NASA's Starliner astronauts talk about watching their ride leave ISS without them

station this is Chelsea BTE with NASA Communications how do you hear me well hello Chelsea we have you loud and clear how us Butch that's awesome I hear you loud and clear as well thank you both so much for taking the time uh we have a lot of people on the phone who are very excited to talk to you so let's Jump Right In uh Butch and sunny I'll toss it back to you first so you can kick us off with some brief opening remarks yeah we we appreciate that Chelsea so yeah it's it's been

quite an evolution over the last three months uh We've uh been involved from the beginning through all the processes of assessing our spacecraft uh Calypso and um it was uh trying at times it was there was some tough times all the way through you certainly as uh the commander and the PLT of your spacecraft you don't want to see it go off without you but that's where we wound up and through all the process most of the news we heard as we would hear things over the news waves and and the different means that we

have to get information up here that uh 80% of the time you'd hear sunny and Butch Butch and sunny sunny and Butch Butch and sunny and I just want everybody to know how much we appreciate that uh the concern for for us specifically uh is very heartwarming and like I said much appreciated um every time I talk to someone that hey that we're praying for you there's prayers coming up for me and sunny both uh street signs people we don't even know Across the Nation sunny and Butch we're praying for you come on back all

that those things and I can tell you it uh it really goes a long way and we so much appreciate it and even the opportunity to share a couple of thoughts now I'm not sure how much we can share that you don't already know but I know you've got some questions prepared and we're ready to answer as best we can all right thanks so much Butch let's begin the Q&A media on the phone if you'd like to ask our NASA astronauts a question please press star one on your phone to enter our question Q we

have several people dialed in today and I want to get to as many of you as I can so please try to ask just one question but we'll begin now with Gina sinceri with ABC News uh good afternoon so uh you're on an extended Mission uh you've done these before but what are the ups and downs for you as you look forward to the rest of the mission well uh Sunny Williams had just been named the commander of the the space station she'll take over in a couple of weeks I'm going to let her start

off with answering that question so I think you know what we look forward to is being here and being part of the crew that's here you know we've been part of expedition 71 uh there're a great bunch of people and we've tried to just jump in and do whatever we can um we're waiting for um Nick Nick and Alex to get up here as part of expedition 72 once we hand over we just got Don petett and uh alexe and Ivon here so I mean I mean we're here with our friends I think that's really

a key part of being on the International Space Station and actually just doing the work so that's I think the up part is we're here with our friends we've got a ride home and uh you know we're looking forward to the next couple months and doing a lot of stuff for the International Space Station we'll go now to Mara done with the Associated Press um but and sunny when you launched you figured you'd be back home in Houston to vote on Election Day have you requested your absentee ballots yet so you can vote from space

if you could elaborate on this and what else are you missing on a personal note I sent down my request for a ballot today as a matter of fact uh and they should get it to us in a couple of weeks and absolutely yes it's a very important role that we all play as Citizens is to uh be included in those elections and NASA makes it very easy for us to do that so we're excited about that opportunity and Mara same here you know it's a very important duty that we have as Citizens and uh

looking forward to being able to vote from space which is pretty cool um you ask what we miss right of course you know the things that we always miss our families I miss my two dogs I miss my friends but you know what like Butch said there are so many people uh on Earth that are sending us messages and it it makes you feel just right at home with everybody when we're able to have those conversations with our friends and family at home so I know they understand I know it's a it's tough on on

them as well as you know being away from home of course but uh everybody understands and everybody's cheering for us to get back with crew n our next question will be with Tom Castello with NBC News hi Bush and sunny nice to see you both buch I can't believe how fast your hair has grown uh in the few months you've been up there on station um can I ask you this question I'm just wondering recognizing that you're both team players and Veteran NASA astronauts do you feel let down by Boeing and Starliner and the fact

that this is clearly not something you plann for your life let down absolutely not not never entered my mind uh I don't think Sunny's either until you mentioned it it's a fair question I I get it I can tell you um you I thought a lot about this press conference and what I might say what I wanted to convey and there's no way to convey every single piece of information that needs to be said to understand a majority of the questions that we might get asked but I will say this you know Sunny's got this

shirt on it's got that nice of Meatball we call it on it and that represents uh something that uh we stand for as an agency we go beyond we do things that are out of the ordinary we send humans to space and yeah we're here today on the space station even today this this operation this is not easy uh NASA does a great job the people at Nasa do a great job of making a lot of things look easy going sending probes Beyond the Edge of our solar system uh going in uh getting sample from

asteroids humans in space and it's a very Risky Business and things do not always turn out the way you want before we launched we said there we're going to find things that is the nature of test every single test flight especially a first flight of a space or an aircraft that has ever occurred has found issues that's things you just cannot think about 90% of our training is preparing for the unexpected and sometimes uh the the actual unexpected goes beyond what you even think that could happen and that's just the way it goes sometimes because

we are pushing the edges of the envelope in everything that we do and it is not easy and uh I'm grateful for the organization I'm grateful for the people that are passionate about what they do that we can make it look easy we can go outside this uh International Space Station and do an Eva a space walk and things go off many times without a hitch because we're making it m making it look Easy by dedicated efforts Monumental efforts on the ground and in the and in space here to make it look that way and

it's a and it's like I said it's not a it's not an easy thing to do but that's not why we do it maybe we do it because it's hard and pushing the en in in any envelope is very difficult regardless of where you're at uh and in space is is is certainly the case I'll take our next question now from Step Clark with ARs Technica hi thank you for taking my question Stephen Clark from Mar uh Butch you mentioned this in your introduction for a moment but both of you are veterans of the Navy

Navy captains I just wanted to hear your thoughts from each of you on seeing your ship leave without you what was that like and were you uh staying up late to watch The Landing the other day well um you know we actually had a couple duties while we were getting ready to let Starliner depart uh there's some things that the International Space Station has to get ready and and be prepared and make sure that it understands that a visiting vehicle has undocked and it goes back to its normal regime of operating so actually we were

tasked with that um we were up in the Koopa and we were watching our spaceship you know fly away at that point in time so I think I think it was good we had some extra activities you know of course we're very knowledgeable about star Starliner so it was uh it was obvious you know what was happening at each moment we were talking to our control team uh people friends of ours that we know we know how much time and effort that they have put into this spacecraft to excellent and precision uh activities that they're

doing down on the ground it was it was nice to have that you know one-on-one Conversation Over the space to ground as Styer was leaving uh just knowing that she was in their hands and they were going to do the best that they could to get her back home um other other thoughts about seeing it leave you know like we're like you mentioned we're both you know Navy we've both been on deployments we're not surprised when deployments gets changed I mean our families extended our families are used to that as well so uh that is

that's not a humongous surprise I think like Butch said this is this is test I think before we even flew we had an interview with a lot of you and and mentioned the same thing that you know a test flight means that we're probably going to find some stuff we've done as much as we can uh to look at the envelope that we're going to operate in but this is the first time that we've had humans in space and Starliner and we did find stuff and um you know we made the right decisions and we're

here and that's that's how things go in this business like but said it's it's risky and that's how it goes in the business