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

[User] Back to normalcy. And one great thing was that Kathy [Kathryn D.] Sullivan was on that crew as well. A nice “first,” the first crew with two women on it.

[Assistant] At least she had someone to share the attention with.

[User] Right. Exactly.

[Assistant] And she was going to be doing the EVA [Extravehicular Activity], which was very much a historic moment. The first woman to do one.

[User] Yes, absolutely.

[Assistant] During the time that you were training, historian Henry [S. F.] Cooper wrote a book about the STS 41-G mission, and apparently just took the time with you guys as you were doing everything that you were doing. How did this affect your training and what did the crew feel about having almost an extra person there with you?


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

[User] Right. Exactly.

[Assistant] And she was going to be doing the EVA [Extravehicular Activity], which was very much a historic moment. The first woman to do one.

[User] Yes, absolutely.

[Assistant] During the time that you were training, historian Henry [S. F.] Cooper wrote a book about the STS 41-G mission, and apparently just took the time with you guys as you were doing everything that you were doing. How did this affect your training and what did the crew feel about having almost an extra person there with you?

[User] It didn’t affect the training too much, but it was unusual. It was very different from STS-7. We really didn’t have much connection with the press. We were just a crew in training before STS-7, and before 41-G, it was almost like there was an outsider looking over our shoulder a lot of the time. I don’t think it really affected our training, and I don’t think it affected our cohesiveness as a crew either, but it was different. We just had to be a little bit more careful about what we said and be aware that there was somebody who was watching and taking notes the whole time that we were training.

[Assistant] In his book he mentions that Bob Crippen was training for another mission while your crew was training as well, and indicates that you were basically the number two person for this mission, because Crippen had asked for that. Was this something that had been related to you or is this his perception?


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

[User] In a way he did. I knew from the time that I was selected for STS-7 that he had been influential in that decision. He was picked as the commander of the flight, and though he didn’t get to choose his crew, he had some input into it. So I knew he had had an influence on my career even then. He’s very, very smart and a very easy person to get along with, and so it’s easy to look up to him—both in the way he thinks through problems and makes decisions and the way that he interacts with people. I spent a lot of time watching the way he worked, the way he learned things, and the way he worked with other people.

[Assistant] As a veteran of this crew when he wasn’t around, what advice or what type of experiences could you share with your new crew members to help them get through that first experience of flight?

[User] Well, mostly we were far enough from flight that the burden on me wasn’t too great. I didn’t have to totally prepare them for spaceflight! So the role that I was playing was really more to talk about some of the basics of being in space—simple things like “Okay, you’ve seen the food trays on the ground, but let me tell you what happens when they get weightless.” Give them some familiarity with the space environment and the way “Crip” liked a crew to function. I didn’t try to cover some of the details “Crip” would get into later. We all knew there was plenty of time for that. He was going to be spending months and months and months with us in training, not just weeks.

[Assistant] Was liftoff different for you the second time?

[User] Actually, it wasn’t. I had very much the same experience the second time as the first.

[Assistant] This time when you were working with the arm, you had a little more challenges with the two satellites that you had. They had the Shuttle Imaging Radar B and the TDRS [Tracking and Data Relay Satellite], and a little frustration. Could you share with us some of the experiences of how you were able to be successful with those?


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

[User] Oh, yes, that was great fun. That was really, really great fun, watching them emerge from the hatch and then float around outside. I wish I’d been able to enjoy a little more of it. After they headed outside, I was down on the middeck most of the time.

[Assistant] You came home; you had a good landing. Again, because there were two women on this flight, did you encounter again a great deal of press attention when the crew landed, and were you and Kathy both then involved in that as well?

[User] There was a fair amount of attention. Not nearly as much as there was after my first flight. Kathy and I got quite a bit of press attention after 41-G, but it was manageable. It really wasn’t nearly as intense as it was after STS-7.

[Assistant] Were you starting to see the attention on the space agency as a whole start to dwindle at that time, or do you still feel like the press, as a whole, was giving attention to the Shuttle flights?

[User] At that time there was still a lot of attention on the Shuttle flights. Forty-one-G was only the thirteenth; there had been something new and exciting on almost every Space Shuttle flight. They were still getting quite a bit of publicity. Shortly after that, Shuttle launches and landings became less newsworthy. You had to really hunt to find them on TV. That started a few flights after 41-G.

[Assistant] Before we move on from your missions, I’d like to talk to you about the science that’s such an important part of your life at that time, and there were experiments on board. Could you share with us some of the experiments that you worked on these missions and how you were involved in making sure that the experiments were taken care of?


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

[User] You did what the commander told you to do. Charlie decided.

[Assistant] Charlie Bolden was the criteria.

[User] Charlie Bolden decided. He said, “Brian, you’re flying the Orbiter on,” whatever shift I was on—I think I was on the blue shift—and he said, “Dave,” Leestma, “you’re flying the Orbiter on the red shift, and you other guys,” Kathy and Dirk and Mike and Byron would work the instruments. We just did what Charlie told us. But it was a logical breakdown. Dave was a good operator and that was what I had done, been an operator in the past.

[Assistant] You had a couple of payload specialists and a payload commander on that flight. How was the payload specialist-astronaut relationship at that time?

[User] It depended on the individual, on both sides. I thought it went okay. It wasn’t frictionless. It wasn’t friction-free by any means, and there were some times when Charlie had to make sure things were smooth and that feathers weren’t ruffled. But for the most part, I thought it was fine. I never had any particular problem with it and I thought things were okay, but there was the occasional incident or two where people get a little crosswise with each other.

[Assistant] Let’s talk about the launch for the first time. You mentioned the simulator was really good on your first landing as commander.


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

[User] Charlie Bolden decided. He said, “Brian, you’re flying the Orbiter on,” whatever shift I was on—I think I was on the blue shift—and he said, “Dave,” Leestma, “you’re flying the Orbiter on the red shift, and you other guys,” Kathy and Dirk and Mike and Byron would work the instruments. We just did what Charlie told us. But it was a logical breakdown. Dave was a good operator and that was what I had done, been an operator in the past.

[Assistant] You had a couple of payload specialists and a payload commander on that flight. How was the payload specialist-astronaut relationship at that time?

[User] It depended on the individual, on both sides. I thought it went okay. It wasn’t frictionless. It wasn’t friction-free by any means, and there were some times when Charlie had to make sure things were smooth and that feathers weren’t ruffled. But for the most part, I thought it was fine. I never had any particular problem with it and I thought things were okay, but there was the occasional incident or two where people get a little crosswise with each other.

[Assistant] Let’s talk about the launch for the first time. You mentioned the simulator was really good on your first landing as commander.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] The simulations for the launch, did—


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

[User] The first hour and a half or so you spend turning this rocketship that you rode into the vehicle that you’re—in our case, it was going to be a laboratory that we were going to use to do all of these experiments. So you safely shut down all of the systems that were operating that you’re not going to need until entry. Then you reconfigure the cockpit. You fold up some of the chairs, the mission specialist chairs, they detach from the floor, and you fold them up and you stow them out of the way. You start powering up things that you’re going to need during the mission that weren’t powered during ascent. So it takes a while to do all of that, reconfigure the computers to the on-orbit configuration. It takes a while to do that. I was primary for some of them and backing up on some other tasks.

[Assistant] You mentioned your primary responsibility was making sure that the Orbiter was in the right position.

[User] During the mission, yes.

[Assistant] During the actual experiments. Did you have any other type of responsibilities with the experiments?

[User] Oh, there are always little things that you do, but I wasn’t a primary operator of the instrument; I was a helper in ways. I wasn’t the prime, but it was my job to have the Orbiter in the proper attitude at the right time.

[Assistant] This was a historic flight scientifically because of the first ATLAS, the first Mission to Planet Earth flight.


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

[User] During the mission, yes.

[Assistant] During the actual experiments. Did you have any other type of responsibilities with the experiments?

[User] Oh, there are always little things that you do, but I wasn’t a primary operator of the instrument; I was a helper in ways. I wasn’t the prime, but it was my job to have the Orbiter in the proper attitude at the right time.

[Assistant] This was a historic flight scientifically because of the first ATLAS, the first Mission to Planet Earth flight.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] Do you have any thoughts on that?


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

[User] You haven’t heard George’s talk about it? He says, well, we’re just—you know, people are complaining about us destroying—I think that’s the way he puts it, we’re destroying the Earth. “We’re not destroying the Earth. The Earth’s going to shake us off like a bad case of fleas,” and he might be right.

[Assistant] He may be.

[User] He might be right. So anyhow, it was a big mission and I was happy to be part of it. I think here now, twelve years later, I think they’re still reducing data from that mission. We collected tons of data.

[Assistant] It was the first of, I think, of eleven-year—was it the sunspot cycle?

[User] The solar cycle, yes.

[Assistant] The solar cycle.


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

[User] He might be right. So anyhow, it was a big mission and I was happy to be part of it. I think here now, twelve years later, I think they’re still reducing data from that mission. We collected tons of data.

[Assistant] It was the first of, I think, of eleven-year—was it the sunspot cycle?

[User] The solar cycle, yes.

[Assistant] The solar cycle.

[User] Yes, right. The sun cycle.

[Assistant] I imagine they are still collecting that.


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

[User] The solar cycle, yes.

[Assistant] The solar cycle.

[User] Yes, right. The sun cycle.

[Assistant] I imagine they are still collecting that.

[User] Yes, they probably are.

[Assistant] The Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment.


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

[User] Yes, right. The sun cycle.

[Assistant] I imagine they are still collecting that.

[User] Yes, they probably are.

[Assistant] The Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment.

[User] SAREX.

[Assistant] Did you have a chance to participate in that?


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

[User] Yes, they probably are.

[Assistant] The Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment.

[User] SAREX.

[Assistant] Did you have a chance to participate in that?

[User] Yes, I did. I got my license before. We had to have two licensed operators onboard, one on each shift, in order to be legal, to be able to use the radio, so Dave Leestma got his and I got mine so we could do that. That was really a lot of fun.\n\n That ended up being one of the neater things for me for a couple of reasons. One day was kind of neat. I got patched. We were flying over Australia, and this was all prearranged. We talked to a station on the ground in Australia and they were tied to the amateur radio shack out here at JSC, who patched me to my wife sitting at our kitchen table, so I was flying over Australia in space, talking to Jan in Seabrook, sitting in El Lago there, at our house. She was sitting at our kitchen table talking to me. So that was a neat experience.\n\n Then over that week sometime, they had a school contact scheduled and we talked to Ed White [Elementary School, El Lago, Texas], where both my children were going to school at that time, and I found out there that my son got on the radio and I learned that he, in secret, had gotten his amateur radio license, without me knowing about it, so that he was KB5SIY, that’s his call sign, so he completely surprised me with that. And that’s a very technical thing to get and he was in like fourth or fifth grade. Of course, he ended up going to MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts], so I guess that was probably a hint that he was inclined to do that kind of thing.

[Assistant] That was an early sign.


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

[User] Yes. So that was really neat, but SAREX was great. I really enjoyed using it. It helped me really feel connected to normal life down here on the planet, because you can’t see people from up there. You can see cities and highways and things like that, but it looks uninhabited, other than the buildings and things.

[Assistant] Just a reminder that there are people.

[User] Yes. So it was nice to do that, and to be able to stay in personal contact with my family. That was really special.

[Assistant] What kind of questions did people ask you?

[User] Over the radio?

[Assistant] Yes, over the radio.


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

[User] Yes. So it was nice to do that, and to be able to stay in personal contact with my family. That was really special.

[Assistant] What kind of questions did people ask you?

[User] Over the radio?

[Assistant] Yes, over the radio.

[User] A lot of times they just want to talk to you just to put you in their log book. Big amateur radio buffs, they keep books on who they’ve talked to and where, and so talking to a spaceship is a big deal to them. So a lot of it is just they say, “Hello,” and then, “Thank you,” and they sign off and they let somebody else get on. They’re a very accommodating community. They’re very professional in the way they deal with you. But sometimes if you have a contact with a school or something, you get the normal kid questions. “What’s it like in space?” and “What does it feel like at liftoff?” and the usual kind of questions.

[Assistant] You landed at [NASA] Kennedy [Space Center, Florida]. As a pilot, what were your duties during landing? And describe that landing for us, if you will.


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

[User] Maybe one or two of them might have been. Those are things they call DSOs, detailed supplementary objectives, or something like that. Those are things we sign up for ahead of time. They’re voluntary and sometimes they only want one or two subjects; they don’t want everybody. Yes, now that you mention it. I’d kind of forgotten that. I think one or two of the crewmembers did do that. It was because they wanted to try to preserve as much as they could, they wanted to be able to observe the recovery to 1-G from zero-G and, of course, even that way is not completely accurate, because even though you might be lying down, you’re still lying down in 1-G, so there’s some gravity things involved. I had forgotten that. There’s probably a lot I’ve forgotten over the years, a lot of the details.

[Assistant] Also, before the flight, Charlie Bolden brought in a psychiatrist to conduct psychological profiling of the crewmembers.

[User] Yes, and the families.

[Assistant] And the families, so that you would understand how each other operates.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] Since you flew other times without that, do you feel like that really helped?


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

[User] Yes, and the families.

[Assistant] And the families, so that you would understand how each other operates.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] Since you flew other times without that, do you feel like that really helped?

[User] I thought it was a good thing to do, particularly for a first-time flyer, and it was a little bit of support for my wife as well, so I thought that was good. It’s not a lot different than the way things are done nowadays in different ways. Like this whole Myers-Briggs personality assessment. You know, the whole reason for doing that is to understand your tendencies, the things you’re most likely to do and the way you’re most likely to act, and then understand that other people are wired differently and have other different tendencies.\n\n I’ve thought about that, actually, that this Myers-Briggs stuff that we’re doing nowadays in management is not that different than what Charlie had us do back then. It just was called something different, and instead of taking a standardized test, it was done almost individually, one-on-one kind of thing, but the same idea. I thought it was a good idea. If nothing else, it makes people more aware that, hey, people have different needs than you do, they think differently than you do, they have different priorities than you do, they’re going to react differently. So, yes, it was good.

[Assistant] What do you think was your biggest challenge as a crew on that flight?


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

[User] I’m trying to remember. I know one extremely memorable one. We were invited to Belgium at the invitation of the King and Queen of Belgium, and we went on the most royal, wonderful trip to Belgium that I could imagine, where we were just treated like royalty. It was so nice. Well, it was nice for the spouses, too, because they don’t get the rewards that we get when we fly. We get the personal reward of having been there and done it, seen it, and experienced it, and they don’t get that; they get the pain of the launch and the relatives and all of that stuff. My wife doesn’t sleep very well when I’m off the planet, she says. So she needs to be rewarded, too, in some way, and this was a great way to do it. I think it was about eight or nine days over in Belgium that was out of this world.

[Assistant] I read that you went along with Charlie Bolden and David Leestma to Hollywood to return an Oscar [Academy Award].

[User] Yes, we did. We flew an Oscar on the flight. We went out—I don’t remember if we carried it with us or if we just went out to present it, but it was really Charlie’s show. It was his deal, and the rest of us just went along for the ride and to enjoy it. But that was fun. We had done a presentation where we actually presented the Oscar on the Academy Awards show from space. We did a crew event with the Oscar there, and that was fun. I’d forgotten about that one, too. I guess I should write all this down. That’s why we’re doing all this.

[Assistant] [Laughs] You’ll have it.

[User] That’s why we’re doing all this. It’s amazing what you forget over time.

[Assistant] That’s right. It will be written down for you.\n\n Did you also take a trip back to your hometown?


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

[User] Yes, we did. We flew an Oscar on the flight. We went out—I don’t remember if we carried it with us or if we just went out to present it, but it was really Charlie’s show. It was his deal, and the rest of us just went along for the ride and to enjoy it. But that was fun. We had done a presentation where we actually presented the Oscar on the Academy Awards show from space. We did a crew event with the Oscar there, and that was fun. I’d forgotten about that one, too. I guess I should write all this down. That’s why we’re doing all this.

[Assistant] [Laughs] You’ll have it.

[User] That’s why we’re doing all this. It’s amazing what you forget over time.

[Assistant] That’s right. It will be written down for you.\n\n Did you also take a trip back to your hometown?

[User] I did. You can only imagine, my town’s pretty much a blue-collar town, where I grew up, outside of Boston, and, first, my being selected in the program was huge and it was a great boost for the school system, because I had gone through the public school system there. So all of a sudden they can say, “Here’s a product of our schools. This is what you can become,” as a motivator for the kids, which I thought was great to be able to do that.\n\n But they made a welcome home, a big celebration. They had a parade for me. I rode in this big parade. It was fun. It was a big deal. Then I went down to the football stadium and I addressed the crowd down there, so it was neat. I was happy for the town, because they were so happy, because no other town around there had anything like this ever. So they were feeling pretty good, they were feeling pretty proud. So when you can do that for people, that makes you feel good.

[Assistant] When did you learn about your next assignment?


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

[User] I did. You can only imagine, my town’s pretty much a blue-collar town, where I grew up, outside of Boston, and, first, my being selected in the program was huge and it was a great boost for the school system, because I had gone through the public school system there. So all of a sudden they can say, “Here’s a product of our schools. This is what you can become,” as a motivator for the kids, which I thought was great to be able to do that.\n\n But they made a welcome home, a big celebration. They had a parade for me. I rode in this big parade. It was fun. It was a big deal. Then I went down to the football stadium and I addressed the crowd down there, so it was neat. I was happy for the town, because they were so happy, because no other town around there had anything like this ever. So they were feeling pretty good, they were feeling pretty proud. So when you can do that for people, that makes you feel good.

[Assistant] When did you learn about your next assignment?

[User] Let’s see. My next flight?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] The day I went into quarantine for my first flight, actually, and all I could think of at the time was, “Jeez, I sure hope I like this, because I just signed up for two of them.” [Laughs] It turned out I really do, I love it. Particularly the flying part was great.\n\n So, going into quarantine, I knew, that day, whatever day it was, back in March of [19]’92, I knew I was going to fly on [STS-] 57, which was great, because I was all pumped up, ready to go. I knew I’d be freshly trained, I’d know everything I needed to know, I’d have the experience from the first flight I could use on my second, which turned out to be real beneficial.

[Assistant] So you just went right into the training for 57?


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

[User] Let’s see. My next flight?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] The day I went into quarantine for my first flight, actually, and all I could think of at the time was, “Jeez, I sure hope I like this, because I just signed up for two of them.” [Laughs] It turned out I really do, I love it. Particularly the flying part was great.\n\n So, going into quarantine, I knew, that day, whatever day it was, back in March of [19]’92, I knew I was going to fly on [STS-] 57, which was great, because I was all pumped up, ready to go. I knew I’d be freshly trained, I’d know everything I needed to know, I’d have the experience from the first flight I could use on my second, which turned out to be real beneficial.

[Assistant] So you just went right into the training for 57?

[User] Well, I went down to the Cape as a Cape Crusader for a few months down there.

[Assistant] Describe that for us, if you will.


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

[User] I don’t think so. Not during that time frame. They’d been down on one launch and they were coming down for the next one, so I don’t think they did that.

[Assistant] I think before we start STS-57, if we go ahead and take a break and let Rebecca change the tape.

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] You mentioned that you found out about your assignment for STS-57 and you went down and you worked at the Cape for a while and then you came back to begin training.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] Tell us a little bit about that flight and what the mission was about and what your training entailed.


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

[User] They never knew anything. We asked them afterwards, we said, “Hey, did you happen to notice anything?”\n\n And they said, “What?” No, they didn’t have a clue. If they’d looked inside at that time, though, they would have seen eight big eyes like, “Whoa! What was that?”

[Assistant] Get the hearts racing. [Laughs]

[User] Yes, I mean, everyone just stopped, like, “What was that?”

[Assistant] Not one of the noises you expect to hear.

[User] It’s not a normal event. We had some other abnormal things during entry, too, that we can get to eventually.

[Assistant] Were there any other experiments or anything that you can remember on that flight that you took part in that were memorable?


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

[User] Yes, I mean, everyone just stopped, like, “What was that?”

[Assistant] Not one of the noises you expect to hear.

[User] It’s not a normal event. We had some other abnormal things during entry, too, that we can get to eventually.

[Assistant] Were there any other experiments or anything that you can remember on that flight that you took part in that were memorable?

[User] Some that I liked or some that I—there were some that I really despised. They were like Science Fair projects. We were not happy to be doing them. We thought this is the dumbest thing we’ve ever seen, but we were more or less ordered to do them, so we had to do them. But there were some good ones. We were growing some cancer cells just for research purposes, try to see how cancer cells and tumors would grow in zero-G, and ultimately there could possibly be a market for something like that, where in weightlessness you can grow things in three dimensions. Like take the cancer cells and grow tumors so that you can bring them back and do research on them, try medicines and try techniques and whatever. That’s a pretty painless way to get a tumor as opposed to having to grow one in a human and try things. So there were some neat things that we were doing as well; protein crystal growth kind of experiments for research, again, medical research. The soldering thing I told you about that I was monkeying around with. That was kind of fun. But they were good. But I think their total was over fifty different experiments that we had onboard, so it was interesting.

[Assistant] It was successful mission.


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

[User] It’s not a normal event. We had some other abnormal things during entry, too, that we can get to eventually.

[Assistant] Were there any other experiments or anything that you can remember on that flight that you took part in that were memorable?

[User] Some that I liked or some that I—there were some that I really despised. They were like Science Fair projects. We were not happy to be doing them. We thought this is the dumbest thing we’ve ever seen, but we were more or less ordered to do them, so we had to do them. But there were some good ones. We were growing some cancer cells just for research purposes, try to see how cancer cells and tumors would grow in zero-G, and ultimately there could possibly be a market for something like that, where in weightlessness you can grow things in three dimensions. Like take the cancer cells and grow tumors so that you can bring them back and do research on them, try medicines and try techniques and whatever. That’s a pretty painless way to get a tumor as opposed to having to grow one in a human and try things. So there were some neat things that we were doing as well; protein crystal growth kind of experiments for research, again, medical research. The soldering thing I told you about that I was monkeying around with. That was kind of fun. But they were good. But I think their total was over fifty different experiments that we had onboard, so it was interesting.

[Assistant] It was successful mission.

[User] Across the broad range. Yes, it was successful, very successful. We came close to losing some of them, because the Orbiter Endeavor had a cooling problem on the runway and we came within minutes of having to do some sort of emergency powerdown on the runway, but again, Ron Grabe kind of worked through the problem and worked with the ground very closely and got that all squared away, so we kind of saved the day right at the very end.

[Assistant] You mentioned that at the entry, there were some unusual things on that.


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

[User] We did, yes. Yes, and I just ate it up. I loved it. Yes. Looking at the Earth, I never got tired of it.

[Assistant] Did you do any of the photography?

[User] Oh, of course. Yes, but by that point, you kind of budget your film so that on landing day, you’re done; you use all your film up. Well, we had two more days. We had passed the landing day so we had shot all the film early. So we didn’t even have film to shoot, so we just got to look and just enjoy it. It was really cool.

[Assistant] Is there anything else about those first two flights or anything we’ve talked about so far that you’d like to add?

[User] No, I think what I saw, if I could summarize them, what I saw was two different but very effective styles of leadership, with Charlie in the way that he led people and Ron in the way he led his crew. I learned a lot from both of them in different aspects, places where Charlie has his strengths and places where Ron has his strengths, so I felt really lucky to have had those two commanders on my first two flights, because I really learned a lot from them. They’re both very talented in different ways and I extracted from those experiences things that I would use later.

[Assistant] You learned as far as—when you became a commander, you took from both of them.


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

[User] Oh, of course. Yes, but by that point, you kind of budget your film so that on landing day, you’re done; you use all your film up. Well, we had two more days. We had passed the landing day so we had shot all the film early. So we didn’t even have film to shoot, so we just got to look and just enjoy it. It was really cool.

[Assistant] Is there anything else about those first two flights or anything we’ve talked about so far that you’d like to add?

[User] No, I think what I saw, if I could summarize them, what I saw was two different but very effective styles of leadership, with Charlie in the way that he led people and Ron in the way he led his crew. I learned a lot from both of them in different aspects, places where Charlie has his strengths and places where Ron has his strengths, so I felt really lucky to have had those two commanders on my first two flights, because I really learned a lot from them. They’re both very talented in different ways and I extracted from those experiences things that I would use later.

[Assistant] You learned as far as—when you became a commander, you took from both of them.

[User] What to do, what not to do, things like that.

[Assistant] Well, if you don’t mind, we’ll stop for today and get you out of here in time to go do what you need to do.