT oil. You've heard me talk about their collagen peptides forever, but this stuff, the MCT oil, goes in my tea every single morning. It's real brain and body fuel backed by science, not vibes. It's made with grass-fed butter and fast-acting MCT oil from coconuts, which sounds kind of weird until you try it.

21:16Barry E. Wilmore:And suddenly, you're awake and not pissed off at everybody. And if butter isn't your thing, relax. They've got a vegan version, too. MCT oil gives your brain quick fuel, supports digestion and gut health, helps curb cravings, and keeps your energy steady all day. I dump it in my tea with my collagen, stir it around, and I'm set. I trust Bubz because they don't cut corners. Their products meet serious quality standards. And the MCT Creamer is NSF certified for sport, which means it's clean, tested, and not sketchy. And here's the part that I love the most. Bubz was founded in honor of Navy SEAL Glenn Bubb Doherty.

22:00Barry E. Wilmore:10 % of all profits go to support veterans as they transition back to civilian life. The stuff we talk about all the time on the show. So when you buy Bubz, you're also supporting the guests that have been on this show. If you want to upgrade your morning routine, then you need to go to BubzNaturals.com slash SRS and use code Sean for 20 % off your order. Again, that's bubsnaturals.com slash SRS and use code Sean for 20 % off your order.

22:35Barry E. Wilmore:Astronauts also train for off-nominal landings, water survival and wilderness survival in case a capsule comes down in a remote or hostile environment. What does that training actually look like and what are you realistically preparing for during those scenarios?

22:51Shawn Ryan:You're realistic preparing to come down in cold weather. You're realistically preparing to come down in water, to come down in an area where it's heat. Because you figure, you know, the space station, if I can explain this clearly, the space station is orbiting on an inclination from the equator at 51.6 degrees. So it's not orbiting around the equator. It's orbiting to plus 51 to minus 51.6 degrees as the Earth spins underneath it. And the reason for that is you can't launch into a lower orbit lower than your latitude. And the Russian launch site, which goes to the space station, is just below 51.6.

23:28Shawn Ryan:We fly to 51.6 because we don't want to overfly China. So the orbit is at 51.6 degrees going around, right? So you see a large portion of the planet as you're orbiting the planet because you're going plus or minus 51.6 degrees. Say the question real quick again to make sure I answer the right question. What are you realistically preparing for during those scenarios? So since you're going that part of the planet, you're over water, you're over desert, you're over the Himalayas. And there are certain scenarios where you could come down anywhere. Anywhere, plus or minus 51.6 degrees. Now, that's never happened, but it could in any number of failure scenarios where you don't know where you're coming down.

24:15Shawn Ryan:You just got to burn. You got to burn now. You got to come down now. and let's hope you're coming down. We would try to target a landing site, something's close to recovery forces, some place, you know, certainly with a space shuttle, you didn't have options. You had to land on a runway. And we had certain runways around the globe where we targeted. Otherwise, you'd be bailing out. So Soyuz, I'll give you the example for Soyuz. We do cold weather survival because you could come down anywhere. But on launch, during launch, you have a failure, you abort, you could come down on a mountain in high altitude.

24:46Shawn Ryan:So you got to be prepared for that. And so we train for that, you know, learning how to just standard survival. You've done it as well. How to survive off the land, make fire and snow and all of that. Water survival, the capsule comes down in water. You know, they made us in the heat of summer, they made us swallow temperature sensors so they could watch our body temperature remotely while we're inside this little bit of capsule. So the capsule, the Soyuz capsule, the inner side diameter is less than seven feet. I mean, I could reach over and touch the third person. It's very, very small. And it's small because the smaller the capsule, the smaller the thermal protection that you have to have when you return, the smaller the rocket.

25:27Shawn Ryan:The bigger the capsule, the bigger the rocket has to be to launch it, more propellant, all of that. So the Russian has designed it well. Very small descent module with an extra habitational module on top, which goes away and doesn't come back to Earth. Only the little gumdrop, we call it, the gumdrop, comes back. And it's very small. So when you do our water survival, we have to take off our spacesuit, put on a survival suit to get in the water. And you have to do that in this very close, small capsule with no room. There's not enough room for three people, but they stuff three of them in there.

25:59Shawn Ryan:And then now you've got to get in a position to change your clothes and help each other change clothes. And it gets super, super hot. So this is all part of the training processes for all spacecraft, whatever you're flying. Cold weather, warm weather, hot weather, water survival. And it's just a part of the process. You got to know in all those scenarios. Yeah. Did you bring anything with you to remind you of your family?

26:25Barry E. Wilmore:Anything like that? I'm just curious. What did you bring with you?

26:29Shawn Ryan:What I brought with me over the course of the three missions I flew, you know, Sean, I try to do things with intent. and things that are, you know, I don't typically watch movies in space unless I'm working out and something to pass the time when I'm working on the treadmill. The things I try to do off the planet are things that I can't do on the planet, try to focus on that. So I try to do things with intent. So things that I brought with intent, something I thought would be meaningful for my girls, you know, my daughters are the legacy that I will leave behind and instilling in them the truth of Jesus Christ, he is Lord and Savior, is paramount in other issues of life, being responsible, being good patriotic, good Americans, part of what I try to train them for.

27:16Shawn Ryan:And as a part of that, a symbol of their dad that I wanted them to have is I flew a ring, wings that I had shaped like a ring, naval astronaut pilot wings, shaped like a ring, I flew one for my wife, for my mom, and my wife's mom on the shuttle mission. And my mom is now gone. My wife's mom's still with us. And they were going to pass it to my two daughters, which they have, that they would have that. And then a pair of gold, normal-sized wings. Again, they don't know they're getting these until they graduate college, until this. And so a pair of those, gold, flume in space, something that they would have to remember their dad, their mom.

28:04Shawn Ryan:because, you know, yeah, their dad wears the wings, but their mom is as big a part of it as I am because, you know, the families, the wives sacrifice. I mean, when I was in space, everything broke. The hurricane came through, I'd get a new roof, and my wife handled it all. My dryer that I bought in 1989, chugging along for 35 years, finally said, I'm done while I was in space. So she's got to go through that whole process. So these wings represent what I do, but this is as much my wife involved as them. So this is an emblem of their dad and their mom, service to the country, that I hope they will cherish.

28:42Shawn Ryan:And so that's what I took with me for my family. Did I take a couple of pictures? Sure, yeah. But that's really the meaningful thing. Yeah, that is really cool. Yeah. That is really cool.

28:53Barry E. Wilmore:And so what would happen if you landed in Russia or China, some kind of a hostile environment, maybe somewhere in the GWAT when that was going on?

29:07Shawn Ryan:Yeah, they would.

29:08Barry E. Wilmore:Do you guys talk about that?

29:11Shawn Ryan:The powers that be would try to get us immediately. This is, of course, national significance. This would be up at the highest levels in both the Russian government and our government and whatever other nation that was with us. You know, we have a conglomeration of nations in the International Space Station program, many European nations and such. They would be involved at the highest levels immediately. And, of course, the search would be on if that certain situation were to occur because of the visibility and all the geopolitical implications and all that, as you're aware. Yeah.

29:43Barry E. Wilmore:There's historical documentation that some Soviet cosmonauts carried firearms in their post-landing survival kit after off-course landings in remote areas. In modern astronaut missions today, do crews carry any form of weapons or defensive tools in their survival kits, or has recovery technology made that unnecessary? Weapons.

30:05Shawn Ryan:Yes, the Russians did fly pistols. Did they really? They did. for survival scenarios where you would need them. But they don't anymore. Like aliens. That was ended. Aliens. No, it wasn't for aliens that I'm aware of. But yeah, they did. But they canceled that before I flew the Soyuz. Okay. So that was done before I flew the Soyuz. I'm like, hey, man, we don't know where we're coming down. We might want one of those. But they're like, no, no, no, no, no. We don't do that anymore. Man. But yes, we did. They did, but not anymore. Well, we got you a little something. Oh, my.

30:41Barry E. Wilmore:So, yeah, I got a buddy over at SIG. His name's Jason. And I told him you were coming. Yeah, yeah, hold it up. I told him you were coming on. He wanted me to present you with one of these.

30:52Shawn Ryan:Oh, my.

30:53Barry E. Wilmore:So maybe the next time we go up.

30:55Shawn Ryan:Oh, my. Yeah, if I go up, we'll put this on the docket.

30:59Barry E. Wilmore:It kind of looks like a space gun. It does. It's a SIG 211 GTO. Amazing. amazing it's got a compensator on the front i'll have to read up on this one new optics line nine millimeter that amazing maybe if it quits raining and we got time we can break that damn thing in

31:18Shawn Ryan:before you leave but thank you sean and thank the person that you said that gets them for you thank

31:23Barry E. Wilmore:you so much i will i will that's amazing glad you like it oh i love it love it thank you my pleasure But, well, I want to get into the interview now and do a bit of a life story on you. So let's just start at the very beginning. Born and raised in God's country, which everybody, of course, knows is Tennessee.

31:48Shawn Ryan:Mount Juliet, Tennessee is where I grew up. And stable family. My parents, thankfully, took me to church because I was the most mischievous kid, I guess. in the county, probably, maybe in the state. And I needed some stability. And my church, the Word of God, actually provided that for that kid that really, really, really needed it. So grateful for, you know, I think about back to my college coaches. You know, I wrote about them a little bit in the book. Not as much as I would like to have, but because they were trying to mold these kids into men and the way that they went about that and some of the things they instilled.

32:26You know, you'll see in the book, it says, you know, you got to want it.

32:29Shawn Ryan:Whatever it is in life that you're striving to do, you got to want it because it's not going to be easy. Life is tough. And I remember my coach Sims, my ninth grade position coach, were out there in the back practicing football. They had built a new junior high. And when they built Interstate 40, they'd taken a lot of the topsoil from the area as they built the interstate. And so where we practiced football had no topsoil. It was clay and rock and a whole lot of rock. And we called it the tundra. and we'd go out on the tundra and sweating and, you know, stinking together out there, hitting each other and doing what we do in the heat of the late summer.

33:07Shawn Ryan:And I can still hear Coach Sims, you gotta want it. You gotta want it. And that kid hearing that with my friends, doing all this together, made me want to want it. And I have carried that with me, that kind of mantra. I mean, my Marine Corps drill instructor, get this, Gunnery Sergeant Tybertius Gerhardt. Interesting. United States Marine Corps. What a name for a drill instructor. I mean, how fortunate was I to have a drill instructor with that name? And, you know, his nickname was, we found this out, was the evil one. And, oh, my, he was not evil. He was tough. And he instilled discipline in me that I didn't even realize I had and took me places physically and mentally and emotionally that I didn't know I could go.

33:55Shawn Ryan:And, you know, I think he's gone now. I've looked him up on the internet. I think he passed away a couple of decades ago. But his family doesn't know what he did for this guy in those 14 weeks that I was there. And just the grit and determination that he displayed that gave me that motivation to do it as well. And so those type of things, events, and I can name others as well. You know, growing up in Tennessee here and instilling in that young kid and growing up and eventually into college here in the state school, Tennessee Tech, majoring in electrical engineering, played football at the school.

34:29Shawn Ryan:And that was not easy as well. I mean, college football is a full-time job, and electrical engineering is a full-time job. And you only got one day, and I was not able to do them both. But by God's grace, he gave me the determination. Playing football, I'll share this with you. I mean, you see me. I'm small. I was slow, and I was weak. Small, slow, and weak is not a great combination for football. No, it's not. It's not at all. But what the good Lord gave me an immense amount of is determination. I mean, over the top. And I think part of that, he didn't just give it to me. He showed it to me as I was growing up through those coaches that I mentioned.

35:13Shawn Ryan:You got to want it. Those type of things. My parents challenging me growing up. My Sunday school teacher's challenging me growing up. You got to want it. And that kind of set the course and developed that level of determination that continued to grow. And so that's why I was able to play football in college, small, small, weak, determined to do so. And major in electrical engineering, determined to do so. Because, again, the Lord is the one that provides all of that. And it set the foundation. I talk a lot about foundation. Set the foundation for the rest of my life going forward from there. And some of that I try to display in the book as well, to try to be encouraging to people in life and the challenges and tough times and tough situations that come.

35:55Shawn Ryan:Man, right on. What age did you start going to church? From the beginning. From the very beginning. My earliest recollection of life was at my church in the Sunday school room. Are you serious? It was a Sunday. I can remember. It was a Sunday night. We were at church. I was in the Seabees or whatever they called us. I don't remember exactly. I might've been three or four years old and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer was on TV. That is my earliest memory in church. Yeah. In church. Yeah. Thankfully. I needed it. Like I said, mischievous kid, I needed that foundation. I did. That godly foundation.

36:36Barry E. Wilmore:I thought when you were talking earlier, I thought you meant that you went to church because you were -

36:41Shawn Ryan:No, no, my parents loved Jesus. They loved the Lord hard. My mom, when she passed, the most content person I've ever seen. She had brain cancer. We didn't know it. She didn't either. And the Lord took her quickly, thankfully. But when she left, she was content. She knew her Lord. She knew her Savior. Her only concern was that her grandchildren and her grandchildren, if this brain cancer thing was hereditary. I don't know that she cared about me and my brother Jack so much on that, but her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, she did. She did. And that's comforting to me, to see the life that she lived, knowing Christ as Lord, her sins are forgiven, eternal hope.

37:22Shawn Ryan:You know, we deal with this book, and I talk about the book, Preparation, Preparation, Preparation. You know, let go and let God is a mantra I've heard that I don't see in Scripture. The Lord is sovereign. He's in control. But he also, we have requirements. And our part of the deal is well, preparing for all. That's why for Starliner, I mean, I spent hundreds, almost a thousand hours in the simulator preparing for things that I didn't know what would happen. And that's kind of what's been instilled in me from those early years on is preparation, preparation, preparation. because life's coming.

37:59Shawn Ryan:So I think there's two things about the book. I think encouraging. I hope it's encouraging in the now dealing with life and the preparation required that goes into that. And I hope that it points you to what truly matters is the everlasting eternal hope that comes only in Jesus Christ, our Lord, because we got to deal with the now, but we're going to exist forever. And it's one form or the other, one place or the other. And Jesus Christ came here to this planet with the purpose of dying, incurring the wrath of Almighty God that we deserve for our sins so that we would not have to. And embracing that truth is what I pray this book will do.

38:42Dealing with the now, encouraged for the now, preparing for the now, but also focused on what is to come.

38:48Shawn Ryan:And that is now as well, embracing Christ as Lord.

38:51Barry E. Wilmore:I'm curious, did your faith change in any way when you reached space?

38:58Shawn Ryan:I did not need to go to space to learn anything about my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The Word, His Word, the Bible is sufficient. I didn't need it. Did it change? I wouldn't say it changed, but certainly it broadened my exposure to this almighty God that we served, His created power. I mean, I look down at the planet and I see Isaiah 45, 18. This is the planet he designed and created to be inhabited. And you can see the life and the colors and the variety as you circle between 51 plus 51 and minus 51.6 degrees latitude and the earth's going by below you. You can see it. And that does give you a specific appreciation that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

39:41Shawn Ryan:But did I need it? I didn't need it. Am I grateful for it? Absolutely. Absolutely. Right on. Yeah. Right on. Yeah.

39:49Barry E. Wilmore:Praise you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So what got you into aviation? Football, electrical engineering, and then aviation.

39:59Shawn Ryan:Aviation, the patriotic tug, do my part for my country. How can I best do that? Going to the nuclear program, I had my mind's eye. I saw a jet, and I thought, maybe doing that. I didn't know what the jet was. I was really, I didn't understand military. I didn't know a lot about it. But in my mind's eye, there was a jet. Turns out the jet, once I gained a little knowledge, was an F-16 in my mind's eye. That's Air Force. I didn't go Air Force. I have flown an F-16. I'm grateful for that too. But the challenge of landing aircraft on ships, on boats, that's something I thought, wow. And maybe eventually I could use this really hard-earned technical degree that I've had and use it in some fashion in the future.

40:46Shawn Ryan:And maybe aviation is the way to do that. So that's really what it was. I had never flown. I hadn't taken any flight lessons, none of that. I'd flown once or twice in an airliner at the time. Wow. But just, you know, again, prayerful that the Lord would lead me. You know, there's a couple of things. I was a goal setter, like many as a young man. It's things that I wanted to do and experience. But I always, because my parents, God's word had given me a good solid foundation there too. I always wanted glory for my Lord, whatever it was, with those goals in mind. And so prayerful. And I tell you, Sean, it wasn't easy.

41:26Shawn Ryan:Yes, I wound up flying jet aircraft off aircraft carriers. But there was stumbling block after stumbling block after stumbling block that the Navy wouldn't take me. I had reconstructive knee surgery from a football injury my freshman year in college. And the Navy initially said, nope, disqualified. And then they finally said, after I kept pushing back, they finally said, okay, we'll take you. And then the paperwork went down to Naval Aviation Medical Institute, NAMI in Pensacola. They called us the NAMI Whammy. They got the paperwork. They whamied me. They said, nope, disqualified. And we came back again.

42:03Shawn Ryan:Back and forth. And so it took almost two years to finally get, even my eyes, I had 2010 vision. And they came back and said, you're disqualified because you don't have 2020. What I know now, there was, I know. What? What I know now is that there was some, you know, an administrative person in the Navy is called a yeoman. There was some yeoman that's looking at the qualifications. It says 2020, you have to have 2020 vision. This guy doesn't have it. Therefore, he's disqualified. I know that now. I didn't know that at the time. I'm like, how can you have better than 20-20 vision and be disqualified?

42:40Shawn Ryan:So I petitioned back again. Again, this went back and forth. Finally, they said, go to an autometrist in your local area. I was in school at Cookville. I went to the local autometrist. And I said, hey, I need paperwork that says I'm 20-20. He said, no, no, no, no, you're 20-10. I'm like, I don't care. Please put 20-20 on the paper and make the Navy happy. And he did. And so the Navy took me. So anyway, every step of life is like that for me in this life. And so, you know, looking back, I'm grateful. You know, James tells us and kind of all jokes when you come through trials and tribulations, because it's growing us and it's good for us.

43:22Shawn Ryan:You know, iron sharpens iron. You don't get that unless you touch each other. You know, metal. How do we make metal stronger? We burn it. We burn it. We burn it. Cool it. Burn it. That makes you stronger. So in this life, I'm grateful looking back. At the time, I didn't know. I was struggling. My faith, my understanding of things was not what it is today. But looking back, I'm grateful that it was difficult to get in the Navy. And like I said, every phase of everything I've ever done has been just the same. And I'm sure that I'm not unique, that other people experience the same.

43:56Barry E. Wilmore:Yeah.

43:56Shawn Ryan:I think a lot of people do. Yeah.

43:58Barry E. Wilmore:So why did you pick the Navy?

44:00Shawn Ryan:Landing, the challenge of landing airplanes on boats, ultimately.

44:04Barry E. Wilmore:So before you even knew what any of this stuff was, you just wanted to land a plane on an aircraft carrier.

44:09Shawn Ryan:So I did talk to the Air Force. I talked to a Navy recruiter, Lieutenant Goddess. Oh, you're great. We want you. Come on, come on, come on. We're the Navy. Love to have you. Come on, come on. I talked to an Air Force recruiter. I don't remember his name. He's like, the Air Force only takes the best and the brightest. And I'm like, that probably ain't me. I'm going Navy. Oh, shit. So many factors. Again, the Lord steering me down the path that I was to go. And the Navy was it. Well, where did you wind up going? I went to initially the Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida. Gunnery Sergeant Tybertius Gerhardt, United States Marine Corps.

44:47Shawn Ryan:And, boy, I could, again, I keep alluding back to the book because there's several amazing stories about him. And I even referred back to him even when I was in Starliner, things that he had instilled in me. One thing he, it's in the book, too, but he's killing us one day. We're out right next to the bay on this flat asphalt area, and we're messing up, marching, just not doing well. and he sits us down and points us towards the bay with his back to the bay. And he starts, he lectures us for 30 minutes about the benefit of being disciplined, of focusing on what the task is. He said, the things you are hearing from me now may save your life in the future.

45:34And he was not right about once.

45:37Shawn Ryan:He was right about multiple times. it saved my life in the future. Things that he was instilling in me then. The whole time he's talking, there are dolphins in the bay, spinning dolphins, jumping and spinning behind him while he's talking. I couldn't have written a movie scene better than this. This man giving his all to these group of knuckleheads, me being one of them, instilling in things that, a mindset that would benefit them for the rest of their lives if they would listen, he hadn't seen those dolphins. We're not looking at anything, but what we're doing while we're marching, he had to have seen them, sat us down facing them, and gave us that gift.

46:21Shawn Ryan:The evil one, he was tough, but he obviously had a little soft side because he gave us that lecture while seeing this amazing portion of creation spinning behind him you know this is the Lord's providence Wow and I'm I'm grateful for that man I'm grateful for that system I'm grateful for our nation for those type of things that have been a benefit to me and now flow on is benefit to my family yeah Wow what did you end up flying oh that's another story you keep asking the right question you've done this before having I go through flight school, I did really well. The Lord gave me the ability to fly.

47:05Shawn Ryan:Number one in my class in all three phases, primary, intermediate jet, advanced jet. And matter of fact, I accelerated and graduated with some individuals that didn't start with me. So when I got to the point of winging, there was a guy, very talented aviator. He had 2 ,000 hours coming into the Navy, and he had done very well in primary flight school. But my grades in intermediate and advanced jet were better than his, though he did very, very well. Like I said, very talented. So when it came to the point of being at the end, they give all those grades, put them all together from all phases of flight to give you an aggregate score.

47:42Shawn Ryan:His was, I think, one point higher than mine. Therefore, only the first person gets their choice. He got his choice. And I got an airplane that I did not even have on my list. I was assigned to the A7E Corsair II. Single-seat attack aircraft. It was eventually, you know, we knew it was being phased out, but that was my assignment. And I was, I was bumped because I'd given my all in flight school and done well. And then I get a jet that's going out of, out of commission and didn't have a pointy nose, had a round nose. And it was a bummer. Damn. I'm just being honest. It was a bummer. Again, life's tough.

48:29Shawn Ryan:I didn't have a choice, though. As a matter of fact, the commanding officer of the A-4 squadron pulled me into his office, which he wouldn't have done otherwise, because they make the announcement of what you're flying in a group, group setting. He pulled me into his office and told me ahead of time and said, I even went and talked to the Admiral to try to get them to change this, and they wouldn't. Why would they put you on a fucking plane? I was number two. I wasn't number one. Quality spread. It was a need.

48:56Barry E. Wilmore:They're decommissioning it.

48:58Shawn Ryan:Well, so they had needs to put new fleet aviators into various airframes. And that was one of them. But Sean, the story continues. I was distraught. I finally get out to Lemoore, California, NES Lemoore. I check into VA-122. And it was the best thing that could have happened to me. That airplane, flying it, the people, the single seat guys, what became Vice Admiral Woody Lewis, guys I met in that community, great Americans. It was the best thing that could have happened. I loved flying the A-7. I mean, loved it. 60, 70 % of our training was down in the weeds. I mean, low altitude. Oh, man. And it was fabulous.

49:48Shawn Ryan:I had no idea. I didn't know what I didn't know. And that's a recurring theme in my life as well. I didn't know that I didn't know. But when I got there, these guys were amazing. They're telling their single seat stories. And those first two deployments on Desert Storm, I was in the A-7 during Desert Storm. Okay. Yeah, flew that. And only two squadrons left in the Navy off the USS Kennedy. And we were flying combat in the A-7. It was thrilling. Again, not knowing what I didn't know, the Lord, you know, he's directing our paths. It says, a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his paths. That's what Proverbs tells us.

50:25Shawn Ryan:And it is true. I am so grateful that I got A-7s and did not get anything on my list, as it turned out. It was fantastic.

50:36Barry E. Wilmore:What's the point of the A7? It's a light attack.

50:38Shawn Ryan:Day visual bomber. We bombed at night, too. We didn't have night vision goggles. That wasn't a capability, but it was the first aircraft with a heads-up display. So we had a HUD, a bombing symbology, all of that in the heads-up display. And it was thrilling. It was great to fly aboard the ship, challenging to fly aboard the ship. It had an engine that had a little bit of a slower spool up time, so it wasn't instantaneous as far as adding power when you needed it. amazing thrilling loved it why were you flying so low well we're flying low because you might be down there that was part of the training so we had we had certain deliveries that were classified with certain capabilities that were classified that we needed to be down in the weeds not detected and so that was a big part of the training because of that classified missions with classified weapons trying to maintain without being detected.

51:36Shawn Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. And these deliveries, I do talk about one of the deliveries in the book, over the shoulder, you fly over target. Let's hear it. Fly over target, low altitude, designate as you fly right over your target. So your system tightens up, you know, the onboard inertial navigation system, start a pull to the vertical about 125, 135 degrees nose high. The bomb comes off and goes up and you continue your pull. It goes up 30 ,000 feet. Don't know. Turns around, comes straight down. And one of my hits was 20 feet. Whoa. From that, we call it over the shoulder delivery. 20 feet. The tightness of the system, maintaining right on the exact, you know, symbology that you have to fly, releasing, the bomb comes off, you know, just keep your thumb on the pickle, you know, the thumb on your, I say the pickle, I say that like you know what I'm talking about, people know what I'm talking about.

52:37Shawn Ryan:There's the designate button where the bomb comes off. The bomb won't come off until the system says release in this mode. So you keep your thumb on it, you pull right up the line, stay on the line, exactly on the line, the system calculates when the bomb should come off to impact the target. And I got a 20-foot hit once over the shoulder. Bomb going up to, I don't know, 30 ,000 feet, way up there. As you continue, then you go back out low altitude and you egress. Thrilling, Sean. Thrilling. Absolutely thrilling. What did you bomb? Well, we're just hitting the targets here. We just, we have a target out in the, you know, this is a desert of El Centro, El Centro, California.

53:14Shawn Ryan:Loom Lobby, targets that were out there. I'm not even sure they even have those targets anymore. This was a long time ago. What were the targets? Connex boxes? Oh, they just have, yeah. They put a, Sometimes they put a tank out there. You know, they got triangulation where they can give you the hits. The bomb is just little blue training bombs. Okay. And when the bomb impacts, it blows a white smoke out the tail. Gotcha. It impacts the ground. Now, we also train with some live weapons as well. But, yeah, different cases, different scenarios. I never launched a live weapon over the shoulder. But some have, you know, because that's part of the training process.

53:48Shawn Ryan:I just didn't, you know, they're divvied out. These good deal actually drive live weapons. I never got one over the shoulder, but I got live weapons in many different scenarios, obviously in combat as well. Let's talk about taking off and landing on a carrier.

54:01Barry E. Wilmore:I've never even been on a carrier.

54:03Shawn Ryan:Really?

54:04Barry E. Wilmore:Uh-uh. Never even been on one.

54:05Shawn Ryan:We need to get you a trip out to one, even for a day. Right on. Okay, so the aircraft carrier flight deck, one of the most dangerous places on the surface of this planet.

54:16Barry E. Wilmore:Really?

54:16Shawn Ryan:You got jets, aircraft that are taxiing, turning, exhaust, going into afterburner, jet blast defectors coming up to deflect the jet blast, wires, you know, the cables on the landing cables are getting pulled out. Sometimes in the history, the story, I never saw the video, but I heard there was a video from like way back 1940s desert, I'm sorry, World War II timeframe, where maybe it was a little after that, where an aircraft hooked down, hits the cable, the cable snaps. And of course, it's whipping across the flight deck, the cable with high energy because it snapped with this high energy imparted into it.

54:56Shawn Ryan:And one of the chiefs is grabbing his belt and starts pulling it off as he's jumping over the cable because he knows it's probably going to impact some people's legs. And maybe he'll need to have a tourniquet. And he's getting a tourniquet ready in his hand. No way. Jumps up over the top, turning it in hand, starts running to somebody that was impacted by the cable. I never saw a cable snap, never snapped while I was on board, but I have heard of it happening. And like I said, the energy of a jet aircraft landing imparted into a cable that snaps that energy. I mean, that thing is whipping at very high speed.

55:32Shawn Ryan:So anyway, I heard about that video. I never saw it. I do have videos of cold catapults where the catapult doesn't give you the end speed that you need. And it's called a cold cat. So the aircraft settles off. The pilot, in this case, pulled the nose up too high. It was an A-6. didn't have flying speed, tried to jettison his external fuel tank, lose some weight, and maybe could keep flying, couldn't, ejected. And I don't think one of them didn't survive.

55:57Barry E. Wilmore:Oh, man.

55:57Shawn Ryan:But so these type of things, it's just part of the environment. It's a dangerous, dangerous place. And so landing on an aircraft carrier, it's challenging. That's one of the things in life I think a lot of people appreciate, that there are challenges in life, me being one of them and landing on, that's one of the things I dreamed about doing when I decided to join the military, landing on aircraft carriers. And then at night, oh my, we talk about the challenge wrapping up. You think about sitting here right now, you're looking at me, but your peripheral vision sees everything off to the side, right?

56:30Shawn Ryan:And in daytime, you can see the ground coming up. You can see, you know, if you get a little angle of bank, you can see that peripherally and your brain is processing all that and you're making corrections all the way down the glide slope to try to affect and land and hit the hook grabs the wire that they're targeting. If there's a four, four wires out, they're targeting the three wire, most likely in most scenarios. And they all do this with how they roll the visual landing aid system, the Fresnel lens, which is what you're looking at, looking at lineup out of your peripheral vision. That's daytime.

57:02Shawn Ryan:Not easy, but if that's what you do, you get accustomed to it. Nighttime, turn all these lights out the peripheral vision is gone you're just got the ball that we call it the ball the visual landing aid system it's a amber lights it's mirrors that have an amber light in the center and it's got green lights called the datum out the side and you want to keep that amber ball in the center of those green lights right okay so you go a little high you take a little power off you catch it if you go low if you go too low it's red you don't want there's no life. The term is those green lights. There's no life below the datums.

57:39Shawn Ryan:That's bad. You don't want to be low. You certainly won't be real low, red, because that's hit the back end of the carrier. Red, you're dead. Yeah, you don't want to do that. So at night, you don't have the peripheral cues. It's all visual on the landing aid system. And then, and there's also, there's lights that go right down the middle of the aircraft carrier landing deck. And there are drop lights that drop off the back end of the carrier. So if you're on lineup, that's a straight line. You get off lineup, what do you see? You see an angle, right? So out of your peripheral vision, you're looking to make sure you keep those lights straight.

58:15If you get off angle, you see the angle and the lights,

58:19Shawn Ryan:you know you're not on center line and you're correcting back. And doing all that without peripheral cues is very challenging at night. Especially, you got a little moon, you got a little peripheral cues, you got no moon, you got overcast. It's challenging.

58:34Barry E. Wilmore:I'm just curious, how much smaller is a carrier runway than what you're used to on the ground? I'm just trying to get some respect.

58:42Shawn Ryan:You get like 300 feet rollout, you touch down, boom, 300 feet, it stops you. So when you touch down on an aircraft carrier, you go full power every single time. Because if you could have a hook skip, skip the wires, you want to have full power on the jet, So you take off. Even when you land, you could land past the wires, full power. So you go full power, the wire grabs you, you hold full power until the yellow shirt runs out and says, throttle back, throttle back, throttle back. And then you pull power. If you were to pull power early or pull power when you touch down, that's called a cut pass.

59:18Shawn Ryan:And every pass is graded, different scoring. A cut pass is a zero in the grading scheme. And I don't know anyone, maybe it's happened, but I'm not familiar with anyone that has had two cut passes in a career that continue to fly around the aircraft carrier. It's that big a deal. You have to be ready, power on. If you're that guy that, you know, the brain fart issue and you pull back instead of adding power, we can't have that. Man. Yeah. How long, so 300 feet, how long is a typical runway? I would say the landing distance is probably, you know, we could look it up. It's probably 600 feet, the distance.

1:00:02Shawn Ryan:But the distance from where you touch down until you stop, 300, 350 feet. Yeah, it's not even quite the length of a football field. So, yeah, you're forwarding your straps once you grab the wire, full power. So, a normal landing in an F-18, how short could you land and stop? Depends on your fuel weight, how much fuel you have. You could probably do it in maybe 2 ,000, less than 2 ,000 feet. But our runways are 7 ,000 plus.

1:00:32Barry E. Wilmore:Holy shit.

1:00:33Shawn Ryan:Yeah, like in a T-38, which I flew the last 25 years with NASA, we are not allowed to go to a runway less than 7 ,000 feet. Yeah, so the difference between a carrier landing and a normal landing, very different. Wow. Yeah, very different. 300 feet? Yeah. Wow. Roughly, yeah. 6 ,300 foot difference. That sets you apart. I mean, there's always that interforce cajoling, if you will, with the Air Force. Y 'all got long runways to land on. It's easy. We do that too. But they can't do what we do as far as landing on a carrier.

1:01:09Barry E. Wilmore:Damn. Do all naval aviators do that? What's that? Do all naval aviators have to land on carriers?

1:01:17Shawn Ryan:No, no, it's just jet. There's also some propellers. There's the E-2 Hawkeye. It's got the dome on top of it. It's a propeller airplane, and it lands on carriers. There's carry-on delivery systems. It used to be a C-3, I think it was called, a COD, a big fat-looking plane that landed aboard the aircraft carrier. But there are also, that's the thing about initially in flight school, the number one guy gets his choice. If you wanted to go jets and you want to be guaranteed jets, you have to be number one. Because the Navy, quality spread from that first primary timing, they will send you to propellers or they'll send you to helicopters based on the needs of the Navy.

1:01:56Shawn Ryan:Oh, wow. The only one that's guaranteed the jets is that number one guy.

1:02:01Barry E. Wilmore:So you don't even know if you're going helicopters? No, I joined the Navy wanting to fly, you know, pointy-nosed aircraft off aircraft carriers.

1:02:09Shawn Ryan:But even that first phase of training dictates whether or not that would happen. And it's not to say that if you're number 10 in the class, the graduating class, that you wouldn't get jets, but you're not guaranteed it unless you're the number one guy. Wow. That's the only one guaranteed it. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

1:02:25Barry E. Wilmore:Did you fly anything else during your time in Sweden?

1:02:28Shawn Ryan:Oh, yeah, I flew F-18s mostly. I flew more of that than the A-7. F-18, another, goodness, amazing. F-18, you air-to-air mode. Select it on the throttles and the stick. Air-to-air mode. Fight your way in. Switch to air.

1:02:44Barry E. Wilmore:It's single seat, too?

1:02:44Shawn Ryan:Pardon? It's single seat. F-18C. Fight your way in, air-to-air. Switch to air-to-ground mode. Bombs on target, on time. Pull off target. Fight your way out, air-to-air mode. But that's why, you know, earlier I said that if I had one life to live, NASA, astronaut, it has high highs. But if I can only do one, knowing what I know now, I'd be a naval aviator in a heartbeat. Fight your way in, bombs on target on time, fight your way out. There's nothing like it. Going out to Fallon, there's actually other naval aviators playing the bad guys in airplanes, F-5s and other aircraft. and simulating. You've got these pods on your aircraft where you link up to a ground station.

1:03:30Shawn Ryan:All the aircraft have pods. And so you can actually go back and replay the fight and actually see where you shot. Did the weapon impact? Was it within the weapons envelope when you shot? You can replay the whole thing. And to go in and fight your way in, bombs on target, fight your way out, really doing it with real aircraft. And it's real, you know, you train like you're fighting, trained in real life scenarios. There is nothing, nothing like it on or off the planet. Man. Nothing like it. That's awesome. So when I talked about earlier about some of these great Americans that I have served with that master this capability that our government has provided them to protect our nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic, there's not a higher level of appreciation for those individuals that I can imagine finding anywhere than those guys that do that and do it well, sacrificing for their countries and their families doing the same.

1:04:32Shawn Ryan:Because I'll tell you another, how stupid I was. I got many, I was stupid stories. I'm at my very first squadron. We have a squadron function. Everybody's together at a, you know, just Friday night social. And this commanding officer, my executive officer's wife, I overheard her talking. And she was saying, yeah, when we finish the command tour, we're going to do this and we're hoping to get this orders. And she was, we, we, we, we. And I'm like, I'm single at the time. I'm like, we? It's not we, it's his career. What do you mean we? As she's saying all this. I'm thinking this. I didn't say it to her.

1:05:10Shawn Ryan:Boy, was I stupid. That's stupid. Because this is a family unit sacrificing for their nation. Because when I say sacrificing, there's significant sacrifice. I mean, there's separation. There's challenges of emotional separation because of what the individual that's on the pointy end of the spear is doing and the hazards associated with that. And this is the family unit doing this together. And when she said We, she was absolutely right. And I was dumb, stupid, new, didn't know what I didn't know. But I learned it pretty quickly, thankfully.

1:05:51Barry E. Wilmore:Can you talk about your first mission, first real-world mission?

1:05:57Shawn Ryan:It might be better if I talked about the first real-world night mission. Okay. Yeah, I had a couple of day missions. So, set the scenario. John F. Kennedy, CV-67, is in the Red Sea. We would launch like 42 aircraft on a strike mission into bad guy country, which was Desert Storm at the time, into Iraq. We would launch…

1:06:21Barry E. Wilmore:42 aircraft at a time?

1:06:22Shawn Ryan:We would launch 42 aircraft off the carrier. We would rendezvous, all these aircraft would rendezvous on tankers.

1:06:29Barry E. Wilmore:Whoa, how long does it take to launch 42 aircraft off an aircraft carrier? I would think the first one would be out of fuel by the time the 42nd winds up.

1:06:37Shawn Ryan:Well, that's what I'm saying. We would launch, we would rendezvous with Air Force tankers. And think about this at night. Air Force tankers, eight of them. And they're stacked up in 1 ,000 foot, these Air Force tankers, KC-135s or KC-10s. They're stacked up from 18 ,000 feet all the way up to 26 ,000 feet. Wow. nose to tail, and you can see their lights. This is nighttime. And you're rendezvousing on your tanker, your designated tanker, and you have to be level. You can't be low because now you're in somebody else's airspace that is rendezvousing on another tanker a thousand feet below you. So we're rendezvousing 42 airplanes on these tankers to refuel.

1:07:19Shawn Ryan:You stay on the left wing. Someone goes in, plugs the tanker, fills up. They go to the right wing and they stay there. The next guy comes, he goes outside, the next one, next one, next one, until everybody's got gas. And then the ones that started, they go back a couple, maybe the first two go back and top off again. Then you leave the tankers, you go in country, lights on, until you get close to the border. And then you separate with altitude and timing splits to go in country, lights off at that point. You don't want to be, you know, the enemy to look up and see you. So you're lights off, 42 aircraft, going in to prosecute a target.

1:07:57Shawn Ryan:lights out, so you can't see anybody, but you know they're there. And this was my first night mission. I'd had a couple of day missions. We crossed the border. Something launches. I learned then that at daytime, a missile launches. You got to be looking at it or you don't see it. Triple A, anti-aircraft artillery fired. You got to be looking at it. You don't see it. At night, your peripheral vision gets it all. It's dark and you see the light and you don't have to be looking directly at it. Something launched in the distance. At least I thought it was a distance. I didn't know because depth perception is hard at night.

1:08:36Shawn Ryan:And it's a missile. I hadn't seen a missile launch it at night. This was pretty eye-opening. And it launches and it goes higher and higher and higher. I'm at like 27 ,000 feet, 23 ,000 feet. It goes above me. And it seems like it's way out there. And SCUD missiles, it's the NATO designation for the missile that the Iraqis had. They had launched a couple of scuds before this, and this turned out to be one as well, and it was going towards the west, towards Israel. I don't know if you remember anything about the conflict, but they were launching some against Israel, trying to get Israel engaged, because if Israel got engaged, then maybe the rest of the Arab nations would get engaged as well.

1:09:09Shawn Ryan:But Israel wouldn't. They wouldn't engage with them. Anyway, it goes off that way. And so this gets your heart pumping. I'll bet. Let me fast forward to the issue, to what happened. And so I wound up kind of a little bit in front of the strike package. I had a different role. I wasn't a bomber. I wasn't bombing the ground or the target. But I had a different role, which put me a little bit in front of the strike package. When it came time to turn and head back and leave, an SA-8 gets launched. And my radar warning receiver, the raw gear, is going nuts. What's an SA-8? SA-8. It's a surface-to-air missile.

1:09:46Shawn Ryan:Surface-to-air missile. And it's got a designation. An SA-2 is like a telephone pole. And it's not real maneuverable, but it'll go further because it's got more propellant because it's really big. An SA-8, smaller, more of a tactical, close-in, but very maneuverable, out to about 8 miles, 25 ,000-ish feet. And we knew that they were there. We got intel. We know they're there. That's part of what we're targeting is to target them. But they fire as I'm turning, and my raw gear lights up, and it's visual. It's got 8s on the display, and it's also aural. So it's going different sounds for different types of something, whatever, different types of radars or whatever that is locking onto you.

1:10:27Shawn Ryan:So my radar raw gear goes off. I see eights. I look off my left wing and I see a light come up above the cloud. It was just a puffy cloud, a small one, come up above the cloud. And it looks like it's targeting me. If it's not targeting me, it'll start moving on the canopy. If it is targeting me, it's going to stay right in the same spot coming at me. And it didn't move on the canopy. It's coming right at me. I had never had a missile shot at me at night before. And so training, what you try to do is try to time it such that you pull max G into a missile so it can't have to turn and get you. That's kind of what the mindset is, what you're trying to do.

1:11:13Shawn Ryan:But at night, the depth perception is not there. I don't know how close this thing is. I have no idea. So maybe it races through my mind. How long has it been going? How fast does it travel in six seconds? Is it going three miles in six seconds? It's only really viable. SA-8s I knew were only viable. The heart of their envelope was two to three miles. Get to four, five, six, it's going to have less maneuverability. And so when it got to a point, I pulled and it wound up going below me. Did it break lock? Did my maneuver kill it? Did it run out of juice? I have no idea. I just know I didn't get hit.

1:11:49Shawn Ryan:And so I reached down and I, we had in this, it's kind of a rudimentary computer system, but it had a thumb wheel where you would punch in a latitude, longitude, lat long, and you'd have a route that you could have on your system. So I flipped the thumb wheel to the egress target. I mean, egress destination back into Saudi Arabia. And I just put the needle on the nose. What I mean by that is on your heading situation indicator, it's got a needle. And I turned until the needle was directly vertical, needle on the nose. I am heading towards my egress heading. As I do that and I start to turn, another missile gets locked.

1:12:30Shawn Ryan:The wall gear goes off. I turn. I see another missile coming. This one didn't. It stayed on my canopy for just a couple of seconds. And then it started fading. And it was not a factor for me. and of course people are hearing these missiles and you hear on the radio missile in the air missile in the air and so it's it's not quiet i turn i put the needle on the nose and i am screaming as fast as the save a seven will go i am giving it all she's got full power full grunt we call it and off we go again i think you know the lord put it in my mind i'm like something's not right i don't know what's not right something's not right what's not right and i start looking i'm looking out, of course, my head's on a swivel looking for other missiles.

1:13:11Shawn Ryan:My raw gear is quiet, but I'm still looking for missiles. But something's not right. I don't know what it is. It wasn't, it was just below a half moon that night that we launched. And the moon, as I'm going in, was behind me. So as I'm coming out, it should be right in front of me. And some, finally, I got the wits about me and I look and the moon's not in front of me like I thought it was. And it's over here. I'm like, uh-oh, I look at my system, I'm needle on the nose, I look down, it's destination number 16. The target was destination number 14. My egress heading was destination number 15. I had put destination in destination 16, I'd put the alternate target.

1:13:54Shawn Ryan:If you're going to get 42 airplanes in the air over bad guy country, five-hour missions, tanking all these assets, you don't want to get there and the weather be bad and you can't do your business. So you have an alternate target just in case. And I'd punch that alternate target into destination 16. When I reached down to flip that thumb wheel, I went from 14. It went two destinations to 16. I didn't check it. I'm just needle on the nose. I look down. I realize it. I flip the needle. I mean, I flip the destination up to 15. The needle goes here, which is, of course, now really. So I'm heading towards the alternate target and don't know it.

1:14:33Shawn Ryan:Fog of war, we call it, right? And if a target is worthy to be targeted by us, then it's probably worthy to be protected by them. And it was. I think they had SA-2s and 3s. So I get an SA-2 indication right on my nose, and I see a light in the distance. I don't know how far, but it's pretty far. And I'm like, oh, my. So now I got a third missile shot at me. I turn at this point, and I put the moon right in front of me. and I really didn't look back. I did dispense. We have chaff and flares. Chaff, it'll shoot out radar deflective material where the radar will hopefully glom onto that. Flare, of course, is a really hot flare that goes out if it's a surface-to-air, a heat-seeking missile.

1:15:23Shawn Ryan:And I had forgotten about it on the first two missile engagements. I just, I didn't even, it never entered my mind. I didn't think about dispensing chaff. But this time I remembered it. I spent a loaded chaff. It's a program. It spits it out at a certain way for certain threats, which we had loaded pre. I spit out chaff as I turn, and I keep needle on the nose. I never look back. I have no idea what happened with that missile. Did it come close? Was it far away? I have no idea. I just know it didn't get me. Lessons learned, right? So what put me in that position was a tactic early in the conflict that we wanted to keep the aircraft all together for the fighter picture, the air-to-air picture.

1:16:01Shawn Ryan:If all of our aircraft are together, the fighters that are looking for bad guys, they know where we are. It keeps the chance of, we call it blue on blue. Blue is good, red is bad guy, right? We don't want to be blue on blue, good on good. So you keep them together. So this tactic we used kept me in a position I should have already been gone. But because of this tactic we were using, we stopped that after this mission. Once you finish whatever you're doing, you leave. We got transponder codes. We got altitudes we can fly. which can deconflict the air-to-air picture. And we use that instead of trying to just keep the aircraft physically in close proximity.

1:16:40Shawn Ryan:A lesson learned the hard way, at least for me. Wow.

1:16:45Barry E. Wilmore:So, you know, fog of war. And that's, hold on, that's your first night mission?

1:16:49Shawn Ryan:First night mission, yeah. I had several after that where, and I try to, you know, again, the purpose of putting them in the book is not to say, hey, look what I did. I don't care. it's to see the progression of what the Lord situation put me in and preparation for the next preparation for the next preparation for the next which you know ultimately this is wrapped around the starliner story which is a baseline for that and it all purposes to glorify him truly truly is as we tell this again encourage people in dealing with the now being prepared for the now and also focus on things that are eternal which is only through Jesus Christ our Lord Yeah.

1:17:29Barry E. Wilmore:Did you drop any ordinance?

1:17:31Shawn Ryan:Oh, yeah. A lot.

1:17:33Barry E. Wilmore:Do you want to, anything stick out there?

1:17:37Shawn Ryan:Yeah. Night mission, again, no air-to-air threat. 8A7s going into a target area, just us. We call them kill boxes. Just a latitude, longitude, 10-by-10-mile box you go into in the bad guy country. before the ground war, before there were any ground troops there. And anything you see in the kill box, prosecute it. We would drop a flare, a loo-two flares. The lead would drop a flare. The flare would fall. A parachute would open under the flare. The flare would light up, and it would illuminate the ground. And anything you saw underneath the ground, prosecuted it. Again, launching office, there's only eight of us.

1:18:21Shawn Ryan:We launched. There was one tanker for all eight of us. I'm last. I'm junior. I'm pretty junior. You know, I went on deployment. I had decent landing grades. Got back. I'd been back only three months. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. And then they send aircraft carriers, kind of like they are right now, over there. And Kennedy was one of them. And they were short on pilots. So I was at home in Tennessee, and my XO calls me and says, Butch, I need you to come back. I can't tell you why. Well, one of my pistons in my 1984 Ford Ranger had blown on my way up there. It was in the shop. So I called the guy.

1:18:57Shawn Ryan:I said, hey, you got to put my truck together now. I got to go. So I got back, found out that they're sending me to another squadron on the Kennedy. So basically, I had almost two years where I was at sea, you know, extended unexpected deployments. Wow. Kind of the theme of the life here. So I'd been home for three months, but I went straight to sea, and this one was an eight-month deployment. Desert Shield, Desert Storm. Excuse me. So I'm in this squadron. It's not my squadron, but I've assimilated into it. We're on this mission. and the flight lead, I'm sorry, rendezvous on the tanker. I'm dashed last because I'm junior.

1:19:31Shawn Ryan:That's kind of why I told that story. I'm junior. I come up, I go to plug, I plug in and the tanker says, tanker's dry. Tanker's dry? It means he can't give me any gas. So seven aircraft are off to the right. He's dry. I got no gas. I got to have gas. And the flight lead tells me to go rendezvous with the tanker that was going to give us fuel after we got out of country and get my gas. And they went in country without me. So they dropped the flare, did the kill box, prosecuted whatever they saw. I went and got gas. I finally make it up to the border. I'm actually 50 miles south of the border. They're checking out.

1:20:12Shawn Ryan:And I'm assuming that he's going to have me just join up and come back to the ship. I can't land on the aircraft carrier with my weapons load out because you can only, you have to have a certain amount of, you know, extra fuel in case you have trouble getting aboard and you can't have sufficient fuel and the weapons weight. The aircraft cannot land at that heavy of a weight. So I would have had to have, you know, jettison, we call it pickle, jettison some of my weapons into the Red Sea, unfused, which we don't want to do. So he tells me to go in country, said, there's no threat, go into country, drop your bombs.

1:20:47Shawn Ryan:I'm thinking. So I even asked him, I said, you want me to go, I think crank was the code word. You want me to go to crank and deploy weapons? He said, affirmative. So he told me to go in country alone. Wow. Over bad guy country alone. It does not seem like a good idea. I didn't think so either, but I'm a junior. I'm junior. I'm, you know, he's a flight lead. I'm gonna do what he says. So I go in country alone. You know, when you get in situations, fear can be detrimental. It can be detrimental to performance. And this is part of what happened with Starliner when I got to that point. I won't talk about that now, but fear can be very detrimental.

1:21:28Shawn Ryan:When I got all these missions that I flew, when I'd get 20 miles south of the border, there was apprehension. But when I got 20 miles south of the border, gone. Focus. This is a job. I got my responsibility. My friends and crewmates, you know, in their aircraft, they're dependent on me. And there was no fear. It is time to go. On this mission, I'm going in country alone. There's fear. I mean, if the stick between my legs, if I didn't have that stick there, my knees would probably be hitting together because I'm going in country alone. I've been in country. Lights are out. You don't see the other airplanes at night, but you know they're there.

1:22:06Shawn Ryan:Mutually supportive. But this time, I'm going in alone. Wow. Because my flight lead told me to. And he said, just drop your bombs B-52 style. B-52 means straight and level. Whatever. I'll do 27, 23 ,000 feet, whatever I want. Just drop them. Come on and then come to the ship. So I go in country and I thought, okay, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to drop my bombs pointing outbound. I'm not going to drop them inbound and then turn. I'm going to go, turn, drop them as I'm leaving. So when they hit, I'm going to be way down there. As I did the turn, looking back, they started shooting at me. AAA.

1:22:43Shawn Ryan:I'm way above it. Realize these flares have already gone out now. I can't see the ground. It's black. The flares that they had, that they used to see the ground to prosecute targets, you know, that flare is gone.

1:22:55Barry E. Wilmore:Mm-hmm.

1:22:57Shawn Ryan:But them shooting at me gave me a target. Mm-hmm. So as I do the turn, they start shooting, they give me a target. So I rolled in and deployed my weapons, and of course, they impacted, and the shooting stopped. People have asked me, how do you rationalize that with what God's Word says about not killing and all that, you know, the murder? And I say, well, this is not murder. This is Romans 13. This is an extension of the governments that he has instituted to keep evil at bay. Go read Romans 13. I mean, if you do evil, you should be fearful. And that's what we are as military members. We are extension of our government.

1:23:42Shawn Ryan:And I trust my government to do the right things for the right reasons, because that's what we've done historically. and as an extension of my government, I'm not murdering. I'm not in that light. I am Romans 13 as an extension of my government, and I have no problem with that because evil needs to be held at bay because if it's not, it will overtake everything, and we know that. Wow. So anyway, prosecute the target. They stopped shooting, and I went back to the ship. You know, at the ship, you ever heard of Barney Clark? I haven't. Never heard the name Barney Clark? I have not. Barney Clark was the first recipient of an artificial heart back in like 1980-something, maybe 1980.

1:24:25Shawn Ryan:He lived, I think, for three months after he got this artificial heart. So on the ship, in his honor, we named, you have four meals on a ship on an aircraft carrier, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight rations, mid-rats. So you're flying at night, you come back, Mid-Rats is you go to the ward room, go to Mid-Rats, and one of the options to order was the Barney Clark. And the Barney Clark was the double meat, double cheese, double egg, double bacon hamburger, full of cholesterol, so named in his honor. So back to the ship, go get a Barney Clark, and then you go to debrief. Right on. Yeah. Damn.

1:25:06Shawn Ryan:Damn. Yeah.

1:25:09Barry E. Wilmore:Wow. Would you have a question about refueling? So they stack them up. Right.

1:25:17Shawn Ryan:If you've got a lot of aircraft, you know, you don't want blue on blue. You don't want aircraft hitting aircraft. And so that's why we did it. The aircraft, the aircraft, it was quite a sight to see, especially in your daytime. You see eight huge airplanes stacked up a thousand feet. They're following the lead down at the bottom. and refueling all these aircraft simultaneously, eight at a time, as you're cycling through, and then you're getting off to the right side and eventually get the whole air wing, you know, those 42-plus aircraft, off to the side. And then you go in country, daytime. It's quite a sight.

1:25:51Shawn Ryan:I mean, I'd hate to be on the ground seeing this coming at me. I mean, it's quite a sight. And it's a formidable force as well with the weapons loadout and, you know, the air-to-air aircraft protecting the strikers and the strikers focused on their task of putting bombs on target on time. And that's why I said the F-18, you're all of that. You do it all yourself. You're fighting your way in, bombs on target on time, fighting your way out. Multiple roles, multiple capabilities. And that aircraft, wow, it is an amazing platform. Sea models are no longer in. That's what I flew. They're no longer in the Navy.

1:26:26Shawn Ryan:When I flew them, initially, we had brand new. They had new car smell. I mean, brand smacking new from St. Louis, the facility in St. Louis, where they put them together. Now there's no more in the Navy. The Marine Corps is still flying some C models, but they're all the newer E and F models now. Top Gun Maverick, Maverick was flying the brand new, the E model, the newer one. I flew the C models, but there was nothing like a C model. It was amazing.

1:26:50Barry E. Wilmore:Did you go to Top Gun? I did. That's Fallon, right?

1:26:54Shawn Ryan:It is. It is now. It was at Miramar in San Diego, and they moved it to Fallon many years back when I was active duty. I didn't go the long course, but I went to what was called the short course, which was a couple of flights. I just didn't have time in my training flow with the test pilot school and all that stuff to do the long course. I would have loved to, but I didn't do that, but I did do the short course. Yeah.

1:27:18Barry E. Wilmore:What is the point of Top Gun? What is the...

1:27:21Shawn Ryan:You take certain percentage of aviators and you give them this high level training, elite training for tactics, realize the Air Force pilots, they're not aviators, naval aviators, Air Force pilots, their primary job is tactics and flying the airplane. The Navy, we can't take a whole bunch of people aboard the aircraft carrier. So naval aviators, their primary purpose is flying the aircraft, but we also have division officer jobs in charge of the troops and various, you know, ordinance officer and, you know, the guys that work on the avionics officer. And we have different roles and responsibilities that all the pilots have.

1:28:03Shawn Ryan:Department heads when you get more senior. So we have to fulfill all those administrative jobs and fly. The Air Force, they have some administrative jobs, but not like we do in the Navy. So Top Gun is to focus on the tactics. As the tactics change, you want to get that into the fleet. So you send some fleet guys, a guy or two from your squadron, and then you send those back to the fleet. And we have a weapons school at the different locations, like the East Coast F-18 RAG, Strike Fighter Wings Atlantic, has a weapons, at least when I was there, had a weapons school. I was the OPSO for a period of time, operations officer of the weapons school.

1:28:39Shawn Ryan:Bunch of top gun graduates go into the squadrons, fly with the squadrons, train them, check rides with their people to make sure that their tactics are acceptable up to the level of snuff of what the most current tactics are, various weapons employment, air-to-air, air-ground, all of that. So that's the purpose of Top Gun, to keep our tactics at the supreme level. I think Top Gun actually kind of says that at the beginning of it, why it was instituted initially, the movie, the movie Top Gun, and Top Gun Maverick as well. So that's the purpose, and we're making sure the fleet is trained, ready to fight, if caught into that action.

1:29:17Shawn Ryan:Right on. Right on. Well,

1:29:20Barry E. Wilmore:Butch, let's take a quick break. Break time. Most gear looks good until you actually start using it. Then you find out pretty quickly what holds up and what doesn't. That's why I keep coming back to Roka. These aren't just lifestyle sunglasses pretending to be performance gear. I've worn mine training on the range, traveling, and outdoors for long days, and they stay locked in place the entire time. They're incredibly lightweight, the optics are razor sharp with zero glare, and you honestly forget you're even wearing them. But they still look clean enough to wear anywhere. Not overly tactical, just modern, functional design that works every day.

1:30:10Barry E. Wilmore:Roka was born in Austin, Texas, and everything about them reflects that performance-first mindset. And if you need prescription lenses, they offer both sunglasses and eyeglasses options built to the same standard. And whether you're outfitting a law enforcement unit, a military team, or looking for corporate gifts that don't suck, Roka offers wholesale partnerships to make it happen. Roka isn't just eyewear, it's confidence. You can wear every single day. They're the real deal. Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out for yourself at Roka.com and use code SRS for 20 % off site-wide at checkout.

1:30:51Barry E. Wilmore:That's R-O-K-A.com and use code SRS. Hi, I'm Sarah Adams, the host of Vigilance Elites, The Watch Floor, where we highlight what matters. It became a permissive state. Explain to you why it matters, and then aim to leave you feeling better informed than you were before you hit play. Terrorists, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime. Not everything is urgent, but this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know.

1:31:37Barry E. Wilmore:All right, Butch, we're back from the break. And as much as I want to dive into your Navy career in all the missions that you went on, I want to get to space.

1:31:50Shawn Ryan:Sure.

1:31:51Barry E. Wilmore:And so why did you leave the Navy?

1:31:59Shawn Ryan:So the Navy has a process, obviously the test pilot program. And this is one of the things that before I ever entered the Navy, how can I use the foundation I built at Tennessee Tech, engineering, and go forward with that? And I even then thought maybe I could eventually get into the test pilot program. So once I got back from my second deployment, which was, like I said, two years at sea almost, a desert storm, I had a unique resume, if you will, in that I was fairly junior, two deployments, combat time. And so I made the application to test pilot school. And that was one of the one of the few easy things in life.

1:32:33Shawn Ryan:And I easy, but I didn't have to apply multiple times. I just applied that one time. I had a decent resume at that point. And so they took me initially. And so going to the school, go through that process as a part of the school training. We want a couple of field trips. One of the places we went was Johnson Space Center, where the astronauts live and train in Houston, Texas. And when we were there and seeing what they did and what those opportunities were, there were some people that I knew, friends that I had that were there. And I began to think, wow, wow, this might be something that would be interesting to maybe see if I could maybe go that way.

1:33:11Shawn Ryan:I didn't have a master's degree at the time. I was in the process of working on it and wound up, it wasn't planned, but I wound up getting two master's degrees. One from Tennessee Tech, electrical engineering, another from University of Tennessee, aviation systems. Both of them turned out to be very beneficial as a process of eventually getting selected by NASA. So I made four applications in the ensuing years. It was every two years they were selected. That's over an eight year period. I actually got called down for an interview on the third application and went through that interview process.

1:33:43Shawn Ryan:Had four days notice before I went. Wasn't thrilled with my interview. They did a background check, which is encouraging because those aren't cheap, like several thousand dollars to do a background check. Go through that process. Looks like I'm going to get selected. Got the background check done, but they didn't select me. And so three days after I found out.

1:34:01Barry E. Wilmore:Like security clearance background?

1:34:02Shawn Ryan:Everything.

1:34:03Barry E. Wilmore:Okay.

1:34:03Shawn Ryan:They're checking everything.

1:34:04Barry E. Wilmore:The SF-86 type probably way better than that.

1:34:07Shawn Ryan:I mean, I've got a super secret clearance, but still they're doing that type of background check for NASA. Just for the interview. This is after the interview. if they're looking at you after you go down for the week. And trust me, the week is medical. It's mostly medical, and you get one hour with the board. Are you serious? You get one hour, yeah. And basically, they set the room up in a T, and they set you in the corner of the T. So you got people here, you got people behind you. And I think they did that just to give you a situation, a unique situation, because you're talking to, you may ask me the question, but I'm talking to the room.

1:34:42Shawn Ryan:And I've got to address everybody in the room as I'm talking. in that T scenario. And the chief of the selection board, the two years I interviewed, was John Young. John Young is one of 12 men to step foot on the moon. And from an aviator standpoint, the astronaut of astronauts, the premier astronaut is John Young. He flew in Gemini, the first Gemini mission. He flew in Apollo twice, stood on the surface of the moon, Apollo 16. He flew the first space shuttle. He flew later in space. He had flown six times. The only person at the time to fly four different spacecraft, one of which was the lunar module to and from the moon.

1:35:29Shawn Ryan:And so he's sitting on the board. He's the chairman of the board. As a matter of fact, my second interview, I go into the room, sit down at the corner of the tea. He goes, okay, Butch, you know what we want. Start talking. That's what he did. It did kind of set me at ease though. It did. The first interview, I, uh, you know, and said, I had four days to prepare. And as I'm sitting there talking, kind of like today I'm talking about me, that was the first time I had talked about me ever out loud. I'd thought what I wanted to say. I didn't make an outline, but I'm sitting there talking to complete strangers around the tea about me out loud.

1:36:08And I'm like, as I'm doing, I'm like, this is hard.

1:36:12Shawn Ryan:Talking about me, this is hard. And so they did the background check. I didn't get selected. The next time, two years later, I thought I'll try one more time. I put the application in. I got three months notice because I was transitioning, moving from the fleet. I was going to shore duty from sea duty. I was in Virginia Beach, Virginia. That's where they moved all the F-18 squadrons. And I was going to be the exchange pilot instructor, Navy exchange pilot at Air Force Test Pilot School in Edwards Air Force Base in California. So I was making that transition. I couldn't come initially when they called me.

1:36:49Shawn Ryan:They were having interviews over the next several months. They said, well, we'll pencil you in for, you know, it was three months from that point. So I spent the next three months like driving across the country. My wife, bless her heart. I talked about me out loud constantly just to get accustomed to it. Because the first time it was so hard. Yeah. So I'm talking to her. We're driving. And I just talked. I told stories she had never heard. I'm surprised I remembered them. Just to get used to talking about me, which was not easy. I went into that interview. When I've listed the first interview, you know, uh, and I'm thinking back, I shouldn't have said that.

1:37:26Shawn Ryan:I'm uh, and you know, I shouldn't have said that. The second interview, I had none of that. I didn't feel like I uh and you knowed. And there was nothing that I said that I wished I hadn't. There was nothing I didn't say that I wish I had because I just got accustomed to talking about me with my wife. Bless her heart. Praise her for enduring all of that. But she was, you know, it's like I said earlier, we're the team. It's a team. It's not just me. It's us. And so she was all on board with listening and hearing and giving some constructive criticism. And I'm grateful for that. So I did get selected.

1:38:00Shawn Ryan:Obviously, I got selected. I said this was the last time I'm going to try. I got selected. And then, of course, the NASA 25 years later, here I am, just left NASA. Looking back, I don't know if I said this earlier, but, you know, this whole thing, it's a privilege, right? It's a privilege to serve. And I look back at those early years, those desires that kid had, and where the Lord allowed my path to go, and just the fact that the Navy finally took me, though it was hard, it's a privilege. Serving our nation in conflict is a privilege. I think back to all those people that didn't come back from those conflicts.

1:38:42Shawn Ryan:I mean, Memorial Day is a huge day for me and yourself and others as well because we enjoy what we enjoy because of them. And I am patriotic. And I know you are too and those other individuals I've mentioned earlier. And a privilege to serve and then serve your nation and its space program. Oh, what a privilege there as well. Beyond my ability to really adequately articulate day in and day out. Not to say everything's easy, nothing's easy. Life's tough. But overall, all of it, a privilege, regardless of what the situation is. So to get selected, this is something as a kid. I mean, my mom and dad got a freezer and it came in a big box.

1:39:27Shawn Ryan:And my brother and I made a spacecraft out of it, made cardboard helmets. And, you know, we imagined and, you know, drew a black crayon, made a window, poked holes in it so the light would shine through, look like stars. And, you know, we did this as kids. Not because I was trying to want to be an astronaut, but I wanted to be an astronaut. When the first thing I wanted to be, first thing I wanted to be was a garbage man because the garbage man was strong. He could pick that can up and put it on his shoulder. And that's what I wanted to be first. But as I got older, it'd be a garbage, it'd be an astronaut.

1:39:56Shawn Ryan:And if something was in it, you know, your mind's eye, you'd dream of that, but never think that would happen. And here I am. Wow. My nation selected me to do this. Wow. What a privilege. And then moving, whole new lifestyle. Very different from, you know, sea duty, shore duty, sea duty, you know, deployments, detachments, gone, you know, all of that. Though my wife loved the fleet. She loved it. The camaraderie in the squadrons, the other spouses is just a special bond that people may not be aware of. And squadron life is fabulous. Serving with these individuals, these patriots, it's fabulous.

1:40:33Shawn Ryan:It's just such a privilege, like I said. But anyway, that's kind of the process. It wasn't something I dreamed of as a kid, not something I strove for. But over the course of time, croquet's a game, you've got wickets you go through. Eventually, as I look back at life, I'd gone through all these wickets and those are the wickets you got to have to be eligible to be selected by NASA. So I made application, eventually wore them down and they took me. Right on. Where do you start when you get in? You go right into astronaut, astronaut candidate training, ASCAN. I was your ASCAN. And at the time we went through and studied the, learned everything we could about the space shuttle.

1:41:16Shawn Ryan:What a complex spacecraft, probably the most complex spacecraft ever designed and built. Because this spacecraft wasn't a capsule. It had to launch like a capsule, orbit like any other spacecraft orbits, and then fly back in the atmosphere to a runway. And, you know, quad redundant computers and all interacted with the reaction control system jets and auxiliary power units that power the moving components to fly in the atmosphere and all the reaction control system jets, like I said, that maneuver in space. It's a super, super complicated spacecraft. And we try to learn, you learn a system at a time.

1:41:52Shawn Ryan:You have a single task trainer, a single system task trainer, SSTT. And we go into that, we learn the system, eventually put them all together and you integrate them all and you learn all that. And then of course, we're also learning the space station, which was new and coming online. We were building at the time and all of that process. And it's, uh, by one of the first instructors that we was an astronaut, a current astronaut, that gave us a brief. And he said, okay, guys, here's your task. Know everything and perform it well. And I'm like, I may not be here long. If that's what the expectation is out of me, I may not last.

1:42:36Shawn Ryan:My brain didn't have that capability. But honestly, why would you set a lower goal, right? To do great things takes great preparation, great energy, great endeavors. Take that. And if you're going to set a goal, know most things and perform them okay. That's your goal. That is not this business. Know everything and perform it well was the right thing to say. I can't do that. Nobody can. But that's what you're striving for. Again, you want to be very broad in your knowledge, and you want to go deep, as deep as you can in that broad knowledge, realizing I can't go super deep in all of them. Some people may have that mental capability.

1:43:18Shawn Ryan:I don't. And that's where the team comes together. The trust and the team, the mission control team, and all the people that are passionate about this business, going deep in that knowledge is what makes this work for our nation. It's a mighty thing and a mighty wonderful thing to be a part of and take part in.

1:43:34Barry E. Wilmore:Yeah. Especially when, you know, there's a whole lot of people that are much smarter, much more passionate maybe about this business than me.

1:43:41Shawn Ryan:But as the guy that climbs in the capsule on the pointy end, I mean, you get a little bit of visibility that others don't get, but you represent them. And that's why when I was out in public and I'm representing NASA, I'm not Butch Wilmore. I'm not just me. This is our national, international, global, significant human spaceflight program that there's only a handful of them around the globe, nations that have this capability. And we're one of them. And to be privileged enough to be a part of that and be kind of visible in that light because of the position. Wow. Wow. I'm grateful to my Lord. I'm grateful to my nation for allowing me to have that, to be a part of that.

1:44:22Barry E. Wilmore:When was your first time in space? STS-129, Space Shuttle Atlantis. I can tell you're laying on your back for three hours-ish after you get strapped in,

1:44:32Shawn Ryan:and the countdown's going, and you're saying, I mean, taking it all in. This is really happening. I'm really, I mean, this is, somebody coined this phrase. I don't remember who it was. I heard it from first, but you're literally leaving the planet. And at the time when I launched on the space shuttle, I was the 505th person in the history of human spaceflight to leave the planet. And I know that because NASA keeps records and they told me. I didn't look it up. The guy sitting behind me, our MS-2 was Randy Brasnicks. He was 506 because I was a nanosecond before him getting to space. And we had another guy on the mid-deck.

1:45:14He was number 507 getting to space.

1:45:19Shawn Ryan:And to think about that in light of history and the billions of people that have survived on this planet, millions of which current day would love to have been sitting there, and it was me sitting in that seat. Sean, that's very humbling to take all that in and realize. And I remember those thoughts vividly, training for it, preparing for it. This is a lifetime. You know, my wife sacrifices and all that goes into that. My daughters were born, though they were young, five and two at the time, and realizing they're out there watching all this as we lay on our backs and get ready to go. Wow. And then when I got to space and, you know, the solar rocket, the launch went well, the solar rocket boots were separated about two minutes in.

1:46:03Shawn Ryan:You got another six minutes of powered flight, and then you separate from the external tank, and that's all. All these events are jarring. And the pyrotechnics are firing. There's blasts going out. I'll share that. So we finally do all that. We're in space. We're separated from external tank. And I look out the front window. I'm the pilot. Best seat in the house, right? I'm still strapped in, but we're zero gravity. In zero gravity, your muscles, your tendons, everything goes to a neutral position. Because there's not gravity pulling it down. Like you sit here like this, your gravity is pulling your arms down, pulling your legs down.

1:46:40Shawn Ryan:But in space, if you don't have tension on your body, it's going to go to whatever that neutral position is for your tendons and muscles. And feeling that for the first time and looking out the window. Sean, looking out the window, you got 870 pounds of thrusters in the nose and they blast. It's like an explosion. And there's orange blast going up as it's maintaining its attitude. Eventually, in the space shuttle, you would transition to the vernier thrusters. In comparison, 870 pounds of thrust. In comparison, they're 24 pounds of thrust. You didn't even feel them or hear them. But initially, when you first get there, these blasts are going off maintaining attitude.

1:47:22Shawn Ryan:When you separate from the external tank, water vapor separates from the tank, crystallizes into ice, and there are thousands of diamonds floating out the window. The sun's behind us, so it's coming this way. These diamonds are out there. I'm feeling this weightlessness. Diamonds. Wow. That was my first experience of space. And I look out my right window, and there's the earth in the most magnificent, brilliant colors I could ever imagine. And I'm like, Lord, why me? That was the first space, Lord, why me moment. I've had many, but that was the first. Why me? How did I get here? And for anybody that's watching, to try to relay that and the appreciation, this is our nation that gives us this capability.

1:48:16Shawn Ryan:This is what freedom brings. Going back to our forefathers, George Washington, Thomas J., all those individuals, not envisioning something like this as they're building the foundation of this country, but realizing where we have gone from those days. And appreciation all the way back for centuries as you sit there in this situation, taking it in, and the Lord you know is the one that allowed you to be in the seat, but there's millions that would love to be in there. talking again humbly and just wow special special memory special moment i'm grateful that you give me the opportunity to share it because it's not about me it's about our nation about our lord's providence and allowing things to happen allowing our nation to to prosper and do the things that that it has to this point um and oh what a what a privilege we all have i've talked about privilege with me what all privilege we all have to be a part of this country um with its current leadership and throughout the history and where we have come from where we were in comparison to other nations, we are indeed privileged.

1:49:32Barry E. Wilmore:Man, I can't imagine just looking out and seeing the planet.

1:49:36Shawn Ryan:I never could have either. That's what made it so special. My first sight of the planet, when I finally did un-strap, as I'm sitting there, just to continue real quick, Mike Foreman, our premier space walker, was strapped in on the mid-deck. There's a ladder over here that comes up from the side, a ladder where we would climb up all the time. Well, you don't need a ladder in space. Mike, I look over. He levitates up. I'd seen it in videos. I'd never seen it with my own eyes. He levitates up, just levitates up from the mid-deck. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. I'm like, wow. Wow, because I'm strapped in still.

1:50:17Shawn Ryan:I'm not floating. A couple minutes later, I look back. Leland Melvin, you know, the external tank separates. You remember Columbia tragedy. There was external tank issues that impacted. I'm sorry, the external tank issues impacted the shuttle, damaged the wing. Columbia broke up on entry back in 2003. So since that time, this is 2009, we took pictures of the external tank to see if there was anything with the tank that might have impacted the shuttle that we couldn't see. So he's floating back there in the windows in the back. I look back, he's levitating, floating, horizontal, taking pictures out the window, video and pictures of the external tank as it floats away.

1:51:00Shawn Ryan:My mind is like, this is not normal. Now, within time, we're all doing it. It became absolutely normal. And every mission after that. But the first time I saw it, it was amazing. Absolutely amazing. And then in space, of course, you're Superman. People say, what's great about space? You're Superman. You fly. You get in a pool and you float. You feel the pressure around your body. In space, there's none of that. And you literally push off and you fly like Superman. Amazing. That is wild. It is wild. It is. It truly is. I mean, does it feel empty out there?

1:51:37Barry E. Wilmore:I mean, once you get over the initial, holy shit, there's the earth.

1:51:39Shawn Ryan:You look out, you see the vastness, and you realize how far the universe goes and how far the stars are. You don't need to go to space to know it to realize that, but you see it from that vantage point. Yeah, yeah. It feels very empty. And you feel like, wow, we're just a little speck in all this big everything, and we actually left the planet. There it goes zipping by below. It just doesn't seem right. But here we are.

1:52:07Barry E. Wilmore:What was the point of that mission?

1:52:09Shawn Ryan:We were installing, we were in the process of building the space station, the final phases of building the space station. And we took up several elements, truss elements that we actually took the robot arm and attached an element, this truss, to the truss segment. And it was full of spare parts. It's just external parts, you know, pumps and gyros and you name it. everything that you might need to replace on the outside of the station because things fail, right? Things are not going to last forever. And so in the subsequent years, we installed two of them, the ELCs they were called, express logistics carriers.

1:52:47Shawn Ryan:We installed a couple of them, and in the sewing years, things fail. We go out, they've gone out and grabbed them off these ELCs and installed them. So that was what our mission was as we built the space station.

1:52:56Barry E. Wilmore:So you did the final phase of the space station?

1:52:59Shawn Ryan:We were in the very final phases. I wasn't the last mission. I was the capsule communicator, the Capcom, for the last two missions, where you're talking to the crew during launch and during entry, which is a very challenging position as well. But I don't know. We were like number six to the end or something like that. But the very final phases of, yeah, building the space station before the space shuttle program ended. Damn. Yeah. Yeah. Thrilling mission to fly the space shuttle. I mean, I've asked people this. You think, okay, I get one chance to fly in space. You get one chance to fly in space.

1:53:33Shawn Ryan:What are you going to do? Are you going to fly a spaceship or are you going to do a spacewalk? You can only do one. Which do you choose? And I say, what do you think I would choose? And they all invariably, 98 % will say spacewalk. I'm like, oh, no. I'm a naval aviator. You give me a choice. I've done both now. But if I can only do one, I'm going to fly that spacecraft. That's the way I'm wired. Don't get me wrong. Spacewalks are amazing. And that one-person space capsule, you know, shaped like a human, inside that 180-degree, you know, bubble helmet, looking and doing all that, and you're out in the vacuum, you know, no air, vacuum of space.

1:54:15Shawn Ryan:It's special. Don't get me wrong. But if I can only do it once, hands-on controls, I'm going to fly that spacecraft. Oh, shit. Yeah.

1:54:22Barry E. Wilmore:When is the first time he did a spacewalk?

1:54:25Shawn Ryan:It was the second mission. Well, you know, ironically, the pilots never did spacewalks ever throughout the space shuttle history because we had the skill, trained skill, of landing the shuttle. And spacewalks are a little more risky of an endeavor, so they wouldn't risk the pilots going out and doing the spacewalks. So we never had the opportunity. It wasn't even in our training flow. But the space shuttle program was coming to an end. They had an open window in the training new people to do spacewalks in 2008. And they said, anybody want to do it? I'm like, I'll do it. So I was actually, there were early, early, early in the space shuttle, space station program.

1:55:09Shawn Ryan:Some of the early astronauts that went up, two of them were pilots, but they had been doing MS mission specialist type jobs for quite a while. And they went in and they, they did a couple of spacewalks. But as far as a space shuttle pilot not involved in those early stages, I was the first pilot to do a spacewalk. Damn. Yeah. And it was special. It was wonderful. I did four. I mean, I did three. I did one in November of 2014. And then I did three, like three-day centers in the end of January and February or end of February and March of 2015. Go do a spacewalk. Let your body heal for a couple of days because, you know, you get beat up in these suits.

1:55:48Shawn Ryan:I mean, you get bruises and everything else because it's just that environment. Get three days to recuperate, go do another one. Get three days to recuperate, go do another one. That's great. That's great. Again, wonderfully great, but if I only get to do one, I'm flying. I mean,

1:56:09Barry E. Wilmore:the anticipation of exiting the shuttle.

1:56:13Shawn Ryan:So I got 32 hours outside in the vacuum of space on a spacewalk.

1:56:18Barry E. Wilmore:32 hours?

1:56:20Shawn Ryan:32 hours total in five different spacewalks. Sean, there's not a single hour that went by that I didn't think two things. I can't believe we do this. We actually put a human inside of a one-man space capsule shaped like a person and we go out into the vacuum of space and work. I can't believe we do this. And the second thing that I always thought was, don't get famous. If you're on a spacewalk and you get famous during a spacewalk, something probably didn't go right. We have procedures where you have a tether, an 85-foot cable. You put two of those together, you've got 170 feet of cable that you can go from wherever you anchor your cable.

1:57:06Shawn Ryan:Right outside the airlock, we typically put the anchor down, and I can go 170 feet from that point. We have other ways if we have to go further than 170 where we'll take and we'll extend our cable various ways. So you've got your safety tether always attached. And when you get to a work site, you have a local tether. So you actually, local tether is about three feet long and you local tether. You never let go until you are local tethered. Even though you have a safety tether, you know, some of the commercials I see, they go off and they're just out there, you know, off the space station. You don't want to be that.

1:57:38Shawn Ryan:I'll bet. Because there's a chance you could become a satellite. And if you become a satellite, meaning that you're out there on your own, separate from the space station, you get famous. You don't want that. So spacewalks are so mental. There is not a passive movement on a spacewalk. Everything is active. I grab my hand. I grab my hand. I don't let go until this hand is cold. And it's all active thoughts. My safety tether is clear. Keep going. my safety tether is clear. When I get to a work site, I put my local tether down and I'm a try check kind of guy because this is a spacewalk and I don't want to be famous.

1:58:21Shawn Ryan:Put my safety tether down. I'm sorry, my local tether down. My safety tether is clear. My local tether's down. I'm still holding on. Okay. My safety tether is clear the second time. My local tether is down. Third time, my safety tether is clear. My local tether is down. Okay, now I'll release because I'm not going to go floating off, you know, off structure. You don't want to be floating off structure.

1:58:45Barry E. Wilmore:So you have no control.

1:58:47Shawn Ryan:You have the next thing. If you float off structure, we have a jet pack that is attached to our spacecraft, our spacesuit. It's called SAFER. S-A-F-E-R. I forget what the acronym stands for. Survival something, something effect. Basically, you reach back here, you lift a handle. It's way back. It's hard to reach in the suit. You lift the handle and a window spring opens and there's a controller. You grab the controller. You put it on your chest. You turn it on. And now you've got a small gaseous bottle of liquid nitrogen, of gaseous nitrogen. And you control yourself and you try to fly yourself back to the space station with the controls on this little controller.

1:59:32Shawn Ryan:And the jetpack is going to try to arrange and do that. And we have virtual reality simulations where we put on a headset and we train for this. Before we launch, we do it. We actually do the same thing in space. We have computers we connect all the system to, software, put the headset on, and I practice flying back to the space station before I run out of gaseous nitrogen. And it's got a little counter, 93%, 85%, 7 % until you got none. And if you're not back at the station and you got no gaseous nitrogen, you're a satellite. See you later. See you later. And we train for all of that. I can't believe we do this.

2:00:15Shawn Ryan:Don't get famous. Constantly in my mind. Damn. Yeah. Because it's, like I said, most people aren't watching when you do a satellite. No, most people aren't watching when you do a spacewalk. But I did one of my first spacewalks. I came in, I got an email from somebody that was traveling in Europe, and they had it in the airport on the screen in Europe while we're doing the spacewalk. So it's something that's globally visible, and it certainly will be if you do something and you get famous for it, which you don't want to do. Man. Yeah. Yeah.

2:00:49Barry E. Wilmore:Are you out there all by yourself or do you have a partner?

2:00:52Shawn Ryan:Always go with one other person. The first person, Alexei Leonov, he went out by himself. He had an actual, this is the Russian, the first spacewalk ever. They actually had an inflatable airlock where they inflated this airlock. He crawled into it, closed the hatch, deflated the inflatable airlock and went out into the vacuum of space. He did it by himself. There was two people on the spacecraft, but he went out by himself. Ed White, first person in Gemini to do a spacewalk. They depressurized the cabin, opened the hatch. He went out. I forget who he was with. That escapes my memory. But he went out.

2:01:28The other person's in his spacesuit, exposed to the vacuum of space because the hatch is open.

2:01:34Shawn Ryan:But he didn't go outside. So technically, he didn't. They did the same thing on Apollo. They depressurized the cabin. One person on the way back from the moon would go out and do a spacewalk, do various things. The other two guys are inside, in the spacesuits, exposed to vacuum. But they didn't count that as being a spacewalk for them since they weren't outside the spacecraft. Extra vehicular activity, EVA. That's what the official term is because you're extra vehicular outside the spacecraft doing activities. So they didn't technically go outside, so they don't get the check as being on a spacewalk, even though they're inside their suit exposed to the vacuum of space inside the spacecraft.

2:02:12Man.

2:02:13Barry E. Wilmore:So after doing, did you say five spacewalks, 32 hours?

2:02:18Shawn Ryan:32 hours. A little over 32 hours, yeah, total.

2:02:21Barry E. Wilmore:What do most, I mean, is that a lot for the profession?

2:02:25Shawn Ryan:It is. Sonny, who I was with on Starliner and with on the space station, I wound up with this last mission. It was two long duration space flights that I've done. The first one was planned, and I was the commander of the space station. That's when I did four spacewalks. walks. Sunny, this was turned out to be her third long duration. So she, she's got 609 days in space or something like that now, because she did three long durations. And because she was up there more, she's done like nine space walks. She's got the most hours of any female. The most anybody's done is nine to 10 total. Um, but the majority, I mean, if you get one, you're privileged, but the majority is probably three or four.

2:03:17Shawn Ryan:Five, back during the shuttle era, if you got five, and if you got six, you've really done many. Space station, there's more people that have more. But five is, yeah, that's pretty amazing to even think that I would get one. But being a pilot, I was selected. There was no chance of me doing spacewalks. But here we are 25 years later, and things changed.

2:03:41Barry E. Wilmore:We've all seen it. The Department of War is operating in a world that's changing faster than ever. That's why so many guests on my show talk about the importance of continued innovation and technology in the military. But here's the problem. Working with the Department of War can be complex. For many companies, the process isn't always transparent. It's hard to know who the right stakeholders are, where the decisions are made, or how funding actually moves. Even when you get the right conversation started, you often hear the same responses. We like the technology, but funding is already allocated.

2:04:19Barry E. Wilmore:Or check back next fiscal year. That leaves a lot of capable teams with strong products, but no clear path forward. That's where my friends at SBIR Advisors come in. They've built a team of over 60 former acquisition officers who spent their careers inside that black box. They help you find the right buyers in the Department of War, find the money, and write winning proposals so you can get on the right contract and fast. Since 2020, they've helped small businesses like yours win over$600 million in government contracts. And they're a 100 % veteran team dedicated to one thing, getting the best technology into the hands of the people who need it the most, the warfighters.

2:05:07Barry E. Wilmore:If you're serious about selling to the Department of War, go to SBIRadvisors.com. That's SBIRadvisors.com. And if you mention my name, you'll get the first month free.

2:05:23Barry E. Wilmore:I mean, I'm just curious, you know, with all the time you have in space, 32 hours worth of spacewalking, I don't know how many days in total you have in space, but - 464. 464. Okay. What do you think when you hear about Elon Musk saying, we were going to Mars. We're going to the moon.

2:05:43Shawn Ryan:Yeah. I don't want to detract from anything anybody thinks or saying. Mars is hard. Really, really, really hard. It's hard because, again, when Mars and the Earth are on the same side as the sun, if they're on the same side, you're like 35 million miles. The transit time of communication is like three to six minutes. You speak. before you get something back, it's like six minutes. When Mars, when Earth, let's say Earth, and Mars is on the other side of the sun, that's like 250 million miles. And the transit time for communication is 42 minutes. So you're basically autonomous because it takes, you know, sound or sound, speed of light is 186 ,000 miles a second to traverse that far and go all the way out communication, come all the way back.

2:06:34Shawn Ryan:So you're autonomous. You have to be. And that makes it very difficult. Things break. Things break on the space station. We can fix it. We go outside and fix it. We fix them inside. Things are going to break on any mission that goes to Mars. So additive manufacturing, 3D printing, it's got to be robust. You're going to have to print a part. You may have to print a tool to install the part or both. That's got to be robust. I was actually the first person to do 3D printing in space back in 2015. It just happened to be the timing. I was there when that experiment was going up, and this was just plastics, but polymers get stronger in what we're using, and we're baby-stepping our way into trying to do that, because we're going to have to be able to do those type of things when you think about going to Mars.

2:07:21Shawn Ryan:You think about the food. How much food? You're going to rely on a crop that you're growing? What if you have a bad crop and it didn't produce. You don't have options, right? So just nourishment of the astronauts and all how that plays out. And so for many, many reasons, Mars is hard. Mars getting to the surface is hard. Nobody knows this, but I was on a, not nobody, but very few people understand this. I was on an interplanetary landing evaluation team. This is many, many years ago. And we surmised that get to the surface of Mars. So let me real quick give you a little background. The Earth has a certain mass.

2:08:01Shawn Ryan:A heavenly body's gravitational pull is based on its mass. That's 9.8 meters per second squared at the surface, 32.2 feet per second squared. That's the acceleration we feel sitting here in this chair towards the center of the Earth. Mars is about 0.38, four tenths the size of the Earth. It's smaller, right? So it's got less mass. Its mass is less. So it's got less mass, therefore it has less gravity at the surface. Mars has just enough gravity to hold an atmosphere. You go to the moon, it's even smaller. It's got one-sixth the gravity at the surface. It doesn't have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere.

2:08:43Shawn Ryan:So there's the surface of the moon, you're in a vacuum. But you go back to Mars, the Mars atmosphere is about one one hundredth the density of our atmosphere. We use our atmosphere to slow down. Friction builds up. You saw the video earlier. It's got 3 ,000 degree plasma ball that says you're coming in, slowing you down. The Mars atmosphere, the mass that we're taking to the surface now, slows down in the atmosphere the same. but it's only one one hundredth the density of ours. It's harder to slow down. And so you take the mass of what we're taking to the surface now compared to the mass we got to take to go to the surface with humans, it's exponentially more mass, harder to slow down.

2:09:28Shawn Ryan:It's almost impossible to slow that amount of mass down to get safely to the surface of the moon, to the surface of Mars. We surmise that it would take six supersonic parachutes the size of six football fields to slow down enough. We would look at balutes, inflatable deceleration devices. And the math, the physics just doesn't work out. It's hard to do. So getting the amount of mass to the surface that it requires to support human life and then leave the surface, it is tough. I applaud people like Elon Musk that says, we're going to figure out a way to do it. Because the only way we're ever going to do it is to have that attitude.

2:10:10Shawn Ryan:Know everything and perform it well, right? Have that attitude, we're going to figure it out. But it is a very, very lofty endeavor.

2:10:19Barry E. Wilmore:What do you think about it as a Christian? I'm just curious. As a Christian? Should we be leaving the earth? Should we be going to settle other planets? The Lord created this planet to be inhabited.

2:10:31Shawn Ryan:right? But He also has given us insight into gaining knowledge. The Lord has all knowledge. He knows everything. And He is, according to His plan and His purposes, He has parsed out His knowledge throughout time, more and more. More so now, abundance of knowledge coming to light, right? Abundance of knowledge. And that's all because the Lord is enlightening us, so to speak. And he's the one that gave us the ability, enhanced our capability to go to the moon, which we have done. And so do I see a problem with enhancing and growing knowledge? No, we don't know what we don't know. And the Lord has given us this ingenuity, this mind to go forward.

2:11:16Shawn Ryan:I don't see an ethical problem with trying to go and explore and do these things. I don't see that in scripture at all. I see just the opposite, actually. I see going forward. Was it Jubal Cain? Tubal and Jubal Cain initially were the first ones in Genesis chapter 4 or whatever that first worked in lead and then first stringed instruments and lute and music and all those things. It started somewhere, and we've grown as we go. And that's obviously, I think, in the Lord's will and going forward. So I don't see a conflict with that at all. Yeah.

2:11:49Barry E. Wilmore:It's a good question. And, I mean, just from being out in space, you were just talking about how you get the shit beat out of you inside those space suits. I mean, how's it going to work? How are we going to get massive amounts of people there?

2:12:03Shawn Ryan:Is it, I mean, somebody who's been out? Low Earth orbit, we've done a lot. We've learned a lot about how to live and operate in low Earth orbit. We have suit technology that's continuing to progress. Yes. So the suits that we have now will be replaced. You got to realize the spacewalk, the suit that I went on spacewalk 30 January of last year, just over a year ago, I think it's 35 years old. I mean, that's pretty old for a spacesuit and all the, you know, advancements and even that technology we're trying to bring on board for future programs. So that will be better as we go forward without question.

2:12:44Shawn Ryan:And we're working on that now and have been and continue to do so. So that will improve. But all of it is difficult. You know, flying in space, Starliner, we had an issue, right? We had problems. Space flight is hard. And sometimes if you don't dot all your T's and dot all your I's and cross all your T's, things are not going to turn out the way you hope. And that's why it's imperative testing, evaluating, using our capabilities, God-given capabilities to learn and grow. It's challenging. This is a very, very, very challenging business and very, very difficult to do well. I think by and large we do it well, but there are going to be issues going forward as well.

2:13:27Shawn Ryan:And we just got to prepare for that. That's why it's important when we have issues.

2:13:33Shawn Ryan:You got to figure out what happened. if you have an anomaly, what happened? Once you figure out what happened, then you got to go back historically and say, why did it happen? And you got to figure that out. If you don't do those things, you are falling far short of what's required in this business. What happened? Why it happened? And then you got to have a process to fix it, to get it right. because in this business, you can't have these type of significant issues if you're not doing a full-up process of going forward to rectify it as we continue to move forward because there's too much at risk.

2:14:11Shawn Ryan:Human lives are literally at stake. Yeah. Yeah, and that's important, of course.

2:14:16Barry E. Wilmore:Let's move to Starliner.

2:14:18Shawn Ryan:Great.

2:14:20Barry E. Wilmore:Where do we start?

2:14:22Shawn Ryan:Oh, my. Where do you want to start? I can explain what happened.

2:14:26Barry E. Wilmore:Well, let's start with what was the point of the mission?

2:14:32Shawn Ryan:Starliner was the sixth first crewed spacecraft in the history of the U.S. space program. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, space shuttle, SpaceX Dragon, Starliner, number six. It was the first crewed flight. I was a commander. And the only reason I was a commander, because we talked about the test pilot stuff background. I had that background. And for a first flight, it's a first flight. It's a test flight. All space flights are test flight. But certainly the first one is significant in that you're trying out new capabilities. You're certifying capabilities, what you see on paper, what you see in the engineering, how you put it all together.

2:15:14Shawn Ryan:You're certifying it all works and goes as designed. So that's the mission. We're going to launch. We've got a list of test parameters that we're going to do prior to affecting the rendezvous and docking. We're going to do the rendezvous and docking tests as we go through that process. Dock. We're going to have quiescent docked evaluations of the spacecraft, thermal implications, all this other stuff while it's docked for a period of days. We're going to undock. We're going to leave the vicinity of the space station. We're going to set a test setting up for the deorbit burn, evaluating, again, the capabilities of the system.

2:15:50Shawn Ryan:things that we have designed in the system, do they really work as planned, as designed? Do the deorbit burn into the atmosphere all the way down to parachutes deploying and landing, hopefully on the spot that you intended. That's the mission. It's a test flight. Specifically, all missions have test portions in them anytime you're flying in space, but certainly this one, first flight, is a full-up test mission. And that's the purpose of the whole thing. Roger that. Yeah. How many people were up there with you? There are two on Starliner, me and Sunita Williams, Sunny Williams.

2:16:23Barry E. Wilmore:Is that the least amount of people you've gone to space with? Oh, yes.

2:16:27Shawn Ryan:And the reason there weren't more, the spacecraft can carry more. It's a test flight. Right. There's no reason to put anyone else at risk in this scenario. There's no reason for that. And so I even lobbied for that. They talked about maybe more. And we had as many as three assigned at some point. Again, it was a long, drawn-out process. We had years where we had several different individuals scheduled on the mission. I was not the first commander scheduled. I was a backup. I was actually initially selected to back up the first two missions, the commander and the pilot, the PLT, on the first mission and the second mission.

2:17:05Shawn Ryan:One guy backing up four positions. That was my role. Eventually, the first guy, the commander of the first mission decided to step aside for many reasons. And that's when I went in as the commander of the first mission. So originally I was a backup. And I hadn't been back. It's kind of the hacker of timing. You go in space, you go to space, you come back, you go to the bottom of the pile and you work your way up until you get back up to the top, you get assigned again. If you stay, come back and you go. So that was me. I went to the bottom of the pile when I got back in 2015, worked my way up, had specific qualifications as test background, but I wasn't in that position in the hierarchy of assignments to be assigned to a mission.

2:17:43Shawn Ryan:But I had the skill. There wasn't many people that could back up all those positions. But I had that experience is why they put me in the backup role. And eventually that evolved into, of course, the commander role for the first mission. Due to a lot of different circumstances. What went wrong?

2:18:04Shawn Ryan:What went wrong? A lot. Yeah, there was. I mean, when I came back, I said it, I didn't see a lot of discussion about those issues from NASA or Boeing while I was in space. But when I got back, every press conference we had, we had several on orbit. And even getting back, I had four goals in mind when I spoke to the media and the nation and the world. I wanted to honor our administration. That's our leadership of our nation, because this is a national endeavor. I wanted to honor NASA, my direct, you know, the ones that I'm a slave to. And I say that not in a bad sense, in a good sense. They're part of, you know, the hierarchy of who I work for.

2:18:55Shawn Ryan:I want to honor them. I want to honor Boeing. And I had to honor my integrity. And those four things were the driving forces in every time I opened my mouth, every time I said whatever I said, honor my nation, honor NASA, honor Boeing, and maintain my integrity. So when I got back, I was very open. I said, we had some failures. It's obvious we did. You don't have this play out the way it play out and say nothing happened. We obviously had some failures. We obviously didn't have sufficient assessment of some of the spacecraft capabilities. It's obvious. I mean, I don't know why we wouldn't say that, but we did.

2:19:35And like I said earlier, we're going to find out why it happened.

2:19:39Shawn Ryan:We're going to find out what happened. And then we're going to put steps in place to rectify it. That's our process. That's what has to take place or we're not doing it right. So what happened? coming up day one was amazing we launched we had all this several multiple tests where i'm hands on the controls manual flying in space in open space testing out the capabilities and this spacecraft was precise as it can as i can imagine if i were to give an example of what the spacecraft i've flown are like. I hope nobody. The space shuttle is a Cadillac. Big, sturdy, go. It's super nice. The Soyuz is like one of those buggies that are racing in the desert and they're bouncing, but they're great capability, sturdy, not as sleek necessarily looking, but so capable.

2:20:39Shawn Ryan:And And, you know, if I'm going to go race in the desert and do bouncing and all that, I want to be in a Soyuz. Starliner, sports car. I mean, that day one, precise. Manual flying, I mean, if I wanted to, you've got a flag on the wall, American flag on the wall behind you. If I wanted to point a dot at one of those stars, I felt like I could do it. Precise, sports car. dragon i don't mean this detrimental but as a kid we had a volkswagen beetle a bug it was different engines in the back it's air cooled it's not as sleek as some of the other other other uh cars but my goodness you talk about sturdy and reliable did everything you wanted it to one sports car you don't get into dragon a spacex dragon in control it doesn't have that capability.

2:21:36Shawn Ryan:It has some rudimentary type of control, but most of it's automated. So it is a Volkswagen Beetle. Capable, sturdy. I'd have one in a heartbeat. And we did it. Like I said, I was a kid growing up. But Starliner is a sports car. That's day one. It was unreal. I mean, we were over the Indian Ocean. One of my tasks was to see if I could point my velocity vector, the vector in which we're going, in the same direction as the direction we were going. Could I point it directly in line with how we were orbiting the planet without any other cues on the displays or anything, just looking out the window?

2:22:15Shawn Ryan:And we were over the Indian Ocean, no moon, minimal stars because I'm looking down at the Earth. So I can't hardly see the Earth. I can only see very vague impressions of clouds that are going by. So we're traveling 17 ,500 miles an hour. That's five miles a second, right? Boom, second. We just went five miles. So you're orbiting the planet every 90 minutes. At this phase, we're over the middle of the Indian Ocean, no ground lights, no lights on it. It's nighttime, no ground lights, no moon. And I'm trying to orient the spacecraft to see if I can get it exactly in line. Because you think about it, if you lose your computers and our thermal, you know, our solar array, basically how we gain our electrical power is on the back of the Starliner.

2:23:08Shawn Ryan:And I want to point that at the sun. If I've got no system, how am I going to ensure that I point it at the sun directly so I can maximize my ability to gain power if I got no system? What about if I lose communication and I don't have a system? How do I point my antennas at the satellites out there so I can regain communication? How do I do that? These are part of the tests that we were doing. Part of this was how can I orient myself with my lick vector if I'm in a rendezvous scenario where I need to get away from the space station. I need to make sure that I'm in line with the velocity vector of which the space station and we are going.

2:23:45Shawn Ryan:So I can make sure that I make the correct control inputs to make me leave the station and not run into it. So this was, we weren't at the station, but we're doing these tests in case we get in a scenario to make sure we can do these things. I almost nailed it. I was a couple of degrees off, but with no visual, no light, no nothing, I almost nailed it exactly on line with that velocity vector, just looking out the window. That's a sports car. That's a sports car. So capable. So capable. Day two, we're coming up. We lost a thruster. So try to describe this briefly. You've got thrusters located orthogonal on the spacecraft.

2:24:29Top, bottom, starboard and port.

2:24:31Shawn Ryan:And there are seven thrusters at each location. They're called dog houses. They kind of stick out on the sides of the service module. So top, bottom, starboard and port. And these thrusters point in different directions so you can control the spacecraft. Six degrees of freedom. Pitch, roll, and yaw. That's attitude, right? Translation, forward and aft, up and down, left and right. That's translation. Put them all together, three and three, six degrees of freedom. You're flying six degrees. That's what you do in space. So we have eight aft firing thrusters, two at each location, to affect the ability to do some of the attitude control and pitch and yaw, and also to translate forward, right, to affect that maneuver.

2:25:22Shawn Ryan:We lose an aft firing thruster on the starboard side. We had lost some thrusters on the service module in the previous uncrewed test flights. We'd had two. There was only supposed to be one, but we had two. We'd lost some on both of them. But the bad thing about the service module itself, you got the crew module on top where the crew is. You got the service module on the bottom. You do your de-orbit burn, use the service module engines to do your de-orbit burn to slow down. You go from 25 ,000 feet per second to about 24 ,700. 100. So now you start to come back to Earth. Once you do your deal but burn, you detach that service module and it burns up in the atmosphere.

2:26:01Shawn Ryan:The only thing that comes back is the module. So you don't get these thrusters back. The ones that failed on the first two uncrewed missions, we don't get them back. We can't inspect them. We just know they failed. You're downlinking as much data as you can. You take the data, you do your best engineering assessment of what happened because you can't inspect the thruster. So we'd had failures on the previous two missions. So we lose this thruster. I'm like, that's not good. But fault tolerance, we build multiple layers of failures into our systems, our capabilities. So dual fault tolerance, what most of our systems are.

2:26:40Shawn Ryan:I can lose two things in whatever the system is and still be able to affect whatever it is I'm wanting to do. For control, we build dual fault tolerance. I lose this one thruster. I still have two fault tolerance. I'm still dual fault tolerant. So not a big deal. Not good, but not a big deal. We start to get closer. We get the velocity vector of the space station as it's orbiting the planet. We get right out in front of the space station, which is part of the rendezvous process, and we lose a second thruster. Now I'm thinking, okay, now we lost the level of fault tolerance. We went from dual fault tolerance to single fault tolerance.

2:27:13Shawn Ryan:And it was a bottom thruster. Still aft firing. And I'm thinking, oh, this isn't good. This has happened. You've got to realize what's going through my mind. I've got thousands of hours in the simulator. I know the spacecraft is good or better than anybody in an integrated fashion. Not as deep in certain areas as some others, but broadly. And I'm thinking, automation, we're under the automated sequences. Does automation have something to do with this? Should I take over manual? how are we going to get these thrusters back if we need them how are we going to do that all this is going through my mind i'm thinking maybe i should take over manual and the ground calls up take over manual control so i take over manual control we're on the v bar the velocity vector of the space station 260 meters out and we'll lose a third thruster now we're zero fault tolerant to maintaining six degree of freedom control this six degree we're zero fault tolerant now and the Control, even with three thrusters down, is not what it was the day prior.

2:28:14Shawn Ryan:Nowhere near. It's sluggish.

2:28:20Shawn Ryan:I'll pause here to tell you what we think was happening before I continue. When we did our tests after the fact, there's a piston. Basically, I'll just try to do it just very basic. There's a piston that keeps the propellant and the oxidizer from entering the combustion chamber. These are hypergolic fuels, meaning there's no ignition source. These two chemicals meet, boom, they fire. So there's a piston in there, and the piston will pull back, let some fluid through. It gets in the combustion chamber, and the fire takes place. The thrust occurs, and then it closes, right? There's a Teflon seal on the end of that piston that we surmise was deforming because it got overheated.

2:29:02Shawn Ryan:So it's not the same shape. It actually deforms, and when it pulls back, it's not allowing sufficient fluid to flow into the combustion chamber. It's restricting it some, so we're getting less thrust, reduced thrust in these thrusters. Okay. So we surmise that's what's happening. When the thrust level goes below a certain level, the computer goes, huh, you're not operating right. Let me take you out of the mix. It's called FITR, Fault Detection Indication Response, FITR. So fitter says, nope, you're not working. You got below that level, you're out, you're done. So fitter is what's taking these thrusters out.

2:29:41Shawn Ryan:We don't know why. I have no idea in the real time. I just know that control is not what it was a day prior. It's challenging. I can't prove this, but I would have to say that other thrusters were reduced in their thrust level because of what the control was like, but not low enough to fail. So we've got eight air firing thrusters. I would say they were all reduced thrust. Just to give an example, audibly what we were hearing, you could hear day prior that day as the piston would move. You know, sound doesn't travel in a vacuum. It has to have air for sound to travel, but it's travel through the structure of the service module into the air that's in the crew module.

2:30:27and we could hear the thrusters fire, meaning you could hear that piston move.

2:30:32Shawn Ryan:And the day prior and up until this point, we could hear...

2:30:38Shawn Ryan:Now, what we're hearing is like a machine gun.

2:30:44Shawn Ryan:Oh, man. I know that probably looks funny on camera, but that's the way it sounded. Yeah. We're hearing machine guns fire, which we hadn't heard before. So the spacecraft is laboring. We're down three thrusters. We're zero fault tolerant now to maintaining six-toff control. I'm on the controls manual trying to maintain control, and then we lose the fourth thruster. We're already in the process with the ground to get the thrusters back, to try to work a plan to come back with the thrusters. But now we've lost four. We're past six-toff. I don't have six-toff control. We went past zero fault tolerant.

2:31:20Shawn Ryan:Now we lost six-degree of freedom control. That's not good. That's way not good. And the control in my hands was very challenging. I'm to the point now of, I mentioned orbital mechanics, how spacecraft fly in proximity to each other. Now we're in that area of, what if I make this control input, what's that going to do with respect to orbital mechanics and my ability to maintain position? I have to maintain my distance. I have to maintain my attitude because we have sensors on the spacecraft that see the space station. Cameras, infrared sensors, radar, they're seeing the space station, and they're building a digital picture.

2:32:00Shawn Ryan:That's how you can rendezvous and dock manually. Because the system builds a visual picture, comes in using this visual picture it's built based on these sensors, and it affects the docking. I mean, automatically. If I lose that attitude, if I lose and can't see the station, it's going to dump all that, and we can't get it back. So now, you know, this is, I just share what's going through my mind. Sunny and I didn't talk. We didn't talk about it. I mean, we were just, I'm completely focused on maintaining control. She's working the procedures and the systems, and we did not discuss it. I didn't discuss it with the ground.

2:32:44Shawn Ryan:The ground didn't talk to me because I know they're busy, and they know we're busy. When we operate the spacecraft, normal ops, the crew supports mission control in the operation of the spacecraft. That's the way I view it. I'm supporting the ground as we operate the spacecraft. When it comes to flying it, in this scenario, the ground is supporting us because we are hands-on. We're the ones that are going to make or break. And so my focus, and again, this is what we talked about earlier, decades of preparation, various scenarios that I've been through, preparing me to be able to focus, forget about everything that's happening.

2:33:25Shawn Ryan:In aviation, we call it beware of the snakes in the cockpit. They're not physical snakes. But in that mindset, things happen. You cannot let the snakes in the cockpit, the issues that are taking place, overshadow your responsibility in the moment. Because, you know, as a commander, I'm responsible for the spacecraft, my crew. And this is of global significance, right? I mean, it's international importance, and it's a great deal of responsibility. And so at that moment, my focus is on flying the spacecraft. Sonny is doing a wonderful job with everything else involved because my focus is fully where it has to be.

2:34:07Shawn Ryan:You know, aviate, navigate, communicate. That's the order in aviation that we talk about. Aviate, fly. Navigate, figure out where you're going. Communicate last. I'm aviate. That's all I'm doing. Sonny's doing the navigate and communicate. wonderfully well. So focus, lost the sixth off control. What is this control input going to do with all mechanics? Can I maintain my position? If I lose attitude, I'm going to drop this lock. We won't be able to dock autonomously. Don't want that. Very challenging. What if we lose a fifth thruster? It's going through my mind. If we lose a fifth thruster, will I be able to control?

2:34:46Shawn Ryan:I don't know. I've never, we never even dreamed up this scenario. I just know what I feel in my hands and losing a fifth thruster, I don't know what's going to happen. Because this is the mindset, the way it's bred into us in aviation and certainly at NASA. We're always looking to the next worst failure. What if? And I'm even thinking, what if we lose calm? What am I going to do if we lose communication with the ground? Because we have to dock. We're in that window of, if we don't dock with the control I feel, I'm not sure we can do a deal with burn and get back to Earth. in the moment. I'm not sure we can.

2:35:23Shawn Ryan:These are the thoughts that are going through my mind. We have to dock. If we don't dock, I'm not sure this is going to turn out well. And then what if we lose calm? That comes in my mind too. And I decided, even in this situation I was in, leaving is not an option unless I'm going to endanger the station. So I'm going to fly all the way in to 10 meters. That's when we set up our docking mechanism, hold there, and then come on in. As I fly into 10 meters, I'm going to evaluate the capability to control the spacecraft. Can I do it? I get to 10 meters. If the answer is no, I can't do it enough to where I think I can safely dock, I'm going to leave because I can't endanger the space station.

2:36:07But if I do, even if I can't talk to them, if I think I can do it, I'm going to dock.

2:36:14Shawn Ryan:That's really the only option we had. Even thinking back on it, there was not another viable option. It was this or, or, you know, like I said, in the moment. We have many options. I know we have many options. We have different capabilities. We have a backup mode in the spacecraft. You don't have a computer. You go directly to the thrusters. You know, inputs go directly to the thrusters to maintain control. I know all of this. But in the scenario at the moment, I want to emphasize this. I don't know why we're losing thrusters. I just know what I'm feeling in my hands and how challenging it is and I'm just trying to think next worst failure what am I going to do?

2:36:53Shawn Ryan:And so it was in the moment it was very trying. And what if we lose another one? Can I control it all? I don't know. I have no idea. Matter of fact, I even asked the flight director, Vincent LaCorte, after I finally got on the phone, I said, hey, what would happen if we lost the fifth one? He's like, I don't know. Anyway, so anyway, this is all going through the mind. So the what happened. So we get to the point where we've lost four, we've lost sixed off control, but maintaining the attitude and the position like I just shared, challenging as it was. The only way to get these thrusters back is to send test firings to these failed thrusters.

2:37:28Shawn Ryan:But to do that, I got to be off the controls because I'm putting a control input in to a thruster that fires when this test signal is sent. It's going to corrupt the data and they're going to be able to tell if this thruster fired sufficiently to bring it back in. So I've got to maintain my position, maintain my attitude, orbital mechanics, all this going through my mind, and don't touch the controls. It's pretty challenging to go off the controls so they can send this test firing. But by God's grace, again, decades of preparation that I didn't even know existed. This is looking back inside now.

2:38:08Shawn Ryan:I can see it. I get a little bit of drift, little bit of drift, little nothing. Okay. And I'd say, hands off. Sonny would say, hands off. They sent the signal to the thrusters. I came back on too quickly. Initially, the story goes on. But we, in that process, very challenging, like I said, we got two of the four thrusters back. I moved in from 260 meters to 200 meters. They asked me to move it in. I did that. Sunny says, go slow. That's the one thing she did say. Go slow. Because I'm a get it done now kind of guy. She knows that. We've been together for years. And I'm like, I agree. So I crept in.

2:38:56Shawn Ryan:I didn't add any extra closure rate, range rates, what we call it. I didn't add any extra. I just slowly, slowly, slowly brought it into 200 meters. Stopped at 200 meters. We lost the fifth thruster.

2:39:14Shawn Ryan:We lost the fifth thruster. Fortunately, like I said, though, we've gotten two of the four, original four we lost back. So now we're only three thrusters down. We're not five thrusters down simultaneously. We're still zero fault tolerant to six degree of freedom control, but we're back to zero fault tolerant. Same thing. Maintain your distance. Maintain your attitude. Don't touch it. Not easy. Get in the position. Drift is minimal. Hands off. Send the test firings. And we've eventually got two of those three back. So now we're only down one. We're back to dual fault tolerant. But the spacecraft is still laboring.

2:40:00Shawn Ryan:Eventually, I had told the flight director several times, you know, this is, this is developmental test. This is what we're doing. This is development of a new capability. And that's what, you know, it's developmental, experimental, it's experimental test too. And when you're in a test pilot jargon, developmental, experimental test, that's what this is. And so in that process, you understand what's taking place in the moment and how to affect whatever needs to be affected. And so we expect to have failures in the process. It's brand new capability. There were a couple of situations in the simulator where I had to go to manual mode out of automatic mode.

2:40:43Shawn Ryan:Again, these are scenarios we're testing. And then I had to go to backup mode because manual wasn't sufficient. And after we went through the process of trying to rectify the problem, I tried to go back into automatic mode. I couldn't. And then I couldn't also get into manual or backup mode. so we perish in the simulator i got no mode i can get into i can't get into i can't get into automatic i can't fly it manually and i can't get into backup mode so we perish and that happened more than once because of that experience in the simulator again you expect to find things as you go through this process i told the flight directors i said if i'm on the controls and i'm able to control and you want me to give it back to automation, I might not do it because you support me in flying the spacecraft in that scenario, like I was mentioning earlier.

2:41:37So when they said, okay, it's time to give it back, all these assessments during tests

2:41:45Shawn Ryan:were software, hardware-related problems. I did not feel like this was a software, hardware-related problem. Let me back up. When we brought those thrusters back in, we had to cancel the fitter, the fault detection indication response. We had to cancel it on those thrusters. So basically, a little bit, you're hanging it out. They're not going to drop. They're not going to be pulled out. If they go to no thrust, if they get a fail leak, whatever, they're not coming out. They're going to be in the mix regardless. We had to do that to safely dock. Anyway, so I go back. I knew they were going to ask me to give it back to automation when we got back dual fault tolerance.

2:42:26Shawn Ryan:But still, the spacecraft, I can still hear the same sound. So I know there's thrusters or something's going on. I don't know at the time what it is, but it sounds different still. And I'm able to control. And for a moment, I'm like, I'm not sure I want to give it back to automation because of, like I said, all that had transpired in the past.

2:42:50Shawn Ryan:but that was the grounds assessment. They have more data than I do. I did not feel like this was a software issue because of how the failures had happened. It wasn't like a blanket, a whole area of a system failed. It was individuals that went out simultaneously. I didn't feel like it was software, hardware related, software related. I didn't know what it was, but because of that, I said, Roger that. And I gave it back to automation.

2:43:42Barry E. Wilmore:Tuesdays on ABC and stream on Hulu. Tax Act understands you haven't memorized the tax code. That's why Tax Act has live experts to help. Tax Act can even do it for you if you prefer. It's the easiest way to know you're doing it right. Well, other than going back to college and obtaining a bachelor's degree in accounting with a minor in finance, then interning somewhere and becoming fluent in all tax forms. But that might be hard to accomplish before tax day. So maybe just stick with Tax Act.

2:44:13Shawn Ryan:Tax Act, let's get them over with. Through this whole process, like I said, we got a dock. I'm not sure what our options are if we don't. And people have asked me, what did you feel like when you found out that you weren't coming home? And I'm like, well, I got to tell you the whole story. Because one of the other things I thought, even before we docked, this is spacecraft is sick. I mean, it is. Tell it. Say what it is. If we dock successfully, we probably aren't coming home in this spacecraft. Because I knew how difficult it is to bound a problem like this. You can't go out on a spacewalk and inspect the thrusters.

2:44:54Shawn Ryan:They're not designed and built that way, where we can do that. And so it's going to be an assessment on the ground based on whatever they have capabilities to test to see if we can figure out what happened and then bound the problem of what happened enough to get us back inside to come home in it. So even before we docked, I'm like, this chances are very slim of us coming back in this spacecraft. So I knew that early. I didn't tell my family that. And so this was June 6th. The decision to come back or not come back on Starliner was late August. It was probably early July that I told my family.

2:45:30Shawn Ryan:I didn't say anything initially. I finally said, you know, the most likely scenario is we're going to be here until 2025. This was July of 2024. So 2025 was six months away. We're probably going to be here until at least 2025. That's what I'm guessing the most likely scenario is. Just because I, again, I knew it before we ever docked that it was, chances were slim, just how difficult these, to figure these things out are. And that's obviously the way it turned out. How'd your family react? So I've tried to build resiliency and that type of mindset into my daughters from day one. A couple of things I've told them, rule number one in our family, since they could speak and understand, you will not disrespect your mother.

2:46:16Shawn Ryan:That's the first. And the second thing is I've tried to teach them to be responsible. And being responsible is understanding that life comes at you and that you have to flex with how life progresses. Our Lord is sovereign. It doesn't reduce our responsibility and preparation, like I've said, but our Lord is sovereign. He's in control. We can be content in most difficult situations because He is working out His plan and His purpose for His glory and your good, ultimately, if you will believe. And we got to believe that. That's what God's Word says. And so I'm not saying there weren't tears. There were.

2:46:53Shawn Ryan:My youngest daughter was going to be a senior in high school. I was going to miss it. Her final year of playing volleyball, we always go to the tournaments and travel and do all that. I wasn't going to be there. I knew that. People miss those type of things in this line of work and other lines of work. Those things happen regularly, not just us, but it was unexpected, right? It wasn't in the plan. And so we had to shift and she did too. And I'm proud of my daughters for how they flexed. My wife was apprehensive from the beginning. She's, you know, there's a lot of things that happened. Starliner had 30 scheduled launch dates until we finally launched.

2:47:32Shawn Ryan:That has never happened before, dating back to 2018. And we'd lived failures, finding stuff, slips. We'd lived it for years. And so she was skeptical anyway about the whole process. So us not coming back on Starliner, she was absolutely fine with it because of that, because of the history that we'd shared. And that's just a loving wife, right? Concerned about her husband and those situations of life that we find ourselves in with specific tasks and roles and responsibilities. And so she was fine with it. Not to say there weren't a tear or two, but because the reality of it sets in, this is really, really happening.

2:48:13Shawn Ryan:But persevering through it all.

2:48:17Barry E. Wilmore:We track our sleep, fine-tune our macros, and try every biohack under the sun. But the truth is, your peak performance starts at the cellular level. Armora Colostrum is nature's original superfood. Colostrum is packed with over 400 bioactive nutrients that fortify gut health, strengthen immune health, fuel performance, and more. Whether you're training for a race, working to balance your health, or simply striving to feel your best, Armora helps you operate at your highest level because your body deserves the same level of optimization as the rest of your life. For me, Armora has become a staple in my daily routine, and I'm impressed by the results.

2:48:59Barry E. Wilmore:So we've worked out a special offer for my audience. Receive 30 % off your first subscription order. Go to armora.com slash SRS or enter SRS to get 30 % off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A dot com slash SRS. Did Boeing know about the helium leak before launch?

2:49:22Shawn Ryan:Yes. It did. We have eight manifolds, and one of them had a very, very small leak. There is debate on this, but I'll say it anyway, realizing that some people may push back, but leak a leak is a leak even if it's super little bitty tiny leak a leak is a leak right before we return by the time the spacecraft returns seven of those eight manifolds had a leak of some sort in it seven seven of the eight they're small they're manageable but a leak is a leak right there was only one that was leaking prior to launch and we've been through so much and there are always issues. I want to caveat that and put this in the right light.

2:50:10Shawn Ryan:There are always issues.

2:50:14Shawn Ryan:But, and we're always, you know, going through the process of trades. What's assessing engineering assessment, what the data's telling us, hardware assessments. We're always doing that. That's constant. And so for one system to have a leak and say, let's go ahead and launch with it once we think we've bounded the problem, like I said earlier, is not uncommon.

2:50:37Barry E. Wilmore:Would you have launched it? No.

2:50:41Shawn Ryan:No, obviously I didn't object. You've got to realize the mindset from the beginning. Growing up at NASA, I was in my 24th year at this point. Trust the process, trust the process, trust the process, trust the process. There's a lot of smart, passionate individuals that are involved in this process, and they want what's best without letting external factors invade their decision making. And so as a part of that, you know, when I came as commander, we were originally, we're supposed to launch in May of 2020. May of 2020 was the launch day. We had a failure on the test flight in December of 2019 where the Starliner did not make it to the space station.

2:51:27And we got it back, but there were significant issues.

2:51:30Shawn Ryan:A timing issue with basically the clock system software. And we didn't make it to the space station, but got it back. Had that not happened, we were launching crew in May, June, you know, five, six months later. That was the plan. I came in as the commander late summer of 2020. It was obvious there was going to be delays because of what had happened on OFT, the original test flight. And other things were happening. Like I said, the gentleman that was the commander stepped aside. I came in as commander. And from that point forward, we went into full up test evaluation mode as I started to build a little bit of a team with engineers.

2:52:10Shawn Ryan:We didn't have those. SpaceX had a whole crew of engineers. They trained out at Hawthorne, California. A whole army of people would go out there. We had nothing. We had 20 percent of a couple of engineers. and I went and asked for them. It was not easy. I finally got a couple. We built a team and I couldn't get tests because we were seeing things in a simulator. I didn't understand and I wanted to test it. You have a simulator. A simulator does what you tell it, right? Just for basic level of understanding. You do this simulator and it does it. If you have an iron bird, meaning you have the real avionics boxes, the real wiring, the real cockpit, all connected together, integrated together, that's where you really test in your iron bird everything that you can on the ground.

2:53:03Shawn Ryan:You can't have an iron bird connected thrusters and actually fire a thruster. You can't do that on the ground. But you can have an emulator that emulates the firing of the thrusters connected in the system and evaluate it. So we wanted to get in the Avionics Software Integration Laboratory, ASIL, and do some testing. But we couldn't. It was hard to get. I won't go into all the nitty-gritty details. When we finally did get in there, and it was a struggle initially, when we finally did get in there, we found several lethal failure modes in the software. Again, this is part of the developmental, experimental process.

2:53:42Shawn Ryan:but realize we were launching in May of 2020. If that OFT had gone well, we were launching crew. And the thing with any aircraft, spacecraft, you want to find everything that is a problem before you go. And what you don't find, you hope your preparation has got you in a place where you can handle it. Well, we found multiple lethal failure modes in the software after the fact by pushing for tests. And my wife knows all this, right? That's why the question earlier, she was fine with it. Because we were originally supposed to launch already. And I came in as a commander, pushed for this stuff. And the story is long, but I don't need to go into all those details.

2:54:20Shawn Ryan:But fortunately, this process, the almost mineral test, we found a lot of stuff. But we don't have any, we don't have, it's a long answer to your question. As a crew, we don't have insight into hardware like helium seals and thrusters. You know, those evaluations for those capabilities are outside of our purview. And we basically trust the process, right? Trust the process. Trust the process. People that are taking care of all that, you just got to trust that those are sufficient and whatever, because we don't have purview over that. We found a lot in what we have purview over, thankfully. But that other stuff, we just trust.

2:54:57Shawn Ryan:You got to, that's all we can. That's what this business is about. Trust is imperative. Absolutely has to be there in this business. and that's where we were in trusting. I can guess what your next question is. Then what happened?

2:55:18Shawn Ryan:I said earlier that we obviously had some shortcomings, right? And we had some shortcomings in our evaluation, our assessment, our testing. We didn't catch some things we should have. Again, those are failures that we got to fix. That's the what happened. But why it happened, why did we not test them? Those are questions that if they're not already in process of being answered, they have to be answered. And I know that you and probably others are aware that NASA has changed its stance on the classification of the mission. You're aware of that? I'm not aware of that. Yeah. Initially, they called it a high visibility close call.

2:55:59Shawn Ryan:And I was vehemently against it. How can this be? And I'm going to share this thought. I mean, this is part of the process that's not right. This classification is based on the NASA procedural requirements document, NPR. And in the NPR, it talks about controllability of the spacecraft as part of the assessment of is it a high visibility close call or is it a type A mishap? Mishap classification gives it a completely different avenue of assessment. And it was a long time before they gave it this high visibility close call. And from the beginning, I was like, this is a mishap. Of course it's a mishap.

2:56:46Shawn Ryan:And they gave it this, and I'm like,

2:56:52Shawn Ryan:if the NPR if the NPR says it has to do with controllability of the spacecraft who controlled the spacecraft? That would be me. Don't you think you'd ask the guy that was controlling the spacecraft about the controllability of the spacecraft if you're trying to make an assessment of classification, you'd talk to that guy, right? Wouldn't you? I would. Yeah. This is part of the sadness of processes and culture and all that they didn't. Wow. And I even voiced that up the chain. I'm like, how do you make this call without talking to me? I mean, not that I'm special, but I'm the guy that was on the controls.

2:57:42Shawn Ryan:How do you make that assessment? What was the answer? It was the wrong answer. Because that's what's happened now. They've changed it. It is now a type A mishap. In line with the other mishaps we've endured, where we lost life. Challenger in Columbia. It's the same classification. And it should have been from the beginning. And this is part of what Administrator Isaacman was saying the other day in his announcement about this, that we, this business is built on trust, what I was saying earlier. And we cannot have situations occur where our trust is not at the forefront of our concerns. And if we're making decisions where we're losing trust, and Sean, this is, you know, it's a long story.

2:58:39Shawn Ryan:I'm not going to go into it here, but that's just one of the points that it just can't happen. When you have an NPR based on controllability and you're saying, well, we lost six off control, but we got it back. But you don't talk to the guy that's on the controls to tell you about how difficult it was to control or if it was difficult. Yeah, we can't have that. And I hate to say that, but it's true. But we're on the right path now. We weren't. I voiced it. But now we are. Now we are.

2:59:19Barry E. Wilmore:And that led to nine and a half months of extra time and space. 286 days stranded. You packed for eight.

2:59:31Shawn Ryan:We did. I wore the same shirt for two months. I mean, what the?

2:59:36Barry E. Wilmore:What do you, I mean. It was okay. So many questions. I mean, you packed for eight, you're there for 286 days. What do you even eat?

2:59:44Shawn Ryan:You know, the Lord's provision, I'm telling you, it's everywhere in the story. I keep saying it, but it's true. I got up there. There were four and a half bags of food that had been, I say, trashed, set aside. Crews before us didn't want it. So they put the food in these bags and eventually they will go into cargo spacecraft that don't return to Earth. They burn up in the atmosphere. It's just put away as trash because we got new food, right? So these bags of food were there. They had me parse it out into the different categories, you know, meats, vegetables, whatever. And that's really basically what I ate for the first four months.

3:00:24Shawn Ryan:There's always a surplus. We planned for four months contingency. That was there. But we also had this extra food that wasn't accounted for. And that's basically what I ate. So people say, you ate trash for four months? No. I like ship food on aircraft carrier. I'm probably one of the rare people that did. So I like ship food. So, no, I thought it was great. I was fine with it because, you know, I don't have a very discerning palate. I'll eat anything. So it was perfect for me. Timing was perfect for me. So that's basically, I mean, that's not all I ate, but that's, I just, I had a bag, a mesh bag, and I'd just go every couple of days and I'd go to that area where that food was stored and I'd just fill up my mesh bag and stick it in a location.

3:01:04Shawn Ryan:That's what I ate on that week.

3:01:06Barry E. Wilmore:Is there ever a point where you thought you're going to die up there? uh no no no no i'm 286 days yeah no you gotta realize i might not go back to earth yeah we

3:01:20Shawn Ryan:know that there's a plan we're working a plan to get us back we didn't know what it would be initially but you know when we first got there when we first docked and we did our hugs and in front of the camera and you know all that as soon as the cameras went off i went we had ku band coverage suitable. And I called the flight director, Vincent LaCourte. I said, Vincent, what do we do in this emergency situation? We trained for, you got to leave space station now. It's never happened. But in a scenario where there's debris coming at the space station, we can't maneuver the station, you got to leave.

3:01:56Shawn Ryan:Maybe you have a depressurization event. You can't fix it. You got to leave. Maybe you have a fire and you can't access most of the key parts of station. You got to leave. I said, what do we do in a situation we run into this where we have to leave? We had a sick spacecraft here. What do we do? He said, Butch, it's never happened. I'm like, yeah, I know that. The chances of it happening are slim, but if it does, Starliner's your option. That's the option you got. Because to go and get, there's not enough room in a Soyuz. We had a Soyuz there. There's room in a Dragon. There's excess room in a Dragon, but there's no seats.

3:02:36Shawn Ryan:There's no environmental control eclipse to support where I could plug in my suit and get air. None of that. So Starliner was our best option. And for the first several months, that was our only option. That was our safe haven. And we even had the scenario where a satellite broke up and they were afraid debris was going to come. And we woke us up in the middle of the night. We went into our spacecraft, you know, the Soyuz, the Dragon, and our Starliner, closed the hatches, waiting to see if we got to go. So we're actually in that scenario. It wasn't optimal, obviously. The spacecraft, we still didn't know what had caused the problem and would it be sufficient.

3:03:15Shawn Ryan:But that's all you got. That's all you got. And that's the way we were for several months. Eventually, we built seats. We built pallets in the Dragon that was there. the ground, SpaceX, to create engineering with what we had on board. And we built seats for us.

3:03:33Barry E. Wilmore:You built seats?

3:03:34Shawn Ryan:We built seats in the bottom of the Dragon. Yeah. And that was, then when we had that sufficiently done, that became our safe haven. Now we didn't have the ability to plug in the Eclipse and all. And I don't, I mean, sure if we had the ability to plug in the communication, I don't think we did, but at least we had a seat that we could strap into made out of foam and everything else. Yeah. Yeah. Mike Barrett, medical doctor, he worked wonderfully well with the ground and basically built these seats while the rest of us are doing space station stuff. Or he did too, but as a side job, he did a lot of extra work on his own to get these seats built for us.

3:04:08So we would have a viable way to return other than Starliner. Yeah.

3:04:15Barry E. Wilmore:Holy shit. Yeah. So you had to build your seats to come home. We built seats.

3:04:20Shawn Ryan:We sure did. And it was a great feat of engineering. This type of stuff happens. And again, the world doesn't know that.

3:04:27Barry E. Wilmore:So are these all, essentially there's three aircraft connected to the space station. What is the space station like? Do you get in there?

3:04:37Shawn Ryan:Think about five or six buses connected end to end as far as volume. The Russian segment's a little smaller. I think the outside diameter is 14 feet of the volumes. the lab, the Node 2, Node 1, Columbus, Japanese experimental module. I think it's 14 feet. And, of course, inside that we've got racks, which brings it smaller, makes it square instead of round on the outside. And there's a lot of volume, a lot of volume. And then, of course, the spacecraft coming and going, there's only so many docking points. In the U.S. segment right now, we have two. We have the forward and the zenith, the top one.

3:05:17Shawn Ryan:The dragon was on the top one. We were on the forward. And of course, the Russian segment docked to the Russians, the Soyuz docks to the Russian segment. And so it's back there. And so, yeah, three spacecraft is pretty amazing. And also, then we have a cargo spacecraft. The Cygnus is attached below Node 1. Yeah, it's pretty amazing when you think about all that's taking place in low Earth orbit with the space station and the choreography and the orchestration of all these spacecraft coming and going. It's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing. It's very amazing. Yeah.

3:05:50Barry E. Wilmore:What kind of effects does it have on your body, Bean? I mean... When I launched in 2014 on the Soyuz, up for five and a half months, and came back on the Soyuz, we touched down in the desert of Kazakhstan in permafrost.

3:06:06Shawn Ryan:It was March of 2015. And it was hard. The Soyuz has what they call soft landing thrusters. Basically, it's like getting hit in the back with a sledgehammer as they fire. They fire about 10 feet from the ground, and then you hit the ground. So it's boom, boom. And it was the hardest thing I've ever felt. I'm laying in a bucket, basically, that's molded like my body because, you know, that's the seat liner that we launched with was molded to my body. And I didn't get knocked out of breath. I was pretty surprised because it was that hard. I didn't feel any pain. Everything was great. It was just a very, very hard landing.

3:06:46Shawn Ryan:within a week, there was something in my right side of my back that I felt. It's never gone away. Don't know what it is. They've MRI'd it. They've X-rayed it. I have a constant forever pain, a thorn in my side, if you will. Oh, man. Since 2015. When I was in space this last time, it was gone. You get no pressure on your system, zero gravity, and all your joint aches and pains are gone. You haven't noticed, but I don't turn my head to the right. Pulling Gs for 40 years almost. My neck is just not what it used to be. So it's hard for me to turn to the right. Not as bad to the left, but I can't turn to the right hardly.

3:07:26Shawn Ryan:No pain. No pain. No pain in space. I got back. We splashed down in the Gulf of America. and within 10 minutes before they'd even gotten us to the boat, my neck had already started hurting. Damn. And that pain was back. And now, so what does it do to your body is your question. I don't know what it is, but that pain is there. And some days it takes my breath. I don't know what it is. So that's one of the leftovers from space flight. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Um, neuro vestibular, your balance, you're not stimulated by gravity. All of a sudden you are, it takes a little while to come back. That's why you kind of get, you know, I, I've never gotten sick going to it.

3:08:15Shawn Ryan:It's seamless for me. No issue at all. Some people get space sickness, the transition from gravity to nothing. Cause the fluids, as we sit here, our fluids are gravity pulls it to our lower extremities and zero gravity fluids just go all over. You'll see, look at my face. is puffy the whole time I'm on orbit because the fluid is shifting into my head. A lot of people, I've just learned this, have a vein that helps drain fluid. Some people, you can't tell it, but some people's veins, maybe it's a little smaller. It doesn't drain the fluid. And so my face is always puffy. You come back to space, from space, excuse me, come back from space.

3:08:54Shawn Ryan:Now the gravity is pulling you, neurovestibular, your balance, your body, your structure's not used to holding up your structure. You know, we've got muscles. We work out two and a half hours a day. I worked out every, even the day I did a spacewalk, I worked out, I got up early and worked out. You got to keep your muscles from atrophying. You got to keep the calcium from decalcifying. You got to do all of that. And every single day you got to do it. And so, and it feels good to put some stress on your body. But coming back, your little muscles we can't work out, your body all of a sudden has to hold up your structure.

3:09:25Shawn Ryan:and those little muscles go, oh my goodness, and oh my. When I came back the last time, we didn't have any massages or anything, but now we do. Since then, some of us said, hey, we got to do this. The Russians always have. They always give massages every other day to help those muscles get back in tone. And so now we do. And it's great, except this one, whatever this issue is with me, I guess it's going to be with me. It's just me now. But it started with the Soyuz mission. Again, I don't think it was the impact. It just was my body in space and then transition to gravity. It just, something happened and not sure what it is.

3:10:05Barry E. Wilmore:What's your daily life like for 286 days? Busy. Is it?

3:10:11Shawn Ryan:Yeah. I mean, stuff breaks. I mean, things break in your house. Other than building a seat. Yeah. Stuff breaks, potty ops. You know, you got to, there's life issues on certain aspects of various components throughout the space station have to be changed out. Things break, you got to fix it. Science, we're doing science every day, 200 and something different science, stem cell research, DNA sequencing, capillary flow. I mean, just the list goes on and on. You know, we give ourselves, take our own blood and get trained to do all that. So phlebotomy, I do it myself. Take my own blood, it's assessed.

3:10:45Shawn Ryan:We freeze it. We send it down on the cargo space raft that returns. There's a space dragon that returns in the atmosphere. or we take it down with us. And it's assessed for various, a number of different things, you know, peeing in a bottle, freezing your pee. And that's all, I mean, it's just, there's all kinds of that. And that's constantly going on.

3:11:04Barry E. Wilmore:Just every element of life. Every element of life. You're testing in a new environment.

3:11:08Shawn Ryan:And the space station, think of it at your house. Things break, you got to fix it. And because it's the space station and it's, not because it's the space station, but because of the environment, things do break. more so than what you would think they would. And we're always launching spare parts to have them there just in case when the next thing breaks. Matter of fact, we took a pump for the potty, UPA, and the structure of one was good and the pump of another was good. So we took it, the pump out of one and put it in the structure of the other. Called it the Franken pump because we put two and made one out of it.

3:11:44Shawn Ryan:And it lasted for a couple of months, which was great until they launched another one. Those type of things are ongoing. Always, always doing those type of things. It's a significant engineering marvel. It truly is.

3:11:56Barry E. Wilmore:How are you maintaining contact with your family?

3:12:00Shawn Ryan:Actually, very easily. Very easily now. I launched in the shuttle way back when, minimal to nothing. The last time I launched on the Soyuz 2014, 2015, when we had the right coverage, I could make a phone call through my computer. and they would set up video calls once a week, holidays. Now, with the capabilities, I can do a video call myself. I could call you, video from space.

3:12:28Barry E. Wilmore:Starlink?

3:12:30Shawn Ryan:I don't know if we're using Starlink or not, but into the iPad, make a video call through whatever satellite system we're using. And right there, almost feels like it's real time. I mean, I tied into my church every Sunday. I read that. Yeah, I'm tying into my church. And I, you know, I've learned over the course of this life, if I want to live worthy, I mean, what's my goal? What's my goal in life? In the flesh, I want to live worthy of my Lord, what He's called me to. If I'm going to do that, I have to have continual influx of the truth of His Word. And I have to have the fellowship of the local body of the church.

3:13:03Shawn Ryan:I need it. And I've learned that. If I want to be the man that the Lord would have me be, and that's what people say, hey, what can I pray for you? And I'm like, well, pray that I would be the man that I say I am, even when nobody's watching. Because that's the true integrity of a man, right? It is. I mean, if I'm going to be a different person when nobody's watching, that's not integrity. And I want to honor my Lord, walk worthy. And that means when nobody's watching either. And so that's something that's paramount for me personally. And I can't do that alone. I need the influx of my church. And it was wonderful.

3:13:46Shawn Ryan:I told you earlier that I was in the corner of a module. They didn't have a place for me to stay. And I just took up residence in the corner of one of the modules out in the open. And I'd tie into my church. I'd sing with them. And I never asked what everybody thought of that. Not that you can hear. There's a lot of sound on Space Station, ambient noise. But I'd sing with them, worship with them, felt a part as much as you can when you're not physically there. And it was vital. I loved it. Loved it. Still do.

3:14:13Barry E. Wilmore:Celebrated Christmas up there.

3:14:14Shawn Ryan:Did. It was great. The crew, you do what you can. You know, we, sticky, you try to get a substance, put on a pan, maybe peanut butter, stick a muffin on it, make some type of frosting. And we made cakes and did all that kind of stuff, you know, using sticky type of food so it won't float away. And we did all kinds of that kind of thing. Birthday cakes, all of that. Celebrated it all. You know, they have, Space Station has been up there 25 years, right? So we've got different things that have been launched over the years, Santa hats and reindeer noses and those type of things. We made a reindeer.

3:14:51Shawn Ryan:We made a bull. You know, we got big old ML, big old huge bags full of food and a smaller bag full of food. And we developed a way to tie the smaller bag, make a head, actually put some clips on it, made it look like horns, drew a face. And we rode it, attached it to bungees over one of the kind of low places. And we rode it like a buck and bronco, a buck and bronco deer at Christmas time. Put a Santa hat on it and everything.

3:15:19Barry E. Wilmore:You know, that kind of stuff.

3:15:20Shawn Ryan:You got to do that stuff.

3:15:21Barry E. Wilmore:What about, I mean, I know I keep bringing up your family. Does your family think you're coming home?

3:15:29Shawn Ryan:They understand that the process is there, that we're working on that. You got to realize in September. What was the plan? Yeah. Well, there was no plan initially, right? Because this wasn't expected. But the plan eventually was developed. There was a crew launching in September to relieve the crew that was already there. Not us, but the crew that was already there, the other SpaceX crew. They pulled two of those crew members off. And they launched it with only two to give us seats to come back. So it launched in September. And when it launched, we knew we were going to be six this month. the normal increment expedition time frame, that the next one would launch.

3:16:10Shawn Ryan:And when they got there and we did a handover, then we'd come back. So that was the plan. And what changed in the plan is that there were some issues with the Dragon spacecraft. There was two of them in process, and there were some issues with them. And the timing of when they could get those fixed, and with the other cargo spacecraft coming and going, which clobbers up one of these docking mechanisms. If there's a cargo spacecraft there, you can't dock anything else to it. The timing of all that, one of the most likely scenarios is we'd be back about the June timeframe. But the administration got involved.

3:16:46Shawn Ryan:And what they wound up doing is swapping the two spacecraft that they were working on. And the one that they were working on, they did some extra man hours on it and got it rectified, whatever the issue was. That's the one that launched in March. We usually have a week handover. We took it down to a day, did a day handover real quick with that crew, and that's when we came back. So the most likely scenario would have had us there about a year because of how everything, you know, these spacecraft issues. But when the administration got involved, they rectified that, swapped the spacecraft, and they came and got us.

3:17:24Shawn Ryan:Well, they came and relieved us. They didn't get us. We already had our spacecraft there. I think the misnomer that most people talk to me, that they launched and came and got you. Well, they did, but they launched in September. And it was a normal flow of an entire mission, normal six-month mission that was going to be extended because of these issues I just mentioned that wound up coming back right about on time in March. Because the administration did get involved.

3:17:52Barry E. Wilmore:And so how did you wind up getting home? On that dragon, the dragon that came up in September. We climbed aboard, set our final farewells, and undocked.

3:18:04Shawn Ryan:17 hours later, we did our deorbit burn.

3:18:06Barry E. Wilmore:How was it? I mean, what did it feel like to undock?

3:18:09Shawn Ryan:Oh, what did it feel like? If you're going to get stranded, stuck, whatever the term is, did we feel stranded, stuck? Not necessarily, but were we? There's many definitions that we were. Ultimately, I've said it several times, Sean. Our Lord's in control. He's the one who had us there.

3:18:26Barry E. Wilmore:You don't sound like you were actually that stressed.

3:18:29Shawn Ryan:Why would I get stressed?

3:18:30Barry E. Wilmore:Because you're stuck in space for an extra nine and a half months.

3:18:33Shawn Ryan:You know, I'll tell you this, Sean. I've learned I'm not going to fret over things that I can't control. That is not beneficial to me or anybody around me. If I'm going to sit there and go, oh, my goodness, there's no benefit to that. That's not, I don't think that's, you know, walking worthy, like I said earlier. So I'm not going to do that. I'm going to take it, do what I can to affect what I can. I might get frustrated over some of the processes that are going in place or maybe some of the reasons why we got there. But as far as fretting over something I can't control, no way. I'm not doing that.

3:19:10Shawn Ryan:I said that long before this situation ever happened. I mean, you ever got extended on a deployment? Yeah. Did you fret over it? No. So maybe initially, but I can't change it. I can't do anything about it. And therefore, I'm not going to fret over it. I'm not going to put myself through that. I'm not going to fret over it in front of my family and put them through that. Because as a leader, my number one God-given responsibility in the flesh is as a husband to my wife. My number two God-given responsibility in the flesh is as a father to my daughters. And I think the word is clear that I'm called to protect them, to provide for them, and to pastor them, help them in the truth of God's word.

3:19:57Shawn Ryan:And I take that responsibility greater. And I know that if I'm going to fret, they're going to fret. And there's no reason for me to put me through that and put them through that as the leader of my family. So no, fretting? No, I wasn't fretting. I was concerned about some of the things that were taking place as far as why we got there and all of that. But as far as being there, I couldn't change it. I'm not going to fret over it. I'm going to press forward and do what I'm called to do. My government has done so much for me for so long. I'm going to do what I can for it these days, however many it is in this situation that I'm in.

3:20:35Shawn Ryan:And that's really, truly the mindset. that.

3:20:40Shawn Ryan:Damn. I mean, there's no benefit any other way. I don't think God's glorified in that. You know, what does it say? Matthew says, worry not. You know, Philippians 4, 6 and 7, be anxious for nothing but everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your request be made known unto God and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And if you look at the details of what that passage is, That is exactly what happened. It's not to say that I wasn't concerned about things, but I go to him in prayer. He takes over. The peace of God in Christ Jesus.

3:21:17Shawn Ryan:It is true. The word is true. I've experienced it, not just that, but many times in this life. That's why I'm grateful to him. He's the one that gave me life. John 3, 27. heaven, a man cannot receive even one thing unless it's given to him from heaven above. I'm breathing air right now, given by my Lord, that I can do that. And my whole existence is wrapped around the truth that my God is in control. People say, there was a little bit of notoriety from the faith standpoint, and I didn't orchestrate it. I don't proselyte from my position as an astronaut. I never did. I only answered questions. And there was one reporter about midway through, maybe before midway through, in a press conference, you know, we're just looking into a camera.

3:22:11Shawn Ryan:We don't see anybody, but there's reporters across the nation, they throw up questions. This one guy says, I don't know who it was, Captain Wilmore, what is your number one biggest takeaway from all this? And I can't separate who I am from what I'm doing. I'm saying, well, that's easy. I am content. My Lord is working out his plan and his purpose for his glory and ultimately my good if I believe, and that breeds contentment. And what I was thinking that I didn't say that I'll share with you now, I mean, go to Corinthians and Paul talks about, I was whipped five times, 40 lashes minus one, 39 lashes, five times.

3:22:51Shawn Ryan:I was beaten with a rod three times. I was stoned and left for dead. I was shipwrecked and in the sea a day and a night. And then you go to Philippians and he says, I understand how to abound and how to be abased, how to be full and how to be not. And he says, I am content. And the reason he's content in all of that, he's not like, give me another lash. That's not what means contentment. He's content in the situation because he knows he's right exactly where the Lord would have him be. He's attempting to walk worthy with his Lord, with his God. And that breeds contentment that passes all understanding, is that passage I just quoted says.

3:23:35Shawn Ryan:And it's true. It passes all understanding. And I think I said it earlier. I'll say it again. And this book, we didn't talk about the book, but that's the reason I published the book. I didn't write the book to publish it. I wrote the book for my daughters. My wife and I had them when we were in our 40s. We delivered a life. I wanted to give them a record of our lives before they were born. I'd written some chapters. But as all this played out, publishers contacted me while I was still in space through my brother, through my church, all kinds of different things. And I'm like, gosh. And I'd already published one other book with a guy that's starting a publishing company.

3:24:16Shawn Ryan:And I'm like, I'm going to go with him. If I want to publish, I wrote it for my daughters. But I published it because of two words, if I could break it in two words, encouragement and perspective. If events in this life could be an encouragement to people that this life is about preparation, commitment and preparation, regardless of what you're doing, and situations that don't go according to plan, if you're seeking to be worthy, walk worthy of the Lord, of our Lord and Savior, who went to the cross and incurred the wrath of God for your sin, if that's what you're seeking in whatever situation you're in, be encouraged that you can be content.

3:25:00Shawn Ryan:So that's dealing with the now. And to point people to what really matters. and that's the eternal, everlasting perspective that only comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. And that's why the book is sitting here on the shelf in a published format, to share that message. The Lord's given me this opportunity. I wouldn't have published it otherwise. It wasn't written for that purpose, but ultimately it became that purpose for this opportunity to share Him, Be encouraged in your life. Things aren't going to go right. Continue to prepare. Give him the glory and the good and the bad and press forward for his glory.

3:25:38Shawn Ryan:Share the blessed truth of Jesus Christ as Lord whenever you get the opportunity. And that is what the Lord has made on me to be passionate about. And I'm not different from any true believer. We all feel the same way because he indwells us and he transforms us into his image. But we also have responsibility. That's part of it.

3:26:01Barry E. Wilmore:Man, I almost feel like that's the perfect way to end this. That is a good way to end this. So I'll ask you one more question. Sure. It's very obvious how much your daughters and your wife mean to you. Sure. And so do you have any closing remarks that aren't in the book that you want them to know?

3:26:22Shawn Ryan:Oh, my.

3:26:26Shawn Ryan:I hope they already know. I've heard so many people say, my dad, he just wasn't an affectionate guy. He wouldn't tell me. He really didn't say he loved me. I've tried to be the opposite. I want them to know how much they mean to me. They are a gift from my Lord to my wife and I. They're not ours, but he's given us responsibility over them. and to know that regardless of what happens, your daddy loves you. And regardless of what happens, you know, this right here, that's my wedding ring. It's not round anymore. This wedding ring has saved my finger many times over the years, and it's got the dents to show it in various scenarios.

3:27:18Shawn Ryan:But that's my most prized possession because that's representative of my union, that the Lord gave me the gift of my wife. And she's not perfect, bless her heart. And she would say the same about me, bless my heart. But together, trying to glorify him in this life, you know, James says it's but a vapor. It's here and it's gone. But what this life does, it sets the tone for all eternity. And let me give you this. Let me give you a one-sentence summary of the Bible. The whole Bible summarized in one sentence. Before the foundation of the world, God the Father determined to present God the Son with a redeemed humanity that would honor, worship, and glorify Him for all eternity.

3:28:11And if you believe and your sins are forgiven,

3:28:15Shawn Ryan:you have repented and turned from sin, and you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and he incurred the wrath of God for your sin, you have met the responsibility for why you were created. That's to honor, worship, and glorify him forever. And it doesn't start after we die. It starts at the moment that he transforms us, and he forgives us, and he saves us. That's what a loving father does. And I can never be loving like my God is loving. But for my family, in answer to your question. I can incorporate what this word tells me that my responsibilities are. Provide, protect, and pastor my family. And I would hope I wouldn't have to say anything more, that they would know that.

3:28:59Shawn Ryan:But I thank you for the opportunity to say it anyway. You're welcome. Because they are, my daughters are the legacy we'll leave behind. That's really it. And that's, in the big scheme of things, life and existence and eternity, glorify my Lord. and what do I leave behind? A lasting, eternal legacy in my daughters. If I were to invent something amazing, that's wonderful, it's great. I'm grateful for the opportunity the Lord gave me a mind to invent something many people have. That's wonderful, but nothing is everlasting except for Jesus Christ and Him crucified and paying the price for our sin.

3:29:33Shawn Ryan:And my daughters know that. Praise Him for it. Man, I love that. Amen. Butch. Brother. It was an honor.

3:29:41Barry E. Wilmore:Honored to interview you.

3:29:43Shawn Ryan:The honor is mine. Thank you. Thank you. God bless you, brother. Thank you.

3:30:13Barry E. Wilmore:Share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review. If you're a podcast host, listen up, this one's for you. My name is Allie Jackson. I'm the host of Finding Mr. Height, a dating and relationship podcast that I've been doing for four years now, sharing my positive and practical approach to dating

3:30:34Shawn Ryan:that's built on my own life experience.

3:30:36Barry E. Wilmore:And I wanted to share another experience that I've had, my secret behind monetizing my show.

3:30:41Shawn Ryan:It's called Red Circle.

3:30:42Barry E. Wilmore:and I was just telling my colleague about how much I love their platform.

3:30:45Shawn Ryan:With Red Circle, not only am I getting a seamless hosting experience, but I also love the support I receive in ad sales. It's not just typical ad sales either. It's targeted opportunities based on my show and my life. And the platform is super simple. You just set your preferences and Red Circle matches you with sponsors that align with your show. You can vet every opportunity and their platform gives you great analytics. More recently too, my Red Circle team has brought me opportunities outside of my podcast on social media to really augment the podcast partnership ships, bring them full circle.

3:31:13Shawn Ryan:I just can't recommend them enough. If you want to give it a try, go to redcircle.com to get your free trial. That's redcircle.com for a free trial.