Astronaut Butch Wilmore and the Story He’s Never Told Until Now

One of my favorite people is Butch Wilmore, a former astronaut and Navy pilot. You may recall that Butch was one of two astronauts who flew up to the International Space Station in June 2024, expecting to stay eight days. But malfunctions in the spacecraft left them “stuck” in space for nine months until NASA could bring them home.

I interviewed Butch twice for my YouTube channel while he was in space, and as always, he was full of life and positivity and, most importantly, full of faith. He loves talking about His walk with Christ, and that faith shines in the book he just wrote, Stuck in Space.  

Butch and I sat down recently for two more episodes for my Inspiring Courageous Faith YouTube channel. In the first interview, he described what went wrong when the spacecraft he was piloting approached the space station for docking, and let’s just say that it was much more harrowing and dangerous than many people realized.

In the second episode, he told a story that he said he’s never spoken about publicly until now.  In his days in the Navy, he was flying an F-18 fighter jet in a training exercise over Bosnia when he accidentally released a live bomb. Fortunately, nobody was harmed in the explosion.      

What fascinates me is the instant decision Butch made at the time to own up to his mistake. He could have just claimed he didn’t know why the bomb came off the jet. Instead, he made sure there was video evidence, “just so I wouldn’t be tempted to lie.”

An admiral gave him a “punitive letter of reprimand,” which would never leave his record. “I was done,” he said. He thought his career as a naval pilot—along with his hopes to become an astronaut—was over.

“That is tough. When you’ve dreamed of [flying aircraft], and you get to do this ... and now all of a sudden I’m done. I launch one day, and then I come back, and I’m done.”

A week later, he was called in to meet with the same admiral who had made the earlier ruling. The admiral said that after further investigation, he had changed the punishment to a “non-punitive” letter of reprimand, which meant that Butch’s career was saved. “The Lord intervened in ways I could not have done.”

The courage and integrity Butch showed in admitting his mistake reflected his character, forged in years of walking with God. “Image is who people think you are,” Butch said. “Integrity is who you really are. That’s my prayer, that I will be the man you see ... a man who walks with courage, and that’s the man I want to be.”

Billy Graham said, “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.” Sometimes those acts of courage take place on a battlefield or a burning building, and sometimes they take place in a split second when you are tempted to be dishonest.

Butch told this story and much more in two new episodes for Inspiring Courageous Faith. You can see the first episode now, with the second coming next week. And if you haven’t seen my interviews with him last year when he was still “stuck” at the International Space Station, you can find them here and here.

I don’t know what you are facing right now in your work, your marriage and family, or perhaps in a moral decision that requires courage. My prayer is that you embrace your responsibility and do what’s right.

–with Dave Boehi