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

[User] That’s a fallout from that lady’s work here at JSC on that balance experiment. It was pretty interesting to hear that just this morning driving to work.

[Assistant] It is interesting. It does make you feel, I would imagine, like the work you’re doing and that NASA is doing in space does have applications on Earth, even though sometimes people don’t realize exactly how it affects their lives.

[User] I think you see that all the time. It just takes so long to get those things to market. But it does, almost everything we do up there has some benefit down here on the planet. It’s a good thing.\n\n But the mission was a tremendous amount of fun. We did good work. I’m just happy that in my career I got to do an Earth science mission, because of course the other ones were to Mir [Russian Space Station] and to [the International] Space Station. I feel good about doing that.

[Assistant] Even though you had that math background, Earth science was important to you.

[User] Yes. Like I said, they make you a believer. They’re so dedicated. Gosh, the Earth is so beautiful up there. To spend a whole mission looking at it, trying to take data for scientists and engineers was very rewarding.

[Assistant] I would imagine you’re getting paid to actually take pictures from up there, that would be pretty good.


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

[User] I think you see that all the time. It just takes so long to get those things to market. But it does, almost everything we do up there has some benefit down here on the planet. It’s a good thing.\n\n But the mission was a tremendous amount of fun. We did good work. I’m just happy that in my career I got to do an Earth science mission, because of course the other ones were to Mir [Russian Space Station] and to [the International] Space Station. I feel good about doing that.

[Assistant] Even though you had that math background, Earth science was important to you.

[User] Yes. Like I said, they make you a believer. They’re so dedicated. Gosh, the Earth is so beautiful up there. To spend a whole mission looking at it, trying to take data for scientists and engineers was very rewarding.

[Assistant] I would imagine you’re getting paid to actually take pictures from up there, that would be pretty good.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] I don’t want to keep you. It’s a little after 2:00. If you want to we can stop and then we can let you get on with what you were going to do today.


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

[User] That's what I should have done also. Kudos to you.

[Assistant] I didn't do that, Jessie did.

[User] Well, kudos to Jessie, if it could have been well aware that I basically had moderated a form that Presidential Libraries used for oral history interviews. And I should have run it by the General Counsel's Office and did not. So my hat is off to you on that score.

[Assistant] Actually, the only reason I know that is when I handed the form to Chris Runkel when I interviewed him, he said, “Oh, I made this.”

[User] Oh, so you think that Jessie asked him?

[Assistant] Jessie sent me all the information that I needed. Maybe it was someone who asked him originally, I'm not sure, but it's that one in the oral history file in the Y drive. I just printed several of the form to use.


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

[User] Well, kudos to Jessie, if it could have been well aware that I basically had moderated a form that Presidential Libraries used for oral history interviews. And I should have run it by the General Counsel's Office and did not. So my hat is off to you on that score.

[Assistant] Actually, the only reason I know that is when I handed the form to Chris Runkel when I interviewed him, he said, “Oh, I made this.”

[User] Oh, so you think that Jessie asked him?

[Assistant] Jessie sent me all the information that I needed. Maybe it was someone who asked him originally, I'm not sure, but it's that one in the oral history file in the Y drive. I just printed several of the form to use.

[User] Excellent.

[Assistant] When you signed it last week does it becomes public domain?


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

[User] Okay, there's one more that relates to workings of the National Archives, sort of, and that was a presentation last June, a year ago, June 24, 2014. That was a presentation of the Afro-American History Society and that was in Archives II and it was filmed by the society, so it's not a National Archives YouTube, but it has been filmed. A close friend of mine, a neighbor, is Dr. Ezra Naughton, who was born in St. Croix, and his talk entitled "The 1848 Emancipation of a Slave Population: US Virgin Islands as a Mirror on America." So it was a National Archives group that hosted that presentation, you know the National Archives does have a record group for the Virgin Islands, and so I think that counts. There have been a couple of times that I've done introductions of speakers, there was one twice this year, as a matter of fact. William Marvel had a talk here in the theater, "Lincoln's Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton," and then last month in July, Anthony Pitch talked about his book, Our Crimes were being Jewish.

[Assistant] I went to that.

[User] So, you heard me?

[Assistant] And I've read it.

[User] So, I've known Tony Pitch for a number of years, and I'd once told him that I wouldn't be able to go to a presentation he was giving because I had put together a field trip for myself to go to the Eisenhower and Truman libraries, which I did. Because I had arranged for my sister-in-law's mother, Joyce Wagner, to speak at the Eisenhower Library on her self-published memoir: "A Promise Kept." So as a Holocaust survivor, survived two years in Auschwitz, she ended up in her book quoting General Eisenhower and his becoming overwhelmed with emotions on seeing those survivors and those who did not survive the death camps, and the ones the Americans liberated were not really the death factories that Auschwitz and other places were.

[Assistant] Did you help Anthony Pitch with finding documents here?


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

[User] So, you heard me?

[Assistant] And I've read it.

[User] So, I've known Tony Pitch for a number of years, and I'd once told him that I wouldn't be able to go to a presentation he was giving because I had put together a field trip for myself to go to the Eisenhower and Truman libraries, which I did. Because I had arranged for my sister-in-law's mother, Joyce Wagner, to speak at the Eisenhower Library on her self-published memoir: "A Promise Kept." So as a Holocaust survivor, survived two years in Auschwitz, she ended up in her book quoting General Eisenhower and his becoming overwhelmed with emotions on seeing those survivors and those who did not survive the death camps, and the ones the Americans liberated were not really the death factories that Auschwitz and other places were.

[Assistant] Did you help Anthony Pitch with finding documents here?

[User] I was instrumental in his using some quotes from Joyce Wagner. The first time I worked with him was on his War of 1812 book. And for that there was, I think, a House of Representatives investigation into the war and I had provided those to him. So that was the beginning of my assistance to him. I did not work with him on his second major book, that of, They Killed Poppa Dead on the Lincoln assassination.

[Assistant] I'll end with the same question I ended the last interview. Are there any other anecdotes or words of wisdom that you want to share before we conclude?


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

[User] It all worked when it got put together, without ever having been together before.

[Assistant] You touched on it—there were delays because of the funding Russia had. Were there contingencies in place to deal with these delays, or did you just deal with them as they happened?

[User] I would say that we dealt with them as they happened. We would go to Russia for meetings and they would lay out their current schedule. It would be probably as favorable as they could make it, and it would show the Service Module being just a few months delayed. But that would happen each time we would go and do that.\n\n If you go back and relook at the early Shuttle manifest around that time you’d see the FGB launch, then you see STS-88 with the node docking to it. Then you continue to see outfitting flights that we would go and visit and do things, and maybe bring a small component, until we got to the Service Module. If you look at that period between STS-88 and the Service Module, it’s about a year and a half. I can’t recall it now, but there’s three or four Shuttle flights in there that were basically just visiting and bringing outfitting and supplies. We filled in that time doing things that we felt could be get-ahead steps with the ISS configuration as it was, with just the FGB and the node.

[Assistant] Just waiting for that next part to come up.

[User] Waiting for that next step. Then when the Service Module flew, it was really rapid-fire after that. The Service Module flew in the summer of 2000, and by I want to say the next winter we were flying the U.S. Lab, and then just continued on for several missions.

[Assistant] Did you see the first launches of Zarya [FGB] and the Unity [module]?


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

[User] I think you would probably find different opinions depending on the person, but I think in general they felt that, “We understand why the Russians need this from a financial standpoint, and we understand we’ve put protections in place that keep us all safe as crew.”\n\n Some of them worked better than others with the whole crew. Dennis was very much with the Russians. Other tourists I think over time were a little better integrated into the full crew. Some of that was their personality, some of that was the crew. I can’t recall a singular no, we shouldn’t do this kind of view from the crew.

[Assistant] Just wondering how much it would affect what the crew was supposed to be doing during the time that the tourist was there.

[User] And that was part of what we worked with on the Code of Conduct and the timeline. If the Russians were going to enable this, the activities were going to be in the Russian modules. It wasn’t going to use the Lab unless we agreed to it, it wasn’t going to use another partner element unless it had been agreed to. We built all that process.\n\n I do recall another funny thing. Charlie was one of our principals in the debate with the Russians about “Should we really do this?” In the middle of negotiations Charlie got emotional and started ranting in Russian at the Russians. I had to pull him and said, “Charlie, your team needs to know what you’re saying.”

[Assistant] That’s funny. But he could do it, so he did.

[User] Charlie has excellent Russian language skills.

[Assistant] I imagine a lot of them that flew did.\n\n The U.S. budgets changed a lot, depending on the President, administration, things that happened with the Station Program. Talk about some of those changes and how that affected the Station, especially over those early years, and the budget in general during that time period.


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

[User] But I remember specifically there were five major swim lanes, if you will, of things that we were going to do to relook at the configuration and formulate a plan that was going to help us improve the cost control of the Space Station Program.

[Assistant] It’s interesting how they worked through that.

[User] Yes, I would say the working through it part Bill Gerst is probably the best source for how we really got through that piece. I literally was out for six months working on my doctorate.

[Assistant] Yes, I was going to ask you about that. You got your doctorate, and back in was it ’96 you’d worked on your master’s.

[User] Yes. When I did the Defense Systems Management College course, at the end of that course several local colleges came in and said, “Well, you just completed 9 credit hours of 36 for a master’s in engineering management.” That’s kind of an interesting idea. So I went ahead and went to GW [George Washington University, Washington, DC], mostly NASA-sponsored, and finished out the master’s. Then just kept taking courses figuring, “Well, if I stop, I’ve stopped forever. If I keep taking the courses it’s still a future decision.”\n\n After the Space Station financial issues, they were going to reorganize the Space Station Office at Headquarters anyway. Pretty much they said, “You can do other jobs. We’d like you to do this, but we have some people in mind, and we have a path that we want to do with this reorganization.”\n\n So I took that opportunity to say, “Well, actually what I’d really like to do is maybe take a year sabbatical and try to finish my doctorate.” That was totally acceptable to Fred [Frederick D.] Gregory at the time and Sean, so that was the deal that I went out on. But that ended up terminating the day of the [STS-107 Space Shuttle] Columbia [tragedy].

[Assistant] Of course my next question was the Columbia accident, if we want to talk about that for a while. Just the experience of that day and what your memories were. .


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

[User] Yes, I would say the working through it part Bill Gerst is probably the best source for how we really got through that piece. I literally was out for six months working on my doctorate.

[Assistant] Yes, I was going to ask you about that. You got your doctorate, and back in was it ’96 you’d worked on your master’s.

[User] Yes. When I did the Defense Systems Management College course, at the end of that course several local colleges came in and said, “Well, you just completed 9 credit hours of 36 for a master’s in engineering management.” That’s kind of an interesting idea. So I went ahead and went to GW [George Washington University, Washington, DC], mostly NASA-sponsored, and finished out the master’s. Then just kept taking courses figuring, “Well, if I stop, I’ve stopped forever. If I keep taking the courses it’s still a future decision.”\n\n After the Space Station financial issues, they were going to reorganize the Space Station Office at Headquarters anyway. Pretty much they said, “You can do other jobs. We’d like you to do this, but we have some people in mind, and we have a path that we want to do with this reorganization.”\n\n So I took that opportunity to say, “Well, actually what I’d really like to do is maybe take a year sabbatical and try to finish my doctorate.” That was totally acceptable to Fred [Frederick D.] Gregory at the time and Sean, so that was the deal that I went out on. But that ended up terminating the day of the [STS-107 Space Shuttle] Columbia [tragedy].

[Assistant] Of course my next question was the Columbia accident, if we want to talk about that for a while. Just the experience of that day and what your memories were. .

[User] I was officially on sabbatical—well, quasi-sabbatical, because Fred’s deal was that I would still come to the office one day a week just to be available to help with Space Station things and transition.

[Assistant] Is that when you were Special Assistant to the Associate Administrator?


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

[User] They were, they were.

[Assistant] It all happened so fast. Like I said, this was a new experience, working with all these different agencies and organizing all that.

[User] It was an interesting thing, too. Within a couple days—it was about when they started talking about the ICS and the firefighters, and that was probably a couple weeks—we had a tag up with the agencies every morning, but it was at the senior leader level. I figured out about that time, and went to Bill and said, “They’re all having a meeting without us beforehand. I don’t know that they appreciate whether we should be there or not, but all you’re hearing is what they’ve already sorted out.” So we ended up going back and inserting ourselves into the earlier meeting as well, to understand more at the working level what was going on.\n\n It was obvious that all of these folks were just reporting up to their bosses, the one that we were tied in to. They weren’t actually making the decisions or recommendations, they were just reporting up to the bosses. That gave us better visibility into what they were really talking about and how this process worked.\n\n We also had a person, Amy [K.] Donahue, at Headquarters, who was a colleague of Sean’s. She had had some experience with the ICS structure in the past, so she was actually one of our ties to that whole process.

[Assistant] I know you had copies of the oral histories. Weren’t you working on a lessons learned?

[User] I was working on a lessons learned with Roger, and we ended up culling them down to a set of talking points. We developed it into a presentation that I used for a while. In fact, I used it in my teaching at GW a little bit. But we never actually published it in a formal sense. Shortly after that Roger passed, and so there wasn’t really any path to collect all of those pieces together.

[Assistant] Was it more lessons learned for NASA on what to do after an accident like that?


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

[User] Many other duties as assigned, yes.

[Assistant] You mentioned the reports that you were giving to the press and how you’re not making news anymore. Of course other things were going on in the world at that time, with the response to 9/11 [terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001] in 2003 right after Columbia came down. Yes, there was a lot going on.

[User] I would say I was pretty inwardly focused at that point.

[Assistant] Yes, I can imagine. I think a lot of people were. We may not get to talk about all of it, but in the time we have left—President Bush’s [2004] announcement for The Vision for Space Exploration, ending the Shuttle Program, finishing out ISS, and then creating some type of spacecraft to return to the Moon and on to Mars, which obviously you are very involved in now.

[User] I am now.

[Assistant] But at the time—do you want to talk about that announcement?


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

[User] Yes. I had retired from the PD about a year and a half, and I got a call, asked me if I’d like to work part-time. I think Ernie [D.] Walker, whom you’re going to be interviewing, was the head of the photo department. That’s how I came back. I came back for four years and worked 1,000 hours a year. We were limited, then. You lose one buck off every two from Social Security at that time. So I was off all winter. I didn’t have to drive from Mansfield [Ohio] in the winter, and so it worked out real nice. Then, they wanted me to go to the next one in the fifth year, and I said, “No, I’m going to write my book,” so I wrote. I took off and took a computer class.

[Assistant] Figured out what to do, right?

[User] I was about 74 years old, and I wrote the book.

[Assistant] What did they want you to do when you came back?

[User] I was doing the photo lab, photo work.

[Assistant] Not as dangerous as before, I hope.


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

[User] I was about 74 years old, and I wrote the book.

[Assistant] What did they want you to do when you came back?

[User] I was doing the photo lab, photo work.

[Assistant] Not as dangerous as before, I hope.

[User] No, no, no. Just regular projects that they had, and I was able to do a couple public relations type [activities] because I’d been doing photography at the Plain Dealer for 31 years, and I knew public relations pretty well. So I was able to help them that way.

[Assistant] You mentioned you were working so much with the engineers, not so much in the actual photo lab, but you developed your own film, your still and movie film? Or did you send it back to the lab?


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

[User] I was doing the photo lab, photo work.

[Assistant] Not as dangerous as before, I hope.

[User] No, no, no. Just regular projects that they had, and I was able to do a couple public relations type [activities] because I’d been doing photography at the Plain Dealer for 31 years, and I knew public relations pretty well. So I was able to help them that way.

[Assistant] You mentioned you were working so much with the engineers, not so much in the actual photo lab, but you developed your own film, your still and movie film? Or did you send it back to the lab?

[User] We could develop—not in color, and we did color. Sometimes we did color in the photo lab for the crash fire program. We asked—Eastman Kodak [Company] and all these companies are all geared to commercial, and that’s what they developed. They weren’t into research, so we would come and ask them to do certain things. One, they had an aerial film that was beautiful, but 32 speed against 8, from Kodachrome [color film]. Thirty-two is quite a gain, that’s two f-stops, and you either can speed up the camera or stop it down more.\n\n We asked them to give us 300 rolls of Fastek-type—the sprocket holes have to be perfect—and run that at 4,000 frames a second. In a second and a half, you’ll run through a roll of film. There’s 4,000 frames to 100 feet. It would run about a second and a half, all the film’s gone, because it’s building up the speed, and then it’s going to go to 4,000. That adds a half-second to it. We asked them to spool the aerial film onto 16-millimeter film, and then we were able to use that faster film in some of our experiments where we were crashing the planes. We were asking Kodak to do something that was not in their production at all.

[Assistant] Were they willing to do that, those companies that you would have to ask?


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

[User] No, no, no. Just regular projects that they had, and I was able to do a couple public relations type [activities] because I’d been doing photography at the Plain Dealer for 31 years, and I knew public relations pretty well. So I was able to help them that way.

[Assistant] You mentioned you were working so much with the engineers, not so much in the actual photo lab, but you developed your own film, your still and movie film? Or did you send it back to the lab?

[User] We could develop—not in color, and we did color. Sometimes we did color in the photo lab for the crash fire program. We asked—Eastman Kodak [Company] and all these companies are all geared to commercial, and that’s what they developed. They weren’t into research, so we would come and ask them to do certain things. One, they had an aerial film that was beautiful, but 32 speed against 8, from Kodachrome [color film]. Thirty-two is quite a gain, that’s two f-stops, and you either can speed up the camera or stop it down more.\n\n We asked them to give us 300 rolls of Fastek-type—the sprocket holes have to be perfect—and run that at 4,000 frames a second. In a second and a half, you’ll run through a roll of film. There’s 4,000 frames to 100 feet. It would run about a second and a half, all the film’s gone, because it’s building up the speed, and then it’s going to go to 4,000. That adds a half-second to it. We asked them to spool the aerial film onto 16-millimeter film, and then we were able to use that faster film in some of our experiments where we were crashing the planes. We were asking Kodak to do something that was not in their production at all.

[Assistant] Were they willing to do that, those companies that you would have to ask?

[User] If you bought enough—we had to buy 300 rolls.

[Assistant] If you buy enough of anything, they’re willing to work with you, right?


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

[User] Yes, he said, “Those guys, you’d be surprised what they come up with.” They got their solution in the second run, but they spent six months afterward designing instruments to clock detonations, flame speeds. It took them six months using my data to do it. They keep going back to the instruments, and there were shortcuts.

[Assistant] It would have been so simple. Comparatively simple, anyway.

[User] Yes, there’s a place for everything. Am I running over time on you?

[Assistant] No, you’re fine. I was just going to ask you one more question, then I was going to see if Rebecca had anything for you. The question I have doesn’t really apply from ’47 to ’53 so much. When you came back in the 80’s, the technology in photography changed so much over time, and compared to now, of course, it’s changed a lot.

[User] It didn’t change that much, yet. They hadn’t gotten into digital yet.

[Assistant] Digital kind of revolutionized everything.


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

[User] Yes. I had a broken family, so I wasn’t going to leave those kids. You can’t hold a marriage together, gone six months at a time. The National Geographic [magazine] people do that. They go out six months, come back six months. You don’t have a marriage. It can’t last.

[Assistant] No, you can’t do that. It’s like he said, if you’re going to be an engineer, you need to be married to your job. The same thing with those type of photographers.

[User] Yes, well, the engineer, you could be at your own location. That works, but the other ones I see a lot, they’ve just become tramps.

[Assistant]
I was going to see if Rebecca had any questions.

I’ve just got two easy ones. When you were here at the Center, did you also have to take pictures of the dull and the mundane?

[User] Yes. You might have two people getting an award over here at the Ad [Administration] Building.

[Assistant] You did the everyday photography, too?


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

[User] Yes, well, the engineer, you could be at your own location. That works, but the other ones I see a lot, they’ve just become tramps.

[Assistant]
I was going to see if Rebecca had any questions.

I’ve just got two easy ones. When you were here at the Center, did you also have to take pictures of the dull and the mundane?

[User] Yes. You might have two people getting an award over here at the Ad [Administration] Building.

[Assistant] You did the everyday photography, too?

[User] I didn’t do too much of that, but they’re doing a lot of that now. I even sent you a copy of the first issue of The Frontier [newsletter], volume 1, issue I, because I’m in there. They did a story on me. That’s how I happened to be there.\n\n Now you know why I left, too. We got that in, we got how I started. I don’t know—you got a lot of stuff you didn’t expect, I think.

[Assistant]
It’s all good. Did you have another?

Yes, one more. Did you have a favorite camera that you liked to use, your go-to camera?


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

[User] Yes. You might have two people getting an award over here at the Ad [Administration] Building.

[Assistant] You did the everyday photography, too?

[User] I didn’t do too much of that, but they’re doing a lot of that now. I even sent you a copy of the first issue of The Frontier [newsletter], volume 1, issue I, because I’m in there. They did a story on me. That’s how I happened to be there.\n\n Now you know why I left, too. We got that in, we got how I started. I don’t know—you got a lot of stuff you didn’t expect, I think.

[Assistant]
It’s all good. Did you have another?

Yes, one more. Did you have a favorite camera that you liked to use, your go-to camera?

[User] I have a little Leica [C-2] that’s got the cover off. I bought a body for $20. I used it at the Plain Dealer in my pocket, and I took a lot of my great pictures because it was with me. It had a 25-milllimeter lens, which is very rare to find. You have 20s and you 50s and 35s, but this was a 25, which is half of a 50, so you get a 6-foot person, 6 feet away. I didn’t have to do much calculating with that. I just set the thing on shoot, and I shot a lot on the fly. I’d see things and I’d take a picture. My collection’s at CSU [Cleveland State University]. I had 51 boxes, and we’ve been going through them for a couple of years. I’m trying to write another book and I got my whole family two weeks ago, and they all picked out the pictures they want. They’re all going to CSU, and we have a contract where the family can get scans for 25 years, any ones they want.

[Assistant] That’s great, that’s great that you have that.


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

[User] I get fired from a lot of jobs.

[Assistant] [Laughs] Did they put someone else in that position to keep fighting it?

[User] Yes. Yes. Yes. Who’d they put in? [Rodney G.] Rod Rose. Rodney Rose, and though he spoke more eloquently than I did, he failed just as dismally.

[Assistant] You mentioned in the last interview that you became head of the Flight Dynamics Section, and that was around 1974, about the same time, I guess, that you were fired from the other job, and then Section Head in 1976. Do you have any specific memories about that time period or anything you’d like to share?

[User] No, not really. Not really. We had a good bunch of people. A lot of the landing and recovery guys came over to work with us, Ron [Ronald C.] Epps and [Michael] Mike Collins and some other people. [Charles F.] Chuck Deiterich was part of that group. No, nothing.

[Assistant] Then you moved on to Branch Chief in 1980?


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

[User] Yes. Yes. Yes. Who’d they put in? [Rodney G.] Rod Rose. Rodney Rose, and though he spoke more eloquently than I did, he failed just as dismally.

[Assistant] You mentioned in the last interview that you became head of the Flight Dynamics Section, and that was around 1974, about the same time, I guess, that you were fired from the other job, and then Section Head in 1976. Do you have any specific memories about that time period or anything you’d like to share?

[User] No, not really. Not really. We had a good bunch of people. A lot of the landing and recovery guys came over to work with us, Ron [Ronald C.] Epps and [Michael] Mike Collins and some other people. [Charles F.] Chuck Deiterich was part of that group. No, nothing.

[Assistant] Then you moved on to Branch Chief in 1980?

[User] Yes, I guess that’s when [Kenneth S.] Kenny Kleinknecht took over the combination of Flight Crew Ops [Operations] and I guess it was Flight Operations back then. Had [Eugene F.] Gene Kranz running Flight Ops and George [W. S.] Abbey running Flight Crew Ops, and in addition to the trajectory stuff we’d always done, I picked up some of the flight crew procedures and training stuff. These are the guys responsible for the crew checklist and procedures during ascent and entry. Another good bunch of people and some interesting work; initial phases of planning how you fly a Shuttle.

[Assistant] Do you have any specific memories? You said it was an interesting time.


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

[User] No, not really. Not really. We had a good bunch of people. A lot of the landing and recovery guys came over to work with us, Ron [Ronald C.] Epps and [Michael] Mike Collins and some other people. [Charles F.] Chuck Deiterich was part of that group. No, nothing.

[Assistant] Then you moved on to Branch Chief in 1980?

[User] Yes, I guess that’s when [Kenneth S.] Kenny Kleinknecht took over the combination of Flight Crew Ops [Operations] and I guess it was Flight Operations back then. Had [Eugene F.] Gene Kranz running Flight Ops and George [W. S.] Abbey running Flight Crew Ops, and in addition to the trajectory stuff we’d always done, I picked up some of the flight crew procedures and training stuff. These are the guys responsible for the crew checklist and procedures during ascent and entry. Another good bunch of people and some interesting work; initial phases of planning how you fly a Shuttle.

[Assistant] Do you have any specific memories? You said it was an interesting time.

[User] No, not really. Not really. About that time, though, we were beginning simulations for the first Shuttle flight, and in addition to the other stuff, I was the ascent Flight Dynamics Officer for the first two Shuttles. Long years, long hours. In preparation for STS-1, we simulated I think the number was 1,843 hours of ascent simulations.

[Assistant] Definitely a lot of simulation hours.


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

[User] Yes, I guess that’s when [Kenneth S.] Kenny Kleinknecht took over the combination of Flight Crew Ops [Operations] and I guess it was Flight Operations back then. Had [Eugene F.] Gene Kranz running Flight Ops and George [W. S.] Abbey running Flight Crew Ops, and in addition to the trajectory stuff we’d always done, I picked up some of the flight crew procedures and training stuff. These are the guys responsible for the crew checklist and procedures during ascent and entry. Another good bunch of people and some interesting work; initial phases of planning how you fly a Shuttle.

[Assistant] Do you have any specific memories? You said it was an interesting time.

[User] No, not really. Not really. About that time, though, we were beginning simulations for the first Shuttle flight, and in addition to the other stuff, I was the ascent Flight Dynamics Officer for the first two Shuttles. Long years, long hours. In preparation for STS-1, we simulated I think the number was 1,843 hours of ascent simulations.

[Assistant] Definitely a lot of simulation hours.

[User] Yes, it was.

[Assistant] Can you talk about that first flight?


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

[User] No, not really. Not really. About that time, though, we were beginning simulations for the first Shuttle flight, and in addition to the other stuff, I was the ascent Flight Dynamics Officer for the first two Shuttles. Long years, long hours. In preparation for STS-1, we simulated I think the number was 1,843 hours of ascent simulations.

[Assistant] Definitely a lot of simulation hours.

[User] Yes, it was.

[Assistant] Can you talk about that first flight?

[User] We simulated for a long time, and I think we probably scrubbed two or three times before the first launch. Everything was going good; we got down around within five minutes, maybe, maybe two or three minutes, of zero. We had a flight rule that said we needed two C-band radars and an S-band, and the C-bands were what we called skin trackers. They didn’t have a beacon that they pinged. They painted the vehicle and looked for a return signal. We had never skin-tracked ascents before. We had one S-band, and it was useless by itself, but with the two C-bands, it was supposed to give us a pretty good solution. Two C-bands alone, if they stayed locked on, would have done well for us.\n\n So we had a flight rule that said if we lost the S-band, we’d scrub the launch. We counted down, we started the APUs [auxiliary power units], and wouldn’t you know it, the S-band tracking station went down, and after arguing and arguing and arguing for years that we needed the two plus the one, I said, “Let’s go without the S-band,” and we did.

[Assistant] Why did you feel that it would be okay to do that at that point, since, as you said, you’d been arguing—


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

[User] Pretty much kept the same structure. The systems guys changed, because the systems were different. The trajectory guys, we kept on doing what we’d been doing since day one. The main engines were an added complication that we didn’t have on Apollo. The F-1 engines, the engines on the Saturn V were pretty straightforward, but there was a lot of thrust variations that could take place on the Shuttle engines that would affect the trajectory and what you do. Also, on Apollo, if you ever got into trouble, you could always shut down the engines and separate and fall back in, land in the water. We had recovery ships all across the Atlantic.\n\n On the Shuttle, though, the plan was always to get the Shuttle back either to orbit or back to the runway, and so we had some—and guys still do have some—pretty complicated processors that would, as we went along in the trajectory, compute what the available abort modes were. We had to come up with the air-ground calls that would let the crew know what to do just in case we lost com [communication], and how to initiate the aborts.

[Assistant] Did it still operate the same? When you talked about Apollo last time and the back room and the support, and we talked a little bit about the calculations that had to be done, in being almost ten years difference in time, and of course, technology had made some leaps by that time—

[User] Not many.

[Assistant] Not many. [Laughs] Did you still have that same relationship with the back room and those calculations?

[User] Yes. We had those guys down in the first floor, and they would run the computers, and they’d make the inputs for us. We didn’t get to the point that every trajectory operator had a keyboard and can control his own computations. That didn’t happen till after—well, it didn’t happen till midway through the Shuttle program, probably.

[Assistant] Around that time, you moved into training to be a Flight Director. Can you talk for a minute about what that training involves, and how you came to the decision you wanted to do that, or if you were asked to do that? Just some of the circumstances surrounding that.


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

[User] That was SolarMax, which was STS-41 Charlie [41-C], and it was 41 Charlie because nobody wanted to call it its numerical number. It was STS-13, and so those superstitious people changed the whole Shuttle numbering plan to avoid having an STS-13.

[Assistant] Let’s go back for just a moment and talk about, as you mentioned, your first mission as a Flight Director was STS-6, and it was the maiden voyage of the\n\n Challenger\n\n . What are your memories of that flight and in this position for the first time?

[User] It felt good. We did the count maybe three or four times. We had a hydrogen leak problems on the vehicle, if I remember, and it took a while to get the vehicle tight enough that we could fly it. Aside from that, like most of the ascents, it was benign. You do all the training and training and training, and you’re prepared for all these contingency situations, and you get there and you fly a nominal, and it’s almost like magic. Most of them are like that. Some aren’t.

[Assistant] During Apollo and Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, you were used to dealing with a relatively small crew, two or three people at the most. Then with Shuttle more people were flying. Did that affect anything in the Control Room or as far as dealing with more people or on the simulations or anything?

[User] No, not really. Not really. We dealt with the pilot, copilot, and one MS [Mission Specialist], and they were the flight crew we dealt with. They operated as a unit, and we treated them as a unit. We never said, “CDR [Commander], go do this,” or PLT [pilot]. The call was to the crew, and they did their own work management on board, so no, the crew size didn’t affect us.

[Assistant] Did you get to know the crews as well as you did during Apollo time?


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

[User] Not about that. Not about that.

[Assistant] You mentioned earlier a DoD [Department of Defense] mission. You said that was the first rendezvous. Can you talk about the differences in preparing for a DoD mission and a normal mission?

[User] No, they were classified. That was primarily the difference.

[Assistant] As far as running the simulations and everything, it was just more—

[User] Well, except that the simulations were as classified as anything on the flight, and the room was closed, and the procedures were confidential or secret or more. You dealt with a smaller bunch of people, because just “need to know” and classification limitations. We had a very good relationship with the people we dealt with in the Air Force. They all acknowledged that the service they got was better than they expected, and they all wanted to continue it. You know, there’s been a lot of talk, the Air Force versus NASA. A different bunch of people in the Air Force. Anybody we touched, we had super dealings with.

[Assistant] About this time, you were working as a Lead Flight Director. Can you talk for a moment about what the determining factors were, choosing a Lead Flight Director for flights? Was it depending on what the flight was supposed to be doing?


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

[User] No, they were classified. That was primarily the difference.

[Assistant] As far as running the simulations and everything, it was just more—

[User] Well, except that the simulations were as classified as anything on the flight, and the room was closed, and the procedures were confidential or secret or more. You dealt with a smaller bunch of people, because just “need to know” and classification limitations. We had a very good relationship with the people we dealt with in the Air Force. They all acknowledged that the service they got was better than they expected, and they all wanted to continue it. You know, there’s been a lot of talk, the Air Force versus NASA. A different bunch of people in the Air Force. Anybody we touched, we had super dealings with.

[Assistant] About this time, you were working as a Lead Flight Director. Can you talk for a moment about what the determining factors were, choosing a Lead Flight Director for flights? Was it depending on what the flight was supposed to be doing?

[User] There was one group that was primarily ascents and entries, and that’s probably the biggest time-critical—but they were fixed procedures that you’d tweak every flight, but pretty much the same old stuff. Lead Flight Director would coordinate a totally different mission every time we went, be it a rendezvous, a Spacelab, and would be required to coordinate three shifts of activity over a seven- to ten-day mission, and was responsible for mission success for that mission. So it was a different set of talents. It was almost a different job. And you get picked for what assignment you had, based on what your background was. [STS] 41-C was the first real big rendezvous flight, and I did all the rendezvous work, and so I got the lead. Then I got into the satellite repair part of it, and having done all that, [STS] 51-I became a natural, and so I picked that assignment up. Other guys specialized in Air Force missions, because they had the contacts with the DoD and the right clearances and knew the right people.

[Assistant] Did you have any certain criteria for choosing your team for any given flight?


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

[User] There was one group that was primarily ascents and entries, and that’s probably the biggest time-critical—but they were fixed procedures that you’d tweak every flight, but pretty much the same old stuff. Lead Flight Director would coordinate a totally different mission every time we went, be it a rendezvous, a Spacelab, and would be required to coordinate three shifts of activity over a seven- to ten-day mission, and was responsible for mission success for that mission. So it was a different set of talents. It was almost a different job. And you get picked for what assignment you had, based on what your background was. [STS] 41-C was the first real big rendezvous flight, and I did all the rendezvous work, and so I got the lead. Then I got into the satellite repair part of it, and having done all that, [STS] 51-I became a natural, and so I picked that assignment up. Other guys specialized in Air Force missions, because they had the contacts with the DoD and the right clearances and knew the right people.

[Assistant] Did you have any certain criteria for choosing your team for any given flight?

[User] No. No. You had veto authority, but pretty much left it to the organizations to put their best people in whatever shifts they were put on. Manning was left to the organizations.

[Assistant] The next mission that I have that you worked on was [STS] 61-C.

[User] Bill [Clarens William] Nelson.

[Assistant] Do you have any specific memories about that mission?


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

[User] Yes, constantly.

[Assistant] What was that like?

[User] I always enjoyed it. I had some big ones, like when Pinky Nelson bounced off, it was like flies on something, and the Press Briefing Room filled up, and they didn’t think we’d be able to pull it off. They could smell the kill. Generally they weren’t big deals, and we had some training on how to talk to the press.

[Assistant] Was that coordinated through PAO [NASA Public Affairs Office]?

[User] Yes, sort of. I forget the guys who gave the course. They were ABC [American Broadcasting Corporation] execs. As a matter of fact, they were so good, they were leaving us to go to Johnson & Johnson, and teach Johnson & Johnson how to put a pretty face on the Tylenol [acetaminophen] problem [product tampering in 1982]. We got into that after there were a couple of incidents where some of our guys didn’t quite answer questions correctly and got into some trouble with the press.

[Assistant] Would you like to take a break for a minute?


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

[User] I always enjoyed it. I had some big ones, like when Pinky Nelson bounced off, it was like flies on something, and the Press Briefing Room filled up, and they didn’t think we’d be able to pull it off. They could smell the kill. Generally they weren’t big deals, and we had some training on how to talk to the press.

[Assistant] Was that coordinated through PAO [NASA Public Affairs Office]?

[User] Yes, sort of. I forget the guys who gave the course. They were ABC [American Broadcasting Corporation] execs. As a matter of fact, they were so good, they were leaving us to go to Johnson & Johnson, and teach Johnson & Johnson how to put a pretty face on the Tylenol [acetaminophen] problem [product tampering in 1982]. We got into that after there were a couple of incidents where some of our guys didn’t quite answer questions correctly and got into some trouble with the press.

[Assistant] Would you like to take a break for a minute?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] When we left off, we were talking about STS 61-C and that flight. After 61-C landed in January, ten days later the\n\n Challenger\n\n accident occurred. If you would, please share your memories of that with us.


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

[User] We secured the room; nobody in or out. We secured the communications. We got everybody getting their data together and writing incident reports. We worked for a long time trying to get the search and rescue guys to enter the area. They were worried that there was debris that was falling for an hour after the accident, and they didn’t want the choppers anywheres near it, which was understandable in the light of day, but at the time was disconcerting, that we could have had guys out in the water and they didn’t want to get close to them. That’s pretty much what we did. Released the operators. Was very calm, cool, and collected; went home and completely broke down. It was a rough day.

[Assistant] In the days following—of course, you mentioned the press conference—what were your duties immediately following the accident?

[User] None. None.

[Assistant] Did you have any involvement with Sally Ride’s report [Leadership and America's Future in Space]?

[User] No.

[Assistant] By October 1987, you became Chief of the Safety Division.


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

[User] None. None.

[Assistant] Did you have any involvement with Sally Ride’s report [Leadership and America's Future in Space]?

[User] No.

[Assistant] By October 1987, you became Chief of the Safety Division.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Do you want to move on to that?


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

[User] No.

[Assistant] By October 1987, you became Chief of the Safety Division.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Do you want to move on to that?

[User] I decided, for a lot of reasons, that I’d had all the fun I wanted to have in the Control Room. I went on and I did a couple of months, a few months, half a year—who knows; something like that—working a lunar exploration group, and then I didn’t like that and needed something more challenging. [Charles F.] Charlie Bolden [Jr.] was running the Safety Division. I took over from Charlie.\n\n Charlie did people, and then I brought engineering rigor in, and we developed a pretty good safety operation, and we developed a Shuttle Safety Review Board. We reviewed the hazard reports, not only for the Orbiter, but for each of the other elements, and it took us about a year. We visited all the sites. We had membership from all the sites. I probably learned more about the vehicle in that year or two than at any other time in my career. It was a great education.\n\n But after doing safety for two years, I got a call. I had a buddy at KSC who was my counterpart. He came in at about the same time I did, and he had a strong engineering background and understood they needed safety guys, but why me, Lord? So he called one day, and he says, “We’ve got a problem.”\n\n I said, “What’s the problem, Bob?”\n\n He says, “You know, if we stay on this job much longer, we’re going to have to read the manuals.”\n\n And I said, “Good put.” So I forget who I let it be known that I was ready to get out. I left there and went to the Shuttle Program, working for [Leonard S.] Nicholson. I did that for a while, and it got me into program management, and I learned a lot in that that year, too.

[Assistant] Do you want to share with us some of the things you learned?


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

[User] Yes, I did some of that. When [Daniel S.] Dan Goldin came in, among other things he put together these study groups to how NASA would team with Department of Energy on about ten different areas. I was given cochairmanship with a guy from DOE, and we ran a board on nuclear power and propulsion, something I knew absolutely nothing about, but if you surround yourself with the right number of Ph.D.’s and nuclear physicists. We did that and put together what I think is still a dynamite piece of paper; it was about fifty pages in length. And Goldin never read it, because he said it was too thick. So there you are. Still a dynamite piece of paper.

[Assistant] How was it working with the Department of Energy and working with another agency like that?

[User] We had a very good relationship, very good.

[Assistant] Were you in the D.C. area the whole time, or did you commute back and forth?

[User] Commuted. Commuted. I commuted when I was in D.C. all the time, which wasn’t a bad deal.

[Assistant] Well, in the early ‘90s, you moved to Engineering Directorate?


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

[User] We had a very good relationship, very good.

[Assistant] Were you in the D.C. area the whole time, or did you commute back and forth?

[User] Commuted. Commuted. I commuted when I was in D.C. all the time, which wasn’t a bad deal.

[Assistant] Well, in the early ‘90s, you moved to Engineering Directorate?

[User] That’s after Exploration went out of business. I needed a place to escape to.

[Assistant] What was your role in that directorate?


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

[User] Commuted. Commuted. I commuted when I was in D.C. all the time, which wasn’t a bad deal.

[Assistant] Well, in the early ‘90s, you moved to Engineering Directorate?

[User] That’s after Exploration went out of business. I needed a place to escape to.

[Assistant] What was your role in that directorate?

[User] I had a Technology Group, and it was ahead of its time—or behind its time—and it wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I sat there and waited for the next time George came to call. Eventually he came, and he said, “We need an Orbiter Project Manager.” I did that for a few years. That was an amazingly good feeling, owning four Shuttles. Going down to the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] and visiting them and actually feeling ownership and responsibility for them.

[Assistant] What were some of the duties that you had in that position?


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

[User] That’s after Exploration went out of business. I needed a place to escape to.

[Assistant] What was your role in that directorate?

[User] I had a Technology Group, and it was ahead of its time—or behind its time—and it wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I sat there and waited for the next time George came to call. Eventually he came, and he said, “We need an Orbiter Project Manager.” I did that for a few years. That was an amazingly good feeling, owning four Shuttles. Going down to the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] and visiting them and actually feeling ownership and responsibility for them.

[Assistant] What were some of the duties that you had in that position?

[User] It was technical, schedule, and budget for the entire Orbiter fleet, and a very close working relationship with our contractor, which was North American Rockwell [Corporation], and then later, Rockwell. Very good friendships; very close relationships with the guys at the Cape, contractor guys, government guys. A very fulfilling position.

[Assistant] What was the move after that?


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

[User] I had a Technology Group, and it was ahead of its time—or behind its time—and it wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I sat there and waited for the next time George came to call. Eventually he came, and he said, “We need an Orbiter Project Manager.” I did that for a few years. That was an amazingly good feeling, owning four Shuttles. Going down to the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] and visiting them and actually feeling ownership and responsibility for them.

[Assistant] What were some of the duties that you had in that position?

[User] It was technical, schedule, and budget for the entire Orbiter fleet, and a very close working relationship with our contractor, which was North American Rockwell [Corporation], and then later, Rockwell. Very good friendships; very close relationships with the guys at the Cape, contractor guys, government guys. A very fulfilling position.

[Assistant] What was the move after that?

[User] George came to see me again. Yes, I probably antagonized a lot of people, because I was dead opposed to the [Team] USA Concept [for Global Space Commerce] and the effects it would have on the Johnson workforce. I was right, but they decided it was time to put me somewheres else.

[Assistant] What concerns did you have?


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

[User] It was technical, schedule, and budget for the entire Orbiter fleet, and a very close working relationship with our contractor, which was North American Rockwell [Corporation], and then later, Rockwell. Very good friendships; very close relationships with the guys at the Cape, contractor guys, government guys. A very fulfilling position.

[Assistant] What was the move after that?

[User] George came to see me again. Yes, I probably antagonized a lot of people, because I was dead opposed to the [Team] USA Concept [for Global Space Commerce] and the effects it would have on the Johnson workforce. I was right, but they decided it was time to put me somewheres else.

[Assistant] What concerns did you have?

[User] That we’d turn the technical responsibility for Shuttle engineering over to a contractor, and they might or might not have been able to assume those responsibilities. We did great damage to the NASA workforce, and they couldn’t assume those responsibilities.

[Assistant] You went on to work as Deputy Manager for Technical Development for the ISS [International Space Station] Program.


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

[User] George came to see me again. Yes, I probably antagonized a lot of people, because I was dead opposed to the [Team] USA Concept [for Global Space Commerce] and the effects it would have on the Johnson workforce. I was right, but they decided it was time to put me somewheres else.

[Assistant] What concerns did you have?

[User] That we’d turn the technical responsibility for Shuttle engineering over to a contractor, and they might or might not have been able to assume those responsibilities. We did great damage to the NASA workforce, and they couldn’t assume those responsibilities.

[Assistant] You went on to work as Deputy Manager for Technical Development for the ISS [International Space Station] Program.

[User] Yes, I did.

[Assistant] Would you like to talk about that for a moment?


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

[User] That we’d turn the technical responsibility for Shuttle engineering over to a contractor, and they might or might not have been able to assume those responsibilities. We did great damage to the NASA workforce, and they couldn’t assume those responsibilities.

[Assistant] You went on to work as Deputy Manager for Technical Development for the ISS [International Space Station] Program.

[User] Yes, I did.

[Assistant] Would you like to talk about that for a moment?

[User] That was great fun. George knew that that station was in deep, serious trouble, and he asked me to go over and see what I could do. So I went over and did things and made things happen, and we got a pretty good Space Station up there. So I feel very proud of that.

[Assistant] How closely did you work with the contractors that were involved in that program?


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

[User] Yes, I did.

[Assistant] Would you like to talk about that for a moment?

[User] That was great fun. George knew that that station was in deep, serious trouble, and he asked me to go over and see what I could do. So I went over and did things and made things happen, and we got a pretty good Space Station up there. So I feel very proud of that.

[Assistant] How closely did you work with the contractors that were involved in that program?

[User] Very closely.

[Assistant] Can you describe some of the issues that you worked on or encountered during that time?


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

[User] That was great fun. George knew that that station was in deep, serious trouble, and he asked me to go over and see what I could do. So I went over and did things and made things happen, and we got a pretty good Space Station up there. So I feel very proud of that.

[Assistant] How closely did you work with the contractors that were involved in that program?

[User] Very closely.

[Assistant] Can you describe some of the issues that you worked on or encountered during that time?

[User] We worked on every piece of hardware, on the node, on the lab, solar arrays, the ECLS system, Environmental [Control and Life Support] System, com system. I was able to go down the Cape and climb in the lab before it launched; climbed in the node before it launched, and was able to just do 360s, and wherever you looked, there was a story about that piece of hardware or that piece of hardware. It all came together, and it’s working far beyond anybody’s expectations.

[Assistant] Can you talk for a minute about working with the international partners?


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

[User] Wonderful. Wonderful.

[Assistant] You also received some prestigious awards for your work on Space Station, the Distinguished Service Medal for NASA, the Stellar Award for the Rotary, and a Silver Snoopy [Award] in 2000. Would you like to talk about any of those awards?

[User] None of them had any money. [laughter] So I got a nice piece of rock for the Stellar Award. That was nice. That was nice. Distinguished Service Medal, that’s usually an end-of-your-career award, and I think people gave it to me hoping it would be. And the Silver Snoopy wasn’t—I don’t know. But that’s nice to have, too.

[Assistant] From that position you moved into your role as Chief Engineer.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Can you describe what you do in that position?


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

[User] None of them had any money. [laughter] So I got a nice piece of rock for the Stellar Award. That was nice. That was nice. Distinguished Service Medal, that’s usually an end-of-your-career award, and I think people gave it to me hoping it would be. And the Silver Snoopy wasn’t—I don’t know. But that’s nice to have, too.

[Assistant] From that position you moved into your role as Chief Engineer.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Can you describe what you do in that position?

[User] I advise the Center Director, primarily. I have a group that’s a Systems Management Group that does cost and schedule analysis and systems engineering support for the center. I have a group that does the ISO [International Organization for Standardization] support for the center. As a result of the CAIB [\n\n Columbia\n\n Accident Investigation Board], there was a move to get what they called independent technical authority going. We waited for [NASA] Headquarters and waited for Headquarters.\n\n We implemented an Independent Technical Authority [ITA] organization. I have about seven engineers working there, all highly talented people, and they’re dispersed to the programs in the onsite organizations, and we have signature authority on all Shuttle and Station change paper, as a result of this ITA. We’re still fighting Headquarters on how it ought to be done.

[Assistant] In 2002, Director [Jefferson D.] Howell [Jr.] established the Engineering Review Board.


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Can you describe what you do in that position?

[User] I advise the Center Director, primarily. I have a group that’s a Systems Management Group that does cost and schedule analysis and systems engineering support for the center. I have a group that does the ISO [International Organization for Standardization] support for the center. As a result of the CAIB [\n\n Columbia\n\n Accident Investigation Board], there was a move to get what they called independent technical authority going. We waited for [NASA] Headquarters and waited for Headquarters.\n\n We implemented an Independent Technical Authority [ITA] organization. I have about seven engineers working there, all highly talented people, and they’re dispersed to the programs in the onsite organizations, and we have signature authority on all Shuttle and Station change paper, as a result of this ITA. We’re still fighting Headquarters on how it ought to be done.

[Assistant] In 2002, Director [Jefferson D.] Howell [Jr.] established the Engineering Review Board.

[User] Yes, and that’s something I use to technically review whatever I feel needs to be looked at.

[Assistant] What is your favorite part of this job?


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

[User] I advise the Center Director, primarily. I have a group that’s a Systems Management Group that does cost and schedule analysis and systems engineering support for the center. I have a group that does the ISO [International Organization for Standardization] support for the center. As a result of the CAIB [\n\n Columbia\n\n Accident Investigation Board], there was a move to get what they called independent technical authority going. We waited for [NASA] Headquarters and waited for Headquarters.\n\n We implemented an Independent Technical Authority [ITA] organization. I have about seven engineers working there, all highly talented people, and they’re dispersed to the programs in the onsite organizations, and we have signature authority on all Shuttle and Station change paper, as a result of this ITA. We’re still fighting Headquarters on how it ought to be done.

[Assistant] In 2002, Director [Jefferson D.] Howell [Jr.] established the Engineering Review Board.

[User] Yes, and that’s something I use to technically review whatever I feel needs to be looked at.

[Assistant] What is your favorite part of this job?

[User] Which job?

[Assistant] The one you have currently.


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

[User] Yes, and that’s something I use to technically review whatever I feel needs to be looked at.

[Assistant] What is your favorite part of this job?

[User] Which job?

[Assistant] The one you have currently.

[User] Getting ready to retire. Trying like hell to do that. I don’t know.

[Assistant] The\n\n Columbia\n\n accident happened while you were still working. What were you doing that moment, and what are your memories of the\n\n Columbia\n\n ?


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

[User] Which job?

[Assistant] The one you have currently.

[User] Getting ready to retire. Trying like hell to do that. I don’t know.

[Assistant] The\n\n Columbia\n\n accident happened while you were still working. What were you doing that moment, and what are your memories of the\n\n Columbia\n\n ?

[User] I was up in the [JSC] Center Director’s viewing room. We heard the com outages. At first, didn’t think much of it, and then the Flight Dynamics guys reported failure to lock on with the C-bands. Remember, the C-bands are skin trackers, and they don’t require an active system, and the fact they couldn’t lock on said nothing was there. Another bad day. Although, personally, I wasn’t as close to this crew as I was to the\n\n Challenger\n\n guys, but it’s been tough.

[Assistant] In light of your experience going through\n\n Challenger\n\n in the Control Room, were you able to provide any sort of guidance or support for anyone?


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

[User] Getting ready to retire. Trying like hell to do that. I don’t know.

[Assistant] The\n\n Columbia\n\n accident happened while you were still working. What were you doing that moment, and what are your memories of the\n\n Columbia\n\n ?

[User] I was up in the [JSC] Center Director’s viewing room. We heard the com outages. At first, didn’t think much of it, and then the Flight Dynamics guys reported failure to lock on with the C-bands. Remember, the C-bands are skin trackers, and they don’t require an active system, and the fact they couldn’t lock on said nothing was there. Another bad day. Although, personally, I wasn’t as close to this crew as I was to the\n\n Challenger\n\n guys, but it’s been tough.

[Assistant] In light of your experience going through\n\n Challenger\n\n in the Control Room, were you able to provide any sort of guidance or support for anyone?

[User] No. They did all the right things, and it was a different situation. It was a different situation.

[Assistant] Were you involved in any of the recovery or the investigation?


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

[User] I was up in the [JSC] Center Director’s viewing room. We heard the com outages. At first, didn’t think much of it, and then the Flight Dynamics guys reported failure to lock on with the C-bands. Remember, the C-bands are skin trackers, and they don’t require an active system, and the fact they couldn’t lock on said nothing was there. Another bad day. Although, personally, I wasn’t as close to this crew as I was to the\n\n Challenger\n\n guys, but it’s been tough.

[Assistant] In light of your experience going through\n\n Challenger\n\n in the Control Room, were you able to provide any sort of guidance or support for anyone?

[User] No. They did all the right things, and it was a different situation. It was a different situation.

[Assistant] Were you involved in any of the recovery or the investigation?

[User] Peripherally. Peripherally.

[Assistant] Anything you’d like to talk about?


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

[User] No. They did all the right things, and it was a different situation. It was a different situation.

[Assistant] Were you involved in any of the recovery or the investigation?

[User] Peripherally. Peripherally.

[Assistant] Anything you’d like to talk about?

[User] No.

[Assistant] During your career, since it’s run quite a few years, you’ve worked with a variety of different Directors and also NASA Administrators. Do you have any comments about any of their management styles or any of those people in particular?


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

[User] Peripherally. Peripherally.

[Assistant] Anything you’d like to talk about?

[User] No.

[Assistant] During your career, since it’s run quite a few years, you’ve worked with a variety of different Directors and also NASA Administrators. Do you have any comments about any of their management styles or any of those people in particular?

[User] Kraft, he was probably the best. [Glynn S.] Lunney was a good man to work with. Worked with Crippen a lot, [Richard H.] Dick Truly. Good people. Dan Goldin, not so good. The current Administrator [Sean O’Keefe]—don’t tell anybody I said this—not so good. We’re lacking a leadership organization with a lot of space experience like we used to have, and it’s going to hurt.

[Assistant] What would you consider your favorite position while you were here?


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

[User] No.

[Assistant] During your career, since it’s run quite a few years, you’ve worked with a variety of different Directors and also NASA Administrators. Do you have any comments about any of their management styles or any of those people in particular?

[User] Kraft, he was probably the best. [Glynn S.] Lunney was a good man to work with. Worked with Crippen a lot, [Richard H.] Dick Truly. Good people. Dan Goldin, not so good. The current Administrator [Sean O’Keefe]—don’t tell anybody I said this—not so good. We’re lacking a leadership organization with a lot of space experience like we used to have, and it’s going to hurt.

[Assistant] What would you consider your favorite position while you were here?

[User] Flight Director, Orbiter Project Manager, and the [International Space] Station job. I liked them all.

[Assistant] Which of these positions do you think were the most challenging?


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

[User] Kraft, he was probably the best. [Glynn S.] Lunney was a good man to work with. Worked with Crippen a lot, [Richard H.] Dick Truly. Good people. Dan Goldin, not so good. The current Administrator [Sean O’Keefe]—don’t tell anybody I said this—not so good. We’re lacking a leadership organization with a lot of space experience like we used to have, and it’s going to hurt.

[Assistant] What would you consider your favorite position while you were here?

[User] Flight Director, Orbiter Project Manager, and the [International Space] Station job. I liked them all.

[Assistant] Which of these positions do you think were the most challenging?

[User] Flight Director, Orbiter Project Manager, and the Station.

[Assistant] [Laughs] I get the feeling you like to be challenged.


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

[User] Flight Director, Orbiter Project Manager, and the [International Space] Station job. I liked them all.

[Assistant] Which of these positions do you think were the most challenging?

[User] Flight Director, Orbiter Project Manager, and the Station.

[Assistant] [Laughs] I get the feeling you like to be challenged.

[User] Yes. Yes.

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


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

[User] Flight Director, Orbiter Project Manager, and the Station.

[Assistant] [Laughs] I get the feeling you like to be challenged.

[User] Yes. Yes.

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

[User] My bicycle.

[Assistant] Okay, talk about your bicycle. [Laughs]


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

[User] Yes. Yes.

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

[User] My bicycle.

[Assistant] Okay, talk about your bicycle. [Laughs]

[User] I ordered a bicycle about fifteen months ago—no, seventeen months ago—from a little mechanic in Chester, Connecticut, and when it comes, I told the Center Director seventeen months ago, I’m leaving.

[Assistant] What are your plans for your retirement, other than riding your bicycle?


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

[User] My bicycle.

[Assistant] Okay, talk about your bicycle. [Laughs]

[User] I ordered a bicycle about fifteen months ago—no, seventeen months ago—from a little mechanic in Chester, Connecticut, and when it comes, I told the Center Director seventeen months ago, I’m leaving.

[Assistant] What are your plans for your retirement, other than riding your bicycle?

[User] I’m going to ride my bicycle.

[Assistant] Are you going to ride it anywhere, or is it just around here?


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

[User] That makes sense. I came to Headquarters in February ’85 I believe it was, as a detailee from JPL. I got to sit in on a lot of the meetings. I saw it happen. Later on I participated in some of the EOS instrument panels. It just seemed to be the right way to plan something like that, to really broadly engage the community and take the time needed to work the issues, refine the questions, and really really get a solid plan together.

[Assistant] What were your expectations after hearing [about the plan]? Like you mentioned you were young. As far as you knew, this was how all things were planned.

[User] Exactly, exactly.

[Assistant] Not knowing that this was very different from how most things were put together.

[User] Yes. I can’t really comment if that was the first time a major program was planned like that, but it was certainly my first exposure to that kind of planning. I don’t know what my expectations were. At Headquarters you hear enough of the people talking strategy and worrying about politics. We were originally planning for the satellites in the EOS series to be deployed by the Space Shuttle and have them serviceable. Of course, after the Challenger [STS 51-L] accident, that all changed quite a lot. The politics of selling and securing the resources—you knew there were people who were worried about it. I guess because I didn’t know how big a challenge it was, I expected it to succeed. I thought the science was so compelling and that the community was so behind it that how could it not happen?\n\n From looking back now over the ups and downs, I realize that I probably would have been a lot more worried if I’d had this perspective then, but at the time it seemed like everything was positive, that there was just a lot that suggested it should succeed. In the international community the development of the IGBP was enormously exciting and supportive too. The other space programs were beginning to think about their contributions, and it just seemed like it should work.

[Assistant] Giving those examples, what are some of the key elements or decisions, events that occurred that you believe provided that current direction and the correct direction for the Earth System Science?


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

[User] I was definitely knowledgeable of the issues with the Hubble Telescope. One of the main lessons learned was that a system-level optical test was not done with Hubble, which would have caught the problem that existed with Hubble. From my point of view, it made the whole process of justifying the test and the amount of effort needed to do the test, because we had the Hubble experience. It was easier to justify that we needed a system-level test at Johnson to make sure that optically we would not have the same problem that Hubble had.

[Assistant] Originally the test was supposed to be done up in Ohio at Plum Brook [Station at NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland]. Why did it get moved to JSC?

[User] I wasn’t really involved in that decision process as far as switching locations or trading between locations. Our role was figuring out a way to make it work at Johnson, as well as Plum Brook, so that NASA could make that trade. Originally, at the time that trade was being made, the project required that the primary mirror be pointed downward for contamination reasons.\n\n We actually came up with an elaborate elevator scheme to make Johnson work [with the primary mirror facing downward]. The telescope was originally going to roll into the chamber with the primary mirror pointed down and then lifted up on an elevator inside the chamber so that we could test the primary mirror with equipment at the bottom of the chamber. Fortunately, later, the project was able to figure out a way to make it work with the primary mirror pointing up, which made the configuration at Johnson much easier.

[Assistant] Were you involved in the decision to move from a cup-down to a cup-up configuration?

[User] I was only involved in the way that we illustrated the obviousness that the test configuration was far more complicated with the mirror pointing down versus mirror pointing up. That incentivized the contamination control team to assess the risk of testing with the primary mirror up versus down and also looking at installing a clean-air utility in the facility down at Johnson to make that work.

[Assistant] What was the potential contamination risk for having it faceup?


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

[User] I wasn’t really involved in that decision process as far as switching locations or trading between locations. Our role was figuring out a way to make it work at Johnson, as well as Plum Brook, so that NASA could make that trade. Originally, at the time that trade was being made, the project required that the primary mirror be pointed downward for contamination reasons.\n\n We actually came up with an elaborate elevator scheme to make Johnson work [with the primary mirror facing downward]. The telescope was originally going to roll into the chamber with the primary mirror pointed down and then lifted up on an elevator inside the chamber so that we could test the primary mirror with equipment at the bottom of the chamber. Fortunately, later, the project was able to figure out a way to make it work with the primary mirror pointing up, which made the configuration at Johnson much easier.

[Assistant] Were you involved in the decision to move from a cup-down to a cup-up configuration?

[User] I was only involved in the way that we illustrated the obviousness that the test configuration was far more complicated with the mirror pointing down versus mirror pointing up. That incentivized the contamination control team to assess the risk of testing with the primary mirror up versus down and also looking at installing a clean-air utility in the facility down at Johnson to make that work.

[Assistant] What was the potential contamination risk for having it faceup?

[User] Just the simple principle that gravity acts on particles; particles tend to fall down towards the ground. If you have the mirror surface facing up, particles from above are more likely to come down and fall on top of the mirror surface. Whereas if you have the mirror surface facing downward, then particles will have a tendency to move away from the mirror.

[Assistant] Would you be able to clean the mirrors easily if particles had fallen on them?


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

[User] I was only involved in the way that we illustrated the obviousness that the test configuration was far more complicated with the mirror pointing down versus mirror pointing up. That incentivized the contamination control team to assess the risk of testing with the primary mirror up versus down and also looking at installing a clean-air utility in the facility down at Johnson to make that work.

[Assistant] What was the potential contamination risk for having it faceup?

[User] Just the simple principle that gravity acts on particles; particles tend to fall down towards the ground. If you have the mirror surface facing up, particles from above are more likely to come down and fall on top of the mirror surface. Whereas if you have the mirror surface facing downward, then particles will have a tendency to move away from the mirror.

[Assistant] Would you be able to clean the mirrors easily if particles had fallen on them?

[User] The project had developed a means to clean the mirror if necessary, but in general you want to minimize operations on the mirror as much as possible so you don’t risk any damage that would affect the imaging capability of the mirror.

[Assistant] Didn’t want a second potential Hubble, I suppose.


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

[User] Just the simple principle that gravity acts on particles; particles tend to fall down towards the ground. If you have the mirror surface facing up, particles from above are more likely to come down and fall on top of the mirror surface. Whereas if you have the mirror surface facing downward, then particles will have a tendency to move away from the mirror.

[Assistant] Would you be able to clean the mirrors easily if particles had fallen on them?

[User] The project had developed a means to clean the mirror if necessary, but in general you want to minimize operations on the mirror as much as possible so you don’t risk any damage that would affect the imaging capability of the mirror.

[Assistant] Didn’t want a second potential Hubble, I suppose.

[User] You try and design the process so that the mirror doesn’t get dirty to begin with.

[Assistant] You work for Harris [Corp.]. Can you talk about the role that Harris played in the test?


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

[User] The project had developed a means to clean the mirror if necessary, but in general you want to minimize operations on the mirror as much as possible so you don’t risk any damage that would affect the imaging capability of the mirror.

[Assistant] Didn’t want a second potential Hubble, I suppose.

[User] You try and design the process so that the mirror doesn’t get dirty to begin with.

[Assistant] You work for Harris [Corp.]. Can you talk about the role that Harris played in the test?

[User] Harris had a fairly large role in the test. We were responsible for the optical test equipment. We were the lead role in the optical test equipment, as well as the mechanical equipment to hold the telescope for the optical test. We also designed and built the sunshield thermal simulator in the test and built a lot of the thermal test equipment that was in the test.\n\n I was the optical test director. A colleague of mine, Mark Waldman, and I were the day-to-day test planners throughout the main part of the test. We supplied a lot of the people who ran the test in the control room. We supplied most of the people and processes to integrate the telescope into the mechanical test equipment, to install it in the chamber for the test, and the thermal test equipment. We covered the logistics of items going in and out of that Johnson building for the test.\n\n So we played a fairly large role in that test. We also generated the drawing that Johnson used to understand what they needed to renovate in the chamber for the test.

[Assistant] I understand there hadn’t been a 3D [three-dimensional] model for the SESL [Space Environment Simulation Laboratory] before.


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

[User] We certainly had to think outside the box to [accomplish the goal while meeting] the [federal] restrictions [working] with international people. The rest of the challenges I think are typical of working with a broad group of smart, innovative people. I don’t think that was unusual compared to any large group of engineers and scientists and technicians.

[Assistant] Do you have any recollections of the day the Webb finally arrived here in Houston?

[User] I wasn’t actually in Houston when it arrived. I had been working with the hardware at [NASA] Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland] previously. But when the hardware arrived at Johnson, I knew the clock started ticking on when everything had to be set for the test. We were very busy putting the final touches on our plans for the test at that point, but it was definitely a thrill to see years and years of development and planning end up with actual hardware showing up onsite. Basically a feeling of, “Here we go!”

[Assistant] When did you finally get a chance to make it down to Houston?

[User] The whole process of transitioning the telescope from shipping to getting it installed in the chamber was about two months long, so I was down there for the second month. By that point, the integration team needed to coordinate with the test team. We needed to start checking out test equipment as it was getting installed. I was down there coordinating with that and getting the final procedures in place.

[Assistant] Would you talk about the test itself? What were your hours like, what shifts did you normally work? Were there any memorable moments or events that took place over the course of the test? [Hurricane] Harvey obviously being one of them, but I wonder if there are others.


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

[User] That experience carried throughout the test whenever we were doing something for the first time and knew all the things that had to happen correctly to make that happen. Having that feeling of excitement and relief that it actually happened as planned and the hardware was in really good shape.

[Assistant] You mentioned something I wanted to go back to. You said that there was some creativity involved in making all this work. Was there any creativity on your part as the test was ongoing, and an issue came up that you had to come up with a new plan on the fly?

[User] We were constantly optimizing. We had many things happening in parallel in order to meet the schedule of the test and get as much testing done as we could in the amount of time we had. There was a lot of time spent talking to the various experts there. As we found issues, you had to work around them and figure out alternative ways to make the test progress efficiently. But at the same time, you couldn’t be overly creative because there was a lot of thought going into the test. There was a lot of careful thought going into the test. You wanted to make sure you didn’t forget something or take any shortcuts. You had to maintain the integrity of the test, while also coming up with ways to either work around issues or ways to make things more efficient.

[Assistant] How many people were on the operations team as you were doing the test?

[User] Let’s see. In the test room there were I would say easily 20 people in there, three shifts a day. That was just our test room. The facility [room] had about another five people, the instruments’ [room] had about another six or seven people. Plus some other experts just there in the background to help out, although the experts wouldn’t need to do three shifts. Let’s say 30 per shift, three shifts. It was about 90 people, plus some other managers and experts that were in the background, so about 100 people a day involved. There were more people than that involved, because we were rotating people on location to help keep bodies and minds fresh throughout the test.

[Assistant] Except for you, you got to stay for a very long time, you said.


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

[User] I had the opportunity to go back and forth. Actually, personally, I was not critical for running the safety of the hardware since I was more involved in the optical testing, which was more optional from a safety point of view. I was staying at a hotel during that time. I could do what I can from the hotel, which is why I was one of the ones who was available to go scouting for food and road conditions for the people who did have to get into Building 32 to keep the hardware safe during the hurricane.

[Assistant] Quite a memorable event in the midst of this unique test, I’m sure.

[User] Yes, I was in a hotel that served breakfast. After a while they had to get creative with the breakfast, I remember one breakfast was just a bowl of salad for us to eat.

[Assistant] A bowl of salad? Oh, wow.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Just what you wanted for breakfast, that’s funny. You stayed until the last day of the test? Or when did you end up leaving Houston?


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

[User] Yes, I was in a hotel that served breakfast. After a while they had to get creative with the breakfast, I remember one breakfast was just a bowl of salad for us to eat.

[Assistant] A bowl of salad? Oh, wow.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Just what you wanted for breakfast, that’s funny. You stayed until the last day of the test? Or when did you end up leaving Houston?

[User] Where we had breaks was when we were waiting for things to happen, when we were waiting for the telescope to evolve thermally to the point where we could run optical tests. I was there for most of the first six weeks of the test, I’ll say. I guess it was longer than that, I guess the first two months of the test. By then we were done with most of the optical testing. We were in a thermal balance mode, so at that point the telescope was just sitting and waiting to reach the point where it stopped changing thermally. The planning was not so complex day-to-day anymore. We weren’t doing things in parallel. We weren’t running both a thermal team and an optical team and other teams simultaneously at that point.\n\n It was mainly the thermal team running the show at that point, and the procedure was fairly straightforward. We were able to leave and just help out from the planning remotely. After that thermal balance was the warmup. We had basically just one optical test to run during the warmup, and a few other mechanisms tests, which was well-procedurized and somewhat simple, so we could [organize] that remotely as well. We also had test directors well-trained in the tools that we used to do the day-to-day planning, so other people could run the local day-to-day operations with confidence at that point. That helped us not have to be there for the full three-month duration of the test.

[Assistant] Did you have to go back down to Houston at all? Have you been back?


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Just what you wanted for breakfast, that’s funny. You stayed until the last day of the test? Or when did you end up leaving Houston?

[User] Where we had breaks was when we were waiting for things to happen, when we were waiting for the telescope to evolve thermally to the point where we could run optical tests. I was there for most of the first six weeks of the test, I’ll say. I guess it was longer than that, I guess the first two months of the test. By then we were done with most of the optical testing. We were in a thermal balance mode, so at that point the telescope was just sitting and waiting to reach the point where it stopped changing thermally. The planning was not so complex day-to-day anymore. We weren’t doing things in parallel. We weren’t running both a thermal team and an optical team and other teams simultaneously at that point.\n\n It was mainly the thermal team running the show at that point, and the procedure was fairly straightforward. We were able to leave and just help out from the planning remotely. After that thermal balance was the warmup. We had basically just one optical test to run during the warmup, and a few other mechanisms tests, which was well-procedurized and somewhat simple, so we could [organize] that remotely as well. We also had test directors well-trained in the tools that we used to do the day-to-day planning, so other people could run the local day-to-day operations with confidence at that point. That helped us not have to be there for the full three-month duration of the test.

[Assistant] Did you have to go back down to Houston at all? Have you been back?

[User] No, actually not. Because the data reviews that we had following the test were not at Houston. So no, I didn’t need to go back. I actually moved on to another project as soon as I returned to Harris. I had a whole weekend off before I had to hit the ground running on another project.

[Assistant] Another telescope project?


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

[User] Where we had breaks was when we were waiting for things to happen, when we were waiting for the telescope to evolve thermally to the point where we could run optical tests. I was there for most of the first six weeks of the test, I’ll say. I guess it was longer than that, I guess the first two months of the test. By then we were done with most of the optical testing. We were in a thermal balance mode, so at that point the telescope was just sitting and waiting to reach the point where it stopped changing thermally. The planning was not so complex day-to-day anymore. We weren’t doing things in parallel. We weren’t running both a thermal team and an optical team and other teams simultaneously at that point.\n\n It was mainly the thermal team running the show at that point, and the procedure was fairly straightforward. We were able to leave and just help out from the planning remotely. After that thermal balance was the warmup. We had basically just one optical test to run during the warmup, and a few other mechanisms tests, which was well-procedurized and somewhat simple, so we could [organize] that remotely as well. We also had test directors well-trained in the tools that we used to do the day-to-day planning, so other people could run the local day-to-day operations with confidence at that point. That helped us not have to be there for the full three-month duration of the test.

[Assistant] Did you have to go back down to Houston at all? Have you been back?

[User] No, actually not. Because the data reviews that we had following the test were not at Houston. So no, I didn’t need to go back. I actually moved on to another project as soon as I returned to Harris. I had a whole weekend off before I had to hit the ground running on another project.

[Assistant] Another telescope project?

[User] Another NASA telescope project, yes.

[Assistant] That’s exciting. I wonder, if you could look back over the time you were working on this test—even before there was a pathfinder or a telescope at the SESL—what your biggest challenge was.


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

[User] I would guess my most significant was organizing the technical team to be ready by the time the test started and also to be prepared so that everyone was comfortable and efficient while we ran the test. I think my contribution was my organizational capabilities leading up to the test.

[Assistant] Are there any important lessons learned from the test that you think would be important for others to consider when they are working on tests of future space telescopes?

[User] It was definitely noticeable, the advantage we had of being well-planned for the test. Never underestimate the value of being well-planned heading into the test and also well practiced heading into the test. It was clear that the test was a success because of all the practice that we had and all the planning that we had.

[Assistant] Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? Any of your experiences, things that we might have not covered or overlooked?

[User] I can’t think of anything big to add on.

[Assistant] Before we go, I did want to ask you—are there other people you think that we should consider talking to?


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

[User] It was definitely noticeable, the advantage we had of being well-planned for the test. Never underestimate the value of being well-planned heading into the test and also well practiced heading into the test. It was clear that the test was a success because of all the practice that we had and all the planning that we had.

[Assistant] Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? Any of your experiences, things that we might have not covered or overlooked?

[User] I can’t think of anything big to add on.

[Assistant] Before we go, I did want to ask you—are there other people you think that we should consider talking to?

[User] Mark Waldman would be a good one if he wasn’t on your list.

[Assistant] I don’t think his name is on the list, no.


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

[User] I can’t think of anything big to add on.

[Assistant] Before we go, I did want to ask you—are there other people you think that we should consider talking to?

[User] Mark Waldman would be a good one if he wasn’t on your list.

[Assistant] I don’t think his name is on the list, no.

[User] I was more involved with the test side. I certainly put the [very] early conceptual [order of events] together for integrating the telescope into the chamber and de-integrating the telescope coming out of the chamber. But there [was a large team that organized and detailed that operation. There are] people much closer to that day-to-day effort, which was also a very—I won’t say heroic effort, but it was a lot of hard work as well.\n\n One person you could talk to is Tom [Thomas R.] Scorse, who’s also here at Harris. Ed [Edward L.] Shade may be another person, who’s at Goddard. I don’t know if Carl [A.] Reis was on your list, I’m sure he has stories.

[Assistant] His name doesn’t sound familiar. Tom Scorse, we have invited him.