Houston, we have a podcast.

Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center.

This is episode 80 from American Soil.

I'm Pat Ryan. I'm your host today.

This podcast brings you the experts from NASA, scientists, engineers, astronauts,

other leaders to tell you the coolest parts about what's going on at NASA.

And today we're talking again about launching astronauts from the USA, USA, with two different vehicles

that are being developed by two private companies, Boeing and SpaceX.

They are part of the Commercial Crew Program that's designed to enable the capability of launching people into space by private businesses.

Now, earlier in the podcast, we had an opportunity to talk with the Commercial Crew Program

Manager Kathy Leaders about the overall program history and progress.

Today we're joined by Steve Stitch.

He's a deputy for Commercial crew based here at the Johnson Space

Center in Houston. We're going to talk about the crews for the very first missions that have

been announced. Also talk about how these crews are working with the companies to design

the vehicles. We talk about the upcoming test missions and what happens after that, how the

commercial crew program that's enabling some of these milestones is playing a huge

role in the future of human spaceflight by private industry.

Now a couple of quick notes up front, We recorded this interview on December 14th of last year, 2018.

So when you hear us make any reference to something happening next year, that means 2019, this year.

And second, a note about references to astronaut Eric Bo.

He was one of the first four astronauts assigned to the commercial crew program back in 2015

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