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The crew of Artemis 2 spoke to the media on Thursday, six days after they returned to Earth from their mission around the moon. After the press conference, the astronauts did some interviews, and Als was able to talk with Orion pilot Victor Glover.
Glover and Ars first linked up nearly a decade ago As part of our tribute to Apollo, biggest leap. Glover now stands at the vanguard of our modern Apollo program called Artemis, which aims to return humans to the moon and establish a semi-permanent base there.
Glover is an outstanding naval pilot who entered space for the first time as a pilot in November 2020 on the first manned Dragon spacecraft mission to the International Space Station. Two years after returning to Earth, Glover was assigned to the Artemis 2 mission and was responsible for most of the test flights of the Orion spacecraft on its journey to the moon and back.
On Thursday afternoon, we mostly talked about that experience at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
als: You pilot Dragon using a touch screen and Orion using more traditional manual controls. I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but which one do you prefer?
Victor Glover: You know me. We’ve talked about Dragon many times before, and it’s a fantastic spacecraft that takes humans to the space station. But I’m really glad there’s a panning handheld controller THC on the Orion.
als: How does Orion’s processing compare to your simulations on Earth?
Glover: The real car has better springs. Less preplay and less joystick swinging, so the thruster sound in the simulation when I move something? Totally wrong. More like the rumble you get when driving a pickup truck on a dirt road.
The SM (Service Module) is good – we can tell it has pressure and thrust. It feels very responsive. I could feel the push, but I could also immediately see movement in the camera. Integrated systems fly much better than analog systems. That team should be very proud.
