Main Engine Cut Off - T+234: Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon of Polaris Dawn

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

The crew of Polaris Dawn—Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon—join me to talk about the mission and its operations, their preparation and training so far, how their roles on past missions play into their role on this one, what they are learning and bringing back to their day-to-day roles, and what they’re excited about as they get ready to fly next year.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 43 executive producers—Simon, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian, Lars from Agile Space, Matt, The Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, Hemant, Dawn Aerospace, Andrew, Harrison, Benjamin, SmallSpark Space Systems, Tyler, Sean & Daniel Hart, and seven anonymous—and 844 other supporters.TopicsT+233: Jared Isaacman, Polaris Program - Main Engine Cut OffPolaris DawnTeam - Polaris ProgramCentrifuge and hypoxia symptoms training - Polaris ProgramPolaris Dawn Selects 38 Science and Research Experiments to Advance Human Health and Space Exploration - Polaris ProgramPolaris on Twitter: “Our teams visited White Sands Test Facility to observe how EVA suit materials behave after being struck by micrometeorites or orbital debris, an important part of developing the spacesuits the Polaris Dawn crew will wear during the mission’s spacewalk”Off-Nominal Happy Hour - Dec 9, 2021 (with John Kraus) - YouTubeThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOListen to MECO HeadlinesJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterMusic by Max JustusArtwork photo by ULA

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo and today we've got our second part of the Polaris Program shows for this week I guess. As I mentioned in the last episode talking with Jared Isaacman who's the founder of the Polaris program and the commander of Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn coming up. We've got the rest of the crew today. So we've got Anna Menon, Sarah Gillis, and Scott Kidd-Poteet coming on the show. I'll let them talk about their roles specifically when we start talking to them. But today we're going to focus on all the other aspects of the Polaris Dawn mission itself, the preparation, the training they've been doing so far for the mission, aspects of the Polaris Dawn mission itself, the preparation, the training they've been doing so far for the mission, some of the operations of different things they'll be

doing on the mission, like EVAs, some of the science experiments they've been talking about this week, and generally just to get to know them and what they've been up to on this mission. And then specifically on Anna and Sarah, they are, you know, from SpaceX day to day. So I'm curious to hear about what their roles are at SpaceX day to day, how it interacts with this mission, and the kind of insight they're bringing back and forth between those two roles, where now they get to see what the other side is like for some of the stuff that they've done in the past for either Crew Dragon flights to the ISS, Inspiration4, Axiom missions, etc. They've got that experience of being on the other side now, so it'll be quite interesting to dig into everything with them. So without further ado, let's give them a call.

Hi, everyone. My name is Anna Menon. And I am one of the mission specialists on the Polaris Dawn mission as well as the medical officer. And at SpaceX, I am a senior space operations engineer. Hi, everybody. My name is Sarah Gill Gillis and I am also on the Polaristan mission as one of the mission specialists. Additionally, I am also actually on the space operations team at SpaceX, so Anna and I are both SpaceX employees. Hello everyone, I'm Scott Poteet, I go by Kidd. I am the mission pilot for PlayerStan. I was also involved with Jared's previous mission called Inspiration4 as a director working behind the scenes. Happy to be here. You've been quite busy lately based on everything I've been seeing coming out about what you've been up to.

Most recently, I think, was the fighter jet weekend when you were scaring some of my friends in the media industry, which I thoroughly enjoyed watching those videos and all that's been posted. I'd love to hear about, you know, maybe maybe, Kid, you could talk about that as the resident fighter pilot, how that went. You know, I think people watch the Netflix documentary, we might have an understanding of what was going on out there. But I'd love to hear a little bit about that time out there. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, anytime you get an opportunity to fly fighter jets, you're going to take advantage of it. And it's, it's an own, it's only a natural transition flying fighter jets to training for space. You know, our, our training has been going on for

about five to six months now, and we got another five-ish months to go before launch. Training has been pretty intense. It's only ramping up. You know, to conceptualize what we've been able to accomplish, I break it down into three kind of categories. The fundamentals, specialized training, and then the experiential type training. Fundamentals being all the simulators we're doing, the academics, getting familiar with the avionics procedures, as well as crew resource management, working together as a crew. The specialized training is kind of what we're starting to hit upon with getting ready for the EVA, some of the laser communication coordination, the science and research that we've got lined up. And then to your point, the experiential type training. And one of those elements is flying fighter jets.

You know, Jared and I have been doing it for a long time. I flew F-16s in the Air Force. And there's a lot of training that goes into flying a fighter jet that we can capitalize on and work together as a team. Just the group dynamic between each other. We put Sarah and Anna in the back seat, hopefully someday in the front seat, providing some instruction. But in a similar fashion, we're going through checklist procedures. We're working through our crew resource management, going through checklist procedures. We're working through our crew resource management, the trust involved with flying close formation. So we'll continue to do this when opportunity is allowed based on our schedule with fighter jet training. How was that, Anna and Sarah? Was that a, I don't know if you've had done high G maneuvers like that before, but I'm sure that was something

special. It was honestly a fantastic experience. I think one of the things that fighter jet training affords is the opportunity to really practice increasing our thresholds for doing different dynamic and high intensity operations. So operations that require focus, attention to technical details, working really well together as a team, and really rehearsing those, getting used to that. So then that feels easy, and you then increase your bandwidth and ability to handle anything off-nominal that might arise. And so getting to practice that in a fighter jet gives us a great opportunity to learn those sorts of skills that we can then also apply to the spacecraft. The other aspect of the high G's, you were recently out about 30 minutes away from my house.

You were at the NASTAR Center. Maybe this is not so recent anymore. I forget exactly when this was. But the centrifuge training, the high altitude chamber training that they have there, I got to sit in it. I wasn't spinning, unfortunately, when I got to sit in it. Um, Sarah, I'm curious what your, you know, you were, you were close to the Inspiration4 mission as we saw on the Netflix doc and all that. Um, but now having been to NASTAR and into a centrifuge, what, what was that experience like for you? Yeah, you know, it's actually pretty funny to be on this side of it. I actually helped develop the training in NASTAR using that facility for SpaceX's profiles, originally with Inspiration

4. And this time it was on the other side where I am putting myself in the seat and I can kind of get into the mental headspace of what it's going to be like sitting on top of the rocket or reentering Earth's atmosphere. And it was really close to home. I think the G's I had certainly felt before, but just kind of integrating those into your psyche and almost picturing yourself there and really trying to memorize the sensation so that you're prepared when you get there. But we got some awesome training, both in the centrifuge and in the altitude chambers. We did some hypercapnia training and hypoxia training as well, so that we can kind of be aware of symptoms that might come up for each of us. They'll appear in a different order for each of those situations,

such that if we were to encounter a pocket of CO2 in the capsule or something else, we're able to recognize that in ourselves and have higher confidence going into the mission. So it was super fun to be on the side of it. CO2 trending, that sucked. Holy cow, to be starved of air that is not a fun sensation turns out our atmosphere and environment is pretty great it's nice right yeah yeah honestly even even just when i was taking a tour around i started like walking into the chamber and it was just ambient air i'm like this is kind of like a freaky metal box to go into knowing like what this thing could do to you it's like very i was a little bizarre walking into that thing but i mean it's it's really cool to see i don't know if when you got

if you were there if you got a chance to see like the other uh centrifuge cockpits that they have or if you only saw like the the space cockpit but um kid i feel like you would have enjoyed the i think they have an f-16 like pseudo cockpit right that can go in that thing they got a little trainer uh it was it was pretty cool just to see the switches because it was you know 20 years of familiarity um a little nostalgic for sure but that that g sensation i mean it was it was new for me um we're we're used to the z-axis um you know that centrifugal force of pulling g's in a fighter jets a little bit different from what we're going to experience on the top of the rocket. Um, so that was certainly very, very good training for me

just to, to feel that different sensation. Um, not necessarily the same risks as G locking that you would experience in a fighter jet. Um, but it's, it builds that confidence, um, going through those rehearsals and, and, um, youals and having these experiences are only going to prepare us for the mission. Now, you've also done some medical training as well. And I think you are the medical director on the mission, if I'm getting my memory correct here. I feel like I also saw a picture of your husband in and around medical training of recent times. So I'd be curious to hear what kind of things you were working on, maybe how that connects to some of the science announcements that we saw this week that you're getting ready for on the mission itself. Absolutely. So we have been doing a lot of medical related things in preparation for this mission. So we went through medical training

specifically to make sure that we are ready for any sort of medical issues that might arise on the mission. And so SpaceX put us through a week long of intensive hospital training. We call it field medical training. And so in that we spent hours in the ER and OR every day for a week and got hands-on opportunities to practice procedures, especially procedures that might be more likely to be needed in space. And then also practiced, went through simulations of medical scenarios, medical emergencies that might arise to train our brains and bodies to respond appropriately. Then additionally, kind of on the other side, we also have been going through an extensive suite of research training. And a lot of that research is medical related, but it really spans a lot of different fields. We have 38 experiments that we are taking into flight with us, And we will be busy for those five days. And

we've been working with the different PIs to make sure we are ready to execute each one of those procedures well, so that we bring back great data to learn and improve life both here on Earth and in the future of space. Are you able to pick up any like contact medical information from Anil as I am from my wife, who's a physician where I'm like, I understand the acronyms at least. So that that helps. Is that why you were picked as the medical director? Because you're not afraid of the acronyms is what I'm wondering. So I actually my background is actually in biomedical engineering and my my professional experience as a biomedical flight controller at NASA for the International Space Station. So that really gave me the foundation that led into performing this role on this mission. But it

definitely doesn't hurt to have Anil at my side. I learn a lot from him. It's really been fun to get to learn together and get to ask him questions as I've been working through this. For example, I have been working with a butterfly ultrasound and I scan him and ask him, Hey, am I doing this right? Like, have I got the, the anatomy correct here, get the scans correct. And so it's, it's a great opportunity for us to work together. I love it. Yeah. Mine is like the new England journal of medicine just comes to our doorstep once a week. And I'm like, Osmos, a couple of words from it each week. So that's cool. The butterfly, that's a really cool, um, people don't know what this is. It's like, I think it's like $2,000 or something, which sounds like a lot. And so you realize, you know, go look up the price of an ultrasound machine in a hospital.

Um, and it just hooks to an iPhone. I think it is. And, and, and they are using that on the ISS these days to maybe just not operationally, but to check out, like, is this something we can replace the other gear with? But that seems particularly useful when, um, you know, you've got,, you know, you've got a pretty big spacecraft that you're flying up on, but it's not exactly ISS big. And, you know, it's easy to lose track of stuff. So it's probably nice that it's the size that it is. Yeah, absolutely. And so we're flying on and we can use it for both medical diagnostics. And it's actually one of the key

instruments that we use for several of the research experiments we're performing. Now, are you going to wear the creepy contacts the whole flight or just a little bit? Probably for just portions of it. We'll make sure to get the good data points for the researchers. The really cool thing about these contacts is that they provide huge spans of time of data for intraocular pressure for the researchers where historically, for example, you would only get an instantaneous moment of time when you, for example, use a tonometer to tap, tap, tap the eyeball. And so this provides hours and hours of data and can give a much better picture into the changes of intraocular pressure over time. And they look

cool too. They do. Especially when you just have one in. That's like a whole different look. You look more bionic if you just have a single one in. Two of the crew members have experience with contacts. Was it Anna and I? Or no, Sarah and I.

Experience with contacts is me and Sarah. Sarah and I do not have experience. They're like these very firm little they're like the old ones that my mom wore up until a couple years ago and I was like that looks like some stuff from the turn of the century why are you wearing that still? it's not natural to poke your eye

or put instruments inside your eye but we're getting familiar with it and it's going to be very helpful the other aspects that you're doing up there Jared and I talked a little bit about this. You know, learning from not only Inspiration4 experience, but some of these other private missions that are going on now, right? Axiom 1 just went to the ISS. They notably talked when they got back that they like completely jammed their schedule way too full. And they needed a couple extra days to, you know, you probably know more about this internally than I do. when they got back that they like completely jammed their schedule way too full um and they

needed a couple extra days to you know you probably know more about this internally than i do but like they needed they needed some more time and to get oriented with the space environment before they dug into such a heavy schedule um how are you managing the the workload of these experiments from like an operations perspective um on the actual flight and and dividing up the workload amongst the crew? Is that something that you each get tasked certain missions that you're in charge of or certain experiments? Or is there a higher level planning that goes into this? I don't know who the right person is to answer this one. So I'll leave that to you three to figure out.

Yeah, on the SpaceX side, I'll take it. On the SpaceX side, we have some awesome people that are working on logistics and scheduling for all of this. But certainly we'll have to figure out the best way to optimize crew time across the mission. And sometimes a research experiment only needs two data points or two subjects worth of information. And so they're taking a look to understand how you lay it out and how you divide it so that it works. it out and how you divide it so that it works. I think one of the big pieces that we maybe aren't having to work through not going to the space station is when you get there, there's this adaption to a much larger environment and a much more complex system to navigate. So I think there's certainly a lot of adaption that they go through when they get to the space station,

in addition to just learning the space environment. So hopefully, we'll, we'll be able to utilize as much time as we can understanding there will be some amount of adaption we need to do when we get there. That's a good point about getting to the ISS, because they also arrived, and then they're in the middle of a very busy workspace. And there's like, now the 11 people running around, and they've got people sleeping in the airlock. And which is a particularly hilarious aspect of when the ISS gets very full to me, because it sounds some sci-fi torture sort of situation but um yeah it's really cool to see everything that went that went in here because a lot of these are are stuff that um you know they we do all sorts of experiments on the ISS for biomedical health

and all that but being able to you know be outside of that typical flow of ISS experiments seems like it brings some benefits into the things that make it onto the flight. Is there, Scott, this might be for you with the mission director aspect from Inspiration4, and I'm not sure what the setup is for Polaris Dawn, but what's the process for these sort of experiments becoming part of these missions? sort of experiments becoming part of these missions? You know, it's a very significant objective that we've set forth for the entire Polaris program. If you reflect back on Inspiration4 and what we were able to accomplish, Polaris Dawn is

a, or the Polaris program is a developmental program. So we're learning things as we go along, just like we learned in Inspiration4. There are a lot of things that went right and there's stuff that we kind of wanted to improve upon. And that's exactly what we're able to accomplish moving into the players program, specifically Players Dawn.

It was great to have that experience, you know, observing everything they went through with Inspiration4. I had the opportunity to sit in mission control and watch the experts, the men and women of SpaceX do their thing. I got to be on the recovery ship. So I feel very blessed to have those observations, that experience to be able to kind of carry forward because, you know, I got Jared, a returning astronaut commander, and I got these two who, you know, taught Jared how to be an astronaut. So having that experience and us able to carry over all the lessons learned, the great things that were accomplished with Inspiration4 to make the Players program and Players Dawn a very successful mission. That's it. We might want to dive into that for a minute of all of your roles, both outside of this particular mission, but then on this mission, because it is a really interesting setup across the board where each of you have a different insight from like what you were working on previously or still are day to day and you're taking some time away to do this mission um and having that full set right somebody who's been on one of these kinds of missions before someone who's directed this kind someone who's trained these people someone who's flown the

flight like every aspect of of what you want as a well-rounded crew it's like no surprise that you four are the fit for this mission. So, um, Sarah, maybe we can start with you and just go through talking about what your day-to-day was before this. Um, and what parts of that you're still doing while doing all this training that's taken a lot of time, I'm sure. So, uh, we can get a better sense for like, you know, what we, what you were doing, what you're still doing and what you're hoping to do on this flight itself. Sure. Absolutely. So, um, prior to all this happening, I was, um, on the astronaut training team here at SpaceX. I was actually leading the team and helped develop from kind of the ground up the original training program we had for our crew members. So supported

Bob and Doug through training for demo two and and every crew since. Since transitioning to this role, I'm still on the training team and I'm still contributing to that objective. So from a day-to-day perspective at SpaceX, I still get to support the sims we do with other crews in the classroom training, as well as contributing towards some of the new training development for our mission in particular with the EVA development and some of the operational new operational components we're working through so it is still fairly aligned with the job I had before and now I just am actually doing the training on myself or putting myself in that seat. Yeah. You, you almost sort of did like undercover boss. Like, you remember that weird TV show? Like you've now snuck into the other side. And were there any things that you were doing before with the training that

you're now going through it? You're like, Ooh, maybe I should change this or maybe we should do that differently or we should add this. Gosh, it's been fascinating to see it from the other side. And so much of the dragon specific content that I've seen, I helped write in some capacity. So I know a lot of that information. But what I think is so interesting is as we get together as a crew, and we go into simulations together, we need to figure out how to work as a team. And so you have so much expertise in the vehicle, but that means that four different people are thinking in four different directions and providing inputs in different directions. So we had this amazing first sim where it was just chaos. And we almost were unable to get to the right answer because we were all running in different directions. But just having the opportunity to work with these people and build this crew is so

unique and so amazing to see. Um, so I don't know, that's, that's what surprises me the most being on the other side is just how you might be bringing a lot of individual knowledge, but it doesn't mean you know how to work as a team and how you bring that knowledge together. Anna, how about you, what you were up to before this and some of the stuff that you've done and how it plays into this mission itself? Yeah, absolutely. So I started out at NASA as a flight controller for the International Space Station and then moved over to SpaceX where I've been working on the space operations team. And my specialization is in the astronaut operations

development. And so what that means is that I and my team develop all of the different operations that our astronauts do in our spacecraft. So that's everything from how do you put on your spacesuit to how do you fight a fire or respond to a rapid depressurization of the capsule to keep the crew safe, make sure we're using each piece of hardware and software correctly, safely, and in the most optimal way to assure crew safety. And so that's been a really fun puzzle to get to work with my team of people to develop every single operation that our crew perform in our capsule from the ground up, back when we were developing all the pieces for Demo 2, and now refining them, adding in new

things, things like that to make each mission even better and build on the last. At the same time, I also work in mission control. So I started out as a core, which is one of the capsule communicators that works in mission control and serves as kind of that bridge between mission control and the crew in our spacecraft. So it's the person talking to the crew, helping to translate between what they need and what the ground team needs. And then have recently been working as a mission director, which is the person that leads the mission control team. And so I've loved all of those roles. Real-time operations is one of my favorite things.

And it's just really fun to get to work as a team together and see how all of these different pieces of the puzzle come together to make a mission run incredibly smoothly. And so I think one of the things I'm really excited about to do on this mission and to experience is to be on the other side of that team, the part of the team that's in space and get to see it from that perspective and see how this large team works together. And to bring back anything I learned to help make our operations even smoother in the future. Now, Kit, on your front, you sort of mentioned this a second ago, but you had a different role that was still very close to Inspiration4 mission. And I feel like you probably now realize the things that you could worry about as mission director that you don't have time to worry

about now when you're in the flow of training. Um, so was there anything that, that you're remembering back to as your time directing the mission that you're trying to like, you know, give yourself some space to focus on while you're in this part of training or anything, you know, vice versa that you might want to do differently next time you're in that other director role? Yeah, that's a great question. First off, clarification, I certainly was not a mission director. That term has been used a little liberally based on my obligation, role, responsibilities during inspiration for i was getting getting coffee ordering food um but i did have those experiences that i can certainly fall back on sitting watching mission control um execute watching the cores and the mds um sitting on the recovery ship which is um you know that's

limited volume on those recovery ships and see that operation in execution was was, you know, exponentially beneficial. So there's I think there's a lot to carry over. I wish I kind of had paid a little more attention to the training that was going on because we were busy. We were trying to figure out this entire Inspiration 4 program as we were going along. But we have some great instructors and I've got immediate phone of friends in the capsule when I've got questions during these simulations. So that's, So that's, you know, it's a unicorn situation for us. One of the biggest observations that I've noticed going through this training is how critical and important the teamwork and the group dynamic is.

And we have that. All four had roles and responsibilities during Inspiration4. We built those relationships during that, and we've only been able to foster, um, and, and it's, it's crucial. Um, you know, we mentioned it on the first simulation that we went through as a crew. Uh, it was, we were asses and elbows trying to figure out what was going on and, and, uh, we were missing the forest of the trees. Um, that's going to improve exponentially. Um, it already has, uh, we got a long road of the trees. That's going to improve exponentially. It already has. We got a long road ahead of us,

but we're going to rely on those relationships, that experience to make this an excellent experience for all. I'd love to dig into the EVA side of this mission a little bit. And one thing that I got out of the way early when I was talking to Jared about this, because as our experience shows from Inspiration4, the internet loves gatekeeping about firsts and who did what technically and all that. And I just would like everyone now that they can then point back to this show where everyone will go around and say,

you are being vented to vacuum. So all of you are doing an EVA, I think is the understanding. Is that correct? That's correct. There's no arbitrary like, oh, I exited the hatch. I'm like, no, if you're sitting in a spacesuit in a vacuum, you're doing an EVA. That counts. There's so many different aspects to preparing for this operation. So maybe we can tackle a couple of different aspects. There's a spacesuit side, which I gather no one's ready to talk about. So we can just skip over that entirely. Am I right? There's smiles. So I'm taking that as a right. One aspect about the vehicle itself, you know, Anna, you were mentioning the operations that

astronauts go through. This wasn't exactly a spacecraft built to do this from day one in terms of its primary mission. So I'm curious if there's been changes to the cabin or the way that things secure down that need to be changed now that you're going to be opening the front of it and hoping that nothing floats out. So what is going on internally there to adapt for venting to vacuum? Absolutely. So you should take this, Sarah, you should take this. Um, I think fundamentally the vehicle was originally designed for venting in some capacity because of our fire response. Um, but now when it becomes a nominal operation,

you need to think through a much higher and stringent bar for safety and fault protection and stuff like that. There are going to be some modifications to the capsule to support the EBA. We are going to need to add some tanks to the cargo pallet to add an additional nitrogen repressurization system, as well as modifications to support the EA umbilical and stuff like that. But it's in true SpaceX fashion, just so incredible to see the level of technical rigor and excellence that's going into the development. All the engineers are kind of working through the problem piece by piece to

figure out how do you actually make the capsule safe to bring to vacuum? And what are all the considerations you need to take into account from off gassing, from what vacuum is going to do to the electronics to kind of what life support modifications need to be made in software and hardware to accommodate this? So it's it's been fascinating to watch. And it's just like a true testament to the team here that is tackling this complex problem. But I know that at the end of it, they're going to have a product that is safe for us and will unlock a capability that could be useful in a lot of different applications into the future.

So I think that's just really exciting to see the work that's going on and i know we'll we'll certainly have more to share as we get further into the development in terms of the the training for the actual like how to do an eva right this was something that obviously the space era has a lot of these where it was like figuring out how to spacewalk was a whole there's books about it and you can read about you know buzz aldrin doing his scuba diving thing and all that um for this environment it's not exactly like there's a dragon mock-up in that uh we were talking right before this that anil has been in the in the tank at johnson a couple of times there's not really a dragon set up in the way that yours will be in that pool. So how do you actually train for the actual mechanics of egressing and coming back in and everything that's going to happen to just, you know, achieve getting out the hatch and back in? We have this awesome simulator here in Hawthorne that the team has done some very interesting modifications

to. We have actually added a suspension system. So one of the microgravity analog simulators that NASA uses is a system called Argos that uses basically suspension cables to offload mass and use a very low friction suspension system to allow you to move pretty freely. So we've actually been augmenting our simulator capacity here to have a similar system that allows you to use the existing flight-like interior mock-up and then be able to kind of go through the physical motions out through the forward hatch. So we are primarily looking at that as the means for validating the movements and the motions and the operation that we need to perform with flight-like interior and flight-like hardware. And then separately looking what skills might not be

covered in that environment and what other analogs we might need to do. If it's, if it is a scuba dive, if it is a zero gravity flight, um, or a parabolic flight, whatever specific actions might not be covered, or we think are not fully trained in the suspended environment, we'll then look at additional analogs for how we, how we supplement that. I'm curious to dig into some of the aspects of the mission that are like the fun stuff. You know, you obviously have had a lot of experience with astronauts finding the ISS on Dragon Inspiration4. What's the food situation? I know there was cold pizza on Inspiration4. Are there any new food items that anyone's particularly excited about? We get to eat. We got no time to eat. We got no time to bleed.

I think the thing I'm most excited about in space is coffee. SpaceX came up with this really creative solution for both coffee and food. And they froze their coffee to serve as the cooling mechanism for the fresh food. So that keeps the pizza fresh while simultaneously providing this great, great cold brew that we can drink from space while looking at our beautiful earth. So I'm really excited about that part. And thankfully, Jared's got some experience and and we all have similar tastes in in some fashion uh so what they did during inspiration four was like this food tasting they had this smorgasbord buffet laid out and get to try all these different things like a wedding getting ready for a wedding exactly so hopefully we get that that experience as well um very you know it's a testament to spacex's attention to detail

just what you can and cannot take up into space to eat drink um all considerations that they have uh painlessly you know painfully gone into uh the specific details to figure out you know because up to a certain point we're going to bring the entire capsule down the vacuum. So that's all a consideration to what we can pack away for sustaining life up there prior to that. I'm curious to hear also about the, I forgot to mention this on the EVA side, but is it the same hatch that's used to go in and out of the ISS or will this be a specialized hatch that would be, obviously there's, uh, some different venting hardware, I'm sure, but is the door mechanism. And what I'm curious about is the

window on that door. Uh, if that's the same one as we see going up to ISS. Secrets. No one wants to tell you. Do you want to take that one sure i thought it was a secret um no yeah so for our mission it will be the same hatch um it's a common forward hatch design um i don't believe there are any specific modifications in support of this at this time but yeah it's it's just the hatch and yes there will be a window that we can look out yeah yeah jared was we were talking about how he's gonna have a slightly less distracting window this time but there is this whole starlink component which will make him be able to read twitter more so that's more distracting it shall be an interesting experiment to see which is more

distracting to uh jared on the mission timeline so throw that in if you want a 39th experiment uh where does jared waste time more in front of Windows or on Twitter? He likes his Twitter. I just can't get into it for some reason. He's good at it. So we're a couple months away from flight at this point. I'd love to go around the room as the last question just to hear about a thing or two that you're looking forward to in the timeline from here to launch and then from launch onward, which things you're looking up for. So we'll go and order my zoom here and start with, with kid there.

Oh, geez. Uh, what am I looking forward to? Um, every time we get together, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's fun. Um, uh, and that's what it's all about is is getting prepared for this mission together um so uh we got a lot of training ahead of us uh a lot of um preparation to ensure that that we are ready for this mission um so as far as looking forward to it fighting flying fighter jets you know we're gonna we're gonna make sure we find time to fly fighter jets uh i'm I'm specifically looking forward to all the time we're going to spend on the simulator. Um, you know, it's, uh, once these, the training suits are, are built and ready for training, um, we're going to spend a lot of time and it's only going to ramp up, you know, as we get towards the end of January, end of February. Um, so that, that whole experience is going to be awesome.

Anna, you mentioned the coffee, but is there anything else on the flight that you're looking forward to? Absolutely. You know, there's so many things. But I think that one of the big things that comes to mind is really just this incredible opportunity to gain the perspective of actually flying in space after having worked intimately with the operations and seeing what we learn, what we can bring back to make future astronauts' lives better, future operations and SpaceX endeavors even better. So gaining that perspective, I think it's just a really unique opportunity to see both sides and kind of merge in your head

to contribute to the future of human spaceflight. So really grateful and excited for that. Sarah, I think I've got a minute left on my Zoom because I'm cheapo that didn't upgrade to the fancy Zoom for this. Do you think you could fit it in? you know similar with anna i think um learning all the ways that we got it wrong in training and how we how we can adapt it and make it better for future crews um but also just i think experiencing weightlessness and actually working and living in that environment. I, I dream about floating these days. And so I really can't wait to experience that.

Well, I'm excited for it. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more as we get closer to flight. I'm hoping to keep in touch with y'all as we get down the line, because it's a really interesting program for a ton of reasons, you know, not only this mission itself, but the things that the overall mission is trying to achieve and the partnership with SpaceX. So I'm really thankful for you all spending the time, and it's a pleasure to hang out and get to know you. Everyone says they're such a fun crew. John Krause is one of our buddies that we've had on our shows before.

He's been on the beer show, kid. Who's that? You have to come on the other beer show now. I sent you a link because he drank neon blue liqueur or something on the show. It was very confusing to me. So you three have to come on and do better than that on the other show. Yeah, thanks again for hanging out and good luck with everything else. Go Phillies! Go Phillillies that is correct we are we are firmly in the go phillies territory

even though i know we've got some some astros people on the call here thanks again to those three for joining me on the show it was a real pleasure to talk with them totally made my day uh to hang out with them for as long as they were able to hang out they're just a real joy to talk with and i'm excited to see them all go to space together so hopefully we get to check in with them as they get closer to launch but for now that is uh the conversation with the full polaris dawn crew and and uh we'll follow their progress over the next couple of months so if you like what i'm doing here if you like this kind of interview if you like the shows that i'm doing head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support. This is a 100% listener supported show.

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