racial discrimination and have concerns about some of the reports around police brutality against communities of color, african-americans in particular. we found that african-americans are experiencing a significant amount of stress, and that stress has gone up over the last several months. when we first asked that question back in may, about 42% of african-americans were reporting that they were filling stress related to racial discrimination and we've seen a steady increase to 67% of people reporting that. and then finally we also found that there's some good news in all of this in that even though 60% of americans are concerned about some of these issues we also found -- >> we're live for a news conference with the spacex crew dragon. speaking to reporters about their most recent mission to

space. >> splash down in the gulf of mexico after 64 days in space, completing the first crewed flight of the spacex crew dagen. they were testing the capabilities of the new space vehicle to the international space station. they contributed more than that on their mission. during their 62 days aboard the station, they dedicated more than 100 hours to scientific investigation and worked with the expedition's 63 crew on four space walks to upgrade the power system among a number of other items. today's crew news conference is the first opportunity after splashdown to ask questions to bob and doug. we'll take questions on our phone bridge as well as on our social media platforms. if you're on the phone, press star 1 to add your name to the queue and ask a question. before we get to opening comments from the crew, we would like to share some of the messages from around the world welcoming bob and doug back to

planet earth. >> splashdown. >> welcome back to planet earth and thanks for supplying spacex. ♪ >> love from india. ♪ >> thanks to all who submitted these messages using the #launchamerica. we'll pass it to the crew for opening comments starting with doug hurley. >> well, it's great to talk to

you today. we're just a couple days removed from splashdown off the coast of florida near pensacola. excited to be back. we're already working through our exercise, rehabilitation program to get our earth legs back. we were lucky that we worked out pretty hard on the space station and i think we both done pretty well up to this point. we're lucky in the fact that we landed in some pretty smooth waters thanks to the weather folks. i think that helped a lot. just incredibly excited to be back and incredibly excited to share the mission with all of you in another way and just so proud of the spacex and nasa teams to get dragon through its first crewed flight flawlessly, just -- we're almost kind of speechless as far as how well the vehicle did and how well the

mission went and all the things we did on board iss with chris cassidy and others. glad to be back and it's great to see how excited everyone was for our mission and followed along and we hope it brings a little bit of brightness to a pretty tough 2020. >> thank you, doug. we'll hand it over to bob. >> i think doug covered most of the things that either one of us would say about the mission itself. it's a humbling experience to be a part of what was accomplished with this spacex vehicle. a wonderful team on the nasa side and the spacex side to pull it all off. it took years in the making. doug and i have been working at it for a good solid five years to get to this point and it's awesome to see it to fruition. i know one of the things that we're most proud of is bringing launch capability back to the florida coast, back to america

and of course landing safely at the end of all of that. and so just, again, humbled to be a part of such an awesome team and awed by what they accomplished. >> thanks to you both for those initial remarks. we'll now open it up for questions. if you're on our phone bridge, press star 1 to submit a question. we'll have a lot of questions. if you find that yours has already been answered, press star 2 to withdraw it. if you're on social media please use the #asknasa. let's start with lauren from the verge. >> hi, bob and doug, good to talk to you, and congratulations on such a great launch. leading up to this mission, the date of the launch was always so uncertain and you mentioned you would plan your life in increments of weeks or months at a time. i'm wondering, how does it feel now after all of that build up now that it's over and you have a little more certainly in your

schedule again? thanks. >> that's a good question. i don't know if certainty is the right word at this point. i think for both of us it feels pretty surreal and i know that's a little bit overused. i don't know how else to describe it. one minute you're bobbing in the gulf of mexico and less than two days later you're in a news conference. so, you know, it's been a time to reflect and think about a lot of the things that went on and the lead-up to the mission, the mission itself, the launch, the orbit time, the entry, the landing. but, yeah, at least we know we're done with the mission, which, you know, we didn't even really know launch dates until just a few months before we launched. we didn't know the duration of the mission until a few weeks before we came home and so i guess it's nice in that respect to be back with our family and friends here at nasa and working

through the post flight activities that we have. and they're pretty well scheduled for the next few weeks for sure. in fact there's a lot of stuff to do over the next few weeks. we're hoping at some point just to take some time off and share a little more time with our families since they were the ones that really had to sacrifice over the last five years because we were mostly in california and we were mostly -- obviously the last two months in space. >> next we'll go to andrea from the houston chronicle. >> welcome home. bob, you gave a really great description of what it was like to launch in the crew dragon. i was hoping you could give us an account of what it was like to land. thank you. >> thank you, andrea. the landing was -- i would say it was more than what doug and i expected. things are always pretty smooth as you work through a deorbit burn. you're still in low-earth orbit

while you take that little bit of energy out that it takes to lower you into the atmosphere and start the trip home. as we descended through the atmosphere, i was surprised at just how quickly it all -- typical events all transpired. it seemed like a couple minutes later after the burn was complete, we could see the clouds rushing by at an accelerated rate. one of the things we didn't have a lot of time to do during our time docked to station was to really focus on the earth for an extended period of time and during free flight in dragon, we were able to do that and probably had a good feel for the rate that the earth was moving below us and we could tell things were picking up quick after we started that burn. once we descended a little bit into the atmosphere, dragon -- it came alive. it started to fire thrusters and keep us pointed in the appropriate direction. the atmosphere starts to make

noise. you can hear that rumble outside the vehicle. as the vehicle tries to control, you feel a little bit of that shimmy in our bodies and our bodies were attune todd to the environment so we could feel all the motions, things that we picked up inside the vehicle. as area descended through the atmosphere, the thrusters were firing continuously. i recorded some audio of it, but it doesn't sound like a machine. it sounds like an animal coming through the atmosphere with all that -- all the puffs that are happening from the thrusters and the atmospheric noise. it continues to gain magnitude as you descend down through the atmosphere and i think we both noticed that aspect of things. all the separation events of the trunk separation through the parachute firings were like getting hit in the back of a chair with a baseball bat.

you would get a motion associated with that usually. pretty light for the trunk separation. with the parachutes, it was a pretty significant jolt and a couple of jolts with the parachutes as well. all the way down, we were talking about it, i think, i took a line from an old movie that doug and i were both familiar with at one point. under the g load of about 4.2 gs, i said, you want to get some coffee, much like we had seen in an old move we had watched. that was the feeling that we had add. that's what we felt like.

>> one vehicle, so that we were familiar with all those sounds and reassuring is not quite the right word because we think of it more in technical terms as, you know, pilots and engineers riding along with that vehicle. but when it performed as expected and we could check off those events, we were comfortable coming through the atmosphere, even though, you know, it felt like we were inside of an animal. >> let's go to david curly from the discovery channel. >> reporter: what a description. welcome back to both of you. i have a lot of technical questions, but let's do the fun questions and the big question, bob. did you leave something for megan, will spacex leave it there and, doug, you said you

would talk about the historical meaning afterwards. here we are, big picture, what does this mean. thank you, gentlemen, and welcome home. >> you go first. >> inside the vehicle, it's not something we don't do, we do our best to keep it in shipshape. we left a patch inside the vehicle that we added and we gave the ship a name endeavor. and i'm hopeful they'll be able to keep both of those things as they go forward and add their decal to the interior of endeavor. >> i guess for me, from the historical aspect, i think certainly the first u.s. crude vehicle since the shuttle, nine years ago, certainly personally, it's significant because i was the last shuttle pilot and the first commander dragon. it's neat to think about now.

and i certainly maybe a year from now will think a lot more about it. but i'm more -- i think what's more important to me is that historical aspect for nasa and certainly for spacex, for a company that's only been around for a decade or a little more than that, to build a spaceship that takes crew into orbit and returns them safely, that part of the historical aspect for me is probably most significant. and to be part of that for me is also by far the most important and one of the most incredible highlights that i'll have from a professional career to just -- to just share in that journey, that odyssey, that endeavor, as we named our ship, was just one of the true honors of my entire

life. but certainly my professional career. >> now go to marsha done from t -- marsha dun from the associated press. >> reporter: did either of you were surrounded by -- so soon after splashdown. were you surprised to find that out afterwards? and bob, when is the puppy arriving? >> i guess since bob's got a really important question to answer, i'll talk about the boaters. this is something that we discussed as a nasa spacex group prior to demo one, actually. and we certainly appreciate the folks wanting to participate in the event. but, you know, there's some safety aspects as the administrator said, we'll have to take a look at.

i can't happen like it did before. certainly, we were not -- it's mostly due to the kind of way the windows looked after splashdown. so, you know, the re-entry is a fairly dynamic event and you can see from just an overall view of the capsule that re-entry is a pretty demanding environment with the different scorches on the vehicle. and the windows were not spared any of that -- the look out the windows, you could basically tell that it was daylight, but very little else. we didn't really see anything clearly out the windows until the spacex recovery crews got near us with the fast boats and we could a head or two out the window. i had no awareness of the other people who were out there until we were back on board and in the medical facility.

>> i just want to add a little bit to that which is, folks need to realize we were delayed with actually hoping the hatch for an extended period while the teams made sure that everything was clear and the vehicle was safe for us to exit and made sure everything was clear and the vehicle was safe to get as many people as required to perform that extraction for us. just a word to the wise for folks who have ideas of coming that close again in the future that we take extreme precautions to make sure it is safe, and we do that for a reason. and hopefully they'll appreciate that that's really required of us. as far as the puppy goes, we're on about a two-week time frame where we need to teach my son a little bit about the things that are required to have a dog in the house and make sure he's comfortable with picking up his responsibilities associated with the dog. i've done a lot of that with the ip phone with the space station over the past couple months.

now he's got to put the right in to get the dog in the right location and show me he's ready to take on the responsibility. he's going to love that puppy, and he needs to bring him up right. we need to set him up for success. otherwise, it'll be my dog instead of his. >> let's go to robert pearlman. >> hi bob and doug. great to see you back on earth. up until now it would be a given that something from the mission, the spacecraft or the space dudes would be heading to the smithsonian. but very little of your equipment belongs to nasa and your space flight is slated to fly again. if it were up to you, what would you like to see spacex donate to the space museum or otherwise put on display? and might we agree to see your

son donate tremor? >> they might make that agreement. i'm sure they would request something in trade, an opportunity to see where tremor's new home will be. i think there's a lot of tremors out there as well at some point. it could be the marketplace is saturated with tremors. as far as what i would like to see donated, there's still an opportunity for the history to play out and the capsule to end up in the smithsonian. it can be used and reused and find that permanent home. spacex has done a wonderful job. if you've ever visited or seen pictures inside the facility in hawthorne, they have hardware they've flown and tested and managed to put on display. right here in houston at the space center of houston, they have a stage now that was used and it's nice to have that in full public view.

and i'm sure and confident that they're going to share pieces of the hardware with the public at large. if you go out to hawthorne, there is a first stage sitting right there on the corner of the property line there and it's just awesome for people to see that hardware and be able to recognize it as hardware that was used for space missions and take a picture next to it and be a part of it. so, i know they'll do it. if it was up to me, i think all this hardware has a home someplace in the future when it's used up. it's just not used up yet. >> thank you. we're now going to switch to social media for just a second. first of all, you have folks from all over the world saying hello and congratulations, brazil, argentina, the neglecterlands, all over the u.s. just to name a few. this is a common theme. who gets to keep trevor? >> i think we're probably going to go along the lines of, i believe it's the nhl, where the

team that wins the stanley cup, if you're familiar with that, each member of the team gets to have the stanley cup for a day or two. i think we'll probably work out something along those lines where we just have a, he spends some time at bob's place and our place. i think that's fair. and then i think at some point obviously the boys will -- they're going to grow up and potentially outgrow trevor and we'll figure out a good place for tremor as well, just like hopefully with the endeavor and our suits and anything else that was associated with this mission. it's just a neat memory for bob and i as fathers to share this type of thing with our sons, and we're just thankful that we were allowed to take tremor with us. and its frank's frankly just amo see the response to tremor and

how much people enjoyed that part of the mission along with some of the other things. we really appreciate that and thank folks for understanding that it was important to us. >> we'll take one more ask nasa question. this one from leann on facebook asking what's the first thing you ate after returning to earth? >> i think for both of us the first thing we ate was the pizza they had available on the jet that brought us back into houston. we had a good pizza. we've done a lot of travel on the aircraft operation folks here at johnson space center's aircraft over the last 20 years, frankly, whether it was t-38s or as we responded to covid and used the larger airplanes to help us get from place to place from a training perspective. and they always have a good plan for taking care of crews that are on board. and our landing day was no different than the other days. they had us all hooked up and set up. and the pizza was waiting when we made it on board. >> thank you. we'll now turn to the phone

bridge starting with eric burger. >> caller: hi, guys. i want to congratulate you on your excellent timing. houston in august is lovely. if i may ask a non-tremor question, were there any surprises during the mission? it all looked so smooth from the lawn toch t launch to landing to us watching on the ground. was it really that perfect? did the vehicle perform that well? was there anything that happened like maybe you went in the capsule on orbit and there was a funny odor or something that alarmed you during the two months you were up there or was it that smooth? >> frankly the dmt mission part of it as well as the docked iss mission we participated in, expedition, but certainly the dm2 mission, i personally expected there to be more --

certainly not issues with the vehicle -- but some challenges or some things that were maybe not quite what we expected. even on our shuttle flights we had things that happened on both of mine -- and bob and i have talked a lot about his missions as well. there were things that happened that were right out of a simulator event and something that you certainly wouldn't have expected in a real flight. but my credit once again is to the folk at spacex, the production folks, the people that put endeavor together. and then certainly our training folks. the mission went just like the simulators. and i -- honestly from start to finish there was no surprises. for me, personally i expected the entry to diverge somewhat by what we saw in the simulator. what i mean by that, as the capsule gets in the thick of the atmosphere, somewhere from 20k

down to maybe 10k just prower to the droegs with dragon, i expected there to be altitude control. it's tough to maintain perfect altitude and control. and at some point -- and the design of this vehicle is for the droves to come out potentially a little bit earlier than they normally would come out to kind of right the vehicle. i fully expected that to happen. and it did not. the vehicle was rock solid right up until the nominal drove deploy altitude. and, as bob described, you could feel it. you knew it. you felt it. you knew the droves both worked. we felt the different stages of disreef. and right to the impact in the water, it was -- you know, we kind of had a feeling it would be not as much as as landing as was described to us, but was

going to be a firm slashdown. even how we bobbed in the water and how the vehicle sat in the water. so, my compliments to spacex and the commercial crew program. the vehicle performed exactly how it was supposed to. and you feel really good about crew 1 and what they should expect and what they should see when they fly their mission. >> next is chris davenport from the "washington post." >> caller: hey, guys. welcome back. good to see you. two quick ones. just looking for maybe a description of what it was like inside dragon when the heat was building, that plasma was building. were you cool? what the view was like? doug, if you could talk about who you called in the fat zone. thanks. >> as we came through the atmosphere, i think we had a pretty good view out the window. until the g started building at

least for me, my view shifted towards the display content. the windows are down by our feet. being able to look at those requires kind of head motion and pushing your body around. so, just didn't seem like the smartest thing to do as the vehicle was maneuvering and starting to put gs on to be turning our heads and trying to move around in our seats. at that point, we were try to ensure we were good and strapped in. i do feel like i felt warming of the capsule on the inside. the real notice was when i got the chance once the gs had come down to look out the windows again, they were obscured as doug described rlier. we saw the crowds racing by. we focused on monitoring the vehicle and paying attention to the small bobbles we could feel as it controlled the altitude. there was not much to see out the windows by the time we had another answer to do it. >> i think i'll just add i had an entry that was a night entry and then a day entry, and it's

tough with shuttle even to see the plasma in the daytime. it's almost just this really thin pinkish hue that you could -- in the front seats of the shuttle you could pick up just very -- it was very difficult to see. i certainly didn't expect with a full daytime entry like we had with dragon and the position of the windows relative to where we sit until the seats adjust for the, basically to get our heads more vertical than our feet after we're under parachutes. you really have to work pretty hard to just see out the windows. as far as the phone, yeah, that probably was a pretty funny to hear that you have astronauts calling whoever we could call. but there was a real reason for it. you know, nick hague, when he had his abort, they also had a phone where they're able to call

folks. but some of the numbers either weren't correct or weren't loaded. and as i think most people know in this day and age, we know very few phone numbers by heart like we used to know many years ago. so, we wanted to get a test objective out of the way, which was to call the core station at hawthorne. and when we called to say we would like to do that, they said, stand by. so, we decided we would exercise our judgment and use the phone to call some other folks. so, we called anthony, i think at the cap con -- the flight director console here. hi, this is bob and doug, we're in the ocean. and then we also called our wives who happened to be together. i think they are here at mission control. and of course they were excited. and as all folks know that have gone through this as a family member, you're kind of helpless until you hear the voice of your loved one on the other end. and this was a great chance to

reassure them that we were in the water, we were okay, we were feeling good. and then at that point, we were still waiting on spacex. so, we just decided to call a few other people that we knew their phone numbers. we got ahold after a few. but if anybody's ever use that phone, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't connect. it was a successful test. we're confident that future crews, if they need it, it's a good option for communication. >> next is steven clark from space flight now. >> caller: hi, guys. congratulations on a successful mission, and welcome back to earth. thanks for taking my question. just wanted to -- this by all accounts was a very successful test flight. just based on your experiences, can i get one of you to comment on if you think crew dragon is ready to go on crew rotation missions to iss for successful returns. >> i think both of us are in

agreement, no questions that the crew dragon, but they finish the certification process. they need to look at our data. it's not just the end user's anecdotes of they performed. they will do a thorough review on the spacex side and nasa side. but from a crew perspective, i think it's ready ogo. there are things that can be improved just like even with the final flight of the space shuttle, i know doug will tell you there are things that could have improved or would have been improved if we flew 136. there are things we have ideas about how we could make things better to make things a little bit more comfortable or more efficient inside the vehicle for those crews. but from a crew perspective, i think we're perfectly ready to say crew 1 is ready when they finish the engineering and analysis for certification. >> bob and i talked many times over the last couple years about

the duration of the flight. for a long part of that, until just these -- essentially the beginning of this year, it was going to be the same length as the dm 1 flight. so, just a few days in space. and i think i personally feel a lot better, even though there were some challenges dealing with the duration of the flight and when all that would come together. i certainly feel much better from the crew-1 perspective and subsequent flights of having dragon docked to station for 2 months is a much better outcome for me than if we'd had just been up there for a few days. if you're asking the crew folks to be up there for a six-monthish type duration, they should have a lot more confidence that the vehicle does fine, dock to station, and there wasn't anything that maybe wouldn't have been uncovered had we just been up there for a few

days. i thought that was a much better outcome. >> we have gene from abc news. >> caller: what mission would be on the books for you folks next? what would you like to do? >> at least for me in the short term, i transition to a support role. as you know, my wife is assigned to a spacex mission, and we have a young son. so, i'll definitely be focused on making sure that her mission's as successful as possible and supporting her just as she did for me over the last five years with the uncertainty in our launch dates and uncertainty in our return dates. it's definitely her turn to focus on getting her mission accomplished while i take care of the things that need to be taken care of for our home life. >> next is elizabeth how well from space.com. >> caller: welcome home, and i wanted to know what kind of lessons learns or kind of advice you will be giving to the crew-1

when they get ready to go. >> that's a great question. we have a tag up with those guys i believe early next week. i think we've mentioned before that we've talked to them shortly after the launch. and once we were docked just to kind of -- while it was all fresh in our memories, the data relay to all the things that we noticed or saw, sounds, and the things that really can't be immolated very well in a simulator and things that would trigger any of the other training objectives that they're going through right now as they wrap up their training. so, i think lessons learned -- you know, there are always lessons learned, things that we did that maybe we could be more efficient about or that we learned or that we thought maybe would work one way or that maybe would work better for another. but generally speaking, i think it's more just relaying the experience and what we did in those particular situations and also trying to at least imagine

what it would have been like to have four people in the vehicle rather than two. we did some dock operation evaluations with four people. we had an toll and chris act as the other two crew members. they had some great suggestions. and we, at the time, passed those things on in the d brief and we'll definitely talk to the crew-1 folks about that as well. there's a very formal process and an informal process. we'll try to pass on everything we learned and what we think might work the best with a crew of 4. >> we have joey from "reuters." >> caller: thanks for doing the this. bob, i really appreciated that description of the semyon crew dragon you gave earlier in the call. i was wondering if you think there's anything spacex should do to take descent calmer or is

that the way it should be? and is that what you expected? >> i think it's important to understand the events the vehicle is going to go through and know what to expect. the thing i found most valuable having gone through that experience was something that actually the launch team put together for us, pulled together some video from both demo 1 and the abort test they performed to show what the sounds in dragon were synced up with the video feed. so, being ai believe to watble correspond to the outside tracking cameras that were in place was invaluable for my sper ektive and understanding what the vehicle was going to be going through and be comfortable as we went through it and monitor it appropriately. both doug and i had confidence like we described earlier that the droves had come out and their reefing had happened according to schedule just based on being able to watch that

video and hear the sounds and have it all synced up, we just knew what to expect. this sounds maybe a little bit boring and i'm going to get flak for talking about movie clichés again. there's a movie, "groundhog day" where they're sequencing through and everything is predictable. for a dynamic event like space flight and assent and entry, it's invaluable to control your body and come through that environment, whether it's the g loading or the dynamics of the pitch and roll moving around inside the vehicle, knowing what to expect sets you up for success to work your way through it and do what you need to do in the dynamic situations. i think the video the spacex team was just wonderful. i watched it again on orbit and before i came home. and i know that will be in a list of things we recommend to the crew-1 guys the if they haven't already watched it that that's something they should commit to memory and consider

having available on orbit. >> next is morgan mcfall from "business insider." >> caller: hi, welcome home and thanks so much for taking my question. i'm wond erg what you would most like to see between nasa and spacex going forward, and what are you most excited about in this new era of space flights. thank you. >> well, it's neat to see spacex is in the competition to build the lunar lander with two other companies. and we've had, as an agency, we've had a wonderful partnership with spacex from commercial cargo to commercial crew. and they just continue to work towards the goal of getting humanity out into the cosmos. and it's been a great relationship. it's been beneficial for both space, ex spa spacex and for nasa. and it should be something we

should continue. and i'm excited to see that happen. it was a lot of work to get from where we started five years ago to now, but it's just -- they're a wonderful company to work with, and they have some incredibly talented people. and i think there's plenty to come from the relationship that nasa and spacex have. >> yeah, from my perspective, it really is critical that we continue to try to build on that relationship that doug referred to. it won't be appropriate if we take the next step which is to restart with a different nasa team and a different spacex team. we really need to leverage those relationships and continue with all the five years of experience that we have of figuring out the things that nasa can best share with spacex to make them as successful as quickly as possible. and that applies to all the partnerships that nasa sets up is figuring out the best way to communicate and share information as how we're all going to cooperate to get to our

end objective. so, i just am really excited as we go forward that the relationships and the groundwork that's in place is going to be leveraged to accomplish even more great things in the future. >> i'll take one from mark from "aviation week." >> caller: i was wondering what the primary question you're getting from your astronaut colleagues is and what you're telling them about the experience. >> actually, we haven't had a ton of interaction with anybody given that, you know, when you get back from space you have a pretty compromised immune system to some degree. so, we're taking every precaution that we can to try to stay away from most folks, although there is a lot of medical testing and rehabilitation that's going on. but there will be time to do debriefs. i think as i mentioned before, certainly with the crew-1 folks coming up here pretty shortly.

but, yeah, we haven't seen a lot of them because we're just in the stage of the pandemic where we're still, i think, even the folks that are -- haven't gone to space are trying to distance and wear masks and those kinds of things. but we definitely know that there are a lot of questions. we've certainly got a lot of texts and emails. and hopefully we can describe everything from memory that is pertinent. as bob said, spacex will certainly have a synced up video with audio for our as sent as well as our entry that will be passed on for multiple crews for them to use. >> i would say we're still in the phase where all of our astronaut colleagues aren't asking us for information. they know now is not the time for that. they're asking us do we need anything, are our families well taken care of are, are we in good shape. that's their primary focus, taking care of the team. so, all the well wishes that

come in are do you need anything, don't climb the ladder, i'll change the light at your house, those sorts of things. it's been wonderful how many folks have reached out to make sure we're well taken care of after the mission we just went through. and it's like that for every mission when crews come back. >> we'll now go to social media for a few more questions now. this one comes from natalie on twitter. what is the reconditioning process like to get reacquainted with gravity? >> well, we'll spend two hours every day with our strength and conditioning specialists, and it's essentially just a walk before you run, literally, type process. we do some stretching. we do some aerobic exercise. we do some lifting and agility drills. and it's -- you're pretty tired after the two-hour process. and we just started it yesterday, so on day two. and it will continue for roughly

45 days. and most people really adjust in that time, certainly before you get to 45 days, but it's a continuous process to get you right back to where you were pre-flight. >> we'll take one more from social media, this one from leo on twitter. what is the greatest lesson that a young person can learn from this mission, especially in these challenging times. >> i think the greatest lesson folks can take from our experience is one of perseverance. doug and i didn't get to this opportunity. this team didn't get to this success without years of hard effort, challenges along theway. doing something complicated like developing a new spacecraft and launching it, developing a new rocket and launching it to the international space station, it's a tremendous amount of effort that's required to accomplish that. there are setbacks.

there are challenges where rocket performance isn't what you expected or a propulsion system on board a capsule isn't exactly everything that you thought it was and you have to adapt to those challenges and you have to overcome them and continue forward and maintain both optimism and paranoia as you go through that perseverance. so, those are all normal things as you try to accomplish challenging tasks. so, i'm hopeful that our experience, the entire spacex team's experience, and the nasa team's experience, just the focus effort for the extended period of time can lead to just awesome results if you stay focused. so, that message of perseverance is the one that i would want to share. >> we'll now go back to the phone bridge, starting with marina coren from "the atlantic." >> caller: hi bob and doug, welcome back. what would you give to future crew dragon astronauts.

you've been close friends for years. did your friendship survive this historic experience? >> all right. what advice would we give the non-professional astronaut when they're flying on crew dragon? clearly spacex and nasa collaborated to build a tremendous vehicle that is very capable to go to and from lower earth orbit safely. it's a comfortable vehicle. there are things that are just an aspect of flying in space that i think most folks don't quite realize or understand. there are times when it's uncomfortable. there are times when, you know, of course you can't take a shower. you know, going to the bathroom is a challenge. but i think in general, it's an outstanding vehicle and they should be excited to fly on board to get that experience if they're lucky enough to do it. and i think as far as our friendship, it certainly

survived. if anything, it just got stronger. you know, being part of a crew with chris, an tolly and yvonne, it was just neat to see the team evolve. we've known chris for a long time. i flew with chris on our first flight together. and it just was really neat to see the expedition 63 crew develop and work through the last few months. and it was very, very rewarding. for me personally, maybe i didn't appreciate that aspect of it as much going into the flight because i think, you know, our huge concern and challenge was making sure dm-2 flew the way it ended up flying, successfully. so, it was neat. and it was just such a huge

advantage, i think, for bob and i that we are close friends, just the crew coordination part of it and flying dragon was almost via telepathy sometimes. we didn't have to say anything. whether we were pointing at something or if we were just at that particular moment looking at that part of a display because that's what we knew would be the thing that's most important. and i just think that -- i know that doesn't necessarily always go into the selection process, but i think, you know, in this case when we were selected to fly this mission together, it certainly gave us a distinct advantage over some crews. and it was certainly very much appreciated by me. >> just as doug said, being able to add chris to our friendship is really how expedition worked out. it was us focused on the mission and chris as commander of the space station being able to shift into the support role when it came time for us to get

docked and us to up shift into support roles when we were on the space station. of course the space walk activities have various points where kind of the leadership kind of moves around and we were able to do that very seamlessly. and part of that is related to just how close and how strong our friendships were across the board. and of course when we came to the end of the mission and it was time to undock, chris jumped back into that support role again and helped us with the cargo transfer that we needed to put in place, some of the powered payload activities. it was all very seamless. folks understood what their responsibilities were. we were able to cooperate and work together to make it all happen and get the mission done. i would say our friendship is stronger and we added folks to our circle as well. >> next is mary bender from "cosmic perspective." >> caller: welcome home, bob and doug. i want to first thank you for sharing that wisdom on

perseverance. you shared a lot of stunning images of the earth while you were on the station, and i really enjoyed the perspective you gave with the captions you used. and i just wanted to ask what compelled you to share so much, and what was your favorite location or feature to photograph? >> well, i think we can both answer that one. you know, for me, i just -- every time you look out the window of the space station -- and certainly, we didn't get the opportunity that i thought we were going to get based on the description of previous crew members. we -- our time was used up a lot to make up for the fact that, you are know, we were down to three crew members on the space station prior to us getting there. and rightly so. the international space station program needed us to get to work right off the bat. but the time we did get to do that, the perspective that you

have from lower earth orbit of our planet is just one of just complete awe, first of all how beautiful the planet is and that there are no borders that you can see from space, that the atmosphere is so thin. and then literally every time you look out the window, you see something different and even more beautiful than the last thing you saw the last time you looked out the window. and it's always different. and maybe more so this year than in past years that astronauts have taken photographs out the window. you know, the country, united states and the world has been dealing with so much chaos and drama and the pandemic and all the things that have been going on in the world. and, you know, if it were me, it would make me feel better to see these pictures from space. so, i just think we felt like it was a way to maybe have folks maybe have a distraction for a

while and also to appreciate the planet that we've been given. you know, it's unique in that standpoint, and it's just beautiful to look at. and it's -- i personally feel it's our obligation to share what we see because not everybody is going to get to go to space. and to just bring as much of the experience to everybody back on earth is something i thought was very, very important. >> you know, i think for both of us, we didn't expect to have a longer duration mission. we expected to have just a few short days, which would have really limited our opportunity to share the station life aspects or the things that you can see from lower earth orbit or from the space station with folks whch folks. when we got the opportunity for a longer mission, i think we both wanted to take advantage of that. i think the earth below is a wonderful view, just amazing things to see. i'm a little bit physics trained, engineer background

sort of thing. so, i was really interested in the things that were examples of science or engineering or just physics below us or above us that was happening. so, whether it was light shimmering across the ocean's surface or it was sunrises or sunset and trying to figure out how to get a photo and share it so somebody else could have the same wonder we have when we get a chance to see it ourselves was really important to me. we had some interesting conditions during the flight. we had a period of time where we were in continuous daylight. we got to do a space walk in continuous daylight which was just crazy to imagine being outside the entire time with the sun up the entire time. it was just a strange thing to kind of get your mind around. and we got to have that experience. and so as a part of that, i think it took away the opportunities for us to get as many shots of the comet neowise that was rising. it kind of came in that same

period. so, we had too much light to be able to see it very much. but just all those things you can see whether it's lightning or the cities at night or look out at the milky way and see the stars in the background or just see the glow of the earth and see it is not dark even at night compared to the darkness of space is just imagery we wanted to share and maybe spark an interest of the wonder that we were able to see and whether it's a child or an adult that's out there so that in this year and years in the future, folks can look at that and be inspired to have the kind of careers that we've had or chase a different dream than the one we've chosen. >> next is irene clots from "aviation week." >> caller: thank you. i realize you're still digesting all of this, but if you -- if the decision to you were to fly a friend, family,

non-professional astronauts, do you think the system is mature enough after perhaps another two flights to have that kind of mission? >> that's a good question. i think if it were me and it were a family member, certainly as bob described there's a certification process that endeavor hasn't completed yet. and it'll likely be weeks. and i think from my experience of flying fighters and testing fighters, you know, a first flight, there's a lot of scrutiny on a first flight and there's a lot of work that goes into a first flight. but you can't let your guard down and you've got take a look at the data. you've got the listen to hardware. and it's probably going to take a few flights because, you know, we certainly did our best and i think the teams did their best to script this flight to be a full up test flight. but there are certainly things on dragon that could be tested

more. and just for an example, you know, we dock to the forward part of the space station. there's certainly the likelihood that dragon is going to dock to a different docking port, either the zenith -- i think it's the zenith port that is likely to be next for a commercial vehicle. that may sound somewhat insignificant, but it isn't. all the software that needs to go into the vehicle trajectory analysis and things they need to do in order to make that possible. and for our flight, that was not possible. the software hadn't been written yet to do those -- to do that docking port. so, just things like that. so i think it's going to take a few flights before -- and i think that's prudent, a few flights before we can consider this vehicle completely tested. and then as we all know, the space business, like a lot of those technically challenging businesses, is not forgiving.

so, the bigger thing to take a look at is to just not let your guard down and don't just assume because the last flight went perfectly that's the next flight's going to go perfectly. you have to do that rigor and that analysis and that attention to detail. and you can't get complacent. and you can never get complacent with the space vehicle. >> that's all the time we have for questions today. thanks to all who submitted questions, and thanks to bob behnken and doug hurley for taking the time to discuss this historic event. the demo-2 mission is part of nasa's crew program. we have more milestones coming up in the near future. for the latest, please visit nasa.gov/commercialcrew. thanks again for joining us. weeknights this month, we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a

police training film from 1964 on how to handle protests and civil disturbances, including techniques for mob control and t the use of tear gas and batons. popular riot gun used to fire gas canisters. watch "reel america: police training films" tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern. enjoy american history tv this week and every weekend on c-span3. coming up here on c-span3, president trump briefing reporters on the federal government's coronavirus response. we'll bring that to you live as soon as it starts here on c-span3. we'll spend the next 45 minutes or so talking politics, campaign 2020. leah is the editor and chief of "the