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

[User] I think it was very little. I don't think there we really, really got that much. We learned a lot about Brazil and about the Northeast, and it's such a vast country with such an extensive difference between the north and the south.

[Assistant] So overall, do you think that training prepared you for the job you were going to be doing?

[User] Well, the language, I think. I think the language instruction was very strong and, you know, it depends a lot on the level of the students. What I haven't got around to yet is talking about. There was eight weeks in Milwaukee. And then there's six weeks in Brazil. So obviously there was more hands-on training when we got to Brazil. I could talk a little bit, when I finish talking about Milwaukee.

[Assistant] Oh, yeah, please do. I'm sorry.

[User] So that was some people got cut during that training. Of the lawyers, one of us got cut. No one knew why people got cut, there was speculation. I suppose, that the security check may be a reason why some of them did. I remember one of the secretaries got cut and she'd never been on a plane before except to Milwaukee. And people were speculating that maybe they thought she wouldn't be able to adapt to life in Brazil. Anyway, there were some of us that got cut, some of us quit of the group of 40. We weren't, the co- operative group wasn't separated from the secretaries, from the health or from the urban planning group at all. As far as I know, they may have got some specialized training, but I doubt it was very much. So the 40 of us were together for 10, 12 hours a day, whatever it was.

[Assistant] Ok, that yeah, so that's the most Milwaukee part of it. Talk a little bit about the in-country training you got.


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

[User] Well, the language, I think. I think the language instruction was very strong and, you know, it depends a lot on the level of the students. What I haven't got around to yet is talking about. There was eight weeks in Milwaukee. And then there's six weeks in Brazil. So obviously there was more hands-on training when we got to Brazil. I could talk a little bit, when I finish talking about Milwaukee.

[Assistant] Oh, yeah, please do. I'm sorry.

[User] So that was some people got cut during that training. Of the lawyers, one of us got cut. No one knew why people got cut, there was speculation. I suppose, that the security check may be a reason why some of them did. I remember one of the secretaries got cut and she'd never been on a plane before except to Milwaukee. And people were speculating that maybe they thought she wouldn't be able to adapt to life in Brazil. Anyway, there were some of us that got cut, some of us quit of the group of 40. We weren't, the co- operative group wasn't separated from the secretaries, from the health or from the urban planning group at all. As far as I know, they may have got some specialized training, but I doubt it was very much. So the 40 of us were together for 10, 12 hours a day, whatever it was.

[Assistant] Ok, that yeah, so that's the most Milwaukee part of it. Talk a little bit about the in-country training you got.

[User] Well, we flew down there and we were put in, um, one of the places we went was a small town, a couple, an hour and a half by bus from Recife. Recife is the capital at the time. Recife was about a million people, and I believe it was the third largest city in Brazil.

[Assistant] So Recife was the capital of the northeast?


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

[User] So there are the cooperative programs, which is called Fecompipe. It’s the, uh. It's F-E-C-O-M-P-I-P-E.

[Assistant] F-E-N-

[User]
F-E-C-O-M-P-I-P-E. Better, I guess a better way to phrase it would be the Federation of Mixed Cooperatives in the State of Pernambuco. There were, I think, 10 to 15 sites in the state of Pernambuco and the state was, I don't know, maybe 200 miles long and 40 miles wide, something like that. But we were in different sites around the state and everything revolved around Recife, the headquarters was there, training was there. We had meetings there. And we were been put in different cities. I was put in Vicencia, V-I-C- E-N-C-I-A, a town of 3,000 people. In a county of 23,000 people, I guess. So that was, if you could call it a county.

I'm not sure why I was put there. Some of the people were put in towns of 20 to 50 thousand. And in some of those towns there were volunteers already, they're not in the cooperative program, but in health programs, education. There were already volunteers there. And I think I was the first American that ended up there. And it was really just one main street, a couple of restaurants, if you want to use that, the term. And some sites had two volunteers.

[Assistant] So you were the only one.

[User] I was the only one and in terms of being able to cope with it, because my Portuguese are so bad, I immediately found this kid, 17 years old, and I said, teach me Portuguese. You know, I got money to pay you 20 cents an hour or what it was, to help teach me Portuguese. But it was, you know, it was not a very interesting place and it was hard to find people to communicate with at any level.

[Assistant] Well, where did you live? How did you find a place to live?


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

[User] The head of the program, a gentleman named John Burns, who had been in Brazil awhile, he was a priest at the time. He drove me to the town where I had my footlocker of over 100 books. We all got these foot lockers and my clothing and stuff, my suitcase.

[Assistant] You said he was head of the program. He was head of the co-op program or Peace Corps?

[User] He was head of Peace Corps in Pernambuco. There was another guy named Chuck Bosley who was head of the Peace Corps in the Northeast.

[Assistant] So, John?

[User] John had the Pernambuco program, which is the co-ops and some of the small health programs and teaching programs and stuff. I don't know how many people.

[Assistant] And he's the one who got you the place to live?


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

[User] He was head of Peace Corps in Pernambuco. There was another guy named Chuck Bosley who was head of the Peace Corps in the Northeast.

[Assistant] So, John?

[User] John had the Pernambuco program, which is the co-ops and some of the small health programs and teaching programs and stuff. I don't know how many people.

[Assistant] And he's the one who got you the place to live?

[User] Yeah, so he's the one. You know, I don't know, someone probably went there, said where can someone live. So the answer was there was one or two restaurants. It was in the back of the restaurant. So in the back of the restaurant was a room, maybe seven feet by three feet, four feet, something like that, had room for a bed. It was 30 cents a night. I think it was six feet by 10 feet, I wrote down. So six feet by 10 feet, and I ate there. And I think dinner was 75 cents a night. So that's where I stayed.

[Assistant] Did you have a toilet? How did you wash?


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

[User] They had each other. And they had my friend. And I think some went much further out and they had horses and there's some with rural, not lawyers, but there was this other group that had, some with more agricultural backgrounds. Not really a lot. But, you know, they had government that got involved in that to some extent. I think that was a real flaw. I think if we're going to be there, I think we ought to learn something about their culture. I think we should be involved in some of the planning stuff, planting, doing that stuff. And in fact, those who stayed for the second year and at the end, I think only 11 of the 31 made it for two years. The others. I ended up at another legal aid program. Some went home, some went on other programs, etc. But the 11 or so who stayed, they got involved in agricultural projects, and they had a much more meaningful experience. And they did a terrific job of setting things up for the next group. And the group that replaced us really was in a much better situation.

[Assistant] Because they were involved in agriculture?

[User] Yeah, and because they could. One of the group that came after us, which was and I'll talk a little bit about them, and try to talk one of them into who lives in Arlington is a good friend who maybe you’ll end up talking to. But they, you know, they had the benefit, sometimes they try to have overlap and they had a much more meaningful experience and they learned a lot more and they really hit the ground running, so to speak. They also get together all the time and have programs and stuff now, 50 years later. And so that's sort of the experience.

[Assistant] So how did you end up leaving? You said you left after eight months, is that it?

[User] Yeah. From the first month or two, I mean, I just understood that, you know, I wasn’t going to make it two years. I understood that.

[Assistant] And because of the loneliness?


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

[User] No, I ate at the same place.

[Assistant] Well, wait, you left town though?

[User] No, no. I stayed in the town.

[Assistant] In Vicencia?

[User] Vicencia. Yeah, I stayed in the town, but I had a house in the town now, which was three blocks away.

[Assistant] Oh I thought you had moved to?


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

[User] No, no. I stayed in the town.

[Assistant] In Vicencia?

[User] Vicencia. Yeah, I stayed in the town, but I had a house in the town now, which was three blocks away.

[Assistant] Oh I thought you had moved to?

[User] No, I'm not. I haven't met. I'm down there. And three months later, like in March. I got there in February. Peace Corps training ended in February, and I got there in February and then it took six weeks to two months to get a home. And that was nice. You know, I had a hammock. I don't think I had a bed. Everybody had hammocks. Most people had beds, I sort of liked the hammock, I think. And so I had the hammock, but no bed. But, you know, I had a dresser and, you know, desk or something. Anyway, it was it was much more comfortable. And that was that place.

[Assistant] And then you moved to Fortaleza?


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

[User] Vicencia. Yeah, I stayed in the town, but I had a house in the town now, which was three blocks away.

[Assistant] Oh I thought you had moved to?

[User] No, I'm not. I haven't met. I'm down there. And three months later, like in March. I got there in February. Peace Corps training ended in February, and I got there in February and then it took six weeks to two months to get a home. And that was nice. You know, I had a hammock. I don't think I had a bed. Everybody had hammocks. Most people had beds, I sort of liked the hammock, I think. And so I had the hammock, but no bed. But, you know, I had a dresser and, you know, desk or something. Anyway, it was it was much more comfortable. And that was that place.

[Assistant] And then you moved to Fortaleza?

[User]
So, I went to the program there, which is a legal aid program. And prior to going there, I spent a couple of weeks with, maybe it was just 10 days, I don't know, to Sao Paolo where I saw the program down there and I saw what the volunteers were doing. Many of whom were good friends from Peace Corps training, and remain so.

So then I came to that legal aid program and the state headquarters in the office was there. The shower was there. So I had a shower and I had a key and I lived in a little, like, one of the volunteers, the secretary was leaving. I took over her house and I guess most of her furniture, whatever it was, and that was in a real poor community about 20 minutes away. And I would take the bus into the center of the city, and there I was involved in the legal aid.

[Assistant] And what was the legal aid program? Whom did it help with what?


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

[User]
So, I went to the program there, which is a legal aid program. And prior to going there, I spent a couple of weeks with, maybe it was just 10 days, I don't know, to Sao Paolo where I saw the program down there and I saw what the volunteers were doing. Many of whom were good friends from Peace Corps training, and remain so.

So then I came to that legal aid program and the state headquarters in the office was there. The shower was there. So I had a shower and I had a key and I lived in a little, like, one of the volunteers, the secretary was leaving. I took over her house and I guess most of her furniture, whatever it was, and that was in a real poor community about 20 minutes away. And I would take the bus into the center of the city, and there I was involved in the legal aid.

[Assistant] And what was the legal aid program? Whom did it help with what?

[User] You want the Portuguese name of it?

[Assistant] Sure.

[User] It’s probably somewhere here.

[Assistant] Well, you can give that to me afterwards.


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

[User] It was much better, it was what I expected. The projects didn't go very far. I don't know why the ones that that try to develop. I was involved in developing with the people so that it was a completely different program to the volunteers. There was just a few in the capital. The rest of them were spread all over the state and the state was much bigger, whereas we were all sort of pushed together in Pernambuco. So that made a different kind of dynamic because I was an outsider and I didn't have that. But, you know, I got the volunteers and with my friends from my first site, in Pernambuco, when they came through and a lot of others came through, my second hammock got a lot of use and stuff. So it was just a, it was just a lot more fun.

[Assistant] And you felt you were contributing.

[User] Yeah, I mean, the legal aid was sort of contributing and it was interesting and I was learning stuff and it was a much more interesting place.

[Assistant] So how long did you do that?

[User] Well, I lasted to the end and then I was hopeful that I would train my replacements or there would be replacements. Apparently they had trouble finding other lawyers to go there. And there was talk when I left that I would be part of a training program in the Virgin Islands to train lawyers to, uh, for legal aid programs in Sao Paolo or other programs in Brazil. And I got a phone call three or four weeks later saying, you know, we're not going to do that. As far as I know, that never happened. So the legal aid program died in the state of Ceara, in the city of Fortaleza, at that time. I don't know what happened to the one in Sao Paolo. One of the lawyers in that program who I knew a little bit ended up as a federal judge here in P.G. County. He's been involved in some of the major immigration cases and stuff there, I see his name.

[Assistant] So you finished your two years. You mentioned you dated?


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

[User] Yeah, I mean, the legal aid was sort of contributing and it was interesting and I was learning stuff and it was a much more interesting place.

[Assistant] So how long did you do that?

[User] Well, I lasted to the end and then I was hopeful that I would train my replacements or there would be replacements. Apparently they had trouble finding other lawyers to go there. And there was talk when I left that I would be part of a training program in the Virgin Islands to train lawyers to, uh, for legal aid programs in Sao Paolo or other programs in Brazil. And I got a phone call three or four weeks later saying, you know, we're not going to do that. As far as I know, that never happened. So the legal aid program died in the state of Ceara, in the city of Fortaleza, at that time. I don't know what happened to the one in Sao Paolo. One of the lawyers in that program who I knew a little bit ended up as a federal judge here in P.G. County. He's been involved in some of the major immigration cases and stuff there, I see his name.

[Assistant] So you finished your two years. You mentioned you dated?

[User] Oh, yeah. In in the north. I dated in the north when I went to Ceara. I dated a one woman, and I realized it wasn't working out for any reason. And I introduced her to another volunteer and they ended up dating and getting married and she still lives here in this area. And some other volunteers, there was one in our group. There was a lot of social life. And there are a lot of the volunteers ended up marrying Brazilians, and especially the group that followed us in Pernambuco, a lot of them ended up with Brazilian wives.

[Assistant] So the men married women, not the other way?


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

[User] Well, I lasted to the end and then I was hopeful that I would train my replacements or there would be replacements. Apparently they had trouble finding other lawyers to go there. And there was talk when I left that I would be part of a training program in the Virgin Islands to train lawyers to, uh, for legal aid programs in Sao Paolo or other programs in Brazil. And I got a phone call three or four weeks later saying, you know, we're not going to do that. As far as I know, that never happened. So the legal aid program died in the state of Ceara, in the city of Fortaleza, at that time. I don't know what happened to the one in Sao Paolo. One of the lawyers in that program who I knew a little bit ended up as a federal judge here in P.G. County. He's been involved in some of the major immigration cases and stuff there, I see his name.

[Assistant] So you finished your two years. You mentioned you dated?

[User] Oh, yeah. In in the north. I dated in the north when I went to Ceara. I dated a one woman, and I realized it wasn't working out for any reason. And I introduced her to another volunteer and they ended up dating and getting married and she still lives here in this area. And some other volunteers, there was one in our group. There was a lot of social life. And there are a lot of the volunteers ended up marrying Brazilians, and especially the group that followed us in Pernambuco, a lot of them ended up with Brazilian wives.

[Assistant] So the men married women, not the other way?

[User] Yeah. There were some women who married Brazilian men, but it was less common. And some of them ended up going back to Brazil, some of them ended up teaching at colleges there, and some of them end up divorced, the men and women, and some of them didn't, you know. But there was certainly a lot of, maybe 10 or 15 percent ended up that way.

[Assistant] Did you travel a lot while you were in Brazil?


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

[User] Reentry was hard. I mean, there was a lot of culture shock, and in return, all the people seem tall and all the people seem white, very white. I came back and I eventually ended up in a legal aid program in Chicago. And I came back to the small town in Illinois and then I moved to Chicago, which. You know Chicago at all?

[Assistant] Not well.

[User] Where are you from?

[Assistant] New York.

[User] OK. Anyway, so I ended up a legal aid program in Chicago. One of the people in our group was already in that program and that helped me get the job. And he was a close friend in Brazil and remain so and remains in Chicago. And I ended up at a legal aid program there in a neighborhood office. And for a couple of years on the south side of Chicago in Inglewood, which is Michelle Obama's home neighborhood. And then there became an opening to run an office in the Mexican area of Chicago called Pilsen, and so I applied for that job, to be the head of the office, and it had four or five lawyers and a staff of four or five. And I had, I think I mentioned I took Spanish lessons down there and I sort of kept up the Spanish. I used it in Argentina and Uruguay and more lessons, and I kept up Portuguese, but a lot more people spoke Spanish. Anyway, that helped me get the head of that office, my Spanish, and I kept on lessons and stuff. And I think my Spanish was maybe a three level, maybe 80 percent of the Portuguese. And of course, neither is any good now, and I have no idea what's going to come out of my mouth was Portuguese or Spanish. But, you know, I used Spanish there. And I stayed in the legal aid program. So that and then I ended up getting a position in the federal government here when Jimmy Carter became president and then I ended up in private practice in Alexandria after I left the federal government.

[Assistant] So what was the impact of Peace Corps on your life as you think about it?


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

[User] Where are you from?

[Assistant] New York.

[User] OK. Anyway, so I ended up a legal aid program in Chicago. One of the people in our group was already in that program and that helped me get the job. And he was a close friend in Brazil and remain so and remains in Chicago. And I ended up at a legal aid program there in a neighborhood office. And for a couple of years on the south side of Chicago in Inglewood, which is Michelle Obama's home neighborhood. And then there became an opening to run an office in the Mexican area of Chicago called Pilsen, and so I applied for that job, to be the head of the office, and it had four or five lawyers and a staff of four or five. And I had, I think I mentioned I took Spanish lessons down there and I sort of kept up the Spanish. I used it in Argentina and Uruguay and more lessons, and I kept up Portuguese, but a lot more people spoke Spanish. Anyway, that helped me get the head of that office, my Spanish, and I kept on lessons and stuff. And I think my Spanish was maybe a three level, maybe 80 percent of the Portuguese. And of course, neither is any good now, and I have no idea what's going to come out of my mouth was Portuguese or Spanish. But, you know, I used Spanish there. And I stayed in the legal aid program. So that and then I ended up getting a position in the federal government here when Jimmy Carter became president and then I ended up in private practice in Alexandria after I left the federal government.

[Assistant] So what was the impact of Peace Corps on your life as you think about it?

[User] I think it was extraordinary. It was the two most interesting years of my life, to a great extent, it charted the rest of my life.

[Assistant] Go ahead, continue.


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] They changed attitudes towards the United States, especially during the Vietnam War.

[User] Yeah. There's a lot, we talked a lot about the Vietnam War, and especially in a place like northeastern Brazil, where the money, which I didn't say, but the cooperatives, most of the money was from the United States. And the building for the cooperative, state cooperative, was AFL-CIO money. And the money came from the co-op league of the United States. And supposedly there was a lot of CIA money that was put into that group. But we had to learn about that on our own. That wasn’t something that we or anybody talked about those two years. But that's how I spent those two years.

[Assistant] That's great. So anything else you want to mention that we haven't talked about?

[User] No. I mean, are there any questions that you all have?

[Assistant] No, it's been a really interesting interview. Important perspective. I'm glad we had a chance to do that.


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

[User] Yeah. There's a lot, we talked a lot about the Vietnam War, and especially in a place like northeastern Brazil, where the money, which I didn't say, but the cooperatives, most of the money was from the United States. And the building for the cooperative, state cooperative, was AFL-CIO money. And the money came from the co-op league of the United States. And supposedly there was a lot of CIA money that was put into that group. But we had to learn about that on our own. That wasn’t something that we or anybody talked about those two years. But that's how I spent those two years.

[Assistant] That's great. So anything else you want to mention that we haven't talked about?

[User] No. I mean, are there any questions that you all have?

[Assistant] No, it's been a really interesting interview. Important perspective. I'm glad we had a chance to do that.

[User] It was nice meeting you and maybe we'll talk about Somalia.

[Assistant] Well, that's a different interview.


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

[User] No. I mean, are there any questions that you all have?

[Assistant] No, it's been a really interesting interview. Important perspective. I'm glad we had a chance to do that.

[User] It was nice meeting you and maybe we'll talk about Somalia.

[Assistant] Well, that's a different interview.

[User] That would be a different interview, yeah.

[Assistant] Ok, thank you.


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

[User] I started that when I was out of Aircraft Ops [Operations], as a matter of fact, and I ended up—I got my degree in 1980. My wife and I graduated the same night, different places. She got her nursing degree at College of the Mainland [Texas City, Texas] and I got my master’s at UHCL.

[Assistant] What interested you in going back to school at that time and getting this degree? Was it for career advancement, or was it through a program with NASA and UHCL?

[User] No. No. The fact is that getting degrees, getting advanced degrees, with NASA, it doesn’t do much for your career enhancement. I don’t know of anybody who went back and got advanced degrees, except, now, for people who have no degree at all and go back and get a degree, I think that it provides them with opportunities. But if you have a degree and you go get a master’s or a Ph.D. I don’t think it makes any difference at all.\n\n It was kind of personal interest. One of the things that they don’t do in engineering school is teach you about business type stuff and teach you about money and finance and that, and it was kind of interesting. I thought it would be fun to do. Matter of fact, I had a couple of friends that were doing it, also, and we were going part-time. The more I got into it, the more I liked it. It was a different way of thinking. I had an engineering degree, and the business degree is a lot different.\n\n Has it helped me in a career? Maybe remotely. Whenever you’re applying for a job, you can say, “Well, I’ve got an MBA [Masters of Business Administration] as well.”\n\n They’ll say, “Well, at least when we’re doing budgets and things like this, this person understands what we’re doing.”

[Assistant] Well, STS-1 in 1981, were you still with the Flight Techniques group?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Do you want to talk about that first flight and your memories of that?


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

[User] No. No. The fact is that getting degrees, getting advanced degrees, with NASA, it doesn’t do much for your career enhancement. I don’t know of anybody who went back and got advanced degrees, except, now, for people who have no degree at all and go back and get a degree, I think that it provides them with opportunities. But if you have a degree and you go get a master’s or a Ph.D. I don’t think it makes any difference at all.\n\n It was kind of personal interest. One of the things that they don’t do in engineering school is teach you about business type stuff and teach you about money and finance and that, and it was kind of interesting. I thought it would be fun to do. Matter of fact, I had a couple of friends that were doing it, also, and we were going part-time. The more I got into it, the more I liked it. It was a different way of thinking. I had an engineering degree, and the business degree is a lot different.\n\n Has it helped me in a career? Maybe remotely. Whenever you’re applying for a job, you can say, “Well, I’ve got an MBA [Masters of Business Administration] as well.”\n\n They’ll say, “Well, at least when we’re doing budgets and things like this, this person understands what we’re doing.”

[Assistant] Well, STS-1 in 1981, were you still with the Flight Techniques group?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Do you want to talk about that first flight and your memories of that?

[User] There’s nothing remarkable about STS-1. I don’t remember anything specific about it. I was not on console. I had been in Flight Techniques. I remember it; there was nothing that made it stand out in my mind one way or the other, that was close or an accident or anything like that.

[Assistant] Was there any sense of relief that the ideas that you’d been working on, that everything worked?


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Do you want to talk about that first flight and your memories of that?

[User] There’s nothing remarkable about STS-1. I don’t remember anything specific about it. I was not on console. I had been in Flight Techniques. I remember it; there was nothing that made it stand out in my mind one way or the other, that was close or an accident or anything like that.

[Assistant] Was there any sense of relief that the ideas that you’d been working on, that everything worked?

[User] No. There is a—and maybe it’s just me—it seems like we felt like, there was an attitude, that we had worked so hard and been so thorough that unless there was some type of a design issue that we were unaware of, that things were going to work. We had a lot of margin. If you’re teaching your kid how to drive, you feel a lot better if you’re in a ten-lane-wide highway, because you know they’re not going to get off in the ditch. They’ve got a lot of margin for error. You don’t do that on a little country road that you’ve got to be very careful on.\n\n That’s the way we did things; we made sure there was a lot of margin. A lot of that stuff had to do with entry, with turning on jets, with things like that, and with fuel management, and consumables management in general, how you would do that. We’d run simulations, and you’d flown that thing so many times in simulations and tested it so many times that, in my mind, there was never a question that it wasn’t going to work.

[Assistant] You moved in [19]’81. You were assigned to the Guidance and Propulsion Systems Branch in Flight Control. Do you want to talk about that position?


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

[User] Yes. He went by him. He went by him, or looked over his shoulder, brushed him or something like that, and the Russian ended up blaming it on him, saying that if he hadn’t come by and bumped him, it would have been okay. But generally that doesn’t happen on a—a brush doesn’t—this is a long-term situation.

[Assistant] Were you involved in the investigation after the fire on Mir?

[User] No. No, I was not.

[Assistant] At one point you mentioned that some of the investigations that you were involved with was to get you training for the Mishap Investigation Team. At what point did you become a part of the Mishap Investigation Team?

[User] Can we stop and let me take a break here?

[Assistant]
Sure, sure. Not a problem.\n\n [pause]

Okay. When we stopped, we were going to talk about your involvement in the Mishap Investigation Team and how that started.


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

[User] I think it was the personalities of the guy, the other person, and myself. Matter of fact, he and I, we still talk. He’s been heavily involved in Katrina and all this stuff, and other things, since then. He lives up in Denton, Texas. We periodically chat. We just—we hit it off. If there had been two A-type personalities there, two people who didn’t want to cooperate, if each of us had said we’re in charge, no matter what, there would have been a big fight. But right off the bat, he and I just—maybe it’s because we’re both bald. We just hit it off. We would talk, and we would negotiate, come up with solutions. I realized where his expertise was, and he realized where mine was, and it just worked.

[Assistant] You were the Chairman for the Space Shuttle Systems Safety Review Panel. Was that after\n\n Columbia\n\n ?

[User] No, that came with my job. When I moved into SR&QA in [19]’89, a part of that was being that.

[Assistant] Well, is there anything else about\n\n Columbia\n\n and that time period or in that position that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention? One other thing, in my notes I’m seeing the Space Shuttle Probability Risk Assessment [PRA] Project. Do you have any specific memories about that?

[User] Oh yes. [Laughs]

[Assistant] Would you like to share them with us?


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

[User] No, not personally. There were JSC S&MA folks there though.

[Assistant] Were you surprised by those test results?

[User] When they fired foam at the wing?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] I remember it was on the seventh test that they broke it, and I wondered, “What if we had quit at six?” This would have come down as a big unknown, and “We still don’t know what happened.” But on that seventh one, they were able to put a big hole in the RCC [reinforced carbon carbon] leading edge, and that became the smoking gun, and we could now say, “Okay, here’s what we’ve got. We’ve got a high-speed big chunk of foam that has enough energy in it to damage this RCC, catastrophically damage it, and here are the pictures.”\n\n Everybody was just amazed, because everybody has their own experience of driving down the highway and somebody’s got some kind of a 7-11 beer cooler in the back, and a piece of it flies off. It might be six inches by ten inches long, maybe an inch and a half thick, very lightweight white Styrofoam, and once it gets up into the air, it immediately stops its own relative motion with respect to the highway and therefore becomes very high speed when it hits my car because I’m going sixty [miles per hour]. It has immediately gotten to zero, so I hit that thing at sixty miles an hour and you don’t even hear it, it’s so light. It hits you right in the windshield and it scares you a little bit, but when you think about that, you wonder, well, how could that thing bring down a Space Shuttle, something like that? But it did.

[Assistant] I know from some of the other interviews we did, people were very surprised when that happened. Nobody expected that.\n\n Did you feel any time pressure during that period to return to flight?


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

[User] Yes. The Space Flight Awareness Program was a big part of our process. The idea was to go out of your way to let the workforce be a part of it, bring their families in, giving tours to family members that we really hadn’t done before. Once they started doing this near the end here, they said, “Why haven’t we always been doing this?”\n\n And we got legislation at [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC] to allow NASA HR [Human Resources] people to help place contractors who were coming off the job, help them find other jobs outside of NASA. Normally, we’re not supposed to do that (without special legislation). The contractors do that; we don’t. We facilitate civil service placement maybe, but not the contractors. So we needed legislative relief to do that, and we got it. There was a lot of that kind of “bending over backwards” going on. Again, and it blew the minds of these ASAP people. They’d never seen that stuff. I thought that whole thing was done very well, and it was consistent with the human space flight culture that we like to think we’ve always had, and that is that people really are aware of the stakes involved when you’re talking about human space flight and try not to become distracted, and really keep their eye on the ball.

[Assistant] Going back to [STS-]114, they did have some dings and things, and as you were talking about the flights since then, they had the protruding gap fillers that they actually went out on an EVA [Extravehicular Activity] and pulled out.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] Then it was another year before we flew again because of some of the issues that they needed to go back and look at.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Were there any concerns in your area that there were going to be more problems with those following flights, or did you feel like it was being addressed the way it needed to be?


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

[User] I know back when I was flying there was a lot more friction between the mental health guys and the management, the life science management, about sharing records. There was a lot more tension in there that I was aware of, not really part of it, but just aware of when I was here in Houston. This second review, I didn’t see as much of that. It seemed to be they had figured out how best to share data and how to keep it private without causing a lot of concern or angst in the management. My guess is over the period of time of human space flight, this has been one of those areas that’s fluctuated up and down. What’s too much sharing and what’s not enough? I did sense that there was some improvement there when I looked at it, from what I remembered back in the eighties.

[Assistant] It’s a sensitive subject, the issues of privacy and how much people are willing to share about their privacy.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] I can imagine it would be very tough.

[User] Also, they have the family involved. This isn’t just the medical or the mental health professional and the astronaut; astronaut families, too, are part of this. They treat it as a family system, and if an astronaut’s family is having problems that could translate to performance of the astronaut. A lot of that is pretty private stuff that is not appropriate to be shared with all these managers, who may or may not even have mental or even medical backgrounds, and yet it could be relevant to the flight surgeon who’s preparing a crew to go fly and needs to be aware that someone’s under a lot of stress because of a family medical problem or a family mental health problem. This isn’t really straightforward stuff, and it’s tough, but I think they do a very good job today.

[Assistant] Yes, it is very interesting how they handle that and especially for long-duration flight and preparing the astronauts and their families for that period when they’re basically out of pocket. They can talk to them every day if they need to, but it’s a different situation.


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] I can imagine it would be very tough.

[User] Also, they have the family involved. This isn’t just the medical or the mental health professional and the astronaut; astronaut families, too, are part of this. They treat it as a family system, and if an astronaut’s family is having problems that could translate to performance of the astronaut. A lot of that is pretty private stuff that is not appropriate to be shared with all these managers, who may or may not even have mental or even medical backgrounds, and yet it could be relevant to the flight surgeon who’s preparing a crew to go fly and needs to be aware that someone’s under a lot of stress because of a family medical problem or a family mental health problem. This isn’t really straightforward stuff, and it’s tough, but I think they do a very good job today.

[Assistant] Yes, it is very interesting how they handle that and especially for long-duration flight and preparing the astronauts and their families for that period when they’re basically out of pocket. They can talk to them every day if they need to, but it’s a different situation.

[User] Of course, this was a big deal, not the mental health part, but the big deal about the family health on STS-134 when Mark [E.] Kelly was trying to decide whether he should go fly his mission with his wife, Gabby [Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords], in rehab from the Arizona shooting, and still relatively early in the rehab, he’s going to be going off training eighty hours a week and trying to care for her. That must have been a tremendous stress on that family.

[Assistant] I imagine it was.


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

[User] Of course, this was a big deal, not the mental health part, but the big deal about the family health on STS-134 when Mark [E.] Kelly was trying to decide whether he should go fly his mission with his wife, Gabby [Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords], in rehab from the Arizona shooting, and still relatively early in the rehab, he’s going to be going off training eighty hours a week and trying to care for her. That must have been a tremendous stress on that family.

[Assistant] I imagine it was.

[User] I don’t know all the details and certainly would never second-guess his decision, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d have said, “I’m just going to back out of this flight. I’ve had a good career, and I’ve got to put my wife on front burner here.” But then his own situation was such that she was in the care that she needed without him particularly and that he was comfortable with that, and that he was still able to get home at night and all these other things. He had to put all that together and figure out what to do, but it was one of those situations where I’m sure the flight surgeons were concerned about him because of a family situation, not his own particular health, but just the effect it could have on him and his performance and his morale.

[Assistant] Yes, it’s quite a balancing act.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] The changes in NASA that are happening now with the commercial operations and industry partners for astronaut transport, you had a statement before the Senate Subcommittee on Space and Science in March 2010, and you talked about some of those challenges of providing crew safety and requirements and standards that would apply to these commercial or industry partners. Since that was over a year ago, do you want to talk about some of those concerns that you had and if there are any plans or any standards in place?


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

[User] More commercial?

[Assistant] Yes, more commercial.

[User] Yes, yes, probably. I just hope people realize that there’s a difference between buying a commercial product or service and developing one, because that second thing there really put us on the spot. Basically, I don’t really think that’s our job. Now, you can argue that it is, and people are doing that.\n\n It’s a philosophical discussion that’s going on about NASA and why we’re here and what we should be doing, and I’ve always thought that we ought to do NASA-unique missions. That’s what we’re here for, and we’re challenged by the Space Act to do it in ways that have benefit to commerce. I worry that if we change that around and we become an agency that develops commercial stuff, that there’s only so much that we can do, and if that’s what we’re going to do, then maybe we don’t have enough money to do our unique missions. And if we’re not doing unique missions, anybody can pass money from the [U.S.] Treasury to some commercial guy who wants to do something commercial, doesn’t have to be NASA, and we may find ourselves being questioned as to why we’re even here.

[Assistant] There are those unique missions still going on.

[User] Yes, we do.

[Assistant] We’re still having unmanned launches.


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

[User] Yes, we do.

[Assistant] We’re still having unmanned launches.

[User] Yes. Thank goodness for the science side. Now, you could say that aeronautics does a lot of commercial stuff, and they do, but it’s R&D. They’re doing research and development things that have benefits to government and commerce, and they’re doing it for those purposes. They don’t have missions, as such, in Aeronautics. They don’t go out and do missions, but human space flight has always been about missions, unique missions, and so it’s a different track we’ve been on. I worry that if we get out of that and get into the business of NASA doing nothing but R&D that has potential to be used by commercial folks for commercial space activities, that we’re going to suffer in the budget wars even more than we do already, if that’s possible. I might be wrong on that, but I just wonder.

[Assistant] When we did our interview for the NASA at 50 project, we talked a lot about your position and what you’ve done since 2002 and the challenges to your position and the outlook for your position in the future. You made the decision that you’re going to be retiring at the end of the month.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] What do you see for the Safety and Mission Assurance area that you’re in charge of now and whoever’s going to follow on after you? What do you see for that future, and what advice would you give to the next person in your position?


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

[User] No, I’m going to take leave. That’s what I tell people.

[Assistant] That’s good. That’s good. I think you deserve it.

[User] I’m old. I’m sixty-five. [laughter]

[Assistant] It’s time.

[User] It’s time.

[Assistant] Looking back over your entire career with NASA, what would you consider the most challenging aspect of your career or the most challenging time?


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

[User] I wouldn’t be able to think of anything now. I’d have to go back and reread everything. I think we’ve captured a lot of stuff. I appreciate your interest and the way you’ve set the table on it. Sometimes I come into these interviews and I think that I don’t know if I can just, from scratch, be useful to you, but what you have done is you’ve picked out some questions that get me thinking, and doing your homework has helped me do a better job for you, I think.

[Assistant] I appreciate that. We do try to do that before we do interviews. Oral history is different, and we try to approach it that way.

[User] So I really respect how you folks do that, and the fact that you’re doing it, period.

[Assistant] Thank you.

[User] It’s going to be useful, too, and I hope people read these things some day.

[Assistant] We do too.


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

[User] So I really respect how you folks do that, and the fact that you’re doing it, period.

[Assistant] Thank you.

[User] It’s going to be useful, too, and I hope people read these things some day.

[Assistant] We do too.

[User] Maybe not mine, but some of the good ones.

[Assistant] I appreciate it, and I appreciate all this time that you have given to this program and this project.


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

[User] Yeah. I don't really think that it impacted my work. It was just independence from GSA. And I don't know if that resulted in, I guess maybe it gave us more clout or whatever. We were this independent agency. We weren't part of GSA, which people always kind of thought is like the agency that cleaned up the buildings. So instead of saying that we work for GSA, now we can say the National Archives, and it sounded more impressive. But impacting the work for me? No. Maybe for funding, but I wasn't really involved in budgeting and things like that.

[Assistant] Did when we got a new Archivist? Did that ever have any impacts on your work?

[User] No. We didn't see the Archivists all that much. We did have inspections where people from the agency came, and they would review operations and make suggestions for improvement.

[Assistant] So were you involved at all or do you know anything about the discussions to make the military personnel files permanent records?

[User] No, that was on the archival side of the agency, so I wasn't involved in that.

[Assistant] And you spent your career at the civilian personnel building, correct?


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

[User] No, that was on the archival side of the agency, so I wasn't involved in that.

[Assistant] And you spent your career at the civilian personnel building, correct?

[User] Right. About two years. Accession and disposal.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] And then putting records into the system called NARS-5. I don't know if that still exists or not.

[Assistant] Yeah, I don't think so. It is familiar though. The NARS-5. I've definitely seen that. Yeah. So can you talk about any interesting discoveries you've made during your work or any really your favorite aspects of your work?


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

[User] Right. About two years. Accession and disposal.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] And then putting records into the system called NARS-5. I don't know if that still exists or not.

[Assistant] Yeah, I don't think so. It is familiar though. The NARS-5. I've definitely seen that. Yeah. So can you talk about any interesting discoveries you've made during your work or any really your favorite aspects of your work?

[User] Well, I guess it was always changing because as technology developed, we were always improving our systems. And I thought that was interesting. For me on the management staff, I mean, I did so many different things. I mean, I was an EEO counselor. On one project, I set up all the logical screens for a website to accept military records requests. I didn't do the HTML, and I thought that was interesting. I kind of liked, I guess, the aspects that related to automation because that just seemed to be figuring out a problem or having a problem and then figuring out how there could be an automated solution to it. I even worked on, they called it—I don't know what they call it in Washington – the Combined Federal Campaign. And I set up a program where you could track all the donations and people got different incentives. It kind of did everything, and I offered that to the people that were in charge of the Combined Federal Campaign here in St. Louis. I don't know if they ever adopted it, but it worked great at the records center. There were just many, many aspects to what I did. We, I mean, we evaluated suggestions, updated procedures and policy, worked with contractors, did training, did troubleshooting. One day was never the same as the other. There was no, "here's a pile of work. Complete this and we'll give you another pile of work."

[Assistant] Yeah. So do you think that your work has changed the way that you view records or the importance of records?


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

[User] Oh, sure. Yeah. You know, every year one friend and I would use some of our annual leave and we'd find somewhere to go – vacation destinations. Yeah, we'd go places after work or on weekends, too. Yeah. It's a good group of people. And like I said last night, how many of us were there? I don't know, a dozen. There's probably about 20 people in all. They call it, well, the men started it when some of the men retired before the women did. They called it "Boys Night Out." So now they call it "Boys and Girls Night Out." And so once a month we meet at a particular location and have something to eat, something to drink, and share what's been going on in our lives. And yeah, it's like you said, it was a positive culture that existed at the records center especially. I have to attribute that to the former director, David Petree. I think he was a good guy and that just sort of trickled down. Yeah, it was a good group.

[Assistant] That's great. Yeah. The genesis for this oral history project really came from Charlie. It was his idea and he really got it started. So I have to give him a big thank you for pushing us to do this project.

[User] Yeah, well, Charlie was my boss for a while too. Yeah, he's a good one. Crazy, crazy, funny guy. But. Yeah. And David Petree. Yeah, he was my supervisor, too. And Deborah Hilton. I don't know if you talked to Deborah or not.

[Assistant] No, but we're still looking for people. So if you have contact information for Deborah or we haven't talked to David Petree.

[User] Oh, okay.

[Assistant] Well, I would love it if I could get, if you have their contact information, and we can do this offline, but that would be great because we're trying to talk to as many people as possible and get as many perspectives as possible.


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

[User] Yeah, well, Charlie was my boss for a while too. Yeah, he's a good one. Crazy, crazy, funny guy. But. Yeah. And David Petree. Yeah, he was my supervisor, too. And Deborah Hilton. I don't know if you talked to Deborah or not.

[Assistant] No, but we're still looking for people. So if you have contact information for Deborah or we haven't talked to David Petree.

[User] Oh, okay.

[Assistant] Well, I would love it if I could get, if you have their contact information, and we can do this offline, but that would be great because we're trying to talk to as many people as possible and get as many perspectives as possible.

[User] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think Deborah, she certainly would, and I'm sure Mr. Petree would. I still call him Mr. Petree. He says call me David. And it's like I can't. I'm sorry. You are my boss. [laughter] Yeah, maybe, I could send a note to Charlie. Or if you want to since he's kind of the point man here and just ask him if he wants to reach out to Deborah and to David Petree.

[Assistant] Yeah, that'd be, that'd be great.


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

[User] Oh, okay.

[Assistant] Well, I would love it if I could get, if you have their contact information, and we can do this offline, but that would be great because we're trying to talk to as many people as possible and get as many perspectives as possible.

[User] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think Deborah, she certainly would, and I'm sure Mr. Petree would. I still call him Mr. Petree. He says call me David. And it's like I can't. I'm sorry. You are my boss. [laughter] Yeah, maybe, I could send a note to Charlie. Or if you want to since he's kind of the point man here and just ask him if he wants to reach out to Deborah and to David Petree.

[Assistant] Yeah, that'd be, that'd be great.

[User] Did you talk to Marcia Haley?

[Assistant] I haven't. No. Give me all these good names.


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

[User] Okay. I'm going to actually see that person tonight who worked in the files with the mask on and everything, and they had to wear gloves and, you know.

[Assistant] Yeah, we have some pictures of how they do it now with gloves. But back then, too, because the records were so, I mean, I hate to say gross, but it seemed like you did not want to touch them or breathe them in.

[User] Right. Yeah. Well, you know, when I was doing the verification for the SGO, when I would find an existing record and run the codes to see if they matched, a lot of times they were partially burned and I'd have them on my desk and be looking for the hospital admission card. And, it would be charred and well, they were like mold spores. So, you'd have to kind of brush off your desk afterwards because there was all this residual stuff. But now I think most of those are controlled by the archives side. And I think that they were trying to do more preservation. In the days when I worked there, we would get the records and try our best to keep the parts together. But, you have little crusty pieces that would fall off and burnt edges that would fall off sometimes. And, you know.

[Assistant] It was like you ate a piece of toast at your desk and you had to shovel off all the crumbs.

[User] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There was charred chunks.

[Assistant] Did they still have a smell to them, even decades later?


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

[User] Right. Yeah. Well, you know, when I was doing the verification for the SGO, when I would find an existing record and run the codes to see if they matched, a lot of times they were partially burned and I'd have them on my desk and be looking for the hospital admission card. And, it would be charred and well, they were like mold spores. So, you'd have to kind of brush off your desk afterwards because there was all this residual stuff. But now I think most of those are controlled by the archives side. And I think that they were trying to do more preservation. In the days when I worked there, we would get the records and try our best to keep the parts together. But, you have little crusty pieces that would fall off and burnt edges that would fall off sometimes. And, you know.

[Assistant] It was like you ate a piece of toast at your desk and you had to shovel off all the crumbs.

[User] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There was charred chunks.

[Assistant] Did they still have a smell to them, even decades later?

[User] Oh, well, yeah. I mean, all the burned records were stored in one area called the B-file. The burnt file. And yeah, when you would go in there. Yeah. It did have kind of a—I mean it wasn't like really pungent, but yeah, it did smell a little bit. Yeah. Records smell, any old records smell. But yeah, they did have a little bit of a burnt smell.

[Assistant] Yeah. Have you been to the new buildings?


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

[User] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There was charred chunks.

[Assistant] Did they still have a smell to them, even decades later?

[User] Oh, well, yeah. I mean, all the burned records were stored in one area called the B-file. The burnt file. And yeah, when you would go in there. Yeah. It did have kind of a—I mean it wasn't like really pungent, but yeah, it did smell a little bit. Yeah. Records smell, any old records smell. But yeah, they did have a little bit of a burnt smell.

[Assistant] Yeah. Have you been to the new buildings?

[User] I have a couple of times for the open house and retirements. Yeah, but I don't know, It just had sort of a what would I say? A sterile feeling.

[Assistant] How does it compare to where you worked?


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

[User] Oh, well, yeah. I mean, all the burned records were stored in one area called the B-file. The burnt file. And yeah, when you would go in there. Yeah. It did have kind of a—I mean it wasn't like really pungent, but yeah, it did smell a little bit. Yeah. Records smell, any old records smell. But yeah, they did have a little bit of a burnt smell.

[Assistant] Yeah. Have you been to the new buildings?

[User] I have a couple of times for the open house and retirements. Yeah, but I don't know, It just had sort of a what would I say? A sterile feeling.

[Assistant] How does it compare to where you worked?

[User] As you know, at the record center on Page Avenue, it was a big place. And there were a lot of agencies, a lot of activity. And at the new building, I don't think, well, I guess there's a few other agencies out there, but it's like you don't really see anybody. And, it just seemed kind of a more, I don't know, controlled sterile environment. And maybe that's fine. You know, it wasn't what I was used to. And I've been down to the caves, went down there for the open house and just, I guess for maybe a retirement or two down there in Valmeyer, Illinois. Have you gone to Valmeyer?

[Assistant] I haven't been to Valmeyer. But I do want to go. We originally wanted to come to St. Louis and do these oral histories all in person and then just we didn't we ran out of time. But my goal is to get there and tour the caves. I'm really, really interested actually in civilian personnel records because they're very helpful for my job. I do a lot of staff highlights. And if all those records were available to me for everyone who worked at NARA, my life would be so much easier.


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

[User] I have a couple of times for the open house and retirements. Yeah, but I don't know, It just had sort of a what would I say? A sterile feeling.

[Assistant] How does it compare to where you worked?

[User] As you know, at the record center on Page Avenue, it was a big place. And there were a lot of agencies, a lot of activity. And at the new building, I don't think, well, I guess there's a few other agencies out there, but it's like you don't really see anybody. And, it just seemed kind of a more, I don't know, controlled sterile environment. And maybe that's fine. You know, it wasn't what I was used to. And I've been down to the caves, went down there for the open house and just, I guess for maybe a retirement or two down there in Valmeyer, Illinois. Have you gone to Valmeyer?

[Assistant] I haven't been to Valmeyer. But I do want to go. We originally wanted to come to St. Louis and do these oral histories all in person and then just we didn't we ran out of time. But my goal is to get there and tour the caves. I'm really, really interested actually in civilian personnel records because they're very helpful for my job. I do a lot of staff highlights. And if all those records were available to me for everyone who worked at NARA, my life would be so much easier.

[User] Oh, yeah, right. Well, you know, for active employees, I mean, if that's what you're interested in, they'd put all those in the vault if they were in the military. Well, the civilian personnel file is kept in the personnel office or the human resources office. Um, yeah. I don't know how records are maintained now, though. I mean, if everything is done electronically. I mean, I was a paper record person.

[Assistant] I try not to bother them too much, or at least the military folks because they're so busy with their backlog right now.


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

[User] Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like backlogs were always there. I don't think that there was ever a time when people got caught up.

[Assistant] Right, right. So is there anything else that you would like to talk about? Any anecdotes? It could be fire related. It could be related to the National Archives in any way.

[User] Um hm. Well, I was just curious. Are you in Washington right now?

[Assistant] I am.

[User] Are you in Maryland or where? Where are you located?

[Assistant] I live on Capitol Hill, so I'm in DC.


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

[User] Um hm. Well, I was just curious. Are you in Washington right now?

[Assistant] I am.

[User] Are you in Maryland or where? Where are you located?

[Assistant] I live on Capitol Hill, so I'm in DC.

[User] Okay. But. Oh, do you work from home?

[Assistant] Mainly, yeah. So I work from the main building. So downtown in DC, and that's my home base. And my office is there, but we have really been teleworking a lot lately, so I only go in if I need to look up records. We've been doing a lot of records management, sending records to RG 64, Records of the National Archives, so I'll go in for that kind of stuff. But otherwise, I've been doing a lot from home.


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

[User] Are you in Maryland or where? Where are you located?

[Assistant] I live on Capitol Hill, so I'm in DC.

[User] Okay. But. Oh, do you work from home?

[Assistant] Mainly, yeah. So I work from the main building. So downtown in DC, and that's my home base. And my office is there, but we have really been teleworking a lot lately, so I only go in if I need to look up records. We've been doing a lot of records management, sending records to RG 64, Records of the National Archives, so I'll go in for that kind of stuff. But otherwise, I've been doing a lot from home.

[User] Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. I can remember when Charlie Pellegrini was my boss and working from home became a thing. I asked if I could work from home? The answer was “No,” but, you know, that was, well, probably, I don't know, around 2000 or something. So now it's kind of normal.

[Assistant] Yeah, COVID really changed things for the National Archives, which wasn't in the forefront of telework before, but now a lot of staff are 100% telework. The people who don't work with records or the public who can work from home.


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

[User] Okay. But. Oh, do you work from home?

[Assistant] Mainly, yeah. So I work from the main building. So downtown in DC, and that's my home base. And my office is there, but we have really been teleworking a lot lately, so I only go in if I need to look up records. We've been doing a lot of records management, sending records to RG 64, Records of the National Archives, so I'll go in for that kind of stuff. But otherwise, I've been doing a lot from home.

[User] Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. I can remember when Charlie Pellegrini was my boss and working from home became a thing. I asked if I could work from home? The answer was “No,” but, you know, that was, well, probably, I don't know, around 2000 or something. So now it's kind of normal.

[Assistant] Yeah, COVID really changed things for the National Archives, which wasn't in the forefront of telework before, but now a lot of staff are 100% telework. The people who don't work with records or the public who can work from home.

[User] Yeah. And now you have all these auxiliary locations for records like down in Mar-A-Lago and a garage.

[Assistant] I should not laugh at that.


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

[User] Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. I can remember when Charlie Pellegrini was my boss and working from home became a thing. I asked if I could work from home? The answer was “No,” but, you know, that was, well, probably, I don't know, around 2000 or something. So now it's kind of normal.

[Assistant] Yeah, COVID really changed things for the National Archives, which wasn't in the forefront of telework before, but now a lot of staff are 100% telework. The people who don't work with records or the public who can work from home.

[User] Yeah. And now you have all these auxiliary locations for records like down in Mar-A-Lago and a garage.

[Assistant] I should not laugh at that.

[User] Yeah, that’s kind of concerning. Yeah. Yeah.

[Assistant] I mean, it is. We've been in the news for the first time. I mean, we've never been in the news as much, I don't think. [laughter]


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

[User] Yeah. And now you have all these auxiliary locations for records like down in Mar-A-Lago and a garage.

[Assistant] I should not laugh at that.

[User] Yeah, that’s kind of concerning. Yeah. Yeah.

[Assistant] I mean, it is. We've been in the news for the first time. I mean, we've never been in the news as much, I don't think. [laughter]

[User] Yeah, not a good thing. [laughter] So the Archivist has new headaches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my. Yeah. Well, let me think if there's anything else. I don't know. I guess, I did enjoy my career at NPRC. And, I think that sometimes people thought that the record center was not a good place to work. But, I didn't find it that way at all. I thought it was a good career. So keep up the image of the National Archives positive.

[Assistant] It is a positive place to work. And your work with the veterans was immensely important work. And I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today and especially also following up if we can have additional interviewees.


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

[User] Yeah, that’s kind of concerning. Yeah. Yeah.

[Assistant] I mean, it is. We've been in the news for the first time. I mean, we've never been in the news as much, I don't think. [laughter]

[User] Yeah, not a good thing. [laughter] So the Archivist has new headaches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my. Yeah. Well, let me think if there's anything else. I don't know. I guess, I did enjoy my career at NPRC. And, I think that sometimes people thought that the record center was not a good place to work. But, I didn't find it that way at all. I thought it was a good career. So keep up the image of the National Archives positive.

[Assistant] It is a positive place to work. And your work with the veterans was immensely important work. And I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today and especially also following up if we can have additional interviewees.

[User] That would be great.

[Assistant] Yeah. Thank you so much.


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

[User] Yeah, not a good thing. [laughter] So the Archivist has new headaches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my. Yeah. Well, let me think if there's anything else. I don't know. I guess, I did enjoy my career at NPRC. And, I think that sometimes people thought that the record center was not a good place to work. But, I didn't find it that way at all. I thought it was a good career. So keep up the image of the National Archives positive.

[Assistant] It is a positive place to work. And your work with the veterans was immensely important work. And I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today and especially also following up if we can have additional interviewees.

[User] That would be great.

[Assistant] Yeah. Thank you so much.

[User] Well, it was fun. Yeah. And, you know, kind of made me think back. I know I talked to Bill Seibert, I think you're going to talk with him. And he said, Diane, it's been so long. I got to see what I can remember. So anyway, yeah, but, I guess we'd like to remember the good things. And so those two projects, medical records registry with the military services and the SGO, I think those are my favorite projects.

[Assistant] I'm so impressed that you could remember things so clearly from 1985. I can barely remember last week. So you must have a great memory.


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

[User] That would be great.

[Assistant] Yeah. Thank you so much.

[User] Well, it was fun. Yeah. And, you know, kind of made me think back. I know I talked to Bill Seibert, I think you're going to talk with him. And he said, Diane, it's been so long. I got to see what I can remember. So anyway, yeah, but, I guess we'd like to remember the good things. And so those two projects, medical records registry with the military services and the SGO, I think those are my favorite projects.

[Assistant] I'm so impressed that you could remember things so clearly from 1985. I can barely remember last week. So you must have a great memory.

[User] Well, I guess like you said, the things that you liked, you remember. If there were things that I didn't really like about work, I'd probably forgotten them. So.

[Assistant] Right. And I guess your project was so giant and cumbersome that it's going to stick with you for the rest of your life.


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

[User] Well, it was fun. Yeah. And, you know, kind of made me think back. I know I talked to Bill Seibert, I think you're going to talk with him. And he said, Diane, it's been so long. I got to see what I can remember. So anyway, yeah, but, I guess we'd like to remember the good things. And so those two projects, medical records registry with the military services and the SGO, I think those are my favorite projects.

[Assistant] I'm so impressed that you could remember things so clearly from 1985. I can barely remember last week. So you must have a great memory.

[User] Well, I guess like you said, the things that you liked, you remember. If there were things that I didn't really like about work, I'd probably forgotten them. So.

[Assistant] Right. And I guess your project was so giant and cumbersome that it's going to stick with you for the rest of your life.

[User] Well, these weren't just week-long projects, they were years. But that's how it works in government. You got the funding, you got lots of people involved and a lot of coordination. And that's just what it takes. So.

[Assistant] Yeah. Well great, thanks for talking to me. I'll let you go, and then I will follow up, like I said, with email, with the transcript. I appreciate you talking to me. And we'll talk more via email.


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

[User] Well, I guess like you said, the things that you liked, you remember. If there were things that I didn't really like about work, I'd probably forgotten them. So.

[Assistant] Right. And I guess your project was so giant and cumbersome that it's going to stick with you for the rest of your life.

[User] Well, these weren't just week-long projects, they were years. But that's how it works in government. You got the funding, you got lots of people involved and a lot of coordination. And that's just what it takes. So.

[Assistant] Yeah. Well great, thanks for talking to me. I'll let you go, and then I will follow up, like I said, with email, with the transcript. I appreciate you talking to me. And we'll talk more via email.

[User] Okay. Well, it was nice to chat with you, Jessie, and enjoy your career with the National Archives.

[Assistant] Thank you. Take care.


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

[User] My current responsibilities are co-chairman of Working Group 6, which is the Mir Operations and Integration Working Group. That's an additional duty I just picked up. It had been Rick Nygren up until the last month or so. My job before that was within Working Group 6, I was the Operations and Training IPT [Integrated Product Team] leader.

[Assistant] When we visited yesterday or day before on the phone, you suggested we come visit with you so we could kind of map out how all the Ops teams worked. So we're going to let you take it from here and proceed however you want.

[User] I don't know how much you know about Phase 1 from a in the Working Group stand point.

[Assistant] Why don't you just take us back. Pretend we don't know anything.

[User] Okay.

[Assistant] Have you ever had to do this before [give an overview], lecture people who are curious about this [process]?


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

[User] I don't know how much you know about Phase 1 from a in the Working Group stand point.

[Assistant] Why don't you just take us back. Pretend we don't know anything.

[User] Okay.

[Assistant] Have you ever had to do this before [give an overview], lecture people who are curious about this [process]?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Was that captured on anything?


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

[User] Okay.

[Assistant] Have you ever had to do this before [give an overview], lecture people who are curious about this [process]?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Was that captured on anything?

[User] Not recently. Usually what's happened is because we've had a lot of people from CB [Astronaut Office - Johnson Space Center], from the office, transfer in and out, and because sometimes we've had to interface with them a lot and be the continuity across the increments, I'd had to go through this several times with several crew members.\n\n The Phase 1 Program, under Frank Culbertson, the organization within that, within that he's got the different Working Groups. Let me see if I remember these. Working Group 1 is PAO [Public Affairs Office]. Working Group 2 is Safety; this is Gary Johnson. Do you have the names of all the Working Group chairs?

[Assistant] Yes, we do have that list, unless there's been some recent change.


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

[User] Per mission?

[Assistant] You were talking about how they overlap and some continue on and some are on every mission.

[User] Our operations staffing was around -I'm trying to remember if it was loaded or not. I think it was a little under thirty, so we had thirty people to do all this on the contractor's side. Then we had about two or three civil servants, myself. I kind of had a part-time deputy, but that didn't always work out. Under ten to do the training between Lockheed and Krug. So, overall, this whole thing was a little under fifty people.\n\n On any one increment, then, you would have -now, this would go that once the mission was launched, he would just jump to the next mission. So he didn't have a role during the mission execution phase. So do you want to look at while the mission is running or preparing for the mission?

[Assistant] Let's do one, then the other.

[User] Okay. Pre-mission, you'd have one, two, three, four. He'd have these guys assigned, but these guys were working double duty. So if you're just looking at heads, if you're trying to do a budget thing -

[Assistant] Do you want to help us out so we don't have to come back and ask you again? When you say "this" and point -


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

[User] Our operations staffing was around -I'm trying to remember if it was loaded or not. I think it was a little under thirty, so we had thirty people to do all this on the contractor's side. Then we had about two or three civil servants, myself. I kind of had a part-time deputy, but that didn't always work out. Under ten to do the training between Lockheed and Krug. So, overall, this whole thing was a little under fifty people.\n\n On any one increment, then, you would have -now, this would go that once the mission was launched, he would just jump to the next mission. So he didn't have a role during the mission execution phase. So do you want to look at while the mission is running or preparing for the mission?

[Assistant] Let's do one, then the other.

[User] Okay. Pre-mission, you'd have one, two, three, four. He'd have these guys assigned, but these guys were working double duty. So if you're just looking at heads, if you're trying to do a budget thing -

[Assistant] Do you want to help us out so we don't have to come back and ask you again? When you say "this" and point -

[User] I'm sorry. Okay.

[Assistant] It won't get on the recorder.


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

[User] Okay. Pre-mission, you'd have one, two, three, four. He'd have these guys assigned, but these guys were working double duty. So if you're just looking at heads, if you're trying to do a budget thing -

[Assistant] Do you want to help us out so we don't have to come back and ask you again? When you say "this" and point -

[User] I'm sorry. Okay.

[Assistant] It won't get on the recorder.

[User] Sure. From the increment team you would have four. You probably have about three heads out of the discipline lead that you could support. Maybe one or two out of here.

[Assistant] "Out of here" which means?


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

[User] I'm sorry. Okay.

[Assistant] It won't get on the recorder.

[User] Sure. From the increment team you would have four. You probably have about three heads out of the discipline lead that you could support. Maybe one or two out of here.

[Assistant] "Out of here" which means?

[User] The operations team supporting it. So I imagine around ten or eleven. From an operations perspective, let me go back and double check. Let me actually bump that more to fifteen, because you wouldn't have what they called -they also had the term "payload systems engineers" out of the integration supporting the hardware development. So, pre-mission, you'd have about fifteen people. Once the mission got started, that would drop to around ten, doing the actual day-to-day mission operations. Now, if something comes up, you could pull in more resources, someone who was working something downstream. You could free up and double bookkeep. So that made it very interesting, looking at monthly charges, what they're charging against, stuff like that, because sometimes it was splitting hairs. Three hours he had to do one thing, the rest of the day he was covering something else.\n\n My personal feeling is, some of the plans to do station, a little bit overkill, where you've got six or seven teams, plus one in training, accounting for other stuff, but this is the other extreme, though.

[Assistant] You proved it could be done with less people.


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

[User] Yes, especially when you come from lots of snow in Russia and you come back to the bright sun in Houston. Flying in that jet is more like a time machine than anything.

[Assistant] Is there something you learned about yourself through all these experiences, that you felt maybe you learned or maybe you grew since you were part of everything that was going on?

[User] Actually, probably not, only because having done a residency, that was probably one of the more intensive, difficult times, like working in emergency rooms in terms of stress and all that goes. So I wasn't put to the test any more than I had been previously. I probably became a little more hard-edged when it came to medical matters in the space program than I'd been before, more willing to pound the desk if needed, to argue certain points more vehemently, but that's about it.

[Assistant] At least you got to test yourself in a new culture and a new climate and with new friends.

[User] That's true. I'd never learned a new language, never lived in another country for that period of time, but I just chalk that up as a lot of great experiences. I'm not sure that what I learned from that would ever change me at all.

[Assistant] Learned to enjoy it.


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

[User] Actually, probably not, only because having done a residency, that was probably one of the more intensive, difficult times, like working in emergency rooms in terms of stress and all that goes. So I wasn't put to the test any more than I had been previously. I probably became a little more hard-edged when it came to medical matters in the space program than I'd been before, more willing to pound the desk if needed, to argue certain points more vehemently, but that's about it.

[Assistant] At least you got to test yourself in a new culture and a new climate and with new friends.

[User] That's true. I'd never learned a new language, never lived in another country for that period of time, but I just chalk that up as a lot of great experiences. I'm not sure that what I learned from that would ever change me at all.

[Assistant] Learned to enjoy it.

[User] Yes. Exactly.

[Assistant] I was curious how accessible were past medical data from previous long-duration flights that the Russians had, previous Mir flights before Phase One and the Salyut missions were. Did you pursue any of that material to help in some of your work, and, if so, how accessible was it?


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

[User] Right. The same with the batteries. When Priroda docked, the batteries heated up and leaked. Finally we found out it probably was leaking sulfur dioxide, but it was very difficult to get the information on what was in those batteries. Yes, that happened several times.

[Assistant] We certainly appreciate your time sharing this information with us.

[User] No problem.

[Assistant] We look forward to hearing your next adventure. Are you going to be participating in the ISS?

[User] Yes, I'm signed up for one flight, but that's about a year and a half down the road before that flight, maybe about a year. Right now I'm just trying to help out getting ready for that.

[Assistant] We wish you the best of luck. Thanks again.


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

[User] I'm Richard McCulley.

[Assistant] And what is your affiliation to the Archives?

[User] I am the Historian at the Center for Legislative Archives.

[Assistant] Okay. Before you came to the Archives, what sort of background did you have that led you to being here?

[User] Well, in 1979, I became the research associate for an administrative history of the Johnson Presidency. That was a National Endowment for the Humanities funded project based at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and directed by Emmette Redford. He was a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and had been the president of the American Political Science Association. And I had studied under Lou Gould, who was a preeminent historian of the Progressive Era, and still is, and I had planned to be a Progressive Era historian. But by the time I finished my dissertation in 1980, I was already hip deep in researching the Johnson Presidential Library records, and Emmette Redford became kind of my postdoc mentor. And ironically enough, 15 years prior to that, he was the person that when I enrolled as a freshman at the University of Texas, I had my first official conversation with. I enrolled at a government major. He was assigned as my advisor. It was really quite perfunctory, but somebody had to approve the course line up you chose before you could get registered, and Emmette Redford was the first person I talked to.

[Assistant] So he was pretty much there your whole entire college career then.


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

[User] Joe Hernon.

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Well, Joe Hernon was retired at that point, and he didn't, no, he didn't really work with this.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] Unfortunately, Joe got cancer and died of cancer in 2007. And before that, because of his partner's career needs, they moved to Massachusetts. Joe was a great guy and a wonderful historian. You could've heard a pin drop in the archivist conference room when he gave his talk. Then he'd quit. Then there was this silence. Somebody finally raise their hand and the question was, how do we get in your class? It was a spellbinding lecture. So you know, we had no way to showcase what was going on here. I worked with Sam a little later to highlight some of the important research that had been going on in the 1990s. I worked with Sam and Julian. We organized a symposium on a really very significant anthology that Julian edited, titled “The American Congress: The Building of American Democracy.” So this symposium was in 2004. About six of the authors who were part of that who wrote chapters in that book participated. It was a milestone, and kind of pulling together some of the best scholarship going on. A number of them had done research here at the Center, so this was really presenting congressional history I think and the first time is kind a coherent subfield of U.S. history, so I was a part of putting that together. And by then, we did benefit from the McGowan Auditorium. But most of the work that went into that had been done in the 90s, so that was kind of the first group of researchers who came here.

[Assistant] When Archives II opened in the mid-90s, did that change how the Center was working? Do any of the records go up there at all, or is everything still here just as it was when it—


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

[User] It had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Canadian.

[Assistant] Just he was a U.S. —

[User] [interposing] Actually, there were no restrictions at all of that sort in the announcement. You had to have been admitted to candidacy. It wasn't necessarily, it turns out, although there were historians, but you know, political scientists and communications specialists–all kinds of people applied for this fellowship, so anyone who had been admitted to candidacy or had received their PhD less than five years ago. So historians trying to work on their book manuscripts for tenure were included in this, so they wanted to use Senate or House holdings to kind of beef up their studies.

[Assistant] Is the fellowship still going on now, or has funding—

[User] [interposing] Well, you know, I thought the legislative fellowship really went about as well as it possibly could, given the fact that we had no experience whatsoever with awarding fellowships, but the Archivist apparently decided to provide research support to a broader range of scholars, so what was adopted the following year was awarding–they're not really fellowships. They're $2500–I call that a research grant to conduct research at one of the National Archives Regional Records Centers, so that obviously spreads the wealth a little more. There's always a political advantage in that. And also consistent I think with what he had in mind starting with us is that those tend to be neglected records more than a lot of the, you know, here in the Washington Records Center and at the Center for Legislative Archives, but it's not a fellowship.

[Assistant] Okay. You also had something called a Brown Bag Series.


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

[User] The guy I’m thinking of begins with a V.

[Assistant] There’s a Valin [B.] Thorn, but he wasn’t a venture capitalist. He was a part of the COTS team [Commercial Crew and Cargo Deputy Program Manager].

[User] Valin Thorn, yes. He candled the business plans for us. He did a good job. They all did. They were enthusiastic about it, and the companies were enthusiastic. The briefs were fabulous. You can say sometimes, “My slide deck is always going to look better than your actual rocket,” but the bottom line is these folks had put a lot of effort into it. It was just great to see that we were able to pull this off and help some companies what we’re now seeing, which is viable transportation systems for cargo at least, and I don’t think crew’s going to be that far behind.

[Assistant] After RpK’s termination, were there any lessons learned from that that you applied to the next round to be able to help companies develop their technologies?

[User] I think the program people would be better able to answer that. In terms of the legal framework, we had the legal framework. In terms of the practicalities of operating and how you select and how you set up the milestones and stuff, that’s more on the programmatic side.

[Assistant] The Space Act Agreements didn’t have a lot of changes?


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

[User] I never got the impression they were setting it up to fail. I got the impression that they saw that their role in it wouldn’t be what they wanted it to be, where NASA had quality review boards, and engineers checking engineers checking engineers checking engineers, and program managers controlling every nickel and dime and being in charge. “This is letting loose some of the stuff that only we at NASA can do!”\n\n There were and are, as you well know, huge skeptics. There’s a feeling that, “I’ll never sign off on putting an astronaut that I can’t honestly say has been done exactly the way it should have been done, and I can’t do that unless I’m watching them screw in every screw and bolt every bolt.” NASA’s fantastic, but have you been able to tour the facilities of any of these other companies?

[Assistant] We did visit SpaceX in Hawthorne.

[User] Have you been down to their facility either out at Vandenberg or down at [NASA] Kennedy Space Center [Florida]?

[Assistant] No, not yet.

[User] You figure out, it comes as no surprise to me in my advanced age, that there are a lot of people out there with really, really good ideas, and you don’t have to do things that way because we’ve always done them that way. It really is innovation. There are only three sovereign nations that have managed to put a man in orbit, and one commercial company has managed to send a rocket ship up, orbit the earth, and recover it. That’s pretty phenomenal.

[Assistant] You made the comment that GAO doesn’t have jurisdiction because these were not contracts. Who does?


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

[User] It’s good to be here.

[Assistant] I’m glad you liked it enough last time to come back for us.

[User] Well, I didn’t know, maybe I talked you to your knees last time and you wouldn’t have me again.

[Assistant] No, it was truly our pleasure.\n\n This time I was kind of going over some of the questions we’d done last time, and I wanted to ask you a little bit about, just to start out, the end of the Apollo Program and going into Skylab. Did you have any interaction for the last several Apollo flights where they had the command module pilot do EVAs [extravehicular activities] outside the spacecraft on the way back? I didn’t know if you had anything to do with the equipment for that.

[User] Just barely. They used an umbilical cord for that, and we were working on the Skylab umbilical, so we used a version of that, sort of a simplified version. The Skylab umbilical had oxygen supply and water cooling lines, supply and return lines, and electrical and a tether. I think they just used the tether and the oxygen line. So that was really the only involvement with those EVAs that I had.

[Assistant] The Skylab system you’re talking about, is that the astronaut life support assembly [ALSA]?


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

[User] Well, I didn’t know, maybe I talked you to your knees last time and you wouldn’t have me again.

[Assistant] No, it was truly our pleasure.\n\n This time I was kind of going over some of the questions we’d done last time, and I wanted to ask you a little bit about, just to start out, the end of the Apollo Program and going into Skylab. Did you have any interaction for the last several Apollo flights where they had the command module pilot do EVAs [extravehicular activities] outside the spacecraft on the way back? I didn’t know if you had anything to do with the equipment for that.

[User] Just barely. They used an umbilical cord for that, and we were working on the Skylab umbilical, so we used a version of that, sort of a simplified version. The Skylab umbilical had oxygen supply and water cooling lines, supply and return lines, and electrical and a tether. I think they just used the tether and the oxygen line. So that was really the only involvement with those EVAs that I had.

[Assistant] The Skylab system you’re talking about, is that the astronaut life support assembly [ALSA]?

[User] Yes. Yes, I was pretty heavily involved in that.

[Assistant] Maybe you could run us through some of the development of that, coming up with the requirements and all that.


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

[User] Let’s see. We used potassium chlorate. I think those are chlorate candles. They’ve come a long way. They use these in aircraft. Some aircraft emergency oxygen systems are a chlorate candle also. Well, this demo candle that we made was really dumb. Hindsight, we should have put it inside a canister and had some sort of a filtration bed in it, but we wanted to show people. Because when you get through with one of these things after it burns, you have an 800-degree piece of salt. You have sodium chloride left. So that system died.\n\n So we went with a real simple system we called a PCU, a Pressure Control Unit, that mounted on the astronaut’s belly and was fed by an umbilical from the Skylab system. We had cooling water that came in and out and oxygen supply and electrical power. Then we had a thirty-minute emergency pack on his leg. That was the system they used real successfully not only during the normal missions during Skylab, but also during Skylab emergency to do the EVAs which essentially resuscitated the station, the Skylab Space Station.\n\n Did I talk about the Skylab Source Board activities out at Ellington at our last time?

[Assistant] No. Not for Skylab.

[User] I talked about the file cabinet that I couldn’t open.

[Assistant] You talked about the file cabinet.

[User] Yes, that was it.

[Assistant] You talked about the trains.


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

[User] I talked about the file cabinet that I couldn’t open.

[Assistant] You talked about the file cabinet.

[User] Yes, that was it.

[Assistant] You talked about the trains.

[User] Yes, the train chart, okay. I just wanted to make sure I covered that.

[Assistant] Was that for Skylab or for Space Shuttle?


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

[User] Yes. It was buying extra suits, buying extra space suits. What we were doing was making a case for reality, which is something that’s hard to do. We had this case where supposedly we were only going to fit a limited number of crewman, twenty crewmen, the so-called cadre. We were going to have an EVA cadre of crewmen, twenty people.

[Assistant] This is Shuttle Program?

[User] Yes. We can change two of them a year. Well, that was limiting the number of crewman. So they bought off on it. The trouble is, the twenty floated. It was twenty, but it was a different twenty. So that meant the number of suits we had weren’t necessarily able to fit all these different sizes. You had to buy a bunch of sized components.\n\n So finally we got them to admit, let’s go with a probabilistic thing. You’ve got this many people that are large and this many that are extra large and this many are medium and this many are small, let’s figure out a probability of these guys being stacked on missions back to back that we’d have to have so many of this certain size. So we came up a probabilistic determination and said we need this many more things, and, I mean, they actually bought it. So that was great. It was one of the high points of my career.

[Assistant] It’s good that that one was successful.

[User] Yes, because there’s been a lot of others that weren’t.

[Assistant] Can you recall any of these that were, as you described them, brutal budget battles that you ended up losing?


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

[User] Claustrophobic. Yes. It worked on Bob Thompson. [Laughs] Yes. That doesn’t shock me at all.

[Assistant] We had Bob Thompson in here, but he didn’t mention this experience.

[User] Well, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say his foot did cramp up.

[Assistant] Well, if we see him again, I’ll ask him about it.

[User] Yes. How did he like his time in the personal rescue sphere?

[Assistant] As you’re developing this for Shuttle, there’s other things going on with the EMU [extravehicular mobility unit] that there’s a lot of problems before you get to the first flight, some of which you’ve alluded to. I was wondering if you could maybe illuminate some of your experience there trying to get this space suit ready for these first few flights, I mean, what some of the critical issues were. I think it was even subjected to a review by the Inspector General and these sorts of things because of ballooning costs and all that.