[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So not only did I deliver water in kerosene, but I also worked with the irrigation workers. Then I found out that some of the villagers really, really were we needed to do something about you, about sanitation. And so I went to the USIS and I got myself a projector and a generator and got them shipped up. So I put it in the back of the jeep. And in the evenings, many evenings, we'd go out, we got dark and I'd go out into the village maybe 10, 15 kilometers out, and we'd set up the generator projector. And I had films in Bengali on sanitation and the latrines and washing your hands on the kinds of pathways of germs. And it was it was wonderful because people would come around and I mean, it's we're sitting in a room right now where there's a screen that's about the size that I had and the energy. And you can imagine if you get 50 people and 50 more and then 50 more and pretty soon 200 more, they're all in the back. And I can't see the film. They want to see it. And you have to come back the next day or another day.

[Assistant] All right, technology.

[User] Mm hmm.

[Assistant] Describe those films you borrowed from USIS.

[User] The first film was very professional done USIS film, which was when President Ayub Khan visited the United States and flew in in a Pakistani Air or Airways. PIA, Pakistan International Air, PIA. And it was it was in color and it was wonderful. And it was it was the language was Bangla and it was translated wonderfully in Bangla and the Bengalis absolutely loved it. Here was their president flying into the United States and its beautiful jet flying into Washington. And then he was shown traveling around Washington and they said that was you couldn't hear a thing that was so quiet and you watch at night cheering once in a while. But they watched and listened to every word and it was amazing. And so that was my that was my headline act.

[Assistant] Right. That brought them in.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Mm hmm.

[Assistant] Describe those films you borrowed from USIS.

[User] The first film was very professional done USIS film, which was when President Ayub Khan visited the United States and flew in in a Pakistani Air or Airways. PIA, Pakistan International Air, PIA. And it was it was in color and it was wonderful. And it was it was the language was Bangla and it was translated wonderfully in Bangla and the Bengalis absolutely loved it. Here was their president flying into the United States and its beautiful jet flying into Washington. And then he was shown traveling around Washington and they said that was you couldn't hear a thing that was so quiet and you watch at night cheering once in a while. But they watched and listened to every word and it was amazing. And so that was my that was my headline act.

[Assistant] Right. That brought them in.

[User] That brought them in.

[Assistant] But what kind of film was this?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The first film was very professional done USIS film, which was when President Ayub Khan visited the United States and flew in in a Pakistani Air or Airways. PIA, Pakistan International Air, PIA. And it was it was in color and it was wonderful. And it was it was the language was Bangla and it was translated wonderfully in Bangla and the Bengalis absolutely loved it. Here was their president flying into the United States and its beautiful jet flying into Washington. And then he was shown traveling around Washington and they said that was you couldn't hear a thing that was so quiet and you watch at night cheering once in a while. But they watched and listened to every word and it was amazing. And so that was my that was my headline act.

[Assistant] Right. That brought them in.

[User] That brought them in.

[Assistant] But what kind of film was this?

[User] This was this was films that were produced.

[Assistant] But I mean the technology, the film itself.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That brought them in.

[Assistant] But what kind of film was this?

[User] This was this was films that were produced.

[Assistant] But I mean the technology, the film itself.

[User] Oh, the film itself was eight or sixteen millimeter. That was 16 millimeter, not eight. That was definitely 16. So I had gotten a projector that was available in Dhaka and they let me have it to use for this.

[Assistant] So was there electricity?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, no. We had snake bit kits and we kept them. Like I say, I don't remember anybody got bit. But we were we were very careful with that in the Bengalis were even more so because they didn't have access to snakebite kits. But if we'd be out on a jeep driving along or even walking along and we'd be a group of Bengalese and you see snakes slithering along, there would be like a riot. They would pick up every piece of clod of dirt they could and they chase after and try to kill the snake. And it would be like they would descend on it because they were terrified. They knew exactly what would happen if they got bit. But we tried to avoid that. It was small stakes. Snakes and snakes. They were called the crates. It's and it would be up in the straw hat on the top of the buildings.

[Assistant] The roof of the house?

[User] Roof of the house, yeah.

[Assistant] But did they bite? Were they venomous?

[User] The crates were very venomous. And so we had too many problems with that. Generally we lived in what they call paca housing, which is which was like cement, didn't always have. My two daughters who were in Peace Corps later on, they lived in these kind of houses in Africa where they could hear this stuff up above them. But, um, during that period, we tried to work with each other, help each other, and we had a lot of pressure that nobody would go home. And so nobody at the end of the period of time, he said, the 29 of us, there were two that dropped out during training. So 29 went over and 29 came back. Two years later, we didn't lose anybody.

[Assistant] That’s quite usual.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Roof of the house, yeah.

[Assistant] But did they bite? Were they venomous?

[User] The crates were very venomous. And so we had too many problems with that. Generally we lived in what they call paca housing, which is which was like cement, didn't always have. My two daughters who were in Peace Corps later on, they lived in these kind of houses in Africa where they could hear this stuff up above them. But, um, during that period, we tried to work with each other, help each other, and we had a lot of pressure that nobody would go home. And so nobody at the end of the period of time, he said, the 29 of us, there were two that dropped out during training. So 29 went over and 29 came back. Two years later, we didn't lose anybody.

[Assistant] That’s quite usual.

[User] There was a lot of pressure. And so I put pressure on a couple of the guys and we put undue pressure on. And I said, you can't do this. You're not leaving. No, we're not going to let you go. But nowadays, a lot more volunteers leave.

[Assistant] So it has either of those guys that you pressured into staying. Have they ever thanked you for doing that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The crates were very venomous. And so we had too many problems with that. Generally we lived in what they call paca housing, which is which was like cement, didn't always have. My two daughters who were in Peace Corps later on, they lived in these kind of houses in Africa where they could hear this stuff up above them. But, um, during that period, we tried to work with each other, help each other, and we had a lot of pressure that nobody would go home. And so nobody at the end of the period of time, he said, the 29 of us, there were two that dropped out during training. So 29 went over and 29 came back. Two years later, we didn't lose anybody.

[Assistant] That’s quite usual.

[User] There was a lot of pressure. And so I put pressure on a couple of the guys and we put undue pressure on. And I said, you can't do this. You're not leaving. No, we're not going to let you go. But nowadays, a lot more volunteers leave.

[Assistant] So it has either of those guys that you pressured into staying. Have they ever thanked you for doing that?

[User] I think I think he did.

[Assistant] They were pleased with that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] There was a lot of pressure. And so I put pressure on a couple of the guys and we put undue pressure on. And I said, you can't do this. You're not leaving. No, we're not going to let you go. But nowadays, a lot more volunteers leave.

[Assistant] So it has either of those guys that you pressured into staying. Have they ever thanked you for doing that?

[User] I think I think he did.

[Assistant] They were pleased with that?

[User] They went through the periods of down, you know, some depression and he got through it. Yeah, they were glad you could look back and say they did it.

[Assistant] So, well, here we are. It sounds like close to the end of your two years there.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I think I think he did.

[Assistant] They were pleased with that?

[User] They went through the periods of down, you know, some depression and he got through it. Yeah, they were glad you could look back and say they did it.

[Assistant] So, well, here we are. It sounds like close to the end of your two years there.

[User] Yes. At the end of the two years then I, uh, I had applied for a Ford Foundation fellowship while I was there. And I got accepted to Penn State with a fellowship that allowed me to go to Penn State for two years or I got back and get a master's degree in nuclear engineering. And I took nuclear because I felt that that was going to be the power source for a developing world. And as it turned out, it wasn't so much because even in this country, we had a long problem of adoption. And even though I never came back, I worked. After I got a graduate degree in nuclear engineering, I worked and helped design and build and start up nuclear power plant. So I became pretty good at that and but I, you know, coincidentally ended up in back and forth to Japan doing those kind of things for many, many years and then started my own company after that. That's a different story that we want to concentrate on Peace Corps.

[Assistant] Right. Well, but these are irrelevant, aren't they? You know, interrelated. So, uh, any memorable things you want to reflect on or say about the Peace Corps, those two years themselves?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not in favor of this crisis going on. So do something about it.

[Assistant] Right. Right.

[User] That was one of the more memorable times. Then I had another occurrence where there was a whole town went on strike and they were protesting something for the government and no one was supposed to drive. And someone in my second group was driving. They learn to drive a jeep and they were driving and they encountered a large group of people and they were making a lot of noise and they stopped the jeep and somehow one of them had a stone or brick. And I don't think it was thrown, but I think it was dropped and it damn near opened the skin. It was bloodied the skin of one guy's leg. So it might have been dropped. I had specific instructions that I had to report anything like this back to Karachi. So I did. And I called and I said, I have to report this. And he's been he's been slightly hurt. It's OK. A doctor looked at his bandage and everything's fine. What wouldn't you know, in Time magazine the next week there was a report of this incident.

[Assistant] Peace Corps volunteer hurt in East Pakistan.

[User] And I think I might have been named or who is the, you know, reported that the Peace Corps volunteer had been hurt on this. I thought, oh my god. Mountain out of a molehill.

[Assistant] So you stayed with this same company then for fifteen years. And then?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That was one of the more memorable times. Then I had another occurrence where there was a whole town went on strike and they were protesting something for the government and no one was supposed to drive. And someone in my second group was driving. They learn to drive a jeep and they were driving and they encountered a large group of people and they were making a lot of noise and they stopped the jeep and somehow one of them had a stone or brick. And I don't think it was thrown, but I think it was dropped and it damn near opened the skin. It was bloodied the skin of one guy's leg. So it might have been dropped. I had specific instructions that I had to report anything like this back to Karachi. So I did. And I called and I said, I have to report this. And he's been he's been slightly hurt. It's OK. A doctor looked at his bandage and everything's fine. What wouldn't you know, in Time magazine the next week there was a report of this incident.

[Assistant] Peace Corps volunteer hurt in East Pakistan.

[User] And I think I might have been named or who is the, you know, reported that the Peace Corps volunteer had been hurt on this. I thought, oh my god. Mountain out of a molehill.

[Assistant] So you stayed with this same company then for fifteen years. And then?

[User] Then I started my own company.

[Assistant] And then you started your own company. And by this time you were living in Reading?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And I think I might have been named or who is the, you know, reported that the Peace Corps volunteer had been hurt on this. I thought, oh my god. Mountain out of a molehill.

[Assistant] So you stayed with this same company then for fifteen years. And then?

[User] Then I started my own company.

[Assistant] And then you started your own company. And by this time you were living in Reading?

[User] Yes. Yeah.

[Assistant] What took you to Reading in the first place?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Then I started my own company.

[Assistant] And then you started your own company. And by this time you were living in Reading?

[User] Yes. Yeah.

[Assistant] What took you to Reading in the first place?

[User] The engineering company. The large company.

[Assistant] [01:08:17]. I see. So you moved, right.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. Yeah.

[Assistant] What took you to Reading in the first place?

[User] The engineering company. The large company.

[Assistant] [01:08:17]. I see. So you moved, right.

[User] And then when I started the company, I eventually took on two partners and we built it to about 120 people. And then we became pretty successful. And I determined at that time when I was 60, I was going to leave and we trained the next group of people. We hired not just any engineers, but we hired guys who knew how to run a business and we had to learn how to run a business, too. So when I did that and and then I became the marketing the outside guy, and so I became involved in a chamber of commerce and politics and then got. It got to help people on their political campaigns and always was inclined that way anyway, so when I did leave, um, that business and, uh, we, um, there was an opportunity to run for mayor of Reading, which happened in 2003 and I was elected in 2004. Four years later, became very active in the Obama campaign and eventually was able to spend time with candidate Obama, Senator Obama. My most memorable time was a bus ride, which was just he and I and one Secret Service guy and one staffer. And we were about a half an hour together going from one part of Pennsylvania to back to Reading.

[Assistant] And what was that, 2007?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The engineering company. The large company.

[Assistant] [01:08:17]. I see. So you moved, right.

[User] And then when I started the company, I eventually took on two partners and we built it to about 120 people. And then we became pretty successful. And I determined at that time when I was 60, I was going to leave and we trained the next group of people. We hired not just any engineers, but we hired guys who knew how to run a business and we had to learn how to run a business, too. So when I did that and and then I became the marketing the outside guy, and so I became involved in a chamber of commerce and politics and then got. It got to help people on their political campaigns and always was inclined that way anyway, so when I did leave, um, that business and, uh, we, um, there was an opportunity to run for mayor of Reading, which happened in 2003 and I was elected in 2004. Four years later, became very active in the Obama campaign and eventually was able to spend time with candidate Obama, Senator Obama. My most memorable time was a bus ride, which was just he and I and one Secret Service guy and one staffer. And we were about a half an hour together going from one part of Pennsylvania to back to Reading.

[Assistant] And what was that, 2007?

[User] That was in ‘07 for the ‘08 campaign coming up. He was just before.

[Assistant] He was starting his campaign.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That was in ‘07 for the ‘08 campaign coming up. He was just before.

[Assistant] He was starting his campaign.

[User] And so we had a wonderful conversation. And I tell him about some of this. He asked me about the city. We talked about Peace Corps. We talked about the city. He talked about things we needed in the city. And I talked about a literacy program which started a whole bunch of things about that. I was very happy with the literacy program I was filling with some of the inner city kids.

[Assistant] In Reading?

[User] In Reading. It was called Cops and Kids. It was a policeman working reading with kids.

[Assistant] Did you help set that up?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And so we had a wonderful conversation. And I tell him about some of this. He asked me about the city. We talked about Peace Corps. We talked about the city. He talked about things we needed in the city. And I talked about a literacy program which started a whole bunch of things about that. I was very happy with the literacy program I was filling with some of the inner city kids.

[Assistant] In Reading?

[User] In Reading. It was called Cops and Kids. It was a policeman working reading with kids.

[Assistant] Did you help set that up?

[User] I did, but I borrowed it from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who borrowed it from Racine, Wisconsin. And I got to know, everybody in that loop. I told the president this is a great thing that we should do all over the country. Later on, one of my major friends and I was that I had become and a certain point president of the Pennsylvania Municipal League. So all the mayors were I was president my last year. And so he came to me and said, what did you talk to the president about? And I said I talked about our literacy program. He's said, literacy program, I want to talk to you about money, get money for our projects! I said, yeah, I had to do this.

[Assistant] So how long were you mayor?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] In Reading. It was called Cops and Kids. It was a policeman working reading with kids.

[Assistant] Did you help set that up?

[User] I did, but I borrowed it from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who borrowed it from Racine, Wisconsin. And I got to know, everybody in that loop. I told the president this is a great thing that we should do all over the country. Later on, one of my major friends and I was that I had become and a certain point president of the Pennsylvania Municipal League. So all the mayors were I was president my last year. And so he came to me and said, what did you talk to the president about? And I said I talked about our literacy program. He's said, literacy program, I want to talk to you about money, get money for our projects! I said, yeah, I had to do this.

[Assistant] So how long were you mayor?

[User] Eight years.

[Assistant] Eight years. And is it like a term limit?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Eight years.

[Assistant] Eight years. And is it like a term limit?

[User] No, no. There was a limit on my ability to keep doing 24/7.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] I couldn't do it.

[Assistant] So that was 2012 that you do finished your mayor position. So we're about to, we're about to bring closure here. And before we do that, is there anything that you would like to reflect on before we close this?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, no. There was a limit on my ability to keep doing 24/7.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] I couldn't do it.

[Assistant] So that was 2012 that you do finished your mayor position. So we're about to, we're about to bring closure here. And before we do that, is there anything that you would like to reflect on before we close this?

[User] Yeah, only the fact that. Well, I have three daughters, the oldest daughter, when she graduated college, decided to go in Peace Corps and I had never pushed it at all. So she went to West Africa in Guinea-Bissau and was there for twenty three months, less than the total term. And there was it was a revolution. She managed to be evacuated. Thank you to our U.S. government got her out. And then my she came home safely and my middle daughter then joined the Peace Corps and went to Cape Verde Islands for two years and became a teacher. She was interested in theater so she formed theater groups. Eventually, she came back to the U.S. and got her master's and Ph.D. in African theater. And so she's teaching at UC Santa Barbara. And so we became immersed in Peace Corps type things. So that was the strongest. And my love for travel was never diminished.

[Assistant] Right. And have did you visit your Peace Corps daughters when they were?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I couldn't do it.

[Assistant] So that was 2012 that you do finished your mayor position. So we're about to, we're about to bring closure here. And before we do that, is there anything that you would like to reflect on before we close this?

[User] Yeah, only the fact that. Well, I have three daughters, the oldest daughter, when she graduated college, decided to go in Peace Corps and I had never pushed it at all. So she went to West Africa in Guinea-Bissau and was there for twenty three months, less than the total term. And there was it was a revolution. She managed to be evacuated. Thank you to our U.S. government got her out. And then my she came home safely and my middle daughter then joined the Peace Corps and went to Cape Verde Islands for two years and became a teacher. She was interested in theater so she formed theater groups. Eventually, she came back to the U.S. and got her master's and Ph.D. in African theater. And so she's teaching at UC Santa Barbara. And so we became immersed in Peace Corps type things. So that was the strongest. And my love for travel was never diminished.

[Assistant] Right. And have did you visit your Peace Corps daughters when they were?

[User] Absolutely.

[Assistant] And how many times have you been back to Bangladesh?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, only the fact that. Well, I have three daughters, the oldest daughter, when she graduated college, decided to go in Peace Corps and I had never pushed it at all. So she went to West Africa in Guinea-Bissau and was there for twenty three months, less than the total term. And there was it was a revolution. She managed to be evacuated. Thank you to our U.S. government got her out. And then my she came home safely and my middle daughter then joined the Peace Corps and went to Cape Verde Islands for two years and became a teacher. She was interested in theater so she formed theater groups. Eventually, she came back to the U.S. and got her master's and Ph.D. in African theater. And so she's teaching at UC Santa Barbara. And so we became immersed in Peace Corps type things. So that was the strongest. And my love for travel was never diminished.

[Assistant] Right. And have did you visit your Peace Corps daughters when they were?

[User] Absolutely.

[Assistant] And how many times have you been back to Bangladesh?

[User] Twice. I went back twice. Once after about thirty years ago and after four years.

[Assistant] So that means it's been a while since you've been back.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Absolutely.

[Assistant] And how many times have you been back to Bangladesh?

[User] Twice. I went back twice. Once after about thirty years ago and after four years.

[Assistant] So that means it's been a while since you've been back.

[User] Last I was back is 2002. 16, 17, 18 years ago, and I went back and I want to do some of the visiting and I stopped to see the Peace Corps director and I also asked if there was any travel around the country. Is there anything I can do to help? They told me of a couple of cases where there some volunteers having problems. And what I stop and talk to them.

[Assistant] And this was in Bangladesh?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Twice. I went back twice. Once after about thirty years ago and after four years.

[Assistant] So that means it's been a while since you've been back.

[User] Last I was back is 2002. 16, 17, 18 years ago, and I went back and I want to do some of the visiting and I stopped to see the Peace Corps director and I also asked if there was any travel around the country. Is there anything I can do to help? They told me of a couple of cases where there some volunteers having problems. And what I stop and talk to them.

[Assistant] And this was in Bangladesh?

[User] In Bangladesh, which I did.

[Assistant] Yeah. Is Peace Corps still in Bangladesh?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Last I was back is 2002. 16, 17, 18 years ago, and I went back and I want to do some of the visiting and I stopped to see the Peace Corps director and I also asked if there was any travel around the country. Is there anything I can do to help? They told me of a couple of cases where there some volunteers having problems. And what I stop and talk to them.

[Assistant] And this was in Bangladesh?

[User] In Bangladesh, which I did.

[Assistant] Yeah. Is Peace Corps still in Bangladesh?

[User] Oh, long gone. And they left year after that, shortly after I was there, but not because of me. Yeah, but I did spend some time with a couple of volunteers who were having some issues. So I think that might have helped.

[Assistant] Right. Well, Tom, this has been a great opportunity to hear your stories and learn about your Peace Corps experience and how it's impacted your life and how you grew up in Bangladesh.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, long gone. And they left year after that, shortly after I was there, but not because of me. Yeah, but I did spend some time with a couple of volunteers who were having some issues. So I think that might have helped.

[Assistant] Right. Well, Tom, this has been a great opportunity to hear your stories and learn about your Peace Corps experience and how it's impacted your life and how you grew up in Bangladesh.

[User] You that definitely you know, it was a great experience. I wish I wish it was the way that we could, uh, somehow bottle it, or convey it in a meaningful way so people get a glimpse of what it was like, what the value of it is. And it's hard to it's hard to say that. And it's hard to tell people sometimes in a short amount of time. But, uh, so I coordinate our sister city relationship with Germany right now. I've been doing this for years, so I'll be be over there and next month and I help with students back and forth.

[Assistant] What city?

[User] Reutlingen, which is near Stuttgart. R-E-U-T-L-I-N-G-E-N. It's a city about a little bit bigger than Reading and which but I've become great friends with the mayor of Reutlingen. So we have exchange programs with students from our high school and the history museum and musical exchange. And I've been really interested in, I love classical music symphony, so I'm trying to get what I want. My goal is to get Beethoven's Ninth and, you know, combination of Germans and chorus and orchestra and everything all together.

[Assistant] Right. What a great dream. So hold that thought about how we can portray the Peace Corps experience most effectively. That is exactly what the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience wants to do. So with that, I'll end this interview and we can talk about the museum.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, I think my biggest challenge—I don’t know. That’s a good question. There’s three that pop in my head.

[Assistant] You can talk about all of them if you want.

[User] One is the Constellation cancellation. One is the Shuttle fly-out. Making sure we did that, and did that well. I think the last one probably from a challenge perspective, the biggest one, and it’s probably because it’s the most recent, was just the Acting Administrator job. I was so worried that I would hurt this great institution that I believe in so much that I just felt like I had to really jump in with both feet, make sure we didn’t have that happen. Yes, it’s not just me, it’s the whole team that does that, but when you’re at the top you kind of feel like it’s you. I didn’t want to hurt the team. I wanted to make sure the team was left with a good mission and good plans to go forward. Felt like I did that, but boy, it’s constantly on your mind.

[Assistant] Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention before we go?

[User] I don’t think so. I think you guys have covered the waterfront.

[Assistant] We like to cover as much as we can. I do appreciate you talking to me again, I really do, and just wrapping this up a little bit from our last interview.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, just reached up and said, “Hey, how’s it going?” and pulled himself up. [Laughs]

[Assistant] Oops. [Laughs] Well, then that shows the value of simulations again.

[User] That’s right, you bet.

[Assistant] To find all the little details as well as the bigger ones.\n\n Were there any other thoughts that you had on the early programs?

[User] No, I think we covered them pretty much last time.

[Assistant] Okay.\n\n Well, then moving on in your career. We had talked up through Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project, ASTP], I believe, briefly, and at that time you were in the Electrical Environmental Systems Branch. At what point did you begin to get involved with the Shuttle systems? Do you recall if that was before Apollo-Soyuz or after or even during Skylab?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That’s right, you bet.

[Assistant] To find all the little details as well as the bigger ones.\n\n Were there any other thoughts that you had on the early programs?

[User] No, I think we covered them pretty much last time.

[Assistant] Okay.\n\n Well, then moving on in your career. We had talked up through Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project, ASTP], I believe, briefly, and at that time you were in the Electrical Environmental Systems Branch. At what point did you begin to get involved with the Shuttle systems? Do you recall if that was before Apollo-Soyuz or after or even during Skylab?

[User] Now, Apollo-Soyuz was after Skylab, right?

[Assistant] Apollo-Soyuz was in ’75.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Now, Apollo-Soyuz was after Skylab, right?

[Assistant] Apollo-Soyuz was in ’75.

[User] My sense is, we started getting involved with Shuttle immediately after Skylab.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] We reorganized. Like all through Skylab, I had what was called a Saturn Workshop CSM [Command and Service Module] Systems Branch. So we had all the systems onboard Skylab.\n\n Then after Skylab, we split it up, and we took the traditional EECOM stuff, and that became my branch. We made it basically a GNC [Guidance, Navigation, and Control] branch, and that was Neil. Neil [B.] Hutchinson ran that. And then right in there sometime is when we also made the INCOs a separate branch, the INCOs and O&P [Operations and Procedures] officers. But it must not have been right then, because Ed [Edward I.] Fendell was in my branch for a while. Ed was, of course, head of the INCOs.\n\n So I guess we just had the systems split into the two branches for a while, and we had Neil’s branch and my branch, basically the GNC branch and the EECOM branch. My recollection is, that happened right after Skylab. So we must have been in that configuration for ASTP.

[Assistant] As you were gearing for Shuttle, and here we are—ASTP did come briefly in this time frame, but that was single mission, very focused. So the time between Skylab ASTP and Shuttle was a number of years. Shuttle didn’t actually launch until ’81. What were your responsibilities during that time, and how much training did you do, and how much did changes in the development of Shuttle affect your role?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] My sense is, we started getting involved with Shuttle immediately after Skylab.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] We reorganized. Like all through Skylab, I had what was called a Saturn Workshop CSM [Command and Service Module] Systems Branch. So we had all the systems onboard Skylab.\n\n Then after Skylab, we split it up, and we took the traditional EECOM stuff, and that became my branch. We made it basically a GNC [Guidance, Navigation, and Control] branch, and that was Neil. Neil [B.] Hutchinson ran that. And then right in there sometime is when we also made the INCOs a separate branch, the INCOs and O&P [Operations and Procedures] officers. But it must not have been right then, because Ed [Edward I.] Fendell was in my branch for a while. Ed was, of course, head of the INCOs.\n\n So I guess we just had the systems split into the two branches for a while, and we had Neil’s branch and my branch, basically the GNC branch and the EECOM branch. My recollection is, that happened right after Skylab. So we must have been in that configuration for ASTP.

[Assistant] As you were gearing for Shuttle, and here we are—ASTP did come briefly in this time frame, but that was single mission, very focused. So the time between Skylab ASTP and Shuttle was a number of years. Shuttle didn’t actually launch until ’81. What were your responsibilities during that time, and how much training did you do, and how much did changes in the development of Shuttle affect your role?

[User] Well, now, don’t forget we had the Approach and Landing Tests [ALT] for Shuttle.

[Assistant] Was your group involved with that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, now, don’t forget we had the Approach and Landing Tests [ALT] for Shuttle.

[Assistant] Was your group involved with that?

[User] Oh yes.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] I don’t recall how many years that was before the actual launch. Maybe a couple of years?

[Assistant] I think that was in ’77-’78 time frame, so it was a few years. It was kind of right in the middle between the programs.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not for Gemini, not for Apollo. In my program office years, after I left mission operations and was in a program office, yes I was able to see about three or four.

[Assistant] Does it still look as speedy in person, or by then were you used to seeing it?

[User] Huh?

[Assistant] Did it still look as fast at that point when you were able to—?

[User] Well, by then, you were used to how quick it got off. What I never did get used to the times that I saw it was just the feel of the thing, the sound and the feel. It’s amazing when you see and hear that thing. It’s a lot of power being unleashed there.

[Assistant] Yes, it is.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, by then, you were used to how quick it got off. What I never did get used to the times that I saw it was just the feel of the thing, the sound and the feel. It’s amazing when you see and hear that thing. It’s a lot of power being unleashed there.

[Assistant] Yes, it is.

[User] Yes, I was able to see—I guess 3 or 4 when I’d be down at the Cape maybe for other reasons.\n\n Jim [James C.] Adamson, one of the astronauts that used to work in flight control, we were real good friends with he and his wife, and he’d invited us, my wife and I, down for his launch.

[Assistant] Oh good.

[User] But that one didn’t go, had an engine problem, I think, the day, the night before launch, and that one got called off.\n\n But my wife did get to see another one. We went down to see—it was a night launch, too. I guess it was Bill [William F.] Readdy’s flight, we went down.

[Assistant] Okay, that’s great.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, that was good.

[Assistant] It’s neat. Oh, that’s quite a story, the chili. Yes, chili cookoffs certainly have become a very big production here.

[User] Yes, yes. Have you ever been to one?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Good.

[Assistant] Yes, very interesting experience, very unique.\n\n Well, with the STS-1, you mentioned that you were in the control center, that you remember the launch, in the SPAN. Do you recall any specifics about the mission, any of the discussions about some of the tiles that had fallen off? I know it was a short mission then.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, yes. Have you ever been to one?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Good.

[Assistant] Yes, very interesting experience, very unique.\n\n Well, with the STS-1, you mentioned that you were in the control center, that you remember the launch, in the SPAN. Do you recall any specifics about the mission, any of the discussions about some of the tiles that had fallen off? I know it was a short mission then.

[User] Not a lot of specifics. In fact, I was talking to somebody about that the other day—Bob [Robert D.] Legler, I guess it was. I don’t know if you guys ever talked to Legler or heard of Legler, but he’s a—

[Assistant] We’re hoping to talk to him soon.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Good.

[Assistant] Yes, very interesting experience, very unique.\n\n Well, with the STS-1, you mentioned that you were in the control center, that you remember the launch, in the SPAN. Do you recall any specifics about the mission, any of the discussions about some of the tiles that had fallen off? I know it was a short mission then.

[User] Not a lot of specifics. In fact, I was talking to somebody about that the other day—Bob [Robert D.] Legler, I guess it was. I don’t know if you guys ever talked to Legler or heard of Legler, but he’s a—

[Assistant] We’re hoping to talk to him soon.

[User] Okay. But we were talking about STS-1 and the tiles that we lost, and I want to say that we called up some ground-based telescopes and looked at the Shuttle, convinced ourself that everything was going to be all right, but, yes, that had a lot of people scratching our heads. Other than that, my recollection of STS-1 was that most of the systems worked pretty good. It may have been that we were concentrating so much on the tiles that I may have forgotten something else, but my recollection was they all worked pretty good.

[Assistant] Well, I think they did. I think everything worked pretty smoothly, especially considering that this was a first flight and completely hadn’t been done at all before, so pretty successful one.\n\n As the missions progressed up until you moved—in 1984, you changed positions, but during the ’81 to ’84 time frame, did you continue to work in the SPAN room supporting the various missions?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not a lot of specifics. In fact, I was talking to somebody about that the other day—Bob [Robert D.] Legler, I guess it was. I don’t know if you guys ever talked to Legler or heard of Legler, but he’s a—

[Assistant] We’re hoping to talk to him soon.

[User] Okay. But we were talking about STS-1 and the tiles that we lost, and I want to say that we called up some ground-based telescopes and looked at the Shuttle, convinced ourself that everything was going to be all right, but, yes, that had a lot of people scratching our heads. Other than that, my recollection of STS-1 was that most of the systems worked pretty good. It may have been that we were concentrating so much on the tiles that I may have forgotten something else, but my recollection was they all worked pretty good.

[Assistant] Well, I think they did. I think everything worked pretty smoothly, especially considering that this was a first flight and completely hadn’t been done at all before, so pretty successful one.\n\n As the missions progressed up until you moved—in 1984, you changed positions, but during the ’81 to ’84 time frame, did you continue to work in the SPAN room supporting the various missions?

[User] Yes, yes, every one of them, yes. Yes, that was always a great break from office work to be able to go over and sit in SPAN during the missions, and you’d even take the midnight shifts just to go do it. So, yes, SPAN was always a lot of fun. Working the missions was a lot of fun.

[Assistant] I could imagine that, and certainly it’s a very active job and you have to be on top of things.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Okay. But we were talking about STS-1 and the tiles that we lost, and I want to say that we called up some ground-based telescopes and looked at the Shuttle, convinced ourself that everything was going to be all right, but, yes, that had a lot of people scratching our heads. Other than that, my recollection of STS-1 was that most of the systems worked pretty good. It may have been that we were concentrating so much on the tiles that I may have forgotten something else, but my recollection was they all worked pretty good.

[Assistant] Well, I think they did. I think everything worked pretty smoothly, especially considering that this was a first flight and completely hadn’t been done at all before, so pretty successful one.\n\n As the missions progressed up until you moved—in 1984, you changed positions, but during the ’81 to ’84 time frame, did you continue to work in the SPAN room supporting the various missions?

[User] Yes, yes, every one of them, yes. Yes, that was always a great break from office work to be able to go over and sit in SPAN during the missions, and you’d even take the midnight shifts just to go do it. So, yes, SPAN was always a lot of fun. Working the missions was a lot of fun.

[Assistant] I could imagine that, and certainly it’s a very active job and you have to be on top of things.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Do you recall any particular memories from any of those flights or any incidents that happened either technically or on an anecdote side that you’d like to mention?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, DoD had a whole control room—they had another SSR, staff support room, which is what our back rooms were called. There was one staff support room that was totally DoD, and since these were DoD payloads, they, I’m sure, reported to the payload officer out in the front room.\n\n So, theoretically—see, there was nothing classified about the Shuttle. We could talk about our systems all day long, and that wasn’t classified. The real classified things about these missions was the payloads. I think they used to classify the time of launch. Probably the orbit that we were in was classified. But most of those things didn’t affect EECOMs, so we didn’t have a lot of stuff in the office that we had to be real careful about safeguarding.

[Assistant] So they would probably only tell you what you needed to know that affected your systems for those types of missions?

[User] Well, as you went through and started developing things like mission rules and what have you, yes, you would become exposed to some of the classified aspects like what time a launch was, say, what kind of orbit you were going to, that sort of thing. Yes, you just found that out.\n\n If it had been possible, you probably could have done all your EECOM duties and never had to know any of that stuff, but because it would come out in the mission rules review, because when you’d go review mission rules with the flight director, you’d have the entire team—EECOMs, GNCs, Boosters, everybody in there, going over the rules.\n\n So when you got around to the payload rules, yes, some of the classified stuff would come out, but EECOMs didn’t really need to know that since our systems just cranked along and did what they were supposed to do to, you know, keep Shuttle running.

[Assistant] Certainly a different aspect to things.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Well, eventually, in 1984, you moved into a new role in the Vehicle Systems Integration Office. What were your duties in this position?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, everything that FOD [Flight Operations Directorate] was responsible for, so, yes, including payloads.

[Assistant] You said you were taking some of the meeting role for the flight controllers so that they wouldn’t have to spend that time. If a topic came up that you needed input from the flight controllers, that was one of your roles, was to interface with them to do that?

[User] Yes. Yes. We would try to have pre-tagups to make sure that the people within FOD were able to make inputs. In fact, let’s say there was a change coming through the system to change something. One of things we would do, I think we had some evaluation sheets, and we would look at it and see which flight control disciplines might be affected by this change. We’d send them a description of the change and ask them to evaluate it for us. The input would come back to us, and then we’d take and meld the inputs together from the different areas that we had gotten within FOD, and then we’d take that to the program. And many times the flight controllers themselves would come over and participate in the meetings when they were really interested in one of these changes, or when we’d ask them to come over, because we thought that we might need their help or something. So, yes, we were very actively involved with pulling all those inputs together.

[Assistant] Were these changes something that would come about for specific missions, or were they changes that would come about just as the program grew and as different situations were discovered or new techniques were decided to be employed, or was it kind of some of both?

[User] Some of both. Yes, you might talk about adding a payload to a mission, to leading a payload for a mission, or you might talk about a hardware change to a fuel cell or an ohms thruster or something. So, yes, it could be both.

[Assistant] About how frequently would you have these meetings?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. Yes. We would try to have pre-tagups to make sure that the people within FOD were able to make inputs. In fact, let’s say there was a change coming through the system to change something. One of things we would do, I think we had some evaluation sheets, and we would look at it and see which flight control disciplines might be affected by this change. We’d send them a description of the change and ask them to evaluate it for us. The input would come back to us, and then we’d take and meld the inputs together from the different areas that we had gotten within FOD, and then we’d take that to the program. And many times the flight controllers themselves would come over and participate in the meetings when they were really interested in one of these changes, or when we’d ask them to come over, because we thought that we might need their help or something. So, yes, we were very actively involved with pulling all those inputs together.

[Assistant] Were these changes something that would come about for specific missions, or were they changes that would come about just as the program grew and as different situations were discovered or new techniques were decided to be employed, or was it kind of some of both?

[User] Some of both. Yes, you might talk about adding a payload to a mission, to leading a payload for a mission, or you might talk about a hardware change to a fuel cell or an ohms thruster or something. So, yes, it could be both.

[Assistant] About how frequently would you have these meetings?

[User] The PRCB used to meet once a week, the CCB once a week. Most all of those meetings were once a week.

[Assistant] Pretty busy schedule for you then.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Some of both. Yes, you might talk about adding a payload to a mission, to leading a payload for a mission, or you might talk about a hardware change to a fuel cell or an ohms thruster or something. So, yes, it could be both.

[Assistant] About how frequently would you have these meetings?

[User] The PRCB used to meet once a week, the CCB once a week. Most all of those meetings were once a week.

[Assistant] Pretty busy schedule for you then.

[User] Yes, yes. Oh yes, it kept you busy.

[Assistant] But it sounds like it was an interesting task, you know, trying to coordinate.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The PRCB used to meet once a week, the CCB once a week. Most all of those meetings were once a week.

[Assistant] Pretty busy schedule for you then.

[User] Yes, yes. Oh yes, it kept you busy.

[Assistant] But it sounds like it was an interesting task, you know, trying to coordinate.

[User] It was, yes, it was, very much.

[Assistant] Do you recall during those times any specific changes that came up that were either problematical or that produced interesting results or anything that you’d like to mention?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, yes. Oh yes, it kept you busy.

[Assistant] But it sounds like it was an interesting task, you know, trying to coordinate.

[User] It was, yes, it was, very much.

[Assistant] Do you recall during those times any specific changes that came up that were either problematical or that produced interesting results or anything that you’d like to mention?

[User] No, nothing that I can think of right off the top of my head. Nothing stands out.

[Assistant] Sure, that’s okay. Certainly a lot of missions and a lot of things going on. So I can understand that.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was, yes, it was, very much.

[Assistant] Do you recall during those times any specific changes that came up that were either problematical or that produced interesting results or anything that you’d like to mention?

[User] No, nothing that I can think of right off the top of my head. Nothing stands out.

[Assistant] Sure, that’s okay. Certainly a lot of missions and a lot of things going on. So I can understand that.

[User] By the way, let me say that I think—my recollection is that I also even—I’m sure, yes, even with doing that, I took the SPAN duties with me. So, yes, I was still doing the SPAN, sure was, yes, still doing the SPAN stuff.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, that would definitely keep you busy, then.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, nothing that I can think of right off the top of my head. Nothing stands out.

[Assistant] Sure, that’s okay. Certainly a lot of missions and a lot of things going on. So I can understand that.

[User] By the way, let me say that I think—my recollection is that I also even—I’m sure, yes, even with doing that, I took the SPAN duties with me. So, yes, I was still doing the SPAN, sure was, yes, still doing the SPAN stuff.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, that would definitely keep you busy, then.

[User] Yes, yes.

[Assistant] When you would work the SPAN, would you just kind of work your schedule around the meetings so that you were able to do both, or would someone fill in for you during the meetings while you were in the SPAN room?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] By the way, let me say that I think—my recollection is that I also even—I’m sure, yes, even with doing that, I took the SPAN duties with me. So, yes, I was still doing the SPAN, sure was, yes, still doing the SPAN stuff.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, that would definitely keep you busy, then.

[User] Yes, yes.

[Assistant] When you would work the SPAN, would you just kind of work your schedule around the meetings so that you were able to do both, or would someone fill in for you during the meetings while you were in the SPAN room?

[User] Yes, we’d just have someone sit in the meeting for us, yes.

[Assistant] Did the astronauts and crew participate in these configuration meetings, control meetings, the boards?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, yes.

[Assistant] When you would work the SPAN, would you just kind of work your schedule around the meetings so that you were able to do both, or would someone fill in for you during the meetings while you were in the SPAN room?

[User] Yes, we’d just have someone sit in the meeting for us, yes.

[Assistant] Did the astronauts and crew participate in these configuration meetings, control meetings, the boards?

[User] When we were together as one organization, they were just another one of the groups we were representing. So they would be one of the groups that we would send evaluation sheets out to.\n\n Then at some point we reorganized again. Yes, I guess at the time that I went down and joined Thorson, George Abbey was head of flight operations, and Gene Kranz was his deputy, and then at some point we reorganized again, and the astronauts were in with us. So we were representing them at the PRCBs and the CCBs as well as the flight control folks.\n\n Then at some point, we reorganized and George took the flight crew and the folks out at Ellington, the airplane people at Ellington, and they became the Flight Crew Operations Directorate [FCOD], and Gene took the flight controllers, the trainers, payloads people, and then that’s who Thorson and I went with. We were the Mission Operations Directorate [MOD]. So at that point then, we were no longer representing astronauts, and they would represent themselves at the meetings.

[Assistant] Certainly a bit of changing and reorganization had gone on throughout the time frame.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, we’d just have someone sit in the meeting for us, yes.

[Assistant] Did the astronauts and crew participate in these configuration meetings, control meetings, the boards?

[User] When we were together as one organization, they were just another one of the groups we were representing. So they would be one of the groups that we would send evaluation sheets out to.\n\n Then at some point we reorganized again. Yes, I guess at the time that I went down and joined Thorson, George Abbey was head of flight operations, and Gene Kranz was his deputy, and then at some point we reorganized again, and the astronauts were in with us. So we were representing them at the PRCBs and the CCBs as well as the flight control folks.\n\n Then at some point, we reorganized and George took the flight crew and the folks out at Ellington, the airplane people at Ellington, and they became the Flight Crew Operations Directorate [FCOD], and Gene took the flight controllers, the trainers, payloads people, and then that’s who Thorson and I went with. We were the Mission Operations Directorate [MOD]. So at that point then, we were no longer representing astronauts, and they would represent themselves at the meetings.

[Assistant] Certainly a bit of changing and reorganization had gone on throughout the time frame.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] When you were working in this role, actually, you continued to have a lot of involvement with integrations throughout the rest of your career at NASA, but early on was when the\n\n Challenger\n\n incident occurred. What did you, in your role with, at this point, the Vehicle Systems Integration Office, what was your involvement in that recovery process after\n\n Challenger\n\n ?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. At some point, Thorson—I think Thorson had left. He had gone. At some point Dick had left and gone over to the Shuttle Program, but that may have been post-\n\n Challenger\n\n . I guess that was post-\n\n Challenger\n\n , but before we flew again, was when he went over to do that, he and some of the guys, the Hal [Harold A.] Lodens and those guys.

[Assistant] Well, in 1988, the Shuttle did come back online very successfully, and, also in ’88, you moved into—and this may have just been one of the reorganization changes—now under the flight director’s office as Assistant for Program Integration. This is what we found in your—

[User] Yes. And that was an effort, and that’s where the job still is today, but that was an effort to try and figure out where best to put that function. We had decided it probably wasn’t big enough to be a total office on its own. So we were looking for a place to put it, and, yes, we thought, “Hey, you know, the flight director office, they interface with all the controllers, they’re very interested in all the changes and stuff that are going on. That seems to be a good place to put this thing,” and so we put it there, you say, ’88?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Okay. And that’s where it still is today. In fact, I was talking to a guy the other day, one of the ex-EGILs [Electrical, General Instrumentation and Life support officer] back on Skylab, Steve [J. S.] McLendon, and he said that he’s doing that job now in the flight director office for Space Station. So it’s still going on. So we must have made a semi-good choice.

[Assistant] Certainly sounds like it. So this was essentially the same role and same duties, just different—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. And that was an effort, and that’s where the job still is today, but that was an effort to try and figure out where best to put that function. We had decided it probably wasn’t big enough to be a total office on its own. So we were looking for a place to put it, and, yes, we thought, “Hey, you know, the flight director office, they interface with all the controllers, they’re very interested in all the changes and stuff that are going on. That seems to be a good place to put this thing,” and so we put it there, you say, ’88?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Okay. And that’s where it still is today. In fact, I was talking to a guy the other day, one of the ex-EGILs [Electrical, General Instrumentation and Life support officer] back on Skylab, Steve [J. S.] McLendon, and he said that he’s doing that job now in the flight director office for Space Station. So it’s still going on. So we must have made a semi-good choice.

[Assistant] Certainly sounds like it. So this was essentially the same role and same duties, just different—

[User] Yes. I moved to a different office to hold us.

[Assistant] At this point, this is in 1988, so there was discussion going on about the Space Station. Were you at all involved in any of those, or was that still a level where it didn’t affect the flight controllers as much?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I moved to a different office to hold us.

[Assistant] At this point, this is in 1988, so there was discussion going on about the Space Station. Were you at all involved in any of those, or was that still a level where it didn’t affect the flight controllers as much?

[User] No, I was not involved in any of those.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] At some point, Kranz’s group, mission operations, actually generated some Space Station offices, but I think that was even after I’d left. So, no, I never had anything to do with Station.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, eventually, you moved up to NASA Headquarters in the Office of the Deputy Director for Space Shuttle Operations, and there you were in charge of the Space Shuttle Operations Integration Office. How was this different than your role at JSC? Obviously, it’s at the Headquarters level.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] At some point, Kranz’s group, mission operations, actually generated some Space Station offices, but I think that was even after I’d left. So, no, I never had anything to do with Station.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, eventually, you moved up to NASA Headquarters in the Office of the Deputy Director for Space Shuttle Operations, and there you were in charge of the Space Shuttle Operations Integration Office. How was this different than your role at JSC? Obviously, it’s at the Headquarters level.

[User] It was a Headquarters badge, but it was still here at JSC.

[Assistant] Oh okay.

[User] See, I was sitting in the outpost one afternoon and Cripp came in. He asked me what all I had done and everything. He said, “I think I’ve got something for you.”\n\n So the next thing I know, he’s asking me to come over to the program office. The way Shuttle was organized back then, you had a chief for programs and you had a chief for operations, and Cripp was the chief for operations, and he had offices here at JSC, he had offices at Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama], and an office at the Cape. Dick Thorson had been running the office here at JSC for him, and they wanted Dick to go to Space Station. So Dick was going to go over to Space Station, so Cripp asked me to come run the office here for him. It was a lot of the same guys that had worked in Thorson’s old Systems Integrations Office back in ’85 or whenever I joined—Hal Loden and Rip [Ryborn] Kirby and a lot of the same guys.\n\n So I said, yes, I’d come do that. So although on paper you were NASA Headquarters employees, the office was still here at JSC.

[Assistant] So you were essentially still doing the same type of—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Okay. You remained in this role for a few years. The Shuttle-Mir Program came into play during this time frame. Were you involved with dealing with that aspect of the operations integrations side of things?

[User] Not so much from that office. That office was responsible for, among other things, the landing sites worldwide, the Shuttle landing sites, including the abort sites, the TAL [Trans-Atlantic Landing] abort sites. And we were also responsible—I mentioned to you out in the hall last time, one of the funnest jobs I’ve ever had with NASA was, I was in charge of the Shuttle ferry program.

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] And it was from that office that we did that.\n\n But on Shuttle-Mir, I can’t recall, from that office, ever getting really involved in Shuttle-Mir other than just it being another mission.\n\n Later on in another reorganization, we got under great pressure to reduce the number of squares on org [organization] charts. Since we had like a six-man office, that was a prime thing, to combine us, put us someplace else. So they put us into an integration office that also handled the payloads. We had the payload integration officers, the PIMs and FIMs, the flight payload integration managers and the flight integration managers. So they put us up there as part of that.\n\n In that area, I got involved with Shuttle-Mir, because I was the deputy in that organization, and the FIMs and the PIMs got very involved with the Shuttle-Mir stuff.

[Assistant] You mentioned the Shuttle ferry program.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not so much from that office. That office was responsible for, among other things, the landing sites worldwide, the Shuttle landing sites, including the abort sites, the TAL [Trans-Atlantic Landing] abort sites. And we were also responsible—I mentioned to you out in the hall last time, one of the funnest jobs I’ve ever had with NASA was, I was in charge of the Shuttle ferry program.

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] And it was from that office that we did that.\n\n But on Shuttle-Mir, I can’t recall, from that office, ever getting really involved in Shuttle-Mir other than just it being another mission.\n\n Later on in another reorganization, we got under great pressure to reduce the number of squares on org [organization] charts. Since we had like a six-man office, that was a prime thing, to combine us, put us someplace else. So they put us into an integration office that also handled the payloads. We had the payload integration officers, the PIMs and FIMs, the flight payload integration managers and the flight integration managers. So they put us up there as part of that.\n\n In that area, I got involved with Shuttle-Mir, because I was the deputy in that organization, and the FIMs and the PIMs got very involved with the Shuttle-Mir stuff.

[Assistant] You mentioned the Shuttle ferry program.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And that was one of the funnest jobs that you’ve ever had. Why was that so fun? What was your involvement with that project?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, in fact, one of the things that we used to have to do was to go down and report to the—before each Shuttle launch since\n\n Challenger\n\n , there’s been a flight readiness review where all the various organizations stand up and say, “Yes, we’re ready to go.” The Orbiter project, the SRB [solid rocket booster] project, the ET [external tank] project, all of them had to stand up and say, “Yes, we’re ready.” The ferry project had to go down and stand up and say, “Yes, we’re ready to support if you need us.”\n\n When I first got involved in it, we weren’t landing in Florida. All our landings were out at Edwards [Air Force Base, California]. So we were doing a lot of ferrying back then.\n\n So one of the things we would do was before a mission, we would evaluate what our TAL sites were and go over again our route of how we were going to get home. Thank goodness, we never had to bring one back from over there, but you would have had to have done is go down the west coast of Africa and then stop in at Ascension Island down in the mid-Atlantic, and then you’d come into Brazil and then up the coast and up the chain islands, come back to Florida. So that would have been a long, rough trip. And you had to come that way, because you’re limited on the amount of fuel, limited on the total amount of weight you could put on the 747. So you could only put so much fuel on. Didn’t have enough to fly nonstop across the North Atlantic.

[Assistant] The Orbiter certainly does add quite a bit of its own weight to that.

[User] Yes. And we would have had to have taken a lot of equipment off, had they ended up over there that we didn’t have to take off out in California.

[Assistant] Oh, equipment off the Orbiter itself?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Oh, that’s interesting. Would you then be able to transport that back by other means?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. And we would have had to have taken a lot of equipment off, had they ended up over there that we didn’t have to take off out in California.

[Assistant] Oh, equipment off the Orbiter itself?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Oh, that’s interesting. Would you then be able to transport that back by other means?

[User] Oh yes.

[Assistant] Okay. Hmm, hadn’t thought about that aspect of it.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Oh, that’s interesting. Would you then be able to transport that back by other means?

[User] Oh yes.

[Assistant] Okay. Hmm, hadn’t thought about that aspect of it.

[User] Well, I also had another interesting project we got into. Of course, out at Edwards and in Florida, you’d have a way to lift the Orbiter up, and that’s what you do. You lift Orbiter up and roll the 747 underneath it and then put it back down. If you’re over at a TAL site, what are you going to do?\n\n There’s an outfit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that has cranes that can lift this thing, but then the question is, how are you going to get the crane over there?\n\n The Air Force had modified two C-5s, I think. There’s a troop compartment in most C-5s back in the back, and they took those out. Well, these DDMS guys that I talked about earlier, somebody came up with the idea, “We bet we could get those cranes inside a C-5,” one of these modified C-5s.\n\n So we brought one of the C-5s into—we did this over in Lafayette, Louisiana—brought it into Lafayette and brought a crane over, and they worked and worked, and sure enough, got it in there. So then we knew. From then on, if we ever had to go do a TAL site, we could get our crane over there by air and not have to put it on a barge and get it over. So that was a big relief.

[Assistant] Yes, that would certainly add to the time required in getting it back. And it’s good that you don’t have to have that equipment at every site already there.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh yes.

[Assistant] Okay. Hmm, hadn’t thought about that aspect of it.

[User] Well, I also had another interesting project we got into. Of course, out at Edwards and in Florida, you’d have a way to lift the Orbiter up, and that’s what you do. You lift Orbiter up and roll the 747 underneath it and then put it back down. If you’re over at a TAL site, what are you going to do?\n\n There’s an outfit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that has cranes that can lift this thing, but then the question is, how are you going to get the crane over there?\n\n The Air Force had modified two C-5s, I think. There’s a troop compartment in most C-5s back in the back, and they took those out. Well, these DDMS guys that I talked about earlier, somebody came up with the idea, “We bet we could get those cranes inside a C-5,” one of these modified C-5s.\n\n So we brought one of the C-5s into—we did this over in Lafayette, Louisiana—brought it into Lafayette and brought a crane over, and they worked and worked, and sure enough, got it in there. So then we knew. From then on, if we ever had to go do a TAL site, we could get our crane over there by air and not have to put it on a barge and get it over. So that was a big relief.

[Assistant] Yes, that would certainly add to the time required in getting it back. And it’s good that you don’t have to have that equipment at every site already there.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And luckily the Shuttle hasn’t had to land in any of those sites.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, I also had another interesting project we got into. Of course, out at Edwards and in Florida, you’d have a way to lift the Orbiter up, and that’s what you do. You lift Orbiter up and roll the 747 underneath it and then put it back down. If you’re over at a TAL site, what are you going to do?\n\n There’s an outfit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that has cranes that can lift this thing, but then the question is, how are you going to get the crane over there?\n\n The Air Force had modified two C-5s, I think. There’s a troop compartment in most C-5s back in the back, and they took those out. Well, these DDMS guys that I talked about earlier, somebody came up with the idea, “We bet we could get those cranes inside a C-5,” one of these modified C-5s.\n\n So we brought one of the C-5s into—we did this over in Lafayette, Louisiana—brought it into Lafayette and brought a crane over, and they worked and worked, and sure enough, got it in there. So then we knew. From then on, if we ever had to go do a TAL site, we could get our crane over there by air and not have to put it on a barge and get it over. So that was a big relief.

[Assistant] Yes, that would certainly add to the time required in getting it back. And it’s good that you don’t have to have that equipment at every site already there.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And luckily the Shuttle hasn’t had to land in any of those sites.

[User] That’s right.

[Assistant] Up to date anyway. So everything seems to be going well.\n\n Well, you said those were some of your duties in this role dealing with the landing sites, the ferry program. You were still involved with these boards. Were there any other aspects of your job as you were filling this Headquarters role?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And luckily the Shuttle hasn’t had to land in any of those sites.

[User] That’s right.

[Assistant] Up to date anyway. So everything seems to be going well.\n\n Well, you said those were some of your duties in this role dealing with the landing sites, the ferry program. You were still involved with these boards. Were there any other aspects of your job as you were filling this Headquarters role?

[User] No, and then this last reorganization I mentioned where we went up to the payloads area, by then we reorganized to where the job came back to JSC. It didn’t stay as a Headquarters thing anymore. So I was back at JSC then, back with JSC paperwork, anyway.

[Assistant] Okay. And is this when you were under Tommy [W.] Holloway? Was this the Customer Flight Integration Office when you were deputy manager?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, by that time, Tommy, who used to be head of the flight director’s office, Tommy had come over to Shuttle Program, and—oh, what was he doing? He later became head of the thing. Anyway, Tommy had come over to the Shuttle Program, and I was working for Tommy then. Then we reorganized and Richard [M.] Swalin had the payload area, so I was Richard’s deputy, but we still all worked for Tommy, because he was now head of the Shuttle Program.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] Talking about the ferry, one time, probably about the second one I was ever on, really impressed me. We were on the C-141, and I don’t remember what I wanted to do, I wanted to get a cup of coffee or a glass of water or something, and I asked a young airman onboard, I said, “Can I do something?” and I don’t know what it was, but he almost snapped to attention.\n\n And he said, “Sir,” said, “you can do anything you want to do.” They have some order, some standing order, and I don’t remember exactly what it’s called, but he said, “In our orders,” said, “there’s the president and there’s vice-president and there’s you.”

[Assistant] [Laughs] Well!

[User] So that whole ferry thing commanded a great deal of respect from the military and from all the bases we went to and everything.

[Assistant] Well, that’s good.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Talking about the ferry, one time, probably about the second one I was ever on, really impressed me. We were on the C-141, and I don’t remember what I wanted to do, I wanted to get a cup of coffee or a glass of water or something, and I asked a young airman onboard, I said, “Can I do something?” and I don’t know what it was, but he almost snapped to attention.\n\n And he said, “Sir,” said, “you can do anything you want to do.” They have some order, some standing order, and I don’t remember exactly what it’s called, but he said, “In our orders,” said, “there’s the president and there’s vice-president and there’s you.”

[Assistant] [Laughs] Well!

[User] So that whole ferry thing commanded a great deal of respect from the military and from all the bases we went to and everything.

[Assistant] Well, that’s good.

[User] Yes. You know, it had been classified a national resource, and so it was worth—I think\n\n Endeavour\n\n , I think the price on it was two and a half billion. So it was a valuable piece of equipment we were hauling back and forth across the country.

[Assistant] And it sounds like they were taking their jobs pretty seriously.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. You know, it had been classified a national resource, and so it was worth—I think\n\n Endeavour\n\n , I think the price on it was two and a half billion. So it was a valuable piece of equipment we were hauling back and forth across the country.

[Assistant] And it sounds like they were taking their jobs pretty seriously.

[User] Crippen told me one time, he said, “I’m more worried during ferry flights than I am during missions.”

[Assistant] Really?

[User] He said, “I’m convinced we’re going to hurt one during a ferry flight.”

[Assistant] Well, now, that’s interesting. Although I guess since it is going through the atmosphere, there is a lot more that can be happening that’s not as easy to control.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Crippen told me one time, he said, “I’m more worried during ferry flights than I am during missions.”

[Assistant] Really?

[User] He said, “I’m convinced we’re going to hurt one during a ferry flight.”

[Assistant] Well, now, that’s interesting. Although I guess since it is going through the atmosphere, there is a lot more that can be happening that’s not as easy to control.

[User] Yes, and, you know, it’s reachable by kooks, if you want to put it that way. I can remember the one time at Barksdale Air Force Base up in Shreveport [Louisiana], the security guy came to me and said, “There’s been reports of some guy out in the woods here shooting at planes.”\n\n So they were advising us to take off—I think it was to the north or south, whichever way, so we didn’t go over his house with the thing.

[Assistant] Well, that certainly is a very big concern.\n\n Well, I’d like to take a brief break here if we could and change out our tape.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] He said, “I’m convinced we’re going to hurt one during a ferry flight.”

[Assistant] Well, now, that’s interesting. Although I guess since it is going through the atmosphere, there is a lot more that can be happening that’s not as easy to control.

[User] Yes, and, you know, it’s reachable by kooks, if you want to put it that way. I can remember the one time at Barksdale Air Force Base up in Shreveport [Louisiana], the security guy came to me and said, “There’s been reports of some guy out in the woods here shooting at planes.”\n\n So they were advising us to take off—I think it was to the north or south, whichever way, so we didn’t go over his house with the thing.

[Assistant] Well, that certainly is a very big concern.\n\n Well, I’d like to take a brief break here if we could and change out our tape.

[User] All right.

[Assistant] Talking still about the ferry flights. You just mentioned the story about landing in Louisiana and having to watch out when taking off, being shot at. Were there ever any other particular security concerns that came up during the ferry flights that you can think of that were—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Good.

[User] And, of course, also since we learned that we’re not going to be landing the Shuttle down there in the middle of a rainstorm, that we didn’t have to be as concerned with water on the runway. But, no, it’s still very adequate for getting rid of water. I would bet it’s the best runway in the United States for getting rid of water, still.\n\n In fact, the Air Force folks down at Edwards, after they saw what we had done in Florida and saw our test results, because we also took the 990 out and did tests on the concrete runway at Edwards and then test on the lake beds also. I know one of the things, right before I retired, the Air Force had come to us and said the Kennedy runway is now so good that they’d like to do the same thing to the Edwards runway. Would we help them out money-wise? And of course we said, “No, the Edwards runway’s just fine as far as we’re concerned. So we don’t have the money to put in to modding your runway.”\n\n Yes, it turns out rougher’s a little better than totally smooth.

[Assistant] Interesting.

[User] Surprised everybody, even the big, really super smart engineers that we had looking at it.

[Assistant] So are the tires replaced after each mission then?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And, of course, also since we learned that we’re not going to be landing the Shuttle down there in the middle of a rainstorm, that we didn’t have to be as concerned with water on the runway. But, no, it’s still very adequate for getting rid of water. I would bet it’s the best runway in the United States for getting rid of water, still.\n\n In fact, the Air Force folks down at Edwards, after they saw what we had done in Florida and saw our test results, because we also took the 990 out and did tests on the concrete runway at Edwards and then test on the lake beds also. I know one of the things, right before I retired, the Air Force had come to us and said the Kennedy runway is now so good that they’d like to do the same thing to the Edwards runway. Would we help them out money-wise? And of course we said, “No, the Edwards runway’s just fine as far as we’re concerned. So we don’t have the money to put in to modding your runway.”\n\n Yes, it turns out rougher’s a little better than totally smooth.

[Assistant] Interesting.

[User] Surprised everybody, even the big, really super smart engineers that we had looking at it.

[Assistant] So are the tires replaced after each mission then?

[User] Yes. Now that you mention it, those tires may be able to be used again, I think, but the main landing-gear tires are replaced after each run, or at least they were when I left. They may have gotten better now, I don’t know.

[Assistant] Probably makes sense. While Shuttle tires are probably a bit more complex than normal tires, it’s still a good idea to have a good pair on them. Well, that’s certainly an interesting aspect to the Shuttle Program itself that we haven’t heard a lot about.\n\n Are there any other pieces to the ferrying side of things that you’d like to mention that we haven’t touched on?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] As you said, most people don’t ever get a chance to see it up close and personal.

[User] That’s right, yes.

[Assistant] It’s neat.\n\n You mentioned in this example that the bird that hit the Orbiter and there was tile damage. When you would do those kind of repairs in-flight like this—well, on the ground, but during transfer—did that require actually replacing those tiles, or was it a patch-type job until it could get to the final destination?

[User] It was a patch-type job. They had some kind of epoxy that they would put in and basically, you know, fill in the holes that had been made and then smooth off the edges. So it was a patch-type thing.

[Assistant] Okay. So no more would come off in the airflow as you had mentioned.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was a patch-type job. They had some kind of epoxy that they would put in and basically, you know, fill in the holes that had been made and then smooth off the edges. So it was a patch-type thing.

[Assistant] Okay. So no more would come off in the airflow as you had mentioned.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] Because you weren’t actually doing any damage to the skin by flying without the tiles. It was just you were trying to protect other tiles from air and stuff.

[Assistant] Sure. Well, it certainly does sound like it was interesting job.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] Because you weren’t actually doing any damage to the skin by flying without the tiles. It was just you were trying to protect other tiles from air and stuff.

[Assistant] Sure. Well, it certainly does sound like it was interesting job.

[User] It was, it was a fun job and totally different from the control center and everything else I’d ever done. So it was enjoyable.

[Assistant] The interface between NASA and the military—as you said, they were a very big support for this—it sounds like it was a pretty good working relationship there. Is that correct?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh yes, yes.\n\n You had asked earlier about the Shuttle launches. The ones I was able to see after I got over into the program office and doing this ferrying stuff, were ones that—one we just went down there as tourists almost, as I mentioned, as Honeycutt’s guests, but the other ones, I just happened to be down there getting ready to take an Orbiter out on the ferry flight and was down there, you know, at the same time we were launching.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, it panned out well for you in two cases then.

[User] It worked out well. I did it a couple three times. I was down there to pick one up at the same time we were launching.

[Assistant] Well, good. Conveniently overlapped them that way.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Well, you did move in—I think we began talking, and we’re back a little bit, moving over into when the job transferred back as a JSC function, as Customer Flight Integration Office.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Well, you did move in—I think we began talking, and we’re back a little bit, moving over into when the job transferred back as a JSC function, as Customer Flight Integration Office.

[User] It had transferred back as a JSC function even before that.

[Assistant] Oh, okay.

[User] But I guess we’ve maintained our same name. So, yes, we were back at JSC.

[Assistant] And so these same duties and all still kept going with that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It had transferred back as a JSC function even before that.

[Assistant] Oh, okay.

[User] But I guess we’ve maintained our same name. So, yes, we were back at JSC.

[Assistant] And so these same duties and all still kept going with that?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Okay, okay. Good.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] But I guess we’ve maintained our same name. So, yes, we were back at JSC.

[Assistant] And so these same duties and all still kept going with that?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Okay, okay. Good.

[User] But then they did, yes, somebody did move up into the Customer and Flight Integration Office.

[Assistant] Okay. At any point after this, did you begin to get involved with—I believe you’d mentioned earlier that later you became more involved with the Shuttle-Mir Program when it became merged with that payloads?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Okay, okay. Good.

[User] But then they did, yes, somebody did move up into the Customer and Flight Integration Office.

[Assistant] Okay. At any point after this, did you begin to get involved with—I believe you’d mentioned earlier that later you became more involved with the Shuttle-Mir Program when it became merged with that payloads?

[User] Well, no. When I got into the cargo and—what’d you say the name of it was?

[Assistant] Customer Flight Integration Office.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] But then they did, yes, somebody did move up into the Customer and Flight Integration Office.

[Assistant] Okay. At any point after this, did you begin to get involved with—I believe you’d mentioned earlier that later you became more involved with the Shuttle-Mir Program when it became merged with that payloads?

[User] Well, no. When I got into the cargo and—what’d you say the name of it was?

[Assistant] Customer Flight Integration Office.

[User] Customer and Flight—yes, when I got there, as I mentioned, I was the deputy there under Richard Swalin, and we had one section that had flight integration managers, one section they had the payload integration managers. So, yes, at that point, acting as deputy of that organization, was very much involved in the payload and stuff, and, yes, we were very involved with the Mir stuff, because a lot of the flights by then were going to Mir. So I was probably around for, oh—I was going to guess how many number of flights to Mir, but I guess I won’t guess, because I might be totally wrong. Anyway, all of them that we were flying then—I just can’t remember what percentage of the flights were going to Mir and which ones were still carrying payloads.

[Assistant] Sure. Did that present its own unique challenges in organizing and integrating the flights that were designated for the Mir as compared to the normal operations for a Shuttle? Were there different aspects to it?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] My sense was, yes, it did. So much of that was already established from the time I up there that, and I say “up” because those offices were on the seventh floor and my offices had been on the fifth. But, yes, by the time I got up there, so much of those procedures and how they were working with the Mir, they were called, what, Phase Two Office, I guess, was what they were called. Phase Two was under [Frank L.] Culbertson [Jr.], right?

[Assistant] Phase One.

[User] Phase One. I guess we’re in Phase Two now. Yes, Phase One was under Frank. But so many of those procedures were all established and everything by the time I got up, that I wasn’t involved in setting up those procedures, but I know it presented a big challenge to the folks. I say “big challenge.” They handled it all very well. But having another NASA organization, Phase One, and then you had the Shuttle guys that were carrying the—the Shuttle was carrying the stuff up to the Mir, and it seems to me there was lot of who’s-in-charge kind of questions that weren’t as smooth as things had been in the past.

[Assistant] That’s understandable with kind of a new way of doing things that hadn’t been done before.

[User] Yes, because all this cargo that you were hauling up to the Mir and bringing back, it wasn’t really a payload in the sense that we’d been used to having payloads. We’d have Hubble Space Telescopes, or we’d have, you know, other deployables or Spacelabs or whatever. Now, although it was still a payload, you were hauling it up in the bay. It wasn’t necessarily a payload, and there was some other NASA people in charge of it. So my sense is, that was not the smoothest of times.

[Assistant] How closely did you work with the Russians at this time, or did you work during—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Phase One. I guess we’re in Phase Two now. Yes, Phase One was under Frank. But so many of those procedures were all established and everything by the time I got up, that I wasn’t involved in setting up those procedures, but I know it presented a big challenge to the folks. I say “big challenge.” They handled it all very well. But having another NASA organization, Phase One, and then you had the Shuttle guys that were carrying the—the Shuttle was carrying the stuff up to the Mir, and it seems to me there was lot of who’s-in-charge kind of questions that weren’t as smooth as things had been in the past.

[Assistant] That’s understandable with kind of a new way of doing things that hadn’t been done before.

[User] Yes, because all this cargo that you were hauling up to the Mir and bringing back, it wasn’t really a payload in the sense that we’d been used to having payloads. We’d have Hubble Space Telescopes, or we’d have, you know, other deployables or Spacelabs or whatever. Now, although it was still a payload, you were hauling it up in the bay. It wasn’t necessarily a payload, and there was some other NASA people in charge of it. So my sense is, that was not the smoothest of times.

[Assistant] How closely did you work with the Russians at this time, or did you work during—

[User] No, I didn’t work with them at all.

[Assistant] Okay. Did you at all have any involvement in—as you said, when you came into this role, the details had been ironed out to a pretty good extent for the Shuttle and the Mir operations. Were you at all involved in planning for a space station at that time as they were beginning to gear up for Phase Two?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, because all this cargo that you were hauling up to the Mir and bringing back, it wasn’t really a payload in the sense that we’d been used to having payloads. We’d have Hubble Space Telescopes, or we’d have, you know, other deployables or Spacelabs or whatever. Now, although it was still a payload, you were hauling it up in the bay. It wasn’t necessarily a payload, and there was some other NASA people in charge of it. So my sense is, that was not the smoothest of times.

[Assistant] How closely did you work with the Russians at this time, or did you work during—

[User] No, I didn’t work with them at all.

[Assistant] Okay. Did you at all have any involvement in—as you said, when you came into this role, the details had been ironed out to a pretty good extent for the Shuttle and the Mir operations. Were you at all involved in planning for a space station at that time as they were beginning to gear up for Phase Two?

[User] Yes, they were starting to gear up, but, no, we weren’t really involved with Station. We were learning a lot of lessons off Mir, I think, that were going to be valuable in Station. And our people, our PIMs and FIMs—I guess I mentioned that—our PIMs and FIMs and us two were involved in getting some of the station elements ready to be carried up on the Shuttle. So, yes, in that way, we were involved with the Station folks.

[Assistant] Involved in being able to integrate those into the Shuttle system for the transport?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, I didn’t work with them at all.

[Assistant] Okay. Did you at all have any involvement in—as you said, when you came into this role, the details had been ironed out to a pretty good extent for the Shuttle and the Mir operations. Were you at all involved in planning for a space station at that time as they were beginning to gear up for Phase Two?

[User] Yes, they were starting to gear up, but, no, we weren’t really involved with Station. We were learning a lot of lessons off Mir, I think, that were going to be valuable in Station. And our people, our PIMs and FIMs—I guess I mentioned that—our PIMs and FIMs and us two were involved in getting some of the station elements ready to be carried up on the Shuttle. So, yes, in that way, we were involved with the Station folks.

[Assistant] Involved in being able to integrate those into the Shuttle system for the transport?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Oh okay. Was that much different from any of the other planning that had been going on, or was it kind of similar to some of the Hubble-type sized—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, they were starting to gear up, but, no, we weren’t really involved with Station. We were learning a lot of lessons off Mir, I think, that were going to be valuable in Station. And our people, our PIMs and FIMs—I guess I mentioned that—our PIMs and FIMs and us two were involved in getting some of the station elements ready to be carried up on the Shuttle. So, yes, in that way, we were involved with the Station folks.

[Assistant] Involved in being able to integrate those into the Shuttle system for the transport?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Oh okay. Was that much different from any of the other planning that had been going on, or was it kind of similar to some of the Hubble-type sized—

[User] No, I think it was very similar to the Mir stuff, but it wasn’t—here again, because you had another organization that was saying, “What happens to this piece of hardware once you get it on orbit?” And I’m not sure, as we talk here, that we had ever launched even the first piece of hardware for the Station by the time I left. I know we’d done a lot of planning on it, but I’m not sure we’d ever put a piece up there yet.

[Assistant] Okay. It certainly sounds like there was a lot being learned. You said lessons learned. It sounds like a lot of them were on the organizational and management side of things and making the program work.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Oh okay. Was that much different from any of the other planning that had been going on, or was it kind of similar to some of the Hubble-type sized—

[User] No, I think it was very similar to the Mir stuff, but it wasn’t—here again, because you had another organization that was saying, “What happens to this piece of hardware once you get it on orbit?” And I’m not sure, as we talk here, that we had ever launched even the first piece of hardware for the Station by the time I left. I know we’d done a lot of planning on it, but I’m not sure we’d ever put a piece up there yet.

[Assistant] Okay. It certainly sounds like there was a lot being learned. You said lessons learned. It sounds like a lot of them were on the organizational and management side of things and making the program work.

[User] Yes, and especially on Station, and they have worked out the way they do this, but like you’ve launched people on the Shuttle, and you’ve got a flight director and his team of people that are controlling that mission. Now you’ve got a Station up here. Now you’ve got a flight director and a team of people controlling that mission, and when you get the two together, who’s in charge, and when does this team say what to do, and when does that team say what to do? So they had to work all those out, and I wasn’t a party to all of that, but I can imagine there were some hurdles to overcome there.

[Assistant] I’m sure there were.