Carol Scott helped NASA assess what went wrong and heal from two tragic accidents during the space shuttle program.
But these days, she's in charge of NASA's Commercial Crew Program Launch Crew - and that means she and her team have been essential in determining that SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule is ready for this mission. and that the inevitable risks have been mitigated.
It is not an easy concert.
"I'm not sleeping well because I have enough anxiety," she joked in an interview with CNN Business on Tuesday. "But if I didn't have butterflies, it wouldn't be good."
SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule is unique: the company managed the design and development, although NASA still provides critical safety oversight. Scott's team numbered thousands when working on the space shuttle program. But his team now has hundreds.
Yet Scott has never been more confident, she said.
the [SpaceX] system is certainly much safer than the shuttle - for many reasons. "
On the other hand, the shuttle required astronauts to sink into the gigantic white space plane, which was attached vertically to the rocket boosters on the launch pad. But for this mission, the astronauts will remain well seated in the Crew Dragon capsule, which is at the top of a large rocket.
With the space shuttle, "a piece of foam came off and hit the orbiter", causing the Columbia orbiter to be destroyed in 2003. "But if you have a capsule on top - hey, the only thing that will hit is a drop of rain."
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