(gentle music) - Sometimes life gives you an opportunity to reflect on what you would do with a clean slate.

Our guest on this episode is Barry "Butch" Wilmore, American retired NASA astronaut and U.S.

Navy test pilot.

♪ I've thrown away my compass ♪ ♪ Done with the chart ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ Looking for direction, northern star ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ I'll just step out ♪ ♪ Throw my doubt into the sea ♪ ♪ For what's meant to be will be ♪ - [Becky] Barry "Butch" Wilmore is a Tennessee native with a 30-year career in the U.S.

Navy and a 25-year career with NASA.

He holds two degrees from Tennessee Tech University, where he served as the football team captain, and a Master of Science and Aviation Systems from the University of Tennessee.

Wilmore is also a graduate of the United States Naval Test Pilot School.

During Wilmore's tenure as a fleet naval officer and pilot, he completed four operational deployments, including 21 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm.

In July of 2000, Wilmore was selected as a pilot by NASA, and as a veteran of three space flights, the first of which was an 11-day space shuttle mission to the International Space Station, and his last was the notable Starliner mission that was originally planned to be an eight-day voyage, but landed him in space for over eight months.

- [Voiceover] Three, two, one.

Ignition and liftoff.

- A distinguished record of service, Wilmore has received numerous awards, including six Navy Commendation Medals, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and in 1999, the U.S.

Atlantic Fleet Strike Fighter Aviator of the Year.

Shortly after the announcement of Wilmore's retirement from NASA, we were able to catch up with him during a visit to Tennessee.

Butch, I'm so excited to have you here.

Thank you so much for agreeing to do "Clean Slate."

- Well, we appreciate you asking, and for the opportunity to come here and share in "Clean Slate" and be with you today.

Thank you.

- Well, so I've never actually had the good opportunity to talk with an astronaut.

- Okay.

(chuckling) - And this is really exciting, 'cause you have had such a tremendous career with NASA.

But if you don't mind, I want to kind of go back a little bit.

You're from Mount Juliet.

- I'm from here.

This is home.

So I can't say "home," because my wife gets upset when I say "home."

Home is where we live.

This is where I grew up, and this is where I feel like home should be located.

- Right.

You went to school here, you played football.

- I did.

- You're a graduate of Tennessee Tech.

You also have a degree, a master's degree from UT.

- I do.

Yes, ma'am.

- Yeah, so what was it like growing up here, and how did you think about getting into science?

- At the time, growing up, you don't think about growing up in an area, but when you get the opportunity to go other places and experience other, it's not other cultures, but other parts of the country... We live in a great country.

Our country is unlike any other in the world.

I've been many places around the globe now, but having seen other parts of the country, there's something special.

Maybe I'm a little bit biased, but there's certainly something special about this place.

I was just with some friends this past week that grew up together, and we were talking about how special we had it, and one of the guys, Gene Brown, buddy of mine from Mount Juliet, he said his kids, they're jealous of him and what he experienced growing up in the area and the time that we grew up.

It was just a super closeness, friends.

Color didn't matter.

You know, we didn't look at that.

We didn't care about that.

And all different, those different type of cultural backgrounds because we were friends, we were together, we were, you know, on the gridiron, fighting, bleeding together, sweating together, smelling up together, you know, all that, that you do in football.

And it was just a special, special place here in this local area with the values that we have here.

And again, looking back, I didn't know how good I had it.

Now I do, and I'm grateful.

- Yeah, well, we're grateful that you still call this home.

- [Butch] Yes.

- I know you have two homes, one in Texas, one here.

- Well, Texas is only because that's where the job took me right now.

- And your wife is from this area too, right?

- She is, and she's from, from East Tennessee and Oneida area, but went to school at Tennessee Tech as well.

We didn't meet there.

It was a mutual friend that got us together later.

But yeah, she's a Tennessee girl.

- That's great.

- Yeah.

- I know family's so important to you.

We're really fortunate that you are not unfamiliar with our studio, because your mom was one of our metro TV teachers.

- She was.

- History is on display, history of the Space Age.

Communications have become almost routine with the use of satellites.

- [Butch] Mom got a request they put out to teachers back in the seventies, and she put in for the position.

She produced, directed, starred in a television program.

She put in for that, got selected for it.

And the first one was "Science through Discovery," and then she did "Discovering," and then "Why" were the three programs she did.

I think "Why" was nationally syndicated for a while, but this was back in the late seventies, early eighties.

And I actually was in a couple of the programs as a small young kid.

Yeah, it was great to... I didn't think about mom being on TV.

She was, but it just seemed like a part of life at the time.

But it's special looking back on it now.

- So you were a PBS kid way before, right?

- I was.

If you ever saw that caveman rolling that log with his leg, that was my leg, as a caveman.

- That's great.

We're gonna look for those.

We're gonna look for those videos.

- Oh me.

- So what got you into science?

Was it your mom?

I mean, how did you get there?

- Yeah, she probably had a huge influence on me.

I was the kid that was always inquisitive though.

Mom says that my first words were not "mom" or "dad."

It was "Why?"

And that's really why she named that last show "Why," because I was always, always inquisitive, curious about how things worked, curious about why things worked the way they did, and that's really what drove me into that realm is just my curiosity.

And science is where that avenue where you get the answers for those things, mathematics, those type of things were very intriguing.

I wasn't that great at it, but I still pressured in because I was very curious.

- Well, clearly you were very good at it, because you've had an amazing career.

Now tell me about being a Navy pilot.

- You know, if I were to describe myself professionally, the professional description I would give is that I'm a naval aviator.

I mean, you called me an astronaut when I first got here, and I understand that.

I see.

It's a job title.

It's not who I am, it's what I do.

And I understand that classification, if you will, but if I were to describe myself, it would be a naval aviator that had the opportunity to also fly with NASA, selected by NASA to do that, because that's where I feel like, you know, that's where I got my professional grounding, if you will.

I left Tennessee Tech and went straight into the Navy, right into flight school, and from there, you know, operating off aircraft carriers.

I was in Operation Desert Storm and had some time in combat and doing those type of things, and eventually went into the test pilot program, mostly because I wanted to use my degree in some form to benefit my nation.

That's really what was my driving force.

I just wanted to do my part for my country, and I thought, "Well, going into the aviation," that the Lord allowed that path to go, maybe the test pilot program, I put in for that program and was selected into that, and then from there, eventually had those wickets kind of that you needed to be selected by NASA as a shuttle pilot.

And so that's what I made the application for, four times, I think, before they finally selected me.

Got a little bit further in the process each time, and decided, "Okay, one more time.

I'll try one more time," and that's the time obviously I got selected, so.

- And my goodness though, the number of missions that you had with NASA.

- Yeah, well, they were special.

I mean, I didn't think about this until somebody told us, but there's me and Sonny Williams, we're the only two astronauts to date that have flown on five different spacecraft.

I mean, the space shuttle, of course the Space Station being a spacecraft as well, the Soyux rocket, the Starliner, and then of course the SpaceX Dragon.

So like I said, to have experience on five different space-faring vehicles is not common, obviously, but to have that opportunity, I praise the Lord for that.

It's been very special.

Yeah.

- I wanna know first, what was that first moment going into space like for you?

- Oh, wow.

- And I know you're a strong Christian, and so how does that impact your faith too?

- Well, let me share that story.

I appreciate that question.

So laying on your back, you strap in about two and a half hours prior to launch, in the space shuttle was my first launch, and then the count eventually gets down to below 31 seconds.

When that happens, all control is handed over to the onboard computers.

There's nobody can stop the launch except for the onboard computers, but depending on how the engine pressures and all those different categories or systems come up when it's time.

So only at 31 seconds, you know you're going, and it's a very slim chance you won't.

So 31 seconds you go, "Okay, this is it.

All this training, all these years, all these desires, here we go."

And then you hit zero and you're off, and looking, I was the pilot, the PLT for the space shuttle, looking up at that light blue sky.

There was some puffy clouds, and we launched up, we got closer to the clouds.

As the clouds got closer to us, the light from the external, you know, the flames coming out of the back of the solid rocket boosters and the engines reverberated, that light reverberated off the clouds, and the clouds went orange as we're getting closer, just bright orange, and then poof, we go right through them.

I mean, those are memories that are very special.

And you can't, even if you were capturing on video, it doesn't do justice to what your eye see.

And as we pop through those clouds going to vertical, you know, I watched that light blue sky get darker and darker and darker and darker until it was black, and then we did this roll to heads-up, 'cause your head's down, bouncing your satellite signals off of ground station.

You roll heads-up to bounce 'em off of satellites, you know, your communication signals, I'm sorry.

And so as we rolled heads-up, I look out the right window and I look out up the coastline, I don't know, as far as Virginia from Florida, and watching as we roll, and it rolls all the way to heads-up.

And I'm watching as we roll until I see the bottom tip of Florida, and those sites I thought about, but to see them for the first time looking down, seeing the clouds from above was pretty mesmerizing.

And then of course we eventually make it to space, and the jarring as the external tank separates from the shuttle itself, and there's water vapor that comes up, comes releases off the tank, which crystallizes into ice.

So we're pitched up, the sun's at our back, we're looking out the window, and this black, black blackness and thousands of crystals floating out here.

It's just water crystals that have got turned into ice, you know, reflecting the light of the sun and thousands of crystals, and the reaction control system jets in the nose of the space shuttle are firing, boom, boom, orange blasts right in front of me, these crystals, orange blasts, and I'm like, "Wow" I mean, if you can kind of imagine that and put yourself in that position, and knowing that there's probably millions of people would love to have been sitting in that seat, and it was the Lord that put me there, allowed me to have a desire in my heart, as it says in Psalms, and just experiencing all of this I just described, it was very humbling.

- It has to be amazing to be able to see the world - Yes.

- from space.

That has to just be such an... I mean, you know, we've seen pictures of it, but to experience that.

- Yeah, I think there are several astronauts that have spent extended appearance on the International Space Station that would debate what I'm about to tell you, but I think I've taken more pictures than anyone, being able to go back and see those or review those and bring those memories back that are very vivid in my mind, day, night, anywhere around, you know, around the globe.

You know, we're orbiting between plus and minus 51.6 degrees north and south latitude as the earth is rotating below us, so you get very, very familiar with the planet, where I could look out the window, the cupola.

It's a set of windows.

We call it the cupola.

I could float up and look out the window, and in almost an instant I could tell you where over the globe we were.

And to have that opportunity where you can just glance out the window and say, "Oh, that's South America."

"Oh, there's the Amazon River Delta."

"Oh, that's the Sahara Desert," or, you know, "That's Uzbekistan," you know, or wherever we are.

And to have that memory, 'cause you've seen it so often, it's, again, that's humbling as well, and very, very special.

And trying to capture all of that, like I said, in pictures and video.

Yeah.

- Well, I can't wait for your book.

I know you're writing a book, right?

- I would say wrote, in the process of editing.

The book I wrote really for my daughters, my daughters, Darren, our oldest, Logan, our youngest, my wife and I lived a life.

I mean, I was all through the fleet Navy.

They weren't born until I had been selected by NASA.

So we had lived pretty much a life, a full lifetime before they were even born.

A lot of stories and things that they're not even aware of, some of the courting issues when I courted Deanna, you know, when the Lord brought us together is included, and it's based on really the Starliner mission.

As I went through the process of describing what happened and the details of Starliner and with flashbacks to this life, and again, written mainly for my daughters, that they would have something to, you know, long after we're gone to hold on, pass on if they decided to with their children, kind of a history of their dad and their mom and what we experienced in this life that we lived a lot of it, like I said, before they were born.

So for that reason, I took the time I had on Space Station to write some of that.

- And so you mentioned Starliner.

Let's talk about that, 'cause that was impactful.

June 6, 2024, you were taking off on a mission that was supposed to last eight days.

- Roughly.

- And it lasted almost 10 months.

- 286.

- Yeah.

286 days.

So let's talk about that.

What happened?

- That's an understandable question, but basically what happened is, as we're coming up to rendezvous with the Space Station, before we got in front of the Space Station, the velocity vector, the direction the Space Station is traveling around the globe.

We're traveling 17,500 miles an hour, and we call it the V-bar, the velocity vector out in front.

So we capture the V-bar 300 meters out in front of the Space Station, and then we slowly work our way into dock.

That's how it works.

So before we got up to the V-bar, that velocity vector, we lost a thruster.

And we had a couple of uncrewed space flights.

This was the first flight of the Starliner.

It was a test flight.

We'd done so many tests the day prior, and the spacecraft performed wonderfully well.

Anyway, we're coming up, affecting the rendezvous, and we lost a thruster.

We'd lost thrusters before on earlier missions.

I wasn't too concerned.

We have fault tolerance.

We can lose... Dual fault tolerance in most systems, where you can have two failures, still function.

So we still had dual fault tolerance.

before we acquired the V-bar We lost a second thruster.

Now, okay, a little concerning, 'cause now we lost a level of fault tolerance.

Now I'm single fault tolerant to losing the ability to fully control the spacecraft.

So six degree of freedom.

You got attitude, pitch, roll, and yawl, right?

That's three degrees, and then you translate, forward and aft, up and down, left and right.

So there's three more degrees of freedom.

You put all those together, and you get six degrees of freedom.

No spacecraft has ever lost the ability to control in all axes in the history of human space flight.

So we are down now, we're single fault tolerant to losing six degree of freedom control.

Concerning.

We acquired the velocity, the V-bar out in front of the space station.

We acquired that, and then we lost the third thruster.

Had we lost that thruster 10 minutes prior, the spacecraft would have automatically aborted, because we were down to zero fault tolerant for a full six degree of freedom control.

But we had acquired the V-bar, so it did not abort.

I took over manual control at this point, and so I'm on the controls, and the controllability of the spacecraft was completely different than it was a day prior.

Because we've lost these three, they're all aft-firing thrusters, and we've lost them, and so the ability to maintain control was a little challenging, right?

We're at zero fault tolerance, lost the six degree of freedom and control.

We lost two of our bottom aft-firing thrusters, we lost one of our starboard, and if I lost that second starboard, then I'm not balanced on my ability to maintain my forward and aft, so I lose that ability.

So really I can't lose that starboard thruster that's remaining.

There I'm thinking there's no way that'll happen, and then it did, we lost it.

So we now we lost four aft-firing thrusters, and I've lost the ability, full ability to control six degrees of freedom, that forward-aft maneuver.

I can't do the forward part, the aft is questionable, and all other axes, they're not as pristine.

And so I'm out there in front of the Space Station, and two spacecraft flying together, you have, you know, it's orbital mechanics play into it, how they fly in proximity to each other.

So I'm thinking orbital mechanics as I'm making my control inputs, what will affect me based on my position relative to the International Space Station, maintaining my position, maintaining my attitude.

We had to maintain pointing at the Space Station because there's sensors that see it.

They see it with cameras, they see it with infrared sensors, they see it with lasers, you know, LADAR.

So if we lose that, the attitude comes off and we can't see it, we won't be able to dock in an automated function.

So I had to maintain that attitude.

So that's not easy when you don't have full control of the spacecraft.

So again, very challenging to maintain that control.

And then this ground, the mission control tells me, "Okay, maintain your position, maintain your attitude, and don't touch anything."

That's not easy.

- No, no.

- Because they're wanting to send signals to these thrusters that are failed and see if they will produce enough thrust to put them back into the mix, if you will.

So maintaining that position, maintaining that attitude, it's not drifting, hands-off.

We'd tell 'em we're hands-off, they'd send the signal to fire the thruster back on.

And then we did that, and where we got two of those four that were failed back.

They weren't at full thrust.

Others were not at full thrust.

It was obvious.

I mean, even the sound of the thrusters the day prior, you can hear the piston that opens and closes to let the propellant into the chamber where it fires, and, you know, on the first day it would (vocalizing piston) You could hear those pistons kind of open and closing, because that's just natural.

Well, this day they're trying to maintain the attitude.

They're verbal, I mean, audibly completely different.

It's like a machine gun.

(vocalizing machine gun) As they're opening and closing so fast to try to maintain this position.

It was even the sound of it was different.

So the control was challenging, the sound was evident as well.

We finally got enough where I could come back in closer.

I went from 260 meters to 200 meters, and I thought when we had four down, if we lost a fifth, what's gonna happen?

I don't have any idea what would happen if we lost a fifth thruster.

Could I control it at all?

I'm thinking, "Okay, we have to dock."

(chuckles) If we don't dock with the Space Station, the position, the condition we were in, I'm not sure we could have made it back to Earth.

I mean, just the controllability was that difficult.

To maintain an attitude when you do your deorbit burn to come back to the Earth, in that condition, I didn't feel like we would be able to do that, or even get to a position where we could do a deorbit burn.

So I knew we had to dock.

Again, remember, this is the first flight of the spacecraft, and we've been through years of preparation, developmental tests.

There had been simulations where I'm manual control in our backup mode, which is the lowest level that you can actually control the spacecraft, and then we worked through getting some systems back, and I tried to get it back to auto, automation, and I couldn't, and I also couldn't get back into a manual mode.

So in the simulation, we'd perish.

These type of things happen in a brand new spacecraft.

That had happened a couple of times, so I had told our flight directors, "If I'm ever on the controls, I might not give it back if it's what I'm doing is working.

I may not give it back to auto, you know, let the automation take over."

But when it came to the point of, okay, we got all of our thrusters back, they're not full up, but let's give it back to auto, and let's let the automation taken it into dock, I debated whether or not I was gonna do it based on what had happened in the past.

But I felt like this was not a software issue.

I felt like based on what had happened and how we got them back, that it was something to do with the hardware.

Again, at the time we didn't know what it was.

So I said, "Okay, I'll give it back."

And I did.

I gave it back.

The light worked, it took over, and from there the spacecraft was able to do the automation and get us docked successfully.

Well, like I said, if we hadn't docked, I'm not sure what our options would've been.

So people ask me now, they'll say, "What did you feel like when you found out you weren't coming home?"

And I'm like, "Well, on June 6th out in front of the Space Station, I knew that if we got docked the spacecraft was sick enough that there's a pretty good chance we won't make it home.

We won't be going back in the spacecraft."

So it wasn't like it was a surprise.

I knew it just based on what we'd already experienced, and it would take a lot, since we were safely... I mean, Space Station's a safe place, and we can find a way to get back on some other spacecraft if we need to.

There's a way that we can work that out.

And I felt like it would be a slim chance that we could come back.

And I didn't tell my wife that.

We didn't make that decision until three months later, almost three months later, and I did tell my wife and my daughters about a month into it, back in July of last year.

I told them.

I said, "The most likely scenario, we're not coming back till sometime in 2025.

That's probably what's gonna happen."

And of course we now know that that's the way it worked out.

- Right.

- So yeah.

At the time, and I'm not saying this to pat myself on the back.

I say it to proclaim my Lord and my savior, Jesus Christ.

I mean, he's working sovereignly, providentially in all things, right, and I know that.

And at the time when we launched on June 5th of last year, there was one person in the astronaut corps that had hands-on experience flying a spacecraft in space, and that was me.

And I'd done orbital mechanics, and I'd done rendezvous training back in the shuttle.

I've been doing it for decades.

I had the experience.

I had the experience of flying in the Navy and doing all those things, and being in stressful situations, like I said, in combat and other things.

And so I just glorify my Lord in all of that as a preparatory, you know, providentially working to where when I got in this situation, I was ready.

I mean, I had been prepared.

- So it strengthened your faith.

- Oh, well, absolutely.

I feel like the Lord has done so many things throughout my life.

My faith in him, I trust in him.

I'm content in all of those things, but certainly every event strengthens it even more, and this did as well.

Sure.

- Well, thank you for sharing that, and we're so glad you're home.

I'm just, I know your family's so glad you're home.

You know, the premise of this show, and there's so many other things I wanna ask you about, but I have to ask you about this, 'cause you've just retired.

The premise of the show is clean slate, and, you know, I always say, "What would you do with a clean slate, either personally or professionally or maybe for your community?"

How would you answer that?

- I tell you, that's a great question.

The first thing that comes to my mind is I wish I knew when I first married, when I first had children, what I know now.

I think I could have been a better father.

I could have been a better husband.

I wish I knew things that I knew now.

I could have been a better citizen.

There's things that I would go back and I would change with myself, and encourage those that I have, you know, purview over, if you will, my daughters, my wife, in those lines as well.

I would be less... I'd be slower to anger.

I think I am more now, but back 20 years ago, to not just anger, just frustration, whatever.

Could trust in the Lord more.

He's brought me a long way.

And I would go back and I would clean that slate like you've got here, and I would try to incorporate some of that.

What do they say?

Youth is wasted on the young, right?

So some of that applies to me.

When I was younger, some of that was just wasted, because I didn't know what I didn't know, and you learn and you grow and you look back.

I wouldn't change a lot of things.

I wouldn't change a lot of the lessons learned.

I wouldn't have changed any of the difficulties that I went through, because that's where I've learned.

I wouldn't change any of that.

But how I responded to many things is probably what I'd clean slate, and I think I could have been a better citizen, a better person, a better city member, if you will, wherever, you know, the various places the Lord has put us, and where we lived, and along those lines, yeah.

- That's great.

I hope to see you again, Butch.

- Yes.

Thank you, Becky.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

♪ I've thrown away my compass ♪ ♪ Done with the chart ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around in one direction ♪ - Your dad certainly is an inspiration to you.

I'm sure he was someone you were in contact with during all that.

- Indeed.

My dad is... My mom passed away four years ago.

Like I said earlier, she had a show here in PBS in this building, and my dad has been a mainstay.

You know, he's the one that introduced me to Jesus, if you will, took us to church when I was a kid, and all those things that was obviously been his benefit of this life ever since.

So I'm very grateful to him.

(gentle music)