00:00Can you talk about what it was like when you found out that you were on the backup crew for
00:04this mission?
00:05I'm still, it's still a little fuzzy. It was a big surprise. I did not see it coming necessarily, but
00:13it is an incredible honor, obviously. That's the first, every time you get handed a space flight,
00:19it is a very humbling experience. We know that there's a cast of thousands that make it happen.
00:25There are a lot of astronauts that are qualified and capable of doing it, and it is an incredible
00:30responsibility that not just the astronaut office or NASA, but that the country bestows upon us.
00:35And so we acknowledge that that is a big responsibility, and we try and carry that
00:40forward and make our country proud and accomplish the mission that is set in front of us.
00:46Historically, I think most of us have been told in the past individually. This time, we were told as a
00:53group. There was some fake meeting name that showed up on a calendar, and we all ended up in a
01:01room
01:01together, and then the boss said, look around. This is your Artemis III crew, which is pretty awesome
01:08because we all get to look around. So you start building that picture a little bit, and it was
01:12super exciting. So that was a really, really cool way to find out.
01:15Andre Douglas is on this mission.
01:17He is.
01:17He was backup crew for Artemis II.
01:18You are backup crew for Artemis III. The next mission is going to land on the moon. Do you hope
01:24you are on that mission?
01:26I think any astronaut is lying to you if they say they don't hope they're not on the next
01:30mission, right? The best mission is the current mission, and the next best mission is the next
01:35mission. And so it goes back to the same point. We all are really excited to play any role in
01:41it.
01:41Certainly, everybody would like to have a role in upcoming missions. And so that's an exciting
01:47thing to look forward to, and whether or not my name's on it, if I can contribute to making it
01:52successful. That's the most important thing, because there is certainly an urgency in getting
01:56NASA back to the moon, getting America back to the moon, and trying to do that as soon as we
02:03can,
02:04as successfully as we can, is really important. And we look forward to continuing that on and taking
02:09that momentum and running with it. I love the imagery of the baton and passing the baton off, and
02:15you know, that baton hopefully will see a decade of flights ahead of it.
