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My career at NASA has a kind of spanned
a couple of decades at this point. I

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arrived with the class of 2000, went
through the training program primarily

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focused on the space shuttle and the
International Space Station learning

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those systems. Having launched a couple
times on vehicles, you know the the

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second time was definitely different
than the first time. You can feel a

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little bit guilty of "Hey, should I study
one more thing? Or one more piece of

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information I should get?
Am I really prepared or not?" So that's

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definitely different between where I was
on my first flight and where I'm at right now.

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For me personally as a spouse,
watching everything that Bob has put

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into this over the last five years, the
dedication that he's shown the

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perseverance is pretty special. For both
of us though, the way our minds work it

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won't be until sort of the mission is
complete that you have really a chance

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to savor it and celebrate it. This is a
huge accomplishment for an Air Force

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flight test engineer to be part of the
demonstration mission of a brand new

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vehicle. It's going to be amazing.

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Without
a partner that has that same

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appreciation I think it can be
challenging for some folks. There's a

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there's a lot of work and a lot of time
that takes away from family that

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that my spouse appreciates and I
love her for that. On a deeply personal

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level, I'm really excited that my son is
going to get a chance to see me launch

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into space. Being an astronaut has been a
little bit of an abstraction thing for

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him because he's seen me do it in old
videos but he hasn't seen me do it for

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real and so I'm excited for him to see
this launch.

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Really my role on the demo2

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mission is to make sure that we get this
vehicle tested and evaluated so that we

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can move on to more operational missions
at the International Space Station.

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We've got a lot of objectives onboard
the vehicle that we need to accomplish

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to really make sure that it's good to go.
We'll make sure all those systems are

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working during the test flight so that
the future missions will have them

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available even if they don't plan to
utilize them. Through years of the

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the NASA team, I'm helping to share that
experience and teaching them the lessons

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that we've learned by going through this.
Now there's another capability in the

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U.S. besides NASA to operate something
of this magnitude. I want to thank the

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entire Commercial Crew program team
that's worked together to get to this