Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday, the twentieth of March. I'm Billy, I'm Zara. Yesterday you likely saw the news that the two astronauts, Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore, arrived back on Earth after an unplanned nine months at the International Space Station. The capsule carrying the astronauts splashed down yesterday morning our time,
surrounded by dolphins on a beautiful sunny day. It was an extraordinary ending to a long saga that has captured the attention of the world. Today, we're going to take you back to why the astronauts were in space for so long in the first place, and what happens now that they are back on Earth.
Billy, we did a podcast on this very topic a few months I remember you were dying to tell the story of these two astronauts back then. And now they finally arrived back to Earth. That is cause for celebration. But I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, so I do just want to start, maybe for those who didn't listen to that last episode, with just some context setting as to why the hell we're talking about these astronauts for a second time.
Yeah, I think it's so interesting. So this all has to do with commercial space travels, so the privatization of the space industry, and it all starts because of Boeing, which you likely will be familiar with because they are the US plane manufacturer and they were wanting to test their first crewed spacecraft.
I think a lot of people will also know Boeing because they've made headlines a lot recently.
Yes, that is not why people know them. They know them. You know. Boeing is often the aircraft that we would travel on when traveling via plane. But we're talking about them today because in this scenario, they were wanting to test their first crewed spacecraft. So they were wanting to send humans into space for the time via their own spacecrafts,
and so they had this deal with NASA. Now, the deal was that NASA would provide the astronauts and Boeing would provide the spacecraft, and the whole aim was to see if Boeing could provide a safe way to get to the International Space Station, which, if you're not familiar with the ISS, it is just a large spacecraft that orbits Earth and it allows astronauts from all different countries
to live there in space. Now with this Boeing basically this Boeing experiment, there were two astronauts on board and they were called Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams. Now they took off in early June. I should mention there was this whole saga leading up to it. You know, there were so many delays even before this launch. It was really a decade process of getting to the point that
they were able to lift off. But we're starting in early June last year when they did lift off and they arrived at the International Space Station safely a few days later. Now, the plan, as I'm sure many of us are now familiar with, was for them to only be there for about a week or about eight days, and then they were going to return to Earth on the Boeing spacecraft that they had arrived in, which is
called the star Liner. But long story short, there were many issues with that with star Liner, and it wasn't safe for them to come home, and so their return to Earth kept getting delayed, and eventually it was decided in September last year that star Liner would return to Earth, but without Butch and Sonny. So Butch and Sunny would stay at the International Space Station.
And so it was about this time that this narrative really emerged, at least in the media, that these two astronauts were essentially just stuck in space. I guess indefinitely.
Yeah, that word stuck or stranded is another word that keeps being thrown around by the media, although Butch and Sunny and also NASA, they have always rejected that wording
that they are stuck or stranded. The other day, I was listening to an interview that they did with The New York Times The Daily podcast, and Michael Babaro, the host, said, if you guys don't want us to describe you as stuck or stranded, how do we describe this situation where you have been in space and at every step it really has been delayed.
You're meant to be there for a week, and you've been for many, many months.
And their answer was, we're just working and having fun. And I thought that response really speaks to their spirit this entire time. You know, whilst down here on Earth we have been saying, oh my goodness, we kind of all see it as like this horrific prolonged work trip that we would all hate to be on. But their spirit and their attitude towards this the entire time has been so positive.
We did have a discussion in the office about who in our office would be best suited to being stuck in space. We quickly ruled ourselves out as viable options. Sam put his hand up as a viable option forgetting that he has significant asthma and can't see out of one eye. So look, the prospects are dwindling, but it's clear that there is a temperament and certainly an optimism that is built into the people that go to space.
Yeah, they clearly are really calm personalities. I remember the story about Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, and they said that his heart rate was ridiculously low when he took off from Earth.
My heart rate goes off the charts when we go through like mild turbulence on a flight to Melbourne.
For many of us, that is true, But I guess astronauts are just built differently. I've watched so many press conferences and so many interviews that these two have done, and again, their attitude is just so positive. Here's Sunny talking earlier this month.
Oh don't remind him the snipey my last flights. That's a little sad. I'm trying not to think about it too much, you know, because, like I mentioned earlier, being in space is just pretty spectacular, and you know, having the opportunity to come up here, I know, we're very, very lucky, and having the opportunity to come up here three times has just been amazing.
So while we're all talking about, oh my god, when are they coming home, she's saying, oh my god, this is going to be the last trip that I probably do in space. I'm just trying to savor every last moment.
Look, it is really a matter of perspective and certainly an interesting thing to witness from down here on Earth. I am really curious, though, what do we know, or what do we understand at least about what the astronauts were doing up there, whether or not they were stuck, stranded or anything else.
No, they were just having fun, just having fun. Well, they literally just worked. They did what astronauts do at the International Space Station, so they did a lot of maintenance on the station. They also did nearly one thousand hours of scientific research.
Sorry, I just have to interrupt you. I was just thinking about the facts that we have right to disconnect laws as and imagine that they were like, now you contracted us for a week, you cannot contact us outside of this week. Sorry, go on.
Yeah.
No, their entire life literally revolved around being in space. They also completed spacewalks, and whilst they were there, Sunny actually set the record for the most time spent on spacewalks cumulatively for a female. So she has now spent sixty two hours and six minutes over her career doing spacewalks. Reminder, this is her third time in space, so that's not just the time spent on spacewalks this trip. This is now her third and like I said, probably her last time in space.
I imagine that if you're spending that much time doing spacewalks, you'd see some pretty incredible things.
Yeah.
Even just from the International Space Station, you can literally see Earth. Quick side note, they have been able to see quite a few natural disasters from space, which I'm sure would have been at times quite devastating to watch on and probably feeling so helpless. Last July, they actually saw a hurricane hit Houston, where they're from, and storm that they were watching actually took off the roof of Butch Wilmore's home.
Wow.
Yeah, So he heard that news from his family, who they have been able to communicate with while they have been in space. And they also saw the fires in La unfold earlier this year, so they have been able to see a lot from.
Space, really a bird's eye view of everything that's happening here. So bially that brings us to now to the present where we have finally had these astronauts return home. What did that journey look like and why? Now? How did it happen?
It actually has a lot to do with Elon Musk. So, as I'm sure many of you know, Elon Musk, the billionaire, one of the richest men in the world. He is the owner of X, He's the co founder of Tezla, and he also is the founder and CEO of SpaceX.
It's so interesting that we've obviously spoken about Elon Musk a lot on this podcast, but often for very different reasons. I've spoken about it in the context of X, now, in the context of the US presidency, and now in a completely different context as the CEO of SpaceX.
A man with many fingers in many different pies. So SpaceX also has a deal with NASA, just like Boeing, as I was mentioning earlier, to send astronauts into space. And actually in twenty twenty, SpaceX was the first private company to launch humans into space. So that again goes to the conversation about the commercial space travel industry. And so SpaceX sent two astronauts into space. They sent them to the International Space Station, and they returned them home safely.
And like I said, that's exactly what Boeing was trying to do but wasn't quite able to do. But yeah, that was in twenty twenty one way to escape a pandemic by going to stay true.
So then how does SpaceX enter this story? What's Ela Musk's role in this?
So because Boeing couldn't provide a safe spacecraft to return the astronauts to Earth, SpaceX then stepped in and sent their spacecraft to save the astronauts. Now it's because of this that this story actually became somewhat of a political storm. Earlier this year, President Trump and Elon Musk basically accused the former administration under Joe Biden of abandoning Butcher and Sonny, and they phrased the launching of SpaceX to go get them as basically this big rescue mission ordered by the
White House. Mask also claimed that the Biden administration rejected his offer to bring them home sooner. NASA has said that they don't know exactly about that offer, and they've really tried to steer the conversation away from politics. And I think every time they hear NASA and also Butcher and Sunny talking about what they're doing at the International Space Station, they really talk about doing this for the betterment of society and for humankind, and they really tried
to steer the conversation away from politics. But once the astronauts did splash down yesterday, Musk thanked Trump for prioritizing the mission.
Billy, there's one thing that I have not such thinking about since these astronauts hit planet Earth, and that is what that long in space would do to your body, into your mind. You know. It's one thing to prepare for a mission that is going to take a certain period of time. It's another to be there, I guess by accident. For that long have we heard from them, like, what has this done to them.
Yeah, well, part of the research that they were doing at the International Space Station was looking at what that kind of time in space does do to the human body.
Interesting.
The first thing to take note of is the fact that there is obviously no gravity in space, so whenever you see the press conferences of them, you'll see them floating around, you'll see the hair floating.
An I'm time why they don't put their hair in ponytails.
I looked this up and the answer was basically, there's no need for ponytails because if the idea of that is to put your hair back, the lack of gravity basically does that for you. So there's literally just no need.
It feels it would be annoying, but that's just my absolutely no empirical basis point.
Yeah. I was fascinated by that as well, because when the other astronauts arrived earlier this week, another female also had her hair just everywhere, and that's why I looked it up, because I was like, surely it's annoying, but apparently the answer is no. Just on the absence of gravity, it really does have a huge impact on the human body, particularly on the density of bones, so astronauts have to be super fit, particularly when they are there in space.
They actually need to exercise for two hours every single day, every day, every single day, two hours. Yeah, to counteract the fact that they are losing bone density whilst they're and so they have things like they have they have a treadmill there and they kind of have this harness to make sure that they're not floating away. They also have special space weights so that again they can make
sure that their bone density is still keep up. And so that's the kind of things that they have to do to prevent there being a huge impact once they arrive back on Earth, and now that they are home, NASA and their medical team will be doing a lot of research on testing to better understand the impact of
spaceflight on the human body. But as we speak at the moment, they very likely have doctors around them making sure that they are all good to go and that they can readapt to life on Earth because even something like walking, that's something that they have not done for nine months, so they really need to readapt to Earth again.
Can you just imagine going to bed for the first time that night, Yeah, Like, what would you be thinking about? I just want to talk to them. Maybe we'll get them on the podcast. Yeah.
Look, I thought about this. I was like, we should reach out to NASA, and then I remember the time that they did an interview with NASA and I forgot to hit record and it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. And I shall never be reaching out to them again.
Okay, well, NASA, if you're listening, we would love to speak to your incredible astronauts, so you can make that happen. All right, Well, Billy, thank you so much for explaining good story, and thank you for joining us for another episode of The Daily Oas. We'll be back as usual with the afternoon headlines later today, but until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Chalcuton woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Straight Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.