Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley met in 2000 when they started their training at the space agency.
Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, the astronauts who are about to launch into orbit on a SpaceX rocket on Wednesday, are both former military pilots, both recruited by NASA in 2000, and both married to fellow astronauts.
With their crew cuts, cool demeanor, short and precise sentences, they have all the traditional characteristics of NASA men.
Smiling, reasonable, competent, reliable: in other words “The Right Stuff” from the beginnings of space flight.
They met in 2000 when they started training at the space agency, and have been best friends since then, said Hurley, 53.
Both attended a school of military test pilots, a well-traveled path to the body of astronauts.
Behnken, 49, holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology.
He joined the military during his studies and attended the elite Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Colonel, he flew more than 25 different aircraft, including the F-22 fighter.
Hurley was also a colonel and before joining NASA he was a fighter pilot and test pilot in the Marine Corps, specialist in F / A ~ CHECK ~ 18.
Between 2008 and 2011, they both carried out two missions, separately, on the space shuttle.
In 2015, NASA assigned them their next mission: the first crew flight of the Crew Dragon, built by SpaceX and originally scheduled for 2017.
– Dream mission –
“If you had given us something that we could have put on our dream job list that we could have one day, it would have been to be on board a new spaceship and to conduct a test mission “Behnken told reporters when he arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Houston last week.
It is through the body of astronauts that each one met his women, who also have space missions to their credit.
Behnken married Megan McArthur and they have a six-year-old boy, Theodore.
Doug married Karen Nyberg and they too have a 10 year old son Jack.
The bond of friendship between the two men is an obvious asset for such a risky mission, where each may have to take control of the spacecraft which is set to autopilot by default.
Hurley is the more meticulous, if not obsessive, of the two, said Behnken.
“If we have to get unnecessary information, Doug is still the depository,” Behnken joked in a video published by NASA.
Hurley himself admitted to being an expert in “obscure procedures”.
As for Behnken, Hurley said his friend thinks of everything in advance. “He already understood everything.”
But he’s not good at bluffing and “doesn’t have a good poker face,” added Hurley.
NASA chief texted the couple on Monday asking them one last time: are you sure you want to continue?
“They both came back and said,” We’re going to launch, “said Jim Bridenstine.” So they’re ready to go. “
It’s a time when they’ve been training for five years.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
