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

[User] But their door is open.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And if I needed anything, they would come. And a group of us, actually, about 13 of us, got together last, over Labor Day weekend, long Labor Day weekend, five or six days in 2013. Four or five couples. Two of us were divorced, so it was just the women, but, um. And we had a wonderful time in Wisconsin. The couple that was the host had a family cottage on a small freshwater lake in Wisconsin, in Minnesota. And we had a wonderful time.

[Assistant] That's great. That's great. And then there's Friends of Korea, and you're connected with them in some way.

[User] Yes, I, I'm, you know, I follow that website and I know a number of the people. And the Korean, this group of us are, uh, this, some subset of the group comes together around events, like one of the couples that we were close to very tragically had an adult son die under tragic circumstances last July. And, um. It's making me cry.

[Assistant] Sorry. Shall I turn this off? [tape break] Um, you were talking about the point of the tragedy.


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

[User] And if I needed anything, they would come. And a group of us, actually, about 13 of us, got together last, over Labor Day weekend, long Labor Day weekend, five or six days in 2013. Four or five couples. Two of us were divorced, so it was just the women, but, um. And we had a wonderful time in Wisconsin. The couple that was the host had a family cottage on a small freshwater lake in Wisconsin, in Minnesota. And we had a wonderful time.

[Assistant] That's great. That's great. And then there's Friends of Korea, and you're connected with them in some way.

[User] Yes, I, I'm, you know, I follow that website and I know a number of the people. And the Korean, this group of us are, uh, this, some subset of the group comes together around events, like one of the couples that we were close to very tragically had an adult son die under tragic circumstances last July. And, um. It's making me cry.

[Assistant] Sorry. Shall I turn this off? [tape break] Um, you were talking about the point of the tragedy.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] The PCV family.


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

[User] Yes, I, I'm, you know, I follow that website and I know a number of the people. And the Korean, this group of us are, uh, this, some subset of the group comes together around events, like one of the couples that we were close to very tragically had an adult son die under tragic circumstances last July. And, um. It's making me cry.

[Assistant] Sorry. Shall I turn this off? [tape break] Um, you were talking about the point of the tragedy.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] The PCV family.

[User] The son of one of the couples that we were friends with all these years drowned tragically and, uh, in his early forties. And a lot of the couples and also single people who, who had been in this group who, who knew the family and had kept up with the family went to the visitation and the funeral.

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've become almost like family with one another, with these people who are your fellow Peace Corps volunteers?


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

[User] The son of one of the couples that we were friends with all these years drowned tragically and, uh, in his early forties. And a lot of the couples and also single people who, who had been in this group who, who knew the family and had kept up with the family went to the visitation and the funeral.

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've become almost like family with one another, with these people who are your fellow Peace Corps volunteers?

[User] Very close. Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] No, they are like family. Yeah.

[Assistant] Thank you very much. It was a most interesting experience, one that's affected all of your life. Thank you very much.


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

[User] I’m glad we finally fit it all together. I’d been looking for an opportunity when I’d be over here and wouldn’t be tied up during the day, so instead of coming over late in the day today I caught the first flight out. Yes, that was great.

[Assistant] Great. We can catch up. I thought we’d start by talking today about becoming chief of the Astronaut Office. How did that come about?

[User] That happened right after STS-47, which was my fourth mission, third time as mission commander. At that point, I was the most experienced pilot astronaut in the corps. One of the astronauts, or maybe even more than one, had told me even I guess right before STS-47, “Rumor has it you’re going to be the next chief.” I think it was Jim [James F.] Buchli that told me that. He was acting chief at the time because Dan [Daniel C.] Brandenstein had left. We had had a couple of successive acting chiefs, but not a permanent chief.

[Assistant] Can I ask a question?

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] Does that mean the chief of FCOD [Flight Crew Operations Directorate] selects you? This is not an open process? Or at the time it wasn’t?


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

[User] Oh yes. The senior marine would do the Marine Corps ones and so on. The senior Air Force would do the Air Force ones. All I know is what was done with the Navy. If the Air Force did it differently and they did an in-person review, I don’t know about it.

[Assistant] There was someone assigned to your office who specifically was over each military branch?

[User] One of the astronauts.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] It would be whichever of the astronauts was senior grade in the military. That’s the person who had the responsibility for that. I was never the senior naval officer. There were always naval officers who were older and more senior to me. I never had that particular job.

[Assistant] You’ll have to ask Rhea [Seddon], because Rhea was a civil servant. I’m curious. How did you handle—you were chief of the Office. You also have a spouse who is in the Office.


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

[User] She was already assigned to SLS-2, so I didn’t have any part in making that assignment. That launched the middle of ’93, and I got back from STS-47 in September. September 12 to 20 [1992] was that mission. I was probably assigned as chief by the end of September, and she had already been training on that mission for a couple years. I never did wind up assigning her to a mission.

[Assistant] You got to avoid that sticky mess.

[User] That was okay. Oh, and one of the things that we’ll be coming to when we talk about the Mir docking, STS-71—immediately when I was named as chief astronaut SpaceNews wanted to do an interview with me. I remember they came to my office, and we did an interview. The question came up. They said, “Okay, the first Shuttle docking with Mir is coming up. Are you going to assign yourself to that mission?”\n\n I launched off into a speech that was, “No, absolutely not, that is not the job of a leader, to skim off the good deals for yourself. The job of a leader is to take care of your people and give them all the good deals. I will not assign myself to the Mir docking.” I was quite adamant about that. That plays into maybe starting to talk about STS-71.

[Assistant] I did have some other questions for you.

[User] Oh, good, yes, I figured you probably had some things for me.

[Assistant] Loren [J.] Shriver was your deputy. Of course he was a classmate of yours from ’78. What was his responsibility and role in working with you as deputy?


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

[User] Oh, sure, oh yes, we always did. We always had a party down at the Cape before launch, and then we always hosted a party here after the mission. To be honest, I think Rhea did all the legwork, because she was the one who had been doing that the most, so I think I showed up and enjoyed the party. She had done all the work, if I remember right. Got to give her all the credit in the world.\n\n I’m sure that I did not fly the weather plane for her launch, because I would need to be up there on the roof of the LCC [Launch Control Center] with the kids as well.

[Assistant] I was curious about that.

[User] I’m sure I was not doing the weathership for that mission. Yes, it changed things a little bit. But that’s the only time that happened. It was basically two years, from the end of ’92 to about the end of ’94, that I was chief astronaut. You said you had a couple questions on it as well.

[Assistant] I had a couple more. Were there any really memorable missions for you during that time? Any issues that you had to work as chief of the Astronaut Office? Either when crews were in orbit or getting ready to launch, landing?

[User] They were all spectacular, always.

[Assistant] I wrote down the Hubble Space Telescope repair. I wasn’t sure what your involvement was as chief in that.


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

[User] Yes, no pressure. And that’s funny you mention that, because Dan Goldin, the morning before we launched, we had a telecon with him. It might have been a video telecon. We might have actually had that in those days, video telecon. One of the last things he said as we were getting ready to say goodbye, he said, “Hoot, no pressure, but I want you to know there are going to be 5 billion people watching you on television.” So no pressure.

[Assistant] What a way to send you off.

[User] Yes. That was our send-off. Fortunately we had trained very extensively, and fortunately the likes of Charlie Precourt and Greg Harbaugh just made all the difference in the world. I think we were 2 seconds off. Our parameter was 0.1 feet per second plus or minus 0.03. We actually wound up—0.107 feet per second was our contact velocity. Mission control had already determined that by the time we landed. We had used something like 24 percent less fuel than they had budgeted for it. All the training and the rules of thumb and the excellent crew really made a big difference, Charlie and Greg.\n\n We had a graph, so Charlie would be plotting our range against this graph. He’d say, “Okay, Hoot, you’re probably about 4 seconds fast right now,” or something to that effect. I don’t know how, I wasn’t supposed to keep that, but I got that. I should scan it and send you that just for fun, just in case you want it.

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Because I wound up with that graph. I think I told you my first two flights they let us keep all of our checklists and things that they weren’t going to reuse. Now after that they let us keep our notebook, just our little book that we had where we could make notes as we went, but nothing else. Somehow I think I wound up with a ground copy of the rendezvous checklist, which didn’t fly, so it’s not a flown checklist.

[Assistant] Maybe that’s why.


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

[User] Because I wound up with that graph. I think I told you my first two flights they let us keep all of our checklists and things that they weren’t going to reuse. Now after that they let us keep our notebook, just our little book that we had where we could make notes as we went, but nothing else. Somehow I think I wound up with a ground copy of the rendezvous checklist, which didn’t fly, so it’s not a flown checklist.

[Assistant] Maybe that’s why.

[User] That actual chart, it was a cue card that Charlie was making x’s on as we were approaching. Somehow I wound up with that. I didn’t intentionally steal it from NASA, but somehow it’s in my stuff, I’m pretty sure. I don’t think it’s a copy, I think it’s the actual one.

[Assistant] That’s great.

[User] I’ll scan that and send you what that looked like.

[Assistant] That would be good to put with the interview.


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

[User] That actual chart, it was a cue card that Charlie was making x’s on as we were approaching. Somehow I wound up with that. I didn’t intentionally steal it from NASA, but somehow it’s in my stuff, I’m pretty sure. I don’t think it’s a copy, I think it’s the actual one.

[Assistant] That’s great.

[User] I’ll scan that and send you what that looked like.

[Assistant] That would be good to put with the interview.

[User] It makes it really apparent. It shows where the holds are. You’ve got range versus time where you can actually plot it and see. So I’ve actually got that still.

[Assistant] I wonder if you would talk about that moment of official docking and then getting ready to go into the Mir. What are your memories of that? Were you planning to take that photo? We’ve got that great photo from ASTP with the commanders shaking hands.


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

[User] I’ll scan that and send you what that looked like.

[Assistant] That would be good to put with the interview.

[User] It makes it really apparent. It shows where the holds are. You’ve got range versus time where you can actually plot it and see. So I’ve actually got that still.

[Assistant] I wonder if you would talk about that moment of official docking and then getting ready to go into the Mir. What are your memories of that? Were you planning to take that photo? We’ve got that great photo from ASTP with the commanders shaking hands.

[User] Oh yes. We knew. In fact PAO [Public Affairs Office] had talked to us. “Look, this is going to be something that is going to be memorable, and it’s going to be something we want to make sure we do it right.” The problem with the handshake in the tunnel there is that the people doing the handshaking block the whole view. We actually practiced I think over in the full fuselage trainer, over in the FFT. What I needed to make sure I did was get my back over against the side, so that I’m not in the middle blocking it. We actually had made sure we strategized it before we actually did it, to where we’d made sure that I was off to the side, so that we could see Vladimir [Dezhurov] as well.\n\n Did I send you that newspaper article where the president said that this ends the Cold War?

[Assistant] No, you haven’t, so you’ll have to send it to me for this one.


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

[User] It makes it really apparent. It shows where the holds are. You’ve got range versus time where you can actually plot it and see. So I’ve actually got that still.

[Assistant] I wonder if you would talk about that moment of official docking and then getting ready to go into the Mir. What are your memories of that? Were you planning to take that photo? We’ve got that great photo from ASTP with the commanders shaking hands.

[User] Oh yes. We knew. In fact PAO [Public Affairs Office] had talked to us. “Look, this is going to be something that is going to be memorable, and it’s going to be something we want to make sure we do it right.” The problem with the handshake in the tunnel there is that the people doing the handshaking block the whole view. We actually practiced I think over in the full fuselage trainer, over in the FFT. What I needed to make sure I did was get my back over against the side, so that I’m not in the middle blocking it. We actually had made sure we strategized it before we actually did it, to where we’d made sure that I was off to the side, so that we could see Vladimir [Dezhurov] as well.\n\n Did I send you that newspaper article where the president said that this ends the Cold War?

[Assistant] No, you haven’t, so you’ll have to send it to me for this one.

[User] I’ve actually got it on my cell phone.

[Assistant] Oh, do you?


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

[User] Oh yes. We knew. In fact PAO [Public Affairs Office] had talked to us. “Look, this is going to be something that is going to be memorable, and it’s going to be something we want to make sure we do it right.” The problem with the handshake in the tunnel there is that the people doing the handshaking block the whole view. We actually practiced I think over in the full fuselage trainer, over in the FFT. What I needed to make sure I did was get my back over against the side, so that I’m not in the middle blocking it. We actually had made sure we strategized it before we actually did it, to where we’d made sure that I was off to the side, so that we could see Vladimir [Dezhurov] as well.\n\n Did I send you that newspaper article where the president said that this ends the Cold War?

[Assistant] No, you haven’t, so you’ll have to send it to me for this one.

[User] I’ve actually got it on my cell phone.

[Assistant] Oh, do you?

[User] Because I was hanging pictures.

[Assistant] You must have been going through things, because you’ve been sending me stuff.


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

[User] I’ve actually got it on my cell phone.

[Assistant] Oh, do you?

[User] Because I was hanging pictures.

[Assistant] You must have been going through things, because you’ve been sending me stuff.

[User] You might be able to stretch this and see it. This I just hung up in the stairway in the man cave.

[Assistant] I was going to say, “Do I have my reading glasses?”


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

[User] Because I was hanging pictures.

[Assistant] You must have been going through things, because you’ve been sending me stuff.

[User] You might be able to stretch this and see it. This I just hung up in the stairway in the man cave.

[Assistant] I was going to say, “Do I have my reading glasses?”

[User] These are readers.

[Assistant] Oh, it’s okay. That’s the nice thing about the iPhone.


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

[User] You might be able to stretch this and see it. This I just hung up in the stairway in the man cave.

[Assistant] I was going to say, “Do I have my reading glasses?”

[User] These are readers.

[Assistant] Oh, it’s okay. That’s the nice thing about the iPhone.

[User] Yes, you can stretch it out.

[Assistant] Yes, you can stretch it, which is nice.


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

[User] These are readers.

[Assistant] Oh, it’s okay. That’s the nice thing about the iPhone.

[User] Yes, you can stretch it out.

[Assistant] Yes, you can stretch it, which is nice.

[User] Now Bill [William J.] Clinton didn’t say, “Well, Hoot ended the Cold War.” I’ve interpreted it that way. But that’s where it shows that Bill Clinton said—

[Assistant] “Guess this really means the Cold War is over.”


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

[User] Yes, you can stretch it out.

[Assistant] Yes, you can stretch it, which is nice.

[User] Now Bill [William J.] Clinton didn’t say, “Well, Hoot ended the Cold War.” I’ve interpreted it that way. But that’s where it shows that Bill Clinton said—

[Assistant] “Guess this really means the Cold War is over.”

[User] Yes, the President of the United States said, “This handshake marks the end of the Cold War.”

[Assistant] You look like you’re having a great time with that smile.


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] I did also want to ask. I don’t know—this might be a question better suited for Public Affairs—but I still thought it was interesting. Your crew was the guinea pig for using the web to promote the mission. PAO had created this website called On Board STS-71. Do you remember that? Like I said, this might be more of a Public Affairs [question]. It was a new way to promote the mission, that way people could follow along on the web and see how things were going. I was curious if you were included in all those decisions.

[User] I don’t think we were, because I don’t remember it offhand.

[Assistant] I wasn’t sure. I find little tidbits. So I always want to ask, because I think well, there could be an interesting story.

[User] Oh yes, good for you.

[Assistant] Did you think at this point that this was going to be your final mission? Had you and Rhea discussed [the issue]?


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

[User] Oh, golly, yes. Sure did.

[Assistant] We always like to end by asking folks what do you think was your biggest challenge while you worked here at NASA, if you had to pick one.

[User] If you had to pick one. Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can pick one.

[Assistant] If you can’t pick one you can list multiple.

[User] There’s been lots and lots of them. I joke around about one of the biggest challenges was trying to learn Russian, because I are a engineer. Science and math and calculus, I’m good at that stuff, but [not] languages.\n\n I vividly remember coming in when I first got here, and I was a highly experienced jet fighter pilot and test pilot. I flew combat in Vietnam. I had all kinds of experience. I got here, and all of a sudden I don’t know anything. I don’t know how I get hydraulic power. It was on a jet engine, and the jet engine is spinning so it turns a pump. How do I get hydraulic power on a Shuttle? How do I do temperature control on a Shuttle? We were mostly air-cooled in jet fighters. I don’t know how we navigate. I don’t know how we communicate. Yes, we had radios. You key the mike.\n\n It was a huge challenge walking in the door having been a very experienced jet pilot, and all of a sudden you don’t know anything. Some of your self-esteem suffers a little bit when you’re sitting there saying, “Boy, I’m dumb. How am I ever going to learn all this?” I think from day one it was a huge challenge.\n\n As you went along the trainers were so good, and all the study materials and everything that we had to learn everything from made it flow so well, that all of a sudden you got to the end of a training cycle and said, “Yes, I’m ready to launch.” It’s a tribute to what we’ve put together here at the Space Center.

[Assistant] What do you think was your greatest accomplishment, if you had to pick one? I know you were involved in so many.


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

[User] Certainly all the missions went well. One of the things that I always would say to my crews when I was commander, when we would get formed up and we’d have our first meeting as a crew, was, “Okay, look, you guys, this is going to be challenging. Anybody can go do this and make it look difficult. We’re going to go make it look easy. It isn’t easy, but we’re going to make it look easy because we’re going to do it that well. We’re not going to whine about what the challenge is, we’re just going to go do it and make it look easy.”\n\n I think for the most part we did that on the missions that I was commander of. We didn’t whine about things, we didn’t complain that this is too hard, this is too difficult. “It is challenging, and it’s not easy. But you guys, we’re going to make this look easy.”\n\n The other thing I also would say is, “And at any point if we’re not having fun, we’re doing something wrong. This is the most exciting thing in the world that we’re getting to do. It ought to be fun, and if it isn’t fun we’re not doing it right.”\n\n I do feel though that one of my biggest achievements when I was chief astronaut—because I got feedback. I wasn’t looking for feedback, because my job is to support you guys, is what my job is. But one of my astronauts, who wasn’t really known for handing out compliments, said to me, “You were liked as chief.”

[Assistant] That’s nice. That really is. One of the things that I appreciate when I talk to so many of the people that you work with is that everyone is so humble.

[User] Astronauts are humble?

[Assistant] Especially the test pilots, especially the test pilots that I talk to.

[User] Test pilots are humble? Oh my gosh.

[Assistant] Yes I don’t know where Tom Wolfe came up with that stereotype, but I’ve certainly not experienced it on my side of the table.


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

[User] Astronauts are humble?

[Assistant] Especially the test pilots, especially the test pilots that I talk to.

[User] Test pilots are humble? Oh my gosh.

[Assistant] Yes I don’t know where Tom Wolfe came up with that stereotype, but I’ve certainly not experienced it on my side of the table.

[User] It was funny. Before I was coming here to interview, one of the other test pilots back at the flight test center—I said, “I understand I got to talk to a psychiatrist.”\n\n He said, “Okay, one of the things that you don’t ever do is you don’t ever fill in the words for a psychiatrist. If the psychiatrist is asking you, ‘Well, so would you say that test pilots are—’ ‘Arrogant?’ Don’t fill it in for them.” Humble? Shoot.

[Assistant] That’s my perspective. Maybe somebody else would say something else.


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

[User] Test pilots are humble? Oh my gosh.

[Assistant] Yes I don’t know where Tom Wolfe came up with that stereotype, but I’ve certainly not experienced it on my side of the table.

[User] It was funny. Before I was coming here to interview, one of the other test pilots back at the flight test center—I said, “I understand I got to talk to a psychiatrist.”\n\n He said, “Okay, one of the things that you don’t ever do is you don’t ever fill in the words for a psychiatrist. If the psychiatrist is asking you, ‘Well, so would you say that test pilots are—’ ‘Arrogant?’ Don’t fill it in for them.” Humble? Shoot.

[Assistant] That’s my perspective. Maybe somebody else would say something else.

[User] That’s complimentary, so thank you.

[Assistant] I’ve enjoyed this. I don’t know if there’s other anecdotes you would like to talk about or other stories you’d like to share.


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

[User] It was funny. Before I was coming here to interview, one of the other test pilots back at the flight test center—I said, “I understand I got to talk to a psychiatrist.”\n\n He said, “Okay, one of the things that you don’t ever do is you don’t ever fill in the words for a psychiatrist. If the psychiatrist is asking you, ‘Well, so would you say that test pilots are—’ ‘Arrogant?’ Don’t fill it in for them.” Humble? Shoot.

[Assistant] That’s my perspective. Maybe somebody else would say something else.

[User] That’s complimentary, so thank you.

[Assistant] I’ve enjoyed this. I don’t know if there’s other anecdotes you would like to talk about or other stories you’d like to share.

[User] I guess they’re not kicking us out of this room, it looks like. Somebody started to open the door.

[Assistant] I don’t think so. I saw somebody stick their head in, so I wasn’t sure. The secretary told me I had it for four hours. I blocked it first thing this morning.


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

[User] That’s complimentary, so thank you.

[Assistant] I’ve enjoyed this. I don’t know if there’s other anecdotes you would like to talk about or other stories you’d like to share.

[User] I guess they’re not kicking us out of this room, it looks like. Somebody started to open the door.

[Assistant] I don’t think so. I saw somebody stick their head in, so I wasn’t sure. The secretary told me I had it for four hours. I blocked it first thing this morning.

[User] Let me think about it for a moment. Of course when we leave I’ll think of about a dozen of them.

[Assistant] If you come back to Houston we can always do a follow-up.


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

[User] I guess they’re not kicking us out of this room, it looks like. Somebody started to open the door.

[Assistant] I don’t think so. I saw somebody stick their head in, so I wasn’t sure. The secretary told me I had it for four hours. I blocked it first thing this morning.

[User] Let me think about it for a moment. Of course when we leave I’ll think of about a dozen of them.

[Assistant] If you come back to Houston we can always do a follow-up.

[User] We can do a follow-up, sure.

[Assistant] Absolutely, we’re always open.


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

[User] Let me think about it for a moment. Of course when we leave I’ll think of about a dozen of them.

[Assistant] If you come back to Houston we can always do a follow-up.

[User] We can do a follow-up, sure.

[Assistant] Absolutely, we’re always open.

[User] We probably haven’t covered everything.

[Assistant] I’m sure that we haven’t. There’s probably a lot that you have knowledge of that I don’t. We have limited resources. The further we get into the Shuttle Program, the less documentation that we have. That’s why these interviews are so important and so vital, because we just don’t have those records.


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

[User] We can do a follow-up, sure.

[Assistant] Absolutely, we’re always open.

[User] We probably haven’t covered everything.

[Assistant] I’m sure that we haven’t. There’s probably a lot that you have knowledge of that I don’t. We have limited resources. The further we get into the Shuttle Program, the less documentation that we have. That’s why these interviews are so important and so vital, because we just don’t have those records.

[User] Yes. I wind up remembering things as we’re sitting here talking about it too.

[Assistant] If you do come back, like I said, our door is always open. Don’t feel like this is the last opportunity. We’d be happy to see you. If at some point you and Rhea want to do a joint interview, I think that might be fun.


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

[User] We probably haven’t covered everything.

[Assistant] I’m sure that we haven’t. There’s probably a lot that you have knowledge of that I don’t. We have limited resources. The further we get into the Shuttle Program, the less documentation that we have. That’s why these interviews are so important and so vital, because we just don’t have those records.

[User] Yes. I wind up remembering things as we’re sitting here talking about it too.

[Assistant] If you do come back, like I said, our door is always open. Don’t feel like this is the last opportunity. We’d be happy to see you. If at some point you and Rhea want to do a joint interview, I think that might be fun.

[User] Oh, that’d be fun too. Yes, maybe one of these times when we’re back for reunions. They would schedule reunions about every two years. I think we missed—I don’t remember what our problem was. We might have been out of the country. She really likes cruise ships. We’re into these deals where we can go for free as speakers on a cruise ship.\n\n I’m always telling her, “No, not another cruise. I made three cruises in the Navy.” For a total of what, how much time, well over two years. “No, I don’t want to make another cruise.” She’d sign us up for two or three a year if I’d let her. We’ve been doing those. Although the virus saved me from one this year.

[Assistant] There you go. No one wants to be on a cruise ship right now.


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

[User] Yes. I wind up remembering things as we’re sitting here talking about it too.

[Assistant] If you do come back, like I said, our door is always open. Don’t feel like this is the last opportunity. We’d be happy to see you. If at some point you and Rhea want to do a joint interview, I think that might be fun.

[User] Oh, that’d be fun too. Yes, maybe one of these times when we’re back for reunions. They would schedule reunions about every two years. I think we missed—I don’t remember what our problem was. We might have been out of the country. She really likes cruise ships. We’re into these deals where we can go for free as speakers on a cruise ship.\n\n I’m always telling her, “No, not another cruise. I made three cruises in the Navy.” For a total of what, how much time, well over two years. “No, I don’t want to make another cruise.” She’d sign us up for two or three a year if I’d let her. We’ve been doing those. Although the virus saved me from one this year.

[Assistant] There you go. No one wants to be on a cruise ship right now.

[User] That’s for sure.

[Assistant] Thank you so much for taking time, Hoot. I appreciate it.


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

[User] No.

[Assistant] Okay. So once it went, that was the last you saw it.

[User] Last I saw of it.

[Assistant] Moved on to your next project.

[User] Went to the next project. One of the—I believe this story to be true, but I haven’t actually gone off and verified it—but I talked to you about putting all these decals in the spacecraft. Well, this was on Apollo 11, and my counterpart on Apollo 11 was Ray Dell’Osso. He was in the spacecraft, and when you’re in the spacecraft the displays and control panel is over you, and the lower equipment bay is by your feet. He’s supposedly laying in the seats writing on the display and control panel when his pen quits writing. [Demonstrates hand movement of shaking a pen.] He starts shaking his pen and dots appear all over the spacecraft. [Laughs] All over the displays and the control panel and the lower equipment bay. I think if you actually went and looked at the spacecraft, you’d probably be able to see some of those spots, but they did the best job they could to clean all the panel surfaces.

[Assistant] Left his mark. [Laughs]


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

[User] Yes. Right after it was over with, I got assigned to Apollo-Soyuz.

[Assistant] Were most of the people you started with—did you all pretty much stay on Skylab, or were people being moved around?

[User] Yes, from my group it was pretty much the same bunch of guys all the way through, including the Martin contractor team. We had about thirteen Martin guys that supported us, and almost every one of them, to the man, stayed all the way through the program. Now, some of the guys that supported us in the launch, prelaunch testing, went back to Denver and were actually working on the software program where we kept track of all the loose equipment and spares, and then some of them actually stayed in Houston and worked with us in Building 4 in our little cubicle. We had a mix in that particular arena, but as far as from when we started the Orbital Workshop testing and experiment development at the beginning of the program, almost to a man, I think those guys stayed with us all the way through.

[Assistant] Since you’ve been kind enough to mention a couple of personal side notes, I thought I would ask—during the sixties was a pretty turbulent time for people of your age group and coming out of college. Were you aware of all the other issues that were going on in the midst of trying to get everything done for Apollo and then into Skylab?

[User] Interestingly enough, really not. I think back a little bit about why. I don’t know whether it was growing up in a small town and not being exposed to what was going on out there, and after I got to work, whether it was the work was so intense that I just wasn’t paying that much attention to the news or reading newspapers, but, in all honesty, it was happening around me, and I was pretty much oblivious to it.

[Assistant] Yes, from what you’ve told us, your schedules were pretty intense.


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

[User] Oh, yes, I did. When I really went into one, that's where we did most of the time, went to Goddard and learned the real-time system and kind of started writing procedures and launch abort mission rules and all that stuff that we had to do. But, see, we invented ourselves. There was a retrofire guy before me, but he didn't know more than I did. So we actually sat down and knew our position and created our positions and made sure that they would work with the other team. It's just like any other team. We'd all been on teams and we knew exactly what our responsibilities were and what our requirements were, and from that we put the team together. Of course, Kraft was the flight director and everybody would report directly to him. So that was a kind of easy thing to remember. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Do you remember anything else about any of the other early flight controllers from that time?

[User] Oh, yes, I knew them all.

[Assistant] Is there anything you'd like to share about any of the people in particular?

[User] Well, Glynn [S.] Lunney and I were in—he was the Flight Dynamics Officer [FIDO] and I was the reentry guy. And before him was a guy named—a Canadian guy. Damn, what's his name? I'm sorry, I'll think about it. I just can't load my software quick enough. It's got bad time tags on it. [Laughter] But Carl Huss was the retrofire guy, and then they had—have you guys ran into the Canadians yet?

[Assistant] Yes, we have interviewed several of them.


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

[User] Oh, yes, I knew them all.

[Assistant] Is there anything you'd like to share about any of the people in particular?

[User] Well, Glynn [S.] Lunney and I were in—he was the Flight Dynamics Officer [FIDO] and I was the reentry guy. And before him was a guy named—a Canadian guy. Damn, what's his name? I'm sorry, I'll think about it. I just can't load my software quick enough. It's got bad time tags on it. [Laughter] But Carl Huss was the retrofire guy, and then they had—have you guys ran into the Canadians yet?

[Assistant] Yes, we have interviewed several of them.

[User] That was a really good group, neat bunch of guys. They came in from AVRO [Canada]. You know all about them. We had surprising a number of those with us. It was a lot more Canadians out of the Space Task Group than there was American citizens. For some reason they decided—I mean Flight Operations—I don't know how they got so many, but they were there. And they did a good job, too.\n\n Lunney had been out at the Barbados with John Hodge. He'd never been back at the Cape, and he came up. So he and I had the first job. That was our first job together, then Shepard’s flying, because they were breaking in these guys that had been there. By this time NASA really was expanding. This was before the Rice [University, Houston, Texas] talk. This was before Kennedy, when I got in. Then they really changed. I mean, when he did that, everything started expanding in hiring. The place in Houston got big and we really did need to bring in more flight controllers on, and that's what I spent a lot of my time doing, training flight dynamics people and billing systems, and it was a really neat job.

[Assistant] What did you think of Kennedy's announcement at the time?


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

[User] Yes, our team is approximately 45 people, the majority United Space Alliance workers. I do have a handful of NASA support. I have a couple engineers, quality, and safety. So, as usual, how we always operate, you have a big conglomerate of the contractor and then a small group of the NASA folks.

[Assistant] You guys had actually tried out the system, I think, last year?

[User] Yes. We did a dry run here, yes, at the Shuttle Landing Facility [SLF]. We did the same thing. Basically, to set up the wind restraint system you have four masts, and each mast has a winch and taglines. All those things have to be anchored into the concrete, and so we actually did that out at the SLF to ensure that we could secure them. Now that the system is all set up at Dulles, we proof-load it to make sure that everything’s going to hold. We also have to put a tie-down point for the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft [SCA] and that’s drilled into the concrete as well so that when we roll in the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, we can hook up to the nose landing gear. The tie down points ensures that the SCA doesn’t move it all while we’re doing this operation.

[Assistant] We were just talking with one of the SCA guys who mentioned that you’ve got to tie that nose down. Otherwise you start to lift that plane up, which I thought was interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] So you’ll be landing then on Tuesday? You’re going to be in the Pathfinder?


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

[User] Yes, we did. Actually, we were ready with Discovery earlier than we initially planned, and we went over to the Vehicle Assembly Building earlier than we had targeted. The main reason for doing that was to get out of the way so that Endeavour could get back into process. We had had Endeavour sitting over in the Vehicle Assembly Building waiting for her turn to get back in the Orbiter Processing Facility [OPF]. So the sooner we were finished with Discovery, the sooner we could get back started on Endeavour. It wasn’t because we were going to deliver Discovery any earlier. We had already set that date, and that wasn’t something we wanted to change, but it really did help to keep moving on Endeavour because with her in the VAB we were not doing work on Endeavour that we needed to do in the OPF.

[Assistant] How long did it take you to finish her and get her ready to go?

[User] Oh, gosh, I’d have to pull the schedule. You mean my total time for Discovery?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Total time in processing, let’s look at this. I don’t have my glasses on. Look, see, I’ve already flipped the page and Discovery’s on the second page now because she’s done.

[Assistant] She’s done. She’s ready to go.


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

[User] When we deliver Atlantis, which is the mid-November timeframe, when we get it to the Visitors Complex, then my job is done. And I have to figure out what I’m going to do next. I have to figure that out before then, but, yes, that’s where my work with the Orbiters will end. Now, there could be something within the transition retirement efforts that are not Orbiter-related that I may be able to help with at that point in time. Our office doesn’t go away when the vehicles are done because there’s still facility work, equipment removal, and records disposal that isn’t yet complete. So there may be an area that I can help out with, or I may do something completely different.\n\n In fact, the conversation that I had with my supervisor when you were waiting was talking about, “You need to start thinking about what you’re going to do next. You’ve got to start answering some questions as to where you’re going to be.” Not really something I want to think about right now, but it’s not the first time he’s told me I have to start thinking about it, so I need to start doing that.

[Assistant]
I’m going to ask Rebecca if she’s got any questions for you.

I do have one. You mentioned about going or having Discovery being processed once it’s inside of the hangar.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] So you will be involved with that?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] How long will that be?


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] So you will be involved with that?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] How long will that be?

[User] We’re delivering on the 19th, we look to be out of there by the end of the month, so not too much work that has to be done. So the target right now is to be done by the 30th. That includes removing the tail cone and shipping it back to Kennedy since we have to use that tail cone again for Endeavour’s ferry, then repositioning the engine nozzles, because to put the tail cone on you have to tuck the nozzles. We’re going to flare those back out, because Smithsonian wants Discovery to look as if it had just landed. We will also reposition the vent doors and install the orbital maneuvering system nozzles. There are a handful of other things, but mainly just getting Discovery into the final display position, jack and leveling it, because we have to jack and level it to get the tail cone off and then put it back down on its landing gear when all the work is complete.\n\n There will be a small team that complete the hangar work. In fact, I won’t be there for much of that since I have to leave on the 23rd to go up to New York. My backup, Bart Pannullo will be there managing the work in the hangar and also the cleanup effort out on Apron W. So he’ll be managing those while I’m up at JFK, getting things set up and ready to go for the offload of Enterprise.

[Assistant] That’s the real question I wanted to ask, how are you going to be in two places at once.


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] How long will that be?

[User] We’re delivering on the 19th, we look to be out of there by the end of the month, so not too much work that has to be done. So the target right now is to be done by the 30th. That includes removing the tail cone and shipping it back to Kennedy since we have to use that tail cone again for Endeavour’s ferry, then repositioning the engine nozzles, because to put the tail cone on you have to tuck the nozzles. We’re going to flare those back out, because Smithsonian wants Discovery to look as if it had just landed. We will also reposition the vent doors and install the orbital maneuvering system nozzles. There are a handful of other things, but mainly just getting Discovery into the final display position, jack and leveling it, because we have to jack and level it to get the tail cone off and then put it back down on its landing gear when all the work is complete.\n\n There will be a small team that complete the hangar work. In fact, I won’t be there for much of that since I have to leave on the 23rd to go up to New York. My backup, Bart Pannullo will be there managing the work in the hangar and also the cleanup effort out on Apron W. So he’ll be managing those while I’m up at JFK, getting things set up and ready to go for the offload of Enterprise.

[Assistant] That’s the real question I wanted to ask, how are you going to be in two places at once.

[User] I have very capable help, which is good. I get the fun work of setting up, delivering, and offloading. Bart gets to be there for offload, the final orbiter work, and the site cleanup.

[Assistant] Sounds like a good plan.


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

[User] We’re delivering on the 19th, we look to be out of there by the end of the month, so not too much work that has to be done. So the target right now is to be done by the 30th. That includes removing the tail cone and shipping it back to Kennedy since we have to use that tail cone again for Endeavour’s ferry, then repositioning the engine nozzles, because to put the tail cone on you have to tuck the nozzles. We’re going to flare those back out, because Smithsonian wants Discovery to look as if it had just landed. We will also reposition the vent doors and install the orbital maneuvering system nozzles. There are a handful of other things, but mainly just getting Discovery into the final display position, jack and leveling it, because we have to jack and level it to get the tail cone off and then put it back down on its landing gear when all the work is complete.\n\n There will be a small team that complete the hangar work. In fact, I won’t be there for much of that since I have to leave on the 23rd to go up to New York. My backup, Bart Pannullo will be there managing the work in the hangar and also the cleanup effort out on Apron W. So he’ll be managing those while I’m up at JFK, getting things set up and ready to go for the offload of Enterprise.

[Assistant] That’s the real question I wanted to ask, how are you going to be in two places at once.

[User] I have very capable help, which is good. I get the fun work of setting up, delivering, and offloading. Bart gets to be there for offload, the final orbiter work, and the site cleanup.

[Assistant] Sounds like a good plan.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Well, I think that that’s it for us, and I think that we did it in less than 45 minutes.


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

[User] I have very capable help, which is good. I get the fun work of setting up, delivering, and offloading. Bart gets to be there for offload, the final orbiter work, and the site cleanup.

[Assistant] Sounds like a good plan.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Well, I think that that’s it for us, and I think that we did it in less than 45 minutes.

[User] Well, great. Well, good. Thank you very much.

[Assistant] Thanks for filling in all those blanks.


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

[User] Yes, that was interesting. I went into McDonnell as a stress engineer, and I worked my way up to chief stress engineer after I was there twelve years—well, I did it after ten, but twelve years after we were [unclear] again, '57, and our chief engineer thought that there was going to be something to this whole thing, so he moved me from that job into advanced design, where they did airplanes, and now they were going to take on space, too, as their space chief designer. So that's how I got into the space business, and that was in '57.\n\n All through '58—this is before NASA was born. They were born, really, mid-'58. But we were going around the country looking for people to do something about this, and we talked to guys like Max [Maxime A.] Faget, Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.], and those guys before they were NASA and before we were bidding on anything. I don't know how we won it. I've heard stories that Grumman really wanted it and the Navy didn't want them to waste their time on that. Anyhow, that was how it got started.\n\n I stayed in space, then, for another twenty years or so after that with the Mercury, Gemini, a little bit on Skylab, not all that much, and the Shuttle.

[Assistant] So you were working in this special group before NASA.

[User] As a matter of fact, the first thing we worked on was Dyna-Soar [Project].

[Assistant] Oh, really, the Air Force project.

[User] The Air Force had an idea on Dyna-Soar. We worked on that and made a proposal, which didn't win, and I'm glad, because it never amounted to anything, and a lot of people wasted a lot of time and weren't, therefore, as competitive in the Mercury thing because they'd been working on it. But we lost it fast enough to get back into the right thing.

[Assistant] So what did you think when you heard about Sputnik?


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

[User] Why in the hell did they do a thing like that? Well, you know, our president, the McDonnell president at the time was Dave [David S.] Lewis. He later became chairman. He called me in and said, "Well, I'd like you to go down to Florida for six months or so and be launch manager."\n\n I said, "Dave, I don't have any experience like this."\n\n He says, "Nobody else has got experience in flying these things." [Laughter]\n\n So I went down for six months and stayed four years. I remember arguing with the IRS guy after a year. He said, "You can't have this per diem, ten dollars a day, any longer than six months." I said, "Well, the company keeps changing its mind." So we revealed some number, but it wasn't as much as it should have been. He thought it was too much.\n\n So that's what I did, and it was a new ball game. Nobody could say it wasn't. All the flight business was new, how you launched them, what kind of mission control you had, what Kennedy did versus what [Lyndon B.] Johnson did, and the whole ball of wax.

[Assistant] So you were launch manager for the Mercury Program.

[User] For McDonnell.

[Assistant] For McDonnell.

[User] NASA was the boss, and they had their guys as chief [unclear], our guys are supplying most of the answers.

[Assistant] So what you basically supervised was a lot of the check-out for the launch?


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

[User] For McDonnell.

[Assistant] For McDonnell.

[User] NASA was the boss, and they had their guys as chief [unclear], our guys are supplying most of the answers.

[Assistant] So what you basically supervised was a lot of the check-out for the launch?

[User] Well, one of the biggest things that we did at the Cape was rebuild spacecraft. There are all sorts of changes come through all the time, and we have to incorporate them at the Cape. So that took a lot of our time. The rest of it was in helping NASA plan the flight plan and the countdowns and writing the procedures for doing that for NASA and that sort of thing and contributing the people to do it. We always had somebody over there who was the number-two guy, the NASA launch—what did they call it? [Unclear]. But basically they had the responsibility, and, of course, they did the whole thing, and they did a lot of the—well, in the Cape they didn't do as much as they did at Johnson [Space Center]. Johnson did all the software and all that stuff and all the overall systems stuff. Of course, we had some people helping there, too. We had a big bunch, maybe a thousand people at Johnson at the time doing that.

[Assistant] So when McDonnell got the Gemini contract, you were moved to the position of Gemini technical director?


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

[User] NASA was the boss, and they had their guys as chief [unclear], our guys are supplying most of the answers.

[Assistant] So what you basically supervised was a lot of the check-out for the launch?

[User] Well, one of the biggest things that we did at the Cape was rebuild spacecraft. There are all sorts of changes come through all the time, and we have to incorporate them at the Cape. So that took a lot of our time. The rest of it was in helping NASA plan the flight plan and the countdowns and writing the procedures for doing that for NASA and that sort of thing and contributing the people to do it. We always had somebody over there who was the number-two guy, the NASA launch—what did they call it? [Unclear]. But basically they had the responsibility, and, of course, they did the whole thing, and they did a lot of the—well, in the Cape they didn't do as much as they did at Johnson [Space Center]. Johnson did all the software and all that stuff and all the overall systems stuff. Of course, we had some people helping there, too. We had a big bunch, maybe a thousand people at Johnson at the time doing that.

[Assistant] So when McDonnell got the Gemini contract, you were moved to the position of Gemini technical director?

[User] Yes. That wasn't at the same time.

[Assistant] That was after?


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

[User] Well, our people—it wasn't very obvious that there was a big problem there. The people who knew the astronauts all felt pretty bad about it. I know I went to see Gus's widow, and Pat [White, Ed White’s widow] …

[Assistant] Another astronaut?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] White. Ed [Edward H.] White [II]?

[User] Ed White's the one, and Gus—who was the other guy?

[Assistant] Roger [B.] Chaffee.


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] White. Ed [Edward H.] White [II]?

[User] Ed White's the one, and Gus—who was the other guy?

[Assistant] Roger [B.] Chaffee.

[User] Yes. I didn't know Roger very well. I'm sure the people down at the Cape who knew those people. Our people at the factory didn't come into as intimate contact with them. They'd come out every six months for reviews or something like that. But everybody felt pretty bad. I don't know that anybody else went to the funny farm.

[Assistant] That was pretty traumatic for the industry as a whole.


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

[User] Ed White's the one, and Gus—who was the other guy?

[Assistant] Roger [B.] Chaffee.

[User] Yes. I didn't know Roger very well. I'm sure the people down at the Cape who knew those people. Our people at the factory didn't come into as intimate contact with them. They'd come out every six months for reviews or something like that. But everybody felt pretty bad. I don't know that anybody else went to the funny farm.

[Assistant] That was pretty traumatic for the industry as a whole.

[User] Yes, it was.

[Assistant] I guess it had some impact on that.


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

[User] Yes. I didn't know Roger very well. I'm sure the people down at the Cape who knew those people. Our people at the factory didn't come into as intimate contact with them. They'd come out every six months for reviews or something like that. But everybody felt pretty bad. I don't know that anybody else went to the funny farm.

[Assistant] That was pretty traumatic for the industry as a whole.

[User] Yes, it was.

[Assistant] I guess it had some impact on that.

[User] So was the\n\n Challenger\n\n .

[Assistant] Right. I'm sure, industry-wide, it probably had a similar impact.


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

[User] Yes, it was.

[Assistant] I guess it had some impact on that.

[User] So was the\n\n Challenger\n\n .

[Assistant] Right. I'm sure, industry-wide, it probably had a similar impact.

[User] Yes. The\n\n Challenger\n\n killed more people. It was far more cost than the Apollo they lost, but it was not the first time it happened. I mean, Apollo was the first. It was the first time in flight.

[Assistant] So McDonnell wasn't active in Apollo, but then they did some work in Skylab, and you were the—


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

[User] So was the\n\n Challenger\n\n .

[Assistant] Right. I'm sure, industry-wide, it probably had a similar impact.

[User] Yes. The\n\n Challenger\n\n killed more people. It was far more cost than the Apollo they lost, but it was not the first time it happened. I mean, Apollo was the first. It was the first time in flight.

[Assistant] So McDonnell wasn't active in Apollo, but then they did some work in Skylab, and you were the—

[User] Well, Skylab was sort of an ad hoc, "what could we work out" deal, a temporary space station. Our cousins on the West Coast sold their S-IVB upper stage, modified would be the tank, and we sold Gemini equipment. We rearranged that airlock, and so we had a big piece of the tube. Martin was doing another piece of it. The only thing I really had much to do with was, I went to Houston and sold them on some of the ideas we had, but I didn't stay with them much.\n\n At that time, we were working on the Shuttle activity. I'm trying to get the time straight here. Skylab was—well, I guess it was before that. They had some missiles, and I had to [unclear] and things like that, you know, but it didn't take too much work. We had a few problems with it, but there weren't any major problems. The most major problem was on launch of Skylab were we had a wing came out and we lost the wing and the other one's cocked or some such thing. The guy that had done the project engineering work on that was a good friend of mine and a very capable guy. Press [Brooks] was the guy.

[Assistant] If we take kind of a step back and look at Mercury through Skylab and look at the relationships between McDonnell and what eventually became McDonnell-Douglas and NASA, what was that relationship like between those, and how did it maybe change across the programs as the programs changed?


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

[User] They were it was like block schedule. Right. So I would have like the third graders Monday and Wednesday, for example.

[Assistant] Any one day then what, three to five classes or?

[User] So. I'd be in school from like eight to 12. And that was the first block of the school was divided in. There were too many students to have all the all the grades all at once, so on. So Christina, who taught third grade in sixth grade, she had her classes in the afternoons from one to three. Tamara, who had all the other grades taught in the morning. So eight to 12. So I had like a lunch break between 12 and one, basically. But usually I would I would stay school that whole time. We weren't really required. We it was really up to us how much we wanted to teach. Our program director, um, she told us our Peace Corps program director told us to do maybe like ten hours a week to start. Right. So you're not overworking yourself. But I found that if I wasn't really doing anything, I was just going to stay, you know, in my apartment or whatever. So I liked to be at school and to be working with the kids. There were some days, for example, when they did testing, there is really no need for me to be there. Um, so I would. And they would do I mean, they tested a lot. I felt like so I would not go to classes during the testing periods and I would hang out with my host family. So usually I was at school from like eight to three. And later I took on clubs, which I would do either during that lunch break, twelve to one or after school.

[Assistant] What kind of clubs?

[User] So I taught I did English language clubs, actually my partner and I did them together so we would do one English club, for example, for third through fifth grade. We would do them at her school. Her school was recently renovated. So it was really nice. And so my kids would go to her school and we would host clubs there together.

[Assistant] So you worked on more than one school?


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

[User] So I taught I did English language clubs, actually my partner and I did them together so we would do one English club, for example, for third through fifth grade. We would do them at her school. Her school was recently renovated. So it was really nice. And so my kids would go to her school and we would host clubs there together.

[Assistant] So you worked on more than one school?

[User] I only worked at one school, but my wife, she taught in the second school. There were two schools in the village. And, yeah, we did clubs. We started with clubs at her school. But eventually I started doing some of we started defining some of the clubs because there were too many students or there weren't enough students like the third graders, didn't want their parents, didn't want them walking all the way to the second school. So I started just doing my third graders at my school and the younger kids, they loved clubs, they loved coming clubs, the older kids.

[Assistant] What did you do in the club?

[User] We it was really getting them to talk and we played like English playing games. So, I'm trying to think of some of the activities we did like one of them that we would do as the kids would get in. There would be like two circles, one circle facing our one circle facing in. And they would have to talk about a topic for like a minute. And then after a minute, the inner circle would rotate. And so you'd have like a different conversation partner. We play board games. We played, we had a spelling bee. We played off all kinds of things, especially with the younger kids, and they loved it. And I think they really just like hanging out with us. The older kids, it was harder to get them to come to clubs. So we would only really get there really dedicated students who wanted to really learn the English, that really wanted to learn English, and we would do readings with them. But again, mostly just conversation, because that's what was missing from the classroom, is they weren't doing enough talking.

[Assistant] How did the role of your own language evolve or play into what you were doing?


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

[User] It did. I like to brag that our team, we’re the tip of the spear, top of the rocket. We led the way. I like to brag about that. We did lead the way on this. Because we had already been through the fires on pad abort, it was easier for us to get to that place than the rest of the vehicle team. Frankly Mark Geyer used us as an example on many occasions of how he would like to see the overall team working. I believe they’ve gotten there today. I think on the crew vehicle side they had already carved off several systems and said NASA is doing this and they’re going to provide it as GFE [Government Furnished Equipment] so that those teams really just kept focusing on what they were doing and continued to do that. But in other areas, like in the structures area for instance, I see the NASA and the contractor teams working well together.\n\n It’s interesting. We weren’t really the tip of the spear on this. The systems analysis folks, the folks that were doing the trajectory simulations, the flight dynamics, and building the aerodynamic databases, they already had been working as a badgeless team prior to that change. So they had already worked out a lot of those issues and were working well together. I wouldn’t say that we invented the way to do it. We looked closely at what they had done, and that allowed us to optimize and move forward.

[Assistant] I just really have one more question. I know you mentioned some of the challenges that you had, but what do you feel is your most significant contribution?

[User] Me personally, I believe that I did rally the team to coalesce and focus on the challenges that were in front of them and be successful. I don’t like to brag about myself, but I do believe that I enabled that through my leadership.

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

[User] No, ma’am, I can’t believe I talked for a whole hour.

[Assistant] A little over an hour actually. I appreciate you taking time out today, and I hope we didn’t run over too long into your schedule.


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

[User] As you mentioned, initially I started off as the Operations and Training IPT lead, and basically for all the mission preparation and execution aspects of implementing the NASA-Mir Research Program. Since that time, though, for about the last six months, I've also been the co-chair, in the sense that we have a Russian counterpart, so the co-chair for the MOIWG, which is the Mir Operations Integration Working Group, and that's been roughly since January of this year.

[Assistant] What was your previous role, and what helped you prepare to take on the role you have now?

[User] Having done the operations and training aspects of it roughly the last six to nine months of this program, I've been involved primarily in the training and operations aspects itself, so it was a natural fit to take over the other duties, the other duties within our working group that I had not been doing before such as hardware processing and preparation, but that was very low level, and the contractor's in a good position to pick up that job and basically we provide some direction and oversight on the NASA side.\n\n Prior to this program, I had been involved in some Space Station and some Spacelab efforts, which we believe gave us a good foundation to start off going into Phase One.

[Assistant] What was your first real job in the Shuttle-Mir Program?

[User] The first job I had was kind of, I guess you would call it, for Mir-18, which was Dr. [Norman] Thagard's flight. Didn't really have a title. It was kind of like an operations point of contact, just with regards to preparing the timelines and procedures and ground support teams to support Dr. Thagard in Moscow. Then once the mission got started, it kind of evolved into a NASA operations lead over there. So I did about two or three tours over in Moscow during Mir-18.

[Assistant] Was it a natural flow for you, or was there lots of changes and challenges from your previous role in taking on this -


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

[User] Having done the operations and training aspects of it roughly the last six to nine months of this program, I've been involved primarily in the training and operations aspects itself, so it was a natural fit to take over the other duties, the other duties within our working group that I had not been doing before such as hardware processing and preparation, but that was very low level, and the contractor's in a good position to pick up that job and basically we provide some direction and oversight on the NASA side.\n\n Prior to this program, I had been involved in some Space Station and some Spacelab efforts, which we believe gave us a good foundation to start off going into Phase One.

[Assistant] What was your first real job in the Shuttle-Mir Program?

[User] The first job I had was kind of, I guess you would call it, for Mir-18, which was Dr. [Norman] Thagard's flight. Didn't really have a title. It was kind of like an operations point of contact, just with regards to preparing the timelines and procedures and ground support teams to support Dr. Thagard in Moscow. Then once the mission got started, it kind of evolved into a NASA operations lead over there. So I did about two or three tours over in Moscow during Mir-18.

[Assistant] Was it a natural flow for you, or was there lots of changes and challenges from your previous role in taking on this -

[User] It was a natural progression. It was an evolution in the sense of what I had been doing before, because prior to that time on the Space Station programs, I was kind of an operations point of contact for those efforts. So it was a natural fit. It was a challenge in the sense of this was something we, NASA, had not done before in long-duration flights and working with the Russians, in particular. So it was a challenge in a good sense.

[Assistant] Could you give us some examples of some of the challenges that you had to meet?


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

[User] I first started going over in April of '94, so each time we went over we were preparing computers, understanding how their process works. Like I said, a normal day in the life of the things that would be required of us with the Russian side. So I was over there about three or four times in '94 setting these things up. We took a couple of trips to Europe to talk to European counterparts about how they did things, that kind of thing.\n\n In '95, once he launched, I was going about every other month. Basically at that time it was basically to support the mission. Shortly after that time, we were told we were also going to take responsibility for what's called the Phase One-B aspects, so, NASA 2 through NASA 7. At that time it was only NASA 5 aspects. We were going over there starting to put the ground work in place just for the follow-on flights. So it was kind of a little bit of both. I would work actually from a flight support standpoint for three to four weeks, then I'd usually tack on a couple of weeks to finish the planning for the follow-on efforts.

[Assistant] What were your experiences like in Russia? Was that your first time to go, associated with this program?

[User] Yes. Very good. I've enjoyed working with them very much. No real negative. It's a big world, you know, so just a lot of different people and different attitudes.

[Assistant] How long was your stay there each time? Would it vary?

[User] It varied. The longest stay I ever had, I think, was about six or seven weeks.

[Assistant] Are you planning to go back soon?


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

[User] Yes. Very good. I've enjoyed working with them very much. No real negative. It's a big world, you know, so just a lot of different people and different attitudes.

[Assistant] How long was your stay there each time? Would it vary?

[User] It varied. The longest stay I ever had, I think, was about six or seven weeks.

[Assistant] Are you planning to go back soon?

[User] I'm going the tenth of June, in about two or three weeks.

[Assistant] Is that part of the close-up?


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

[User] It varied. The longest stay I ever had, I think, was about six or seven weeks.

[Assistant] Are you planning to go back soon?

[User] I'm going the tenth of June, in about two or three weeks.

[Assistant] Is that part of the close-up?

[User] Yes, we'll be closing some things down, also kind of doing a final push in preparation for the final few months of this flight with the cosmonauts, and then we're returning, I think, roughly mid-August.

[Assistant] We still have experiments?


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

[User] I'm going the tenth of June, in about two or three weeks.

[Assistant] Is that part of the close-up?

[User] Yes, we'll be closing some things down, also kind of doing a final push in preparation for the final few months of this flight with the cosmonauts, and then we're returning, I think, roughly mid-August.

[Assistant] We still have experiments?

[User] Yes, about three or four experiments will be continuing on after the American crew member leaves on STS-91. They'll be docking, I think, around the eighth or ninth of June, so our plan is to get there shortly after that. Then we've got about two months. I won't be staying there two months, but the team will be in place about another two months there. A lot of the things we'll be turning over to the station guys, because they're also establishing a base over there, not in the same physical location, but in the same building. So a lot of our computers and some other things will be turned over to them either in June or in August.

[Assistant] What are your duties and roles as far as the science areas are concerned?


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

[User] Yes, we'll be closing some things down, also kind of doing a final push in preparation for the final few months of this flight with the cosmonauts, and then we're returning, I think, roughly mid-August.

[Assistant] We still have experiments?

[User] Yes, about three or four experiments will be continuing on after the American crew member leaves on STS-91. They'll be docking, I think, around the eighth or ninth of June, so our plan is to get there shortly after that. Then we've got about two months. I won't be staying there two months, but the team will be in place about another two months there. A lot of the things we'll be turning over to the station guys, because they're also establishing a base over there, not in the same physical location, but in the same building. So a lot of our computers and some other things will be turned over to them either in June or in August.

[Assistant] What are your duties and roles as far as the science areas are concerned?

[User] With regards to the science, the way it's structured within Phase One is you have basically one group, one organization responsible for managing the science requirements, and then it's our responsibility to actually go off and do feasibility assessments on the requirements and form those into some kind of implementation plan on each increment, and then also establish and process some systems across all increments so you have a way of doing business. As far as the science, strictly speaking, our responsibility lies on doing evaluations and feasibility assessments on that. Not everything that's agreed to that, yes, it's a definite requirement can be implemented, of course, so you decide, well, do you carry this thing below the line if there's an experiment of opportunity that comes up, that you can move it back over, move it above the line, rather? Or do you just roll this over to another increment, to another mission?

[Assistant] In the course of Phase One, was there one increment more challenging than the other regarding the science aspect?


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

[User] That's true. So we've probably gone down every avenue. We didn't have a lot of backup systems because of our budget. We couldn't have a lot of contingency plans in place, but the ones we did seem to have worked, and a lot of times we had to be very dynamic and very creative coming up with a solution. Rather than spending three or four months going off and analyzing them, we had to come up with an answer usually within weeks.

[Assistant] That had to be very challenging, to come up with a real-time system in real time, without any planning to do any -

[User] Yes. Basically you want to make sure you've got the process in place to address the issue, even though you've never seen the issue before. At least you have the right people in place. You have the right processes to deal with the issue. In some cases we've been kind of fortunate because with regards to payloads, the success criteria is a little different than you would, say, a vehicle system. So there's a difference between mission criticality and mission success. So we're fortunate in that. But, of course, the budget reflected that you're only working payloads, not systems. So we've had to tack on some things later in the life of the program, like getting additional engineers to develop timelines and following the actual Mir vehicle subsystems.

[Assistant] Were you involved in preparing the crew for the experiments?

[User] Not directly, but I oversaw it. I didn't directly sit down with the crew and explain how this experiment will operate.

[Assistant] It sounds like a lot of what you did was making sure everything was in place for other people to take care of.


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

[User] Yes. Basically you want to make sure you've got the process in place to address the issue, even though you've never seen the issue before. At least you have the right people in place. You have the right processes to deal with the issue. In some cases we've been kind of fortunate because with regards to payloads, the success criteria is a little different than you would, say, a vehicle system. So there's a difference between mission criticality and mission success. So we're fortunate in that. But, of course, the budget reflected that you're only working payloads, not systems. So we've had to tack on some things later in the life of the program, like getting additional engineers to develop timelines and following the actual Mir vehicle subsystems.

[Assistant] Were you involved in preparing the crew for the experiments?

[User] Not directly, but I oversaw it. I didn't directly sit down with the crew and explain how this experiment will operate.

[Assistant] It sounds like a lot of what you did was making sure everything was in place for other people to take care of.

[User] Yes. Basically we had to manage and we had to make sure the process was in place, that this is the way we're going to do business and this is what people are accountable for and these are the records we're going to keep and this is how we're going to track it so we have some idea of metrics and we have some feedback mechanism to follow this stuff through, so we know what improvements need to be made and how to prepare for the debriefs with the crew members post flight.

[Assistant] When we talked last time, we talked about how everything was prepared for the missions and the increments. What happens when everything would come back? You've got one coming, you've got one going. Could you explain some of the processes that took place for the exchanges?


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

[User] Let me put it this way: the way Phase One ended, the scope and the objectives of Phase One roughly, say, in the last six months [unclear], is different than what it started out to be. So there's been some, I would say, change in direction, but some mission creep in what it was responsible to do, what it set out to do. I'm not saying that's necessarily something wrong.

[Assistant] Sure.

[User] It's just you're measuring the success of which criteria.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] I think given the original criteria we set for ourselves, yes, I think it was successful. Given what we've ended up with, I would say, yes, it's successful, given that those tasks were added on either after certain events or late in the flow. And they're not diametrically opposed necessarily, but there is some slant there.

[Assistant] It just grew and grew.


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

[User] It's just you're measuring the success of which criteria.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] I think given the original criteria we set for ourselves, yes, I think it was successful. Given what we've ended up with, I would say, yes, it's successful, given that those tasks were added on either after certain events or late in the flow. And they're not diametrically opposed necessarily, but there is some slant there.

[Assistant] It just grew and grew.

[User] It just grew into something else. So you can try to go back and say [unclear] we're changing the scope and direction of this program.

[Assistant] The point that you were able to meet those expectations as they continued to grow is a success in itself, that the team was able to rise to the occasion over and over again to meet the changing scope.


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

[User] I think given the original criteria we set for ourselves, yes, I think it was successful. Given what we've ended up with, I would say, yes, it's successful, given that those tasks were added on either after certain events or late in the flow. And they're not diametrically opposed necessarily, but there is some slant there.

[Assistant] It just grew and grew.

[User] It just grew into something else. So you can try to go back and say [unclear] we're changing the scope and direction of this program.

[Assistant] The point that you were able to meet those expectations as they continued to grow is a success in itself, that the team was able to rise to the occasion over and over again to meet the changing scope.

[User] Yes. You could probably say that. Even though some people griped about these additional tasks coming on and not necessarily additional bodies or budgets, I think there was this [unclear], "We'll just throw another couple of million on it and we'll take care of these other jobs." Well, that's fine, but you don't find these people just off the street. It took us a little while to prepare these people, to train them. We can't just grab somebody out of school, or we can't just grab somebody, extra bodies from the Shuttle side to do this job necessarily, because there's a learning curve.

[Assistant] I guess when you were mentioning about trying to find people to train, the jobs were so many, you weren't just training people for payload.


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

[User] It just grew into something else. So you can try to go back and say [unclear] we're changing the scope and direction of this program.

[Assistant] The point that you were able to meet those expectations as they continued to grow is a success in itself, that the team was able to rise to the occasion over and over again to meet the changing scope.

[User] Yes. You could probably say that. Even though some people griped about these additional tasks coming on and not necessarily additional bodies or budgets, I think there was this [unclear], "We'll just throw another couple of million on it and we'll take care of these other jobs." Well, that's fine, but you don't find these people just off the street. It took us a little while to prepare these people, to train them. We can't just grab somebody out of school, or we can't just grab somebody, extra bodies from the Shuttle side to do this job necessarily, because there's a learning curve.

[Assistant] I guess when you were mentioning about trying to find people to train, the jobs were so many, you weren't just training people for payload.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] You were training for all these different areas, is that correct?


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

[User] Yes. You could probably say that. Even though some people griped about these additional tasks coming on and not necessarily additional bodies or budgets, I think there was this [unclear], "We'll just throw another couple of million on it and we'll take care of these other jobs." Well, that's fine, but you don't find these people just off the street. It took us a little while to prepare these people, to train them. We can't just grab somebody out of school, or we can't just grab somebody, extra bodies from the Shuttle side to do this job necessarily, because there's a learning curve.

[Assistant] I guess when you were mentioning about trying to find people to train, the jobs were so many, you weren't just training people for payload.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] You were training for all these different areas, is that correct?

[User] Yes, because a lot of our training up front, the training that the crew member went through was somewhat, from a payload standpoint, from our responsibilities, was Mir in terms of on the ground, in terms of what we did for the flight controllers. So a lot of them would actually go to some of the crew training sessions so they could observe the crew interactions, so they understood what the issue would be two or three months down the line. We had the same investigators when they would come to test their hardware, to train the crew. They'd also stay over extra days to train our people. Question-and-answers-type sessions also, and bring the hardware. We tried to pattern it very similar so they were all on the same page.

[Assistant] Looking back over the years that you've spent, is there a high point that you feel for yourself as well as for the program that you've contributed for?


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

[User] Right.

[Assistant] You were training for all these different areas, is that correct?

[User] Yes, because a lot of our training up front, the training that the crew member went through was somewhat, from a payload standpoint, from our responsibilities, was Mir in terms of on the ground, in terms of what we did for the flight controllers. So a lot of them would actually go to some of the crew training sessions so they could observe the crew interactions, so they understood what the issue would be two or three months down the line. We had the same investigators when they would come to test their hardware, to train the crew. They'd also stay over extra days to train our people. Question-and-answers-type sessions also, and bring the hardware. We tried to pattern it very similar so they were all on the same page.

[Assistant] Looking back over the years that you've spent, is there a high point that you feel for yourself as well as for the program that you've contributed for?

[User] I guess it depends how you establish priorities. I think from a professional aspect, as we mentioned briefly, it's being able to address and to meet certain challenges that have come up in a timely fashion and how you handle those things, and seeing the process work, if you will. I think from a personal aspect, I think it's more just working with people, and working with people of different cultures in that sense. So that's somewhat independent of the job at hand, necessarily; could have been anything. Could have been building a water-treatment plant somewhere or something like that. That would be more on a personal nature.

[Assistant] You were able to visit with the Europeans as well. Can you tell us about those experiences, going over there?


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

[User] It depends on the nature. If they were detailed questions about a payload operation or something like that, usually I would just have to take notes. It depends on the situation. In some cases I was kind of thrown into it as a stopgap to cover some stuff. So I'd say about 60, 70 percent of the questions I could answer, depending on what he had. That was both for Thagard and for Blaha, because we also had to go over there for Blaha for some time. Because I had a lot of things to cover, it was hard to get in-depth knowledge on any one particular area. So usually we had the team there. Most of the crew members actually prefer talking to a different variety of people, so basically what we did is we would put different people on the [console as Cap] Com, some of the other engineers and science support people. They like the variety, talking to different people. We just want to make sure whoever is on there is knowledgeable and they can conduct themselves to be somewhat expedient in a ten-minute pass. Sometimes the crew members just wanted to chitchat about different things. It worked out.

[Assistant] I can certainly understand that. I can't imagine that, but I can understand that they'd like to hear different voices.

[User] Right. And there's a ham radio capability on board the Mir, so they use that a lot from a diversionary standpoint.

[Assistant] Were you involved in making sure all that worked well?

[User] No. Actually, that's being done out of the Medical Operations Group. I don't know if you've got something scheduled with those guys, but they can give you more detail about some of that. Al Holland is actually the guy who's doing that.

[Assistant] We'll ask him. What do you see now for yourself or for the Shuttle-Mir Program in your involvement? Will you spend the next three or four months helping to close things down?


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

[User] Right. And there's a ham radio capability on board the Mir, so they use that a lot from a diversionary standpoint.

[Assistant] Were you involved in making sure all that worked well?

[User] No. Actually, that's being done out of the Medical Operations Group. I don't know if you've got something scheduled with those guys, but they can give you more detail about some of that. Al Holland is actually the guy who's doing that.

[Assistant] We'll ask him. What do you see now for yourself or for the Shuttle-Mir Program in your involvement? Will you spend the next three or four months helping to close things down?

[User] Yes. As I mentioned, the real-time operations aspect is going on through August. Shortly after that we have some baseline data collection, which will be done on the cosmonauts in September out of Moscow, so we have some hardware that has to be out there to support that. Then it will be returned. So once that comes back here, we have to disposition that hardware, close some of the final reports out, some of the things. So, roughly by September-October, even though the rest of the Phase One is essentially over shortly after 91, ours will go roughly through September-October, closing some things out.

[Assistant] I'm sure you'll be busy up until the last very minute, if there is a last very minute.


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

[User] No. Actually, that's being done out of the Medical Operations Group. I don't know if you've got something scheduled with those guys, but they can give you more detail about some of that. Al Holland is actually the guy who's doing that.

[Assistant] We'll ask him. What do you see now for yourself or for the Shuttle-Mir Program in your involvement? Will you spend the next three or four months helping to close things down?

[User] Yes. As I mentioned, the real-time operations aspect is going on through August. Shortly after that we have some baseline data collection, which will be done on the cosmonauts in September out of Moscow, so we have some hardware that has to be out there to support that. Then it will be returned. So once that comes back here, we have to disposition that hardware, close some of the final reports out, some of the things. So, roughly by September-October, even though the rest of the Phase One is essentially over shortly after 91, ours will go roughly through September-October, closing some things out.

[Assistant] I'm sure you'll be busy up until the last very minute, if there is a last very minute.

[User] That's true. That's true. I think it will come to a graceful halt, but I don't think it will be abrupt. I can see now the workload diminishing some. It's not to say problems don't keep up, but the things that would consume you day after day, eight, ten hours a day, are kind of dwindling away and now it's a little more -I'd consider it just clerical kind of stuff.

[Assistant] Are you adapting to the slower pace after all these years?


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

[User] Yes. As I mentioned, the real-time operations aspect is going on through August. Shortly after that we have some baseline data collection, which will be done on the cosmonauts in September out of Moscow, so we have some hardware that has to be out there to support that. Then it will be returned. So once that comes back here, we have to disposition that hardware, close some of the final reports out, some of the things. So, roughly by September-October, even though the rest of the Phase One is essentially over shortly after 91, ours will go roughly through September-October, closing some things out.

[Assistant] I'm sure you'll be busy up until the last very minute, if there is a last very minute.

[User] That's true. That's true. I think it will come to a graceful halt, but I don't think it will be abrupt. I can see now the workload diminishing some. It's not to say problems don't keep up, but the things that would consume you day after day, eight, ten hours a day, are kind of dwindling away and now it's a little more -I'd consider it just clerical kind of stuff.

[Assistant] Are you adapting to the slower pace after all these years?

[User] Yes and no, because I'm not used to not having to work fifty hours a week, so it's like -what do they say in Chicago? If the winds stop, people would fall down. I mean, that's kind of what you feel like, because we're not used to -a couple of guys who have left, they said, "I'm not used to sitting around and wondering where I'm going to go for lunch today." We're used to catching lunch when we can a lot of times, you know, from seven to six very easily.

[Assistant] It's a heck of a diet plan.


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

[User] That's true. That's true. I think it will come to a graceful halt, but I don't think it will be abrupt. I can see now the workload diminishing some. It's not to say problems don't keep up, but the things that would consume you day after day, eight, ten hours a day, are kind of dwindling away and now it's a little more -I'd consider it just clerical kind of stuff.

[Assistant] Are you adapting to the slower pace after all these years?

[User] Yes and no, because I'm not used to not having to work fifty hours a week, so it's like -what do they say in Chicago? If the winds stop, people would fall down. I mean, that's kind of what you feel like, because we're not used to -a couple of guys who have left, they said, "I'm not used to sitting around and wondering where I'm going to go for lunch today." We're used to catching lunch when we can a lot of times, you know, from seven to six very easily.

[Assistant] It's a heck of a diet plan.

[User] That's true. That's true. And also the responsibility. Because it's a small group, especially on the Civil Service side, I think we've been given a lot of responsibility and authority within a very small group. I don't think you'll find that in too many other projects. I know you won't find that in Station. So I think some of the people who have gone over there have been a little bit frustrated: "I'm used to doing all this and having this authority and getting all this stuff done, and I come over here and I'm responsible for this little box."

[Assistant] I guess flexibility is real important in Mir as well as real-time decision-making.


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

[User] Yes and no, because I'm not used to not having to work fifty hours a week, so it's like -what do they say in Chicago? If the winds stop, people would fall down. I mean, that's kind of what you feel like, because we're not used to -a couple of guys who have left, they said, "I'm not used to sitting around and wondering where I'm going to go for lunch today." We're used to catching lunch when we can a lot of times, you know, from seven to six very easily.

[Assistant] It's a heck of a diet plan.

[User] That's true. That's true. And also the responsibility. Because it's a small group, especially on the Civil Service side, I think we've been given a lot of responsibility and authority within a very small group. I don't think you'll find that in too many other projects. I know you won't find that in Station. So I think some of the people who have gone over there have been a little bit frustrated: "I'm used to doing all this and having this authority and getting all this stuff done, and I come over here and I'm responsible for this little box."

[Assistant] I guess flexibility is real important in Mir as well as real-time decision-making.

[User] Yes. And very early on, I think anyone who couldn't do that we had to kind of leave behind.

[Assistant] That expression "hit the ground running" just hasn't stopped yet.


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

[User] That's true. That's true. And also the responsibility. Because it's a small group, especially on the Civil Service side, I think we've been given a lot of responsibility and authority within a very small group. I don't think you'll find that in too many other projects. I know you won't find that in Station. So I think some of the people who have gone over there have been a little bit frustrated: "I'm used to doing all this and having this authority and getting all this stuff done, and I come over here and I'm responsible for this little box."

[Assistant] I guess flexibility is real important in Mir as well as real-time decision-making.

[User] Yes. And very early on, I think anyone who couldn't do that we had to kind of leave behind.

[Assistant] That expression "hit the ground running" just hasn't stopped yet.

[User] That's true. That's true.

[Assistant] At least now you're to a jog.


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

[User] Yes. And very early on, I think anyone who couldn't do that we had to kind of leave behind.

[Assistant] That expression "hit the ground running" just hasn't stopped yet.

[User] That's true. That's true.

[Assistant] At least now you're to a jog.

[User] [Laughter] Yes. Yes, that's true.

[Assistant] Get up and go again. That's all that I have. I was going to ask Mark or Carol if they have anything that they'd like to ask you, if that's okay.