Troubleshooting the "difficult" issues that have stranded two American astronauts on board the International Space Station will take time, former astronaut and retired Navy Capt. Winston Scott told Newsmax on Friday.
Following a June 5 launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams originally were scheduled for an eight-day visit to the space station. A series of issues foiled that plan.
"It seems that quite a few things have gone wrong with this mission," Scott told "Wake Up America" host Sharla McBride. "First of all, they've had helium leaks and then they've had thruster problems.
"For people who don't know, helium is typically used to control the valves on a rocket, to allow the propellant to go to the thruster. So they had helium leak problems and then thruster problems themselves.
"And the difficulty is in troubleshooting the problems because, of course, the vehicle is in space. The engineers and technicians are on the ground, so very difficult to isolate and specifically pinpoint where the problems are," he continued.
"So there's delay, after delay, after delay while they troubleshoot, while they analyze, while they try and replicate the problems here on Earth — but, again, a very, very difficult problem to solve."
McBride asked Scott whether NASA and the astronauts themselves were prepared to handle more time in space, perhaps as much as eight months.
"Well, in terms of resources, of course we can always resupply the International Space Station," Scott said. "Just two days ago, a resupply ship arrived. So they've got plenty of food, water, and things like that. But I can't help but wonder if we aren't getting to the point where there are too many chefs in the kitchen."
Besides Wilmore and Williams, there are four other Americans and three Russians on board. Four more NASA astronauts are scheduled to arrive at the space station next month.
"You're starting to get a full house here," Scott said. "The station crew will try and utilize their [Wilmore and Williams] presence there, they weren't trained to perform the scientific experiments and the work that's going on up there for another six months or so.
"So you start to get a crowded group, a large crowd of people up there, and some of the people may or may not be able to contribute to the mission of the space station.
"Butch and Suni's job was to fly the spaceship up to do a test flight, a dock for eight days, and come home. And now you're asking them to be a part of a crew for six, eight months," he said.
Scott said Wilmore and Williams likely won't suffer psychologically due to the unexpected situation.
"The psychological part is to be considered, but they would handle that. That's not too big an issue," he said.
"They're both military pilots, military test pilots. They've done long deployments on board ships, so that in and of itself would not be a problem."
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