Mercer Island man shares what it means to see brother as Commander of Artemis II mission

SEATTLE — Bill Wiseman says his younger brother Reid was put on this planet to push the boundaries of flight. As the Commander of a four-person crew of the Artemis II mission that’s headed toward the moon, it’s safe to say Reid is doing exactly that.

On Wednesday, Bill was with his wife and father, looking on as the Artemis II rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, hurtling at thousands of miles per hour out of Earth’s atmosphere.

Strapped into his seat within the Orion spacecraft on the rocket, was flight Commander Reid Wiseman, a former Navy fighter pilot, tester pilot, and experienced astronaut.

Even having witnessed Reid’s last launch into space in — he says he was not prepared for the sheer power behind the Artemis II launch.

“When those things kicked off, I mean, it hits you like a thunderclap and it looks like just the sun is pouring out of these engines. And that thing just took off and there was no question,” Bill explained, “For the next two minutes, It sounded like the biggest fireworks show I’ve ever heard, and it just took off. It was amazing.”

He says the experience was so special, as he made the effort to bring their ailing father down to the Cape, to witness the historic NASA project come to fruition.

“It’s a really special time, for the two of us to spend real time together all around something that Reid was doing and leading.” Bill said.

He explained that they had two opportunities to see Reid prior to the launch, which included one visit through a glass window, as the astronauts had to quarantine prior to takeoff, and another from a distance in a parking lot, which Bill says was a fun moment as the crew members rode up in Ford Mustang convertibles.

Bill added that the launch was even more special, because there were so many important people from Reid’s journey, who wanted to witness the launch as well.

“All of Reed’s, his fellow astronauts, his fellow test pilots, and a bunch of his previous fighter pilots that were all there,” Bill said, while mentioning that a surgeon who performed a special surgery on one of Reid’s eyes as a young boy, which paved the way toward him being able to become a pilot, was also in attendance.

“Reid really still goes back and says, if you had not done that procedure on me and done it with the precision that you did, I would have never been qualified to fly.” said Bill.

He says it was a reminder to see just how skilled, smart, and confident his brother has grown over the years, especially as the two spent some time away earlier in adulthood, due to their respective careers.

It also stirs up old memories for Bill, traveling across the country to see his little brother at Navy flight training in Pensacola, Florida, following his resignation from the Navy.

“I remember watching him on a board with a wheel under it, so he’s got he’s out of balance, he’s juggling balls and doing like landing flight calls, and talking to an aircraft control tower, at least simulating it all at the same time. And I’m like, who is this? Like, this isn’t the same kid that I knew when I went to the Naval Academy when he was like 14?” Bill added with a laugh.

The two grew up in a suburb of Baltimore, Bill was a wrestler and baseball player, but considered himself “a pretty lousy athlete in high school”. Reid, instead of trying to catch his brothers shadow through athletics — pursued a strong passion for the drums, and joined the marching band.

“I gave him a bit of a hard time about doing that. But when I went and actually watched him play, he was damn good!” Bill said, adding that his brother was a huge fan of the band Rush, “he, always wanted to be Neil Pert banging around on those, on those skins, and that was just what he was into.”

But the brothers did have one thing in common. A desire to serve. Bill graduated from the Naval Academy, after he says his dreams of a being a fighter pilot like in the famous movie Top Gun, were dashed by his eyesight falling out of the necessary 20/20 threshold.

Instead, he became a Navy Seal, and served in that capacity for six years, before resigning to focus on his wife who he met in the Navy. Her career as a neurosurgeon is actually what led to Bill’s family moving to Washington, where his wife had previously trained at Harborview Medical Center earlier in her medical career.

Meanwhile, Reid, pursued being a Maverick as well, graduating from Navy Pilot School, and getting to fly fighter jets.

Both Bill and Reid learned to speak Russian, from high school through their military training.

“It’s offered at our high school, so we both studied it. I studied it at the Naval Academy, but he really perfected it.” Bill said.

Reid knew the Russian language so well, in fact, that it led to him partaking in a very unique launch into space in 2014, to dock at the International Space Station (ISS).

“I think he was the first American to pilot a [Russian] Soyuz rocket up to the space station, which is hard because it’s a lot of technical Russian and the manuals for emergency procedures.” Bill explained, “And all the air traffic control at the time from Kazakhstan up to the space station was all in Russian, so he had to handle all that as well.”

From there, Reid spent several months on the ISS, where he tapped into social media, specifically Twitter (now X) which was just several years old.

“He’s always been a photographer.” Bill said, “He would post a photograph a day, which he called Earth art. And it would be something zoomed in that just looked amazingly strange from orbit.” he explained.

It was that hobby while floating over Earth, that Reid tapped into once the Artemis II crew was soaring through space, snapping a beautiful image of Earth, while it was backlit by the sun.

“The pictures are great, but I think some of the real specialness they’re going to have, they really can’t share with anybody outside of words.” Bill said.

His brother may actually disagree with that statement, at least according to a post to his X account on Saturday.

As the crew has settled in for their long journey, Bill says he’s been able to speak with Reid via an email connection set up by NASA.

Naturally, it’s led to Bill asking some very pressing questions.

“So I had to say, hey, Reid, I need a toilet update,” Bill joked, as news had spread of a maintenance issue with the bathroom aboard the craft, “Sure enough, it came back, hey, he told me it’s working.”

More importantly, he says his brother, a single father, has been able to do a virtual call with his two daughters while on the spacecraft.

“I think if there’s anything that’s worrying him, it’s not about his skills or the capability of mission control or the spacecraft itself, I think it’s how his daughters are emotionally handling the risk that’s inherent in this mission.” Bill said.

As he awaits Reid and the other three crews members to “splash down” off the coast of California, after the 10-day mission, he says he’s kept a special ritual with his brother in mind.

He says the two received $2 bills from their father on their birthdays while growing up, just because ‘my Dad, for some reason, liked $2 bills’.

“Before [Reid] went to launch in 2014 in Russia, I had one of the folks from quarantine slip him a $2 bill, and then all of a sudden I got one back. So every time we do anything risky, we’re always trading $2 bills ahead of time.” Bill explained, “So we did the same thing on this one, and I gave him back the $2 bill that he handed me when he got back from the space station, which had a nice Russian stamp on it from the ISS, which was kind of unique. So I’m looking forward to getting that back from him.”