“”Thankfully, these folks are heroes. And please print this. What do heroes look like? Well, heroes put their tank on and they run into a fiery building and pull people out of it. That’s a hero. Heroes also sit in their cubicle for decades studying their systems, and knowing their systems front and back. And when there is no time to assess a situation and go and talk to people and ask, ‘What do you think?’ they know their system so well they come up with a plan on the fly. That is a hero. And there are several of them in Mission Control.”
-Statement by NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore in a recent interview with Ars Technica about his risky trip on the Boeing Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS). The Starliner experienced thruster problems that threatened the success of the mission. Butch Wilmore attributes much of his safe mission to the talents of the NASA team supporting him from Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Our Awesome Universe 