The White House tweeted on Monday about a new member of the family: A puppy named Commander. The White House confirmed to CBS News that the Bidens will also be welcoming a cat in January.
In a video posted to President Joe Biden’s account, the president welcomes the dog to the White House with his wife, first lady Jill Biden.
“Hey pal, how are you,” Mr. Biden said in the video, which also features the dog running around the White House and has the caption “Welcome Home, Commander!”
Commander is a purebred German Shepherd who was born in September. She was a gift from Mr. Biden’s brother and sister-in-law.
Commander is shown in a photo released by the White House.
Twitter / POTUS
At this point, Commander will be the only dog in the Biden White House. The family’s other dog, Major was removed from the White House after he was involved in at least two “nipping” incidents. After consulting with dog trainers, animal behaviorists, and veterinarians, the White House said the Bidens decided to follow the expert recommendation that it would be safest for Major to live in a quieter environment with family friends. The Bidens had adopted Major, a German Shepherd, three years ago through the Delaware Humane Association. The decision to move him permanently wasn’t made in reaction to any new or specific incident, but came about after several months of deliberation by the family, the White House said.
Champ, the Bidens’ 13-year-old German Shephard, died in June. “He was our constant, cherished companion during the last 13 years and was adored by the entire Biden family. Even as Champ’s strength waned in his last months when we came into a room, he would immediately pull himself up, his tail always wagging, and nuzzle us for an ear scratch or a belly rub,” the White House said in a statement.
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The United States and its European allies have warned Putin that Russia will face severe sanctions and other penalties should he attempt another incursion, and that they will not waver in their military support for Ukraine.
President Joe Biden has indicated, however, that he won’t send American troops to directly fight in that ongoing war.
Bydén, whose country is not part of NATO but works closely with the military alliance, said America should send military reinforcements to Europe if the Russia-Ukraine crisis takes a turn for the worse.
He didn’t define what he meant by that, but responded affirmatively when asked if he’d like to see more U.S. troops in his neighborhood should Russia take the step of once again invading Ukraine.
“If the situation — I wouldn’t say ‘require’ because that’s the wrong word — but if the situation would worsen, I do believe it would be good to have a bigger footprint,” Bydén said.
Asked where the troops should go, the Swede said, “probably where they are today. Because you have bases in Europe. It’s not like you’re not there. It’s more it’s more like… reinforce what you have… More people, more capabilities.”
Sweden does not host any U.S. military bases.
Poland has long been eager to add more U.S. troops to the 5,500 it already hosts under an agreement struck during the Trump administration. Latvia also has appealed for a bigger U.S. presence, either on a rotational basis or permanent, and has suggested it would pay some of the costs to base them there.
Bydén declined to say how many more troops the United States should send. He also declined to give details about his meetings with U.S. officials and what each side pledged to the other.
Asked for comment, a Pentagon spokesperson said: “The Department of Defense and the Sweden Ministry of Defense enjoy long-standing cooperation as highlighted in the 2016 Bilateral Statement of Intent. We also enjoy strong trilateral cooperation with Sweden and Finland, both of which are Nordic NATO Enhanced Opportunity Partners.”
The Swedish military leader stressed that European countries should step up their own coordination and actions in the event of a Russian move against Ukraine. But when asked if Sweden would join NATO, he noted that was not in his country’s current government’s plans.
“If we show that we are able to take care of what we should do, the chance to get support from [the] U.S. to a greater extent, more, a bigger footprint in Europe, I think… the chance would be much better.”
“I don’t take it for granted,” he added. “But the support from your country, the relationship, it’s one of the most important parts also for European security.”
Bydén expressed confidence in the ongoing intelligence sharing between the United States and his country. He also said he believes the United States is capable of maintaining strong ties with Europe even as it infuses more resources toward dealing with an increasingly assertive China.
“It’s not either/or for us,” he said. “And I wouldn’t expect the U.S. just to withdraw from Europe because of China, but it’s obvious that you also need to put more effort in that part of the world. I think you can do both.”
He also noted that China and Russia appear to be deepening their military relationship. “We see more of it than before, and it’s a very good question how far they have come,” he said.
The shadow of Commander Shepard looms large over the idea of a Mass Effect TV series.Image: BioWare/EA
After years of wondering when, not if, Mass Effect would ever make the leap from video games to film or TV, it would seem we’re at last on that precipice: Amazon has eyes on bringing BioWare’s sci-fi shooter/Garrus Vakarian dating simulator to streaming. But the question should be less if the Mass Effect series should come to TV, but how—and the answer is without its “main” character.
Commander Shepard is the star of the first three video games in the Mass Effect saga—in the fourth game, Andromeda, it’s Ryder, a character similarly largely defined by the player. Shepard is beloved, although not perhaps necessarily because they are a great character. Shepard is, in some ways, hard to define as having a personality when you scrape away the thing that makes Mass Effect still so loved, and the thing that makes an attempt to adapt Commander Shepard’s story to another medium such a dangerous prospect: so much of what we see in Shepard as players is what we ourselves put into them. Mass Effect is a game franchise defined by its incorporation of player choice, no matter how clear sometimes the limitations that influence can be made within its systems. Even if, on a macro scale across the games, players’ choices are relatively binary, or more about filling in the little flourishes here and there rather than the broadest strokes of its overarching tale, Commander Shepard remains a deeply personal character to people who play the Mass Effect games. We do more than just control Shepard from one plot point to the next, we guide what they say and what they believe in, we forge their friendships and their loves, we craft them as a person. Are they man or woman, paragon or renegade, are they queer, are they war survivors or orphaned soldiers, tech experts or psychic space-wizards? All the little choices people pour into that character make Shepard less of their own person, for better or worse, and instead our window into their place in Mass Effect’s universe.
This is Commander Shepard. There are many like them, but this one is mine.Screenshot: Bioware/EA
Shepard’s nature as that kind of powerful cipher makes the possibility of a Mass Effect show simply trying to adapt them and the events of the original trilogy of games something of a nightmare. It’s not that it can’t be done—the games have long prided themselves on their cinematic framing and values, making it about as easy an adaptation as it could possibly be if literally translated. But bringing in a Shepard, whoever plays them, and trying to set a defined frame around the nebulous idea of who Commander Shepard is, feels like asking for trouble: and asking for it from a fanbase that has, to put it diplomatically, very much proven how vocal they can be about things they don’t like about the ways the series handled their choices. Even what might seem like the simple choice of whether or not adapting Shepard as John or Jane would be a decision that upends Mass Effect’s fanbase, and that’s before you even get to the granularity of weaving about their personality, their romances, or the way they conduct themselves across their story. So much of ourselves is wrapped up in our interpretation of Commander Shepard as Mass Effect players that the thought of seeing some version that is not just our own would be jarring.
So why even do it? It’s not just that adapting Shepard is a guaranteed way to disappoint the Mass Effect fan base in one way or another. Mass Effect’s world is home to more than just one story, and Shepard’s story has already been told. It’s a setting ripe for exploration beyond the conflict between the Commander and the Reapers. A Mass Effect show could follow in and around the shadow of Shepard—following characters we know before or after they crossed paths with Shepard, familiar favorites like Kaidan, Liara, Garrus, Thane, or Tali (or perhaps an anthology that could encapsulate the lives of its beloved expanded cast). It could show us the events that brought us to Mass Effect’s start point, like the Rachni War and the Krogan rebellions that came after, the Quarian’s creation of the Geth, or even the First Contact War between the Turians and Humanity. There are tales in between the games, especially the period of time in Mass Effect 2‘s opening where Shepard is, well, quite dead (they get better). With the addition of Andromeda to the canon, Mass Effect’s universe and potentiality exploded onto the scope of whole galaxies—and a show could explore what Andromeda set up, seemingly left behind after that game’s lukewarm reception, while we wait for whatever comes next in the franchise.
We know what Shepard’s story is already, and most importantly to Mass Effect players, we know what that story is to our own experience of the shape of it. If we’re going to take the next Mass Relay to TV stardom, Mass Effect should stand ready to do so beyond the shadow of its first hero—and get ready to lay the groundwork and introduce us to new ones beyond the Commander’s reach.
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Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer love Mass Effect as much as we do. The iconic voice actors, who both play Commander Shepard in the influential and beloved BioWare trilogy, are just as invested in the adventures of the Normandy and its crew today as they were 14 years ago when the original Mass Effect launched.
That’s why, when I sit down to chat with them as part of a celebration of Mass Effect N7 Day, my nerves immediately dissipate. Their excitement about the revamped Mass Effect Legendary Edition and the series’ legacy is palpable – it almost feels like a powerful biotic force is emanating from my monitor. The fact that they are as gracious and kind as a hero should be only adds to their appeal – they both are, in many ways, the embodiment of Commander Shepard.
Returning to Mass Effect
(Image credit: EA)
The mere announcement of the remastered trilogy brought Hale to tears, in part because of her love for the series, but also because FemShep finally got proper representation across all three games. Until Mass Effect 3, there was no default FemShep design, so BioWare went back and added it into the first two games for the Legendary Edition. “I’ve been really public about how it hit me, you know, that feeling of actual representation was mind-blowing and moving,” Hale says earnestly.
“I live my life as an open-minded, inclusive, advocate human being, and I thought I understood representation until I actually experienced it. So that was an extraordinary experience. And weirdly enough, that deep, visceral experience of representation has shut me up a lot because I sit back and I respect other people’s experiences in a way that I wish I had done all along.” She pauses, almost as if she’s just reminded herself, and says, “Actually, I’m curious about Mark’s experience, because you’ve played the games…”
Meer perks up. “I’ve not actually played the Legendary Edition yet,” he admits. “But I’ve watched a lot of people play it and I’ve been on Twitch streams and friends of mine have been doing their first playthroughs of it, so I’ve got to experience that through them.” I ask if he’s noticed an uptick in attention around the release of the Legendary Edition. His response: “It’s not like it ever went away.”
(Image credit: EA)
“Ive been really public about how it hit me, you know, that feeling of actual representation was mind-blowing and moving”
Jennifer Hale
“Mass Effect fans kept this alive, there’s been constant feedback from Mass Effect fans and people sending me fan art or getting tagged in things,” Meer continues, “but I did notice that sort of got kicked up to another level around May of this year… but it’s not like there was just nothing and now suddenly there’s an abundance. It’s just that there was a lot and now there’s even more.” Hale agrees: “This fandom doesn’t fade,” she says, shaking her head in joyous disbelief. “It’s evergreen. It’s crazy. I’m blown away. I think it has such staying power and it is just connected to people.”
I ask when they first realized the power the Mass Effect had, and they both reference conventions. “Someone walked by me at a convention in immaculate Commander Shepard armor that lit up at the back and just looked like they could walk into a movie set,” Meer says. Hale’s experience is similar: “It was Comic Con San Diego and we were polling the fans about what FemShep should like, because she was going to be included on the box for Mass Effect 3. We had our own little stage off to the side and fans were there and I thought, ‘Oh god, okay, I guess this is a thing.'”
“I’ve worked on games where huge amounts of money were spent flying us to other cities for performance capture and all kinds of stuff and then POOF, game gone,” says Hale, who points out that she doesn’t pay attention to how a game is doing because her eyes are solely on living her life as a character – but that moment struck her all the same. “I was like ‘oh my god, wow!’ They said there’s gonna be a trilogy and this one actually was.”
Representing Us
(Image credit: EA)
Popular culture has shifted quite a bit since Mass Effect released in 2007. And while there are still issues related to representation in the broader video game industry, a lot has changed in 14 years. In fact, a major shift took place between the original game and its sequel. You might not remember this, but Mass Effect’s debut was soundtracked by the squawks of Fox News pundits who were irate that there were sex scenes showing “full digital nudity”. And the fact that mono-gendered asari were femme-presenting certainly didn’t help calm the naysayers down – but BioWare forged ahead, adding same-sex romance options in Mass Effect 2 and 3.
“When [Mass Effect 1] first came out, that there were same-sex romances, everybody was like ‘Wait, what?’ And now the culture has shifted so quickly and so beautifully that people are like, ‘well, yeah’,” says Hale. I tell them that Mass Effect was one of the games that helped me come out as a queer woman, as it didn’t feel like an option in my youth, and they both beam with a delight that feels genuine
“I think BioWare is often at the forefront and I think we’ll continue to see that,” Meer says, referencing the upcoming Mass Effect 5. “We’re recording this just a couple of days after National Coming Out Day in the States, and I don’t think that holiday existed – or at least it certainly wasn’t celebrated to the level that it is now. So when we first recorded Mass Effect we were blazing a trail to a certain extent – or rather, BioWare was blazing a trail and we got to be part of that process. And it was a real honor to get to take part in that.”
Mass Effect covers a lot of ground across the trilogy, putting players in positions where they must carefully weigh decisions and potentially question their morality – or, in my case, their sexuality. I ask what the duo thinks the ultimate message of the Mass Effect trilogy is and Hale is quick to answer.
(Image credit: EA)
“I think BioWare is often at the forefront and I think we’ll continue to see that.”
Mark Meer
“One of the things that stands out to me so much about this game was this message that kind of always hangs in my head. I see it through the narrative, through all the choices, and for every single character: you matter, and what you do matters,” she says. “We’ve heard that our whole life: ‘There’s only one of you; don’t be anyone else.’ But the truth is, there really, actually, literally is only one of you. Please be here. Please be you. ‘Cuz if you don’t, it never happened. And we need it, ya know?”
This feels like something a Paragon FemShep would say before the Suicide Mission, and I almost cry on the spot. Ever the consummate professional, however, I continue on, asking them about the Citadel DLC – in which Shepard and crew throw an absolute rager – and how it felt like an especially personal love letter to fans. “It gave you the chance to see NPCs interact that had never interacted before, you got to have Wrex and Grunt in the same room and, oh, Zaeed is here as well, and you get to see the conversation between them,” says Meer. “And beyond that, the party was all about, let’s face it, fan service. There was lots of fan service in the Citadel – lots of in-jokes, and it was just so celebratory.”
“To me, that goes back to the nature of this company making this, the heart of BioWare,” continues Hale. “It’s just so beautiful. It’s so responsive, so open-minded, open-hearted, inclusive, and connected. It’s about the game and the material and it’s not about anything else – it’s incredible.”
Canada, the birthplace of legends
(Image credit: EA)
Both Hale and Meer agree: BioWare wasn’t trying to make a blockbuster game with Mass Effect, they just wanted to make something cool. And part of that coolness stems, believe it or not, from being Canadian. “I’m actually going to take a step out and say that the fact that this is a Canadian team has something to do with it, because I’ve lived in both countries… and this is no shade to anybody, but there’s an element that I find in our northern allies where status doesn’t matter,” says Hale.
“Nobody cares who’s a star. Nobody cares what your last thing was; you don’t have that same pressure you might get in some of the larger markets in the US. You just need to be good at what you do, decent to be around, and then just go have a beer. I’m in love with the humanity here, the open-heartedness and the practicality… I don’t know, Mark, I’m speaking about a place you know a lot more about than me… There’s just a beautiful straightforwardness to the team. They weren’t seeking to be stars, they were seeking to do something really cool that they loved. What do you think?”
“I will sing ‘O Canada’ in its entirety,” native Canadian Meer jokes. “I’ll actually go even further. The fact that it’s not only Canadian but Edmonton – the city that I live in, where BioWare is based and where BioWare started – that kind of feel is very Edmontonian, I think. We don’t feel the pressure to be the coolest, because we’re often the coldest.”
Hale and Meer make it abundantly clear that the team behind Mass Effect adores the Mass Effect trilogy just as much as its fanbase – and that adoration bleeds through into their work. That adoration is why Mass Effect fans can recall certain moments and specific lines of the trilogy with a tear in their eye. It’s why some people, like myself, felt comfortable coming out after playing the series. It’s why Mass Effect endures. Happy N7 day.
Check out our Mass Effect Legendary Edition review.
The historic Inspiration4 mission, launched and operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, returned safely from orbit last month.
CNBC spoke to the mission’s commander and benefactor Jared Isaacman about the experience. He spent three days in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule in orbit alongside the Inspiration4 crew of four – which included pilot Sian Proctor, medical officer Hayley Arceneaux and mission specialist Chris Sembroski – having launched on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket.
“The single most impactful moment for me was the moonrise,” Isaacman said. “That just made me think that we’ve got to just get our a– in gear a little bit more and get out there.”
The primary goal of the mission was to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur, donated $100 million in addition to purchasing the spaceflight, and Musk also personally pledged $50 million to St. Jude after the mission. Inspiration4 has raised $238.2 million for St. Jude as of Tuesday, according to the mission’s website.
Read the question and answer interview with Isaacman below. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
The Inspiration4 crew visited SpaceX headquarters after the mission: Any new takeaways from that debrief?
There was the crew giving our experiences – what we saw, or what we heard or what we felt – back to the engineers, so they can learn from that going forward, and then there were separate debriefs where the engineers are debriefing Dragon, Falcon, operations. They learned some things from us based on our experiences, and then we learned some things from them based on what they learned from the vehicle or the booster.
How do you describe the feeling of space adaptation syndrome [a form of motion sickness space travelers experience]?
Space adaptation syndrome is certainly real. Approximately 50% have [had the syndrome] happen throughout spaceflight history, across NASA astronauts and such. There’s not a whole lot up until now that you can do to predict it. You [even have] hardcore fighter pilots that just get sick in space. What they do know is the recovery is very quick – usually even without medication it’s less than 24 hours – and they do know that certain medications will reduce it even further. In terms of just general odds, those odds played out with us. The medications made it a shorter recovery and everybody was happy and healthy shortly thereafter.
What I do think was interesting is that for SpaceX, given their objective to put like potentially millions of people in space someday, we did participate in a research experiment before and after the mission. Based on the data so far, and it’s a small sample size, they would have predicted 100% would have been faced with it. So that’s good because now maybe there’s a different medication that those people who are susceptible to it could take before launch and minimize that impact … it reinforces the real role of a medical officer on a mission because, as much as we want to turn this into airline travel, the reality is you do feel very different in space … that can lead down a path where some medical treatment is warranted, so having Hayley Arceneaux on our mission to start divvying up shots as required was pretty important and that will be something they maybe even want to expand upon.
I was assisting Hayley in helping our other crew members, and I would say that it presented in two very different ways: One was very much like typical seasickness, motion sickness – where you’re happy and then all of a sudden, you’re like “I don’t feel so well” and then the other I would say was much more gradual, slowly building. Again, not uncommon from what we have heard from NASA and others. It presents differently with people. For me, I didn’t actually think anything was out of place. Obviously you’re looking out the window and you’re seeing Earth and that’s moving and then you’re in a spacecraft now that can move on all axes while you’re floating inside it and I think, for some people, maybe the combination of all three is a little bit of a sensory overload.
What was the launch experience like, from the moments before ignition to the moment when you realized you were in space?
As a pilot you instruct people, as they move into higher performance aircraft, the concept that you always have to stay in front of the jet and that things will continue to happen faster and faster for you, where the time to make decisions needs to be quicker. But to be honest, as I progressed through my aviation career, I never really noticed those leaps that much.
It absolutely is that case in a Falcon and a Dragon, because time is moving very slowly right up until the last 10 minutes and then it just moves at this exponential pace where, before you know it, minutes are disappearing as if they’re seconds. It did not feel like 10 minutes; it felt like, I don’t know, 20 seconds.
You hear everything. [NASA’s] Crew-1 told us that too, when we spoke to them, that Dragon does, as they described it, come alive … The first thing is the launch escape system, because you have to arm that before you put propellant on and that is a very loud noise as valves open and the system gets charged … so you feel that thud, and then it’s only seconds thereafter before you actually hear grumbling propellant loading onto Falcon and then as tanks are starting to fill and you have venting you hear that. You hear valves opening and closing. It’s not very mechanical sounding – I would describe it more as a rumble … and you’re hearing that right up until essentially the last minute.
You do feel as the transporter erector, the “strongback,” retracts, because there’s just a little less stability so even a little bit of wind you feel … by the time you hear the countdown of one, you’re already feeling the sensation of liftoff. There’s a delay in the radio so you’re seeing the bloom of the engines come alive on the screens and before even the countdown hits one you’re already on your way up. It is not the big G event that people think because you’re actually going rather slow initially, so you sense the motion, but it’s nothing like being in a car and somebody slamming on the gas.
You hear and you feel the throttle up and throttle down, so going through Max Q … when those dial back, it is noticeable. You also do feel the pitch over – so as Falcon’s pitching down range – you can see it on the screens but you can feel it too, that it is changing its attitude at that point. It sounds loud, but what you’re hearing is the turbo pumps driving at max performance. Once you’re going past the speed of sound it’s really what is on the vehicle that you’re hearing.
Did you feel a change when weightlessness began?
It’s instant. It’s actually the same feeling that you have at stage separation. At stage separation, before the second motor ignites, to me it was a huge unload. You’re practically at a zero-G event at that moment. It’s the same thing when you get on orbit, except that it never starts up again. It’s continuous. And the best way to describe that would be hanging upside down from your bed, like your head fills with blood.
What does the lack of gravity feel like?
You’re still kind of on your terrestrial up, down, left, right when still strapped in. The moment you unstrap and you start working in space, you don’t care anymore. You’re not bounded by that at all. You could be just as comfortable upside down facing the floor and that wouldn’t feel that unusual. That said, I would say most of the time you are still oriented where the cupola is the top and and the floor is the floor.
When did you get your first view out of Dragon?
When I made that call down about the doors opening up a bit, I was just looking under the screen and looking out the two forward windows and it looked like if you watch space camp, whether it’s rendering or otherwise, it looks exactly like everything we’ve ever seen: “Holy s—, there’s Earth through the window.” I wasn’t surprised that it looks so much different than I thought it would be. It radiates more and it’s higher resolution for sure — you’re seeing it with your own eyes — but it looks pretty much what you would expect it to look like.
Was each day in orbit on a tight schedule?
It was a very tight schedule and it went by very quickly. It did not feel like three days. We got behind on our schedule the first day, which is exactly what was predicted based on a long simulation, that if even one person is feeling unwell – and to be clear, no one vomited, it’s just an unwellness feeling where you just take your meds and you just ride it out. But if even one person is down, the workload increase is pretty significant, so we did have two that were down for some period of time. Despite good efforts you’re really behind on the first day. By the morning of the second day, we woke up early, which is exactly what we did in the 30-hour sim to get ahead, and you’re right back on track and now everyone’s feeling good. And then by the third day you’re even better because whatever adaptation your body’s going through it’s kind of at its strongest by that point…. We went from behind on schedule to ahead of schedule by the third day.
What is sleeping in space like? Did you have any trouble getting used to sleeping?
This was another one where it was a 50/50 thing, where like 50% of astronauts say they love sleeping in space and 50% really don’t. And with us, one really loved it and three weren’t in love with it. One of the things that happens, versus being in your own bed, is while you’re sleeping you turn into a board – your body just straightens out. It just happens, you can’t like kind of curl up, you don’t have like the same benefit of cocooning like in a one-G environment. That leads to back pain. I had it, too. I would say it’s very minor, but the moment you start working again and moving around it goes away. But lying like a perfect board, like in a plank all night on a hard floor, is kind of what that feels like. Hayley, she had no problem at all. She just loved it.
We all were tired – so I would have thought like hey, “I can go to Vegas, think of it like a bachelor party weekend, you’re just gonna be up for three days.” But no, I was just so exhausted, as was everybody at the end of the day. [We slept] for like four to five hours a night; nobody slept eight hours.
Since you were trained to fly Dragon, did you ever take control and fly or reorient the spacecraft?
It was one of my regrets, not changing the pointing mode. We have a “Sun+GEO” mode and it’s better communication, but it points the cupola towards the star field. And I don’t know why none of us really thought about it, but we didn’t.
The reality is, in all of the emergency [situations], where you actually manually bring Dragon home, it has to be really bad and the most likely time it’s going to happen is right when you get on orbit. If you can’t separate from the second stage, that’s an immediate ‘come home’ because you jettison the trunk and that’s a manual re-target back, because there’s not enough time for ground [control] to upload a burn to get you back to a supported site. Or if you have a major communications failure – you don’t launch with your [return site] already pre-loaded in Dragon – so for as autonomous as it is, [Dragon] has to be told where and when to come home. It’s not pre-stored in the computer … for that to actually happen on orbit after the downhill plan has already been uploaded, which happens within the first 12 hours, it’s got to be a fire or depressurization or a micrometeorite hit that’s pretty bad.
Did you have any other regrets from your time on orbit or wish you brought other things along with you?
Nothing I wish I would have brought. In fact, a lot of my feedback to SpaceX was they should have been harder on us to take less stuff up, because it’s just a lot to manage. A lot of the cargo locations are hidden behind panels and it’s a real pain to get stuff in and out. My regrets are really small stuff. I felt like I was very driven on a timeline to just “stay ahead of the jet,” don’t get behind … I was always busy – that didn’t mean that I didn’t take pictures – but could I have taken an extra second, to stage a picture better? Could I have wiped down the cupola, where there was a smudge mark? It’s little things like that, that I was mad at myself for just not pausing in the moment and just trying to get it a little more right.
What were your favorite moments with just yourself and the crew in space?
The single most impactful moment for me was the moonrise.
That just made me think that we’ve got to just get our a– in gear a little bit more and get out there. It’s so hard, because I’m totally in the same camp as Elon; that the vast overwhelming percentage of our resources should be spent on making Earth better. But even 1%, or a fraction of a percent, can make such a bigger difference out in the universe. And if you could imagine trying to explain to somebody from 200 years ago what a cell phone represents, what virtual reality is, what augmented reality is, what jet transportation is – all of these concepts, that to us have positively impacted our lives, made us more productive … the world has gotten better because of technology that a person 200 years ago couldn’t even imagine.
Well, how much more of that is out there if we just go and explore this vastness of space that we know literally nothing about? Really, in the grand scheme of things, we know nothing about it. So there’s a degree of frustration that I hope in our lifetime, or at least we set up the generations to follow a little bit better, so that we can go across the oceans and climb the mountains again. So that was the feeling I had looking at the moonrise. There were happy moments of course: Chris playing a ukulele – where I’m quite sure if it was on Earth, we would all find anything else to do but if you’re in space, you’re like, “man, this is cool” – watching your crewmates eat and be happy, watching Sian paint. We got to watch everybody be who they are, which was pretty cool.
What did the reentry and splashdown experience feel like inside the capsule?
In general, the climate of Dragon was awesome. Crew-1 told us it gets really cold; we didn’t find that at all. We do have the ability to manually adjust temperatures – this is not like in your car, your thermostat. Coming downhill is nothing like the movies where everybody’s sweating and there’s condensation everywhere and there’s a fireball out the window. You only see pulses of what I would describe as like a fluorescent type light coming into the window. And it’s pulsing, it’s not continuous. It’s like a flash of yellow, a flash of purple, a flash of pink, a flash of orange – which is exactly what we saw from the Crew-1 footage, so nothing surprising about that at all.
Temperature was normal the whole way down. There is a cooling process that begins prior to re-entry to just adjust the cabin, but you don’t know it because you’re in your suits and you’re getting air, that’s basically your climate control. You absolutely know when you hit the atmosphere. We’d done 50 re-entries in training and you know exactly when you’re going to hit the denser part of the atmosphere … The deceleration starts happening quick and the G build-up starts happening and as you get more and more into denser atmosphere, you’re still going at a pretty substantial velocity. The G’s build up and it actually hurts a lot more than than the uphill because your body deconditioned over three days. So that was actually one of the debrief points I said, is that in the centrifuge profiles, [SpaceX] should add one G to everything on the re-entry because your body is feeling it more on the way down than on the way up.
In the simulators, I would recall, from the time deorbit sequence would begin to splashdown it’s about 70 minutes or so … there are gaps of time where nothing’s going to happen – and then it just disappeared, the last 80 kilometers. In fact, for a triple flight computer failure – which is one of the worst things that can happen other than a fire or a depressurization – in our checklist, you have to be able to start the process no later than 20 kilometers [above the water] because it takes 90 seconds to reboot all three, and if you’re less than 20 kilometers then you just plan to manually deploy all the chutes. When I think about when I saw 20 kilometers versus when we hit the water, it felt like five seconds. So I don’t know how, at that moment, you would have you’d be able to do that – I think you’d just be focused on getting the chutes out. You definitely feel the chutes big time, the drogues and the mains [a drogue is a parachute which deploys at high-speed, before the main parachutes].
Hayley will talk about how she looked at the G meter and saw 0.2 Gs and she’s like: “Wow, I feel that” and it’s true. It’s like an elephant sitting on your chest for probably eight minutes or so.
When the drogues come out it’s the sound that you want to hear of the mortars firing – those are pretty loud. From there, we have a camera looking straight up, so you can see if they come out nominally, and then you have a vertical velocity indicator that shows if you decelerated within a nominal range and then, third, you’ve got a WB-57 [a NASA supported aircraft] up there that is talking to mission control. Right about the time we see the velocity slow, you get the call from mission control that we see two healthy drogues. That lasts … 10 seconds or so, and then the mains come out. That’s another smack.
The way I’ve described it: Imagine just being in this tin can and somebody shaking it – it’s a lot of lateral forces, where you’re getting jerked around like that a little bit. And then the next is splashdown, which is just like getting rear-ended with a car, you’re like, “I’m just sitting here and somebody smacked me from behind” – that’s what it feels like.
Were there any adjustments from returning to gravity?
Everything feels heavier, but your legs the most. So maybe your arms feel like 10% or 15% heavier, but your legs feel like 40% to 50% heavier. And then it’s a coordination thing where your ability to tell what is level is degraded. We’re all slightly different on that – I was probably 90% physically there and 85% from a coordination perspective, which is totally good. It was much more the rocking of the boat that they were probably worried about than us just falling over. I’d say everybody was generally in the same ballpark, plus or minus 5%-10% percent.
When did you find out Musk donated $50 million to help push the campaign past its fundraising goal?
We got pulled away for the checkups, which was really smart. And while we were all sitting around this conference room table waiting for our turn on some of these tests, somebody pointed out that Elon tweeted that he’s in for $50 million. And then we knew at that point we were at like $218 million. It was just a very emotional experience for all of us – I don’t think there was a dry eye, because it just meant that what we did mattered that much more. And there is a lot to it, because Elon inspires the world with self-landing rockets and everything he embarks on. But we were able to inspire him to put some of his resources towards a cause. Maybe he would have done it – I have no idea how much of a relationship he did or did not have with St. Jude – but I’m highly confident he wasn’t planning on making that $50 million contribution until he got impacted by Inspiration4.
What has it been like to go back to “normal” life on Earth?
I’d say that every one of us had a little bit of an empty feeling at one point or another. It goes away pretty quick but, in the first five days from coming home, we all had something. With me it was deleting all the standing calls from my calendar, because there were a lot throughout a week and I was like “wow, I’m never going to do this check-in call again.” This was such an intense – super intense – part of our lives. The idea of going to space and coming back is intense in general, but when you’re on SpaceX’s timeline – clearly they do things in months that other people do in years – and you’re living it … you’re at this pace, you hit this peak and then it just drops and stops.
I think with Hayley it was when she got back home and she was unpacking all of her Inspiration4 medical officer shirts and she’s like: “I may never wear these again, I may never pack to go to Hawthorne again.” Everybody had it a little bit differently. But then you get back and you start thinking about: “Well, what’s my job now?” Well, share the experience, put pictures out there, talk to you, tell you what it was like so you can tell others, give SpaceX the feedback they need so the next mission is even more successful.
What would entice you to go on another spaceflight?
Before launch I had a pretty high bar for another mission, in that I’ll never do a joyride. It has to have real responsibility, it has to make a real difference and and I have to somehow be in a position where I’m the right person to do it or somebody else should, somebody who hasn’t gone.
So that was the bar before. But when we came back, looking at all the objectives we set out to accomplish a little under a year ago – finding an amazing crew, bringing us all together, delivering an inspiring message to people (maybe some of it has nothing to do with space: Hayley overcoming adversity at an early age, Sian never giving up on her dreams) – and reaching people with that message, I feel like we did all that. And then we said we want to solve a real problem, or attempt to solve a real problem, here on Earth by partnering with St. Jude. We set a $200 million goal and we exceeded that. We had other things that are impactful but still important – you want to make every moment on orbit count – we signed up for a bunch of research with Cornell and Baylor, you want to go past the space station (because why not, if you’re going to go to moon and Mars). We checked all those boxes … So that just raised my bar even higher because I would never want to do anything that would take away from the legacy of Inspiration4. My bar is really high on a very impactful, meaningful mission. If something like that does come around, then, yeah, why wouldn’t I want to go back?
Any other thoughts about your experience?
One final point that doesn’t usually come up much in these conversations – but I certainly try and draw as much attention to as I can – is that SpaceX is an incredible company. I know Elon can be a controversial person, but his company is incredible. We were just the lucky beneficiaries of their effort over the last 20 years. They’re all really extraordinary. I would hire like all of them if I could, except they’re working on making life multiplanetary so that’s also a very high bar to eclipse.
Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, the Marine officer who went viral for criticizing leaders over the pullout from Afghanistan, was released from the brig Tuesday, according to his attorney and a Marine Corps spokesperson.
“Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr. is being released from confinement today, Oct. 5, 2021, as a result of a mutual agreement between Lt. Col. Scheller, his Defense counsel, and the Commanding General, Training Command,” Captain Sam Stephenson, Training and Education Command, spokesperson said in a statement.
No additional details about the agreement will be released at this time, according to Stephenson.
Scheller was being held in pre-trial confinement at the brig at Camp Lejeune.
He has submitted a letter to the Secretary of the Navy offering to resign his commission instead of facing a court martial. Scheller’s attorney says “numerous members of Congress” have urged the secretary to approve the request.
Scheller posted a video in August following the suicide bomb attack in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. service members and over 100 Afghan civilians. In the video, Scheller said senior leaders should raise their hands and take ownership for the withdrawal that he said turned into a mess.
“People are upset because their senior leaders let them down and none of them are raising their hands and accepting responsibility and saying we messed this up,” Scheller said in the video.
He criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley for closing Bagram Air Base, the primary U.S. military base in the country, and for not anticipating the fall of the Afghan National Security Forces.
According to legal documents, he is facing potential charges of conduct unbecoming of an officer, contempt toward officials, disobeying a senior officer and failure to obey an order or regulation.
Following the video, Scheller was relieved of duty by the Marine Corps. Scheller was the battalion commander for the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion, based in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
David Martin
David Martin is CBS News’ National Security Correspondent.
Saeed Ara Jani, head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ UAV Command, was behind the attack on the Israel-linked Mercer Street ship, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz told diplomats from UN Security Council member states on Wednesday.
“Ara Jani is the head operator of the IRGC Air Force’s UAV system, which struck the Mercer Street,” Gantz stated. “He provides the supplies, training, plans and is responsible for many acts of terror in the region.”
Gantz pointed out that Iran is responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks in the Middle East, and operates proxies in Yemen, Iraq and other countries.
The defense minister said he would provide the participating countries with detailed intelligence on the matter.
Lapid pointed out that Iran’s latest attacks “are on international trade routes. This is an attack on freedom of movement. This is an international crime.
“What is the international community going to do about it? Does international law still exist? Does the world have the ability and the will to enforce it?” he asked. “If the answer is yes, the world needs to act now.”
Lapid argued that if the world does not respond to the latest incidents, then there is no international community, and it will be “every man for himself.”Israel’s Ambassador to the UN and US, Gilad Erdan told the UNSC in a letter that “Iran’s repeated brazen and murderous actions – which constitute grave violations of the United Nations Charter and of international law more generally – serve not only to threaten the safety of international shipping and navigation and disrupt international trade, but to further destabilize a highly volatile region. “The Security Council should not sit idly by in the face of such violations by Iran or by the terrorist organizations throughout the region that serve as its proxies,” he said.
It was important in particular to highlight the role the Iranian IRGC has played “in sowing violence and destruction in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world,” he wrote, adding that the Guard Corps “is the main sponsor of terrorist groups and militias throughout the region.
“Over time, the IRGC has developed dangerous and precise weaponry, such as attack drones and long-range missiles, which it uses against civilians and civilian objects in countries across the region, whether directly or by means of the terrorist groups the IRGC sponsors and supports,” Erdan wrote.
He highlighted past Iranian maritime attacks this year including on the Israeli-owned vessels the Helios Ray in February and the Hyperion Ray in April. The CSAV Tyndall, previously owned by an Israeli, was attacked in June.Iran struck an oil tanker with connections to Israel near Oman on Friday, killing two crew members on board. It was the first deadly attack in the continuing maritime war-between-wars and has led Jerusalem to accuse Tehran of “sowing violence and destruction.”
The two crew members killed in the attack on the Mercer Street were the Romanian captain and a British security officer. There were no other casualties.
Though owned by a Japanese company, the Mercer Street is operated by London-based Zodiac Maritime, part of Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Group.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine troops killed an Abu Sayyaf rebel commander blamed for years of ransom kidnappings and on Sunday rescued the last of his four Indonesian captives, the military said.
Marines wounded Amajan Sahidjuan in a gunbattle Saturday night and he later died from loss of blood on Kalupag Island in the southernmost province of Tawi Tawi. Two other militants managed to flee and dragged along the last of four Indonesian hostages but troops finally rescued him on Sunday, regional military commander Lt. Gen. Corleto Vinluan Jr. said.
On Thursday night, three Indonesian men were rescued by police who also captured one of their Abu Sayyaf captors along the shores of South Ubian town in Tawi Tawi.
The military said the Abu Sayyaf militants led by Sahidjuan were fleeing assaults in nearby Sulu province when their speedboat was lashed by huge waves and overturned off Tawi Tawi.
A military officer said the militants were attempting to cross the sea border to Tambisan Island in neighboring Malaysia’s Sabah state to release the captives in exchange for a ransom of at least five million pesos ($104,000), but the Philippine military got wind of the plan and launched covert assaults.
The officer, who has a keen knowledge of anti-Abu Sayyaf operations, spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to speak publicly.
Vinluan said the rescue of the Indonesian men, the last known hostages held by the Abu Sayyaf, would allow government forces to finish off the ransom-seeking rebels.
“It will just be relentless in a massive and focused military operation because, now, we would not worry about kidnap victims getting hit,” Vinluan told reporters by telephone.
Vinluan said there were about 80 Abu Sayyaf gunmen left in Sulu and outlying island provinces. One of their remaining elderly leaders, Radulan Sahiron, has fallen ill and was wounded in a recent offensive in Sulu, he said.
Sahidjuan, who uses the nom de guerre Apuh Mike, has been blamed for carrying out ransom kidnappings since the early 1990s. He was reportedly among Abu Sayyaf militants who attacked the southern largely Christian town of Ipil in 1995, where they killed more than 50 people after robbing banks and stores and burning the town center in one of their most audacious raids.
The Abu Sayyaf is a small but violent group that has been separately blacklisted by the Philippines and the United States as a terrorist organization for bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings. Some of its factions have aligned themselves with the Islamic State group.
The militants have been considerably weakened by years of military offensives, surrenders and battle setbacks but remain a national security threat. They set off a security alarm in the region in recent years after they started venturing away from their jungle encampments in Sulu, a poverty wracked Muslim province in the largely Roman Catholic nation, and staged kidnappings in Malaysian coastal towns and targeted crews of cargo ships.