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

[User] Nancy Boggess, yes.

[Assistant] Which was an interesting name because it was one of the few female names. Did you have a lot of experience during this journey working with other female scientists, or was that a pretty rare event at the time?

[User] It’s a changing phenomenon. Many more women are going into science now than were then. Times have changed a lot. Nancy is a fine scientist. She was among the first really well-known professional women astronomers. She made the choice to go work for NASA, so she stopped actually doing astronomy, and she has made the astronomy happen with other people. She found—this is sort of reporting on her behalf—that people tended to assume she wasn’t a scientist because she was a woman.\n\n Even our secretarial staff here, they would write “To Mrs. Boggess and Dr. John,” so, she was pretty annoyed. She had every good reason to be annoyed, too, because she’s good! People don’t know because they didn’t. Things have changed now. When I go see who’s coming up in science now, quite often, more than half of the young people are women, so it’s changing quickly. I think that’s good; there’s a lot of talent there, so I think we need the talent. I’m glad people can do it now.

[Assistant] No matter if they’re male or female, they’ll still go through that wonderful or grueling bureaucratic process that you endured, going through all those years.

[User] I would change those words. Nothing was grueling about it. It was all fun.

[Assistant] Was it fun?


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

[User] Some of the story’s in the book there, but there were a few people here on the engineering side, the management, who figured out that we were this close to being able to stuff it back into the Delta rocket, and it needed a certain kind of major surgery, but the hard parts about the instruments didn’t have to be changed much at all. Which was almost a miracle—we were within a few pounds of not being able to fit, but we fit. There were a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvers that went into getting that Delta rocket, and many people that you’ve heard of, like Mike [Michael D.] Griffin, were involved in that. He wasn’t even at NASA then, but he was on the other side of the fence, and he knew about all that process. He told me once that he had something to do with it.

[Assistant] That was kind.

[User] As it happened, his wife was a thermal engineer here at Goddard, and she worked on the COBE project, so it’s a small world.

[Assistant] Yes, so there’s a little inside information there.

[User] Yes, her name’s Becky [Rebecca Griffin].

[Assistant] Talk about the working relationship between engineers and scientists, and how that works well and then how the two different sides communicate.


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

[User] Yes. I don’t think we ever could have built this project in the contract mode. Maybe, but I couldn’t see how.

[Assistant] Some of the instruments you did, you did have to go to other areas.

[User] We bought stuff, we’d buy stuff. The big thing we bought was the tank, the helium cryostat, which came from Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado. It was a more or less copy of the one they had just built for the IRAS [Infrared Astronomical] Satellite. They had experience, and they had mastered that. That part worked.

[Assistant] That was a benefit for you, too, you didn’t have to go through that.

[User] Oh, yes. If we had had to be the first ones to build that, too, I think we never could have gotten started.

[Assistant] At the time when NASA was supporting this effort, to borrow a statement from your book, it mentions that NASA had a unique opportunity to advance humanity’s knowledge about the beginning of the universe. From your experiences, can you share with the pros and cons of why you feel NASA moved forward with your project on something of this type?


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

[User] It suddenly went from being the dog that got to wait until everybody else was done to being, “Well, this could be the next flight after the Challenger,” and it was. It was the first science mission. It came before even the Hubble [Space Telescope, HST], and the Hubble, of course, had to go on the Shuttle, but the Hubble was the next spring after COBE launched.\n\n Before that, our project was at the bottom of the totem pole. Whenever anybody else had an emergency, they got to get our best engineers. I thought, “Well, this is kind of slow going, this way.” Everybody else had priority in the machine shop anyway because this was, “We’re just going to do it our way here at home,” and nobody else was pushing us to get there by a particular instant. Then, suddenly, yes, we could be the first, so then they said, “How fast could you possibly go if we give you everything you ask for?” We did it. It was a few months after what they asked, but we got it.

[Assistant] That’s a little change of pace, from getting whatever you could to being the first in line?

[User] Yes. There were a lot of nights and weekends for the staff, and the engineers and the technicians, they were in the clean rooms all the time, somebody was in there. There wasn’t a single quiet moment.

[Assistant] Also, I believe I remember reading that someone had a concern for burnout because you guys were just working almost non-stop to get this up and going.

[User] Yes, well, I don’t know if anybody actually burned out, but I’m sure people were a little tired.

[Assistant] Yes, and sometimes, there are mistakes that were made, but you scheduled in a lot of testing. Talk about the importance of the tests that you were able to do, and then actually, sometimes, the re-testing to make sure, thinking outside the box, make sure that when this went, it really worked.


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

[User] It’s one of the few times I got to go into the clean room, was to see what they were doing that day. Mostly, I stayed out of the clean room because I knew that I’m just a kibitzer, I’m just getting in their way. They fixed it, and if we had not done that, we wouldn’t be here telling this story. It was so important to the mission. That’s where I have to say, the engineers know what they’re doing.

[Assistant] That was good you had dedicated people from that side as well.

[User] Oh, yes.

[Assistant] I thought it was an interesting statement in your book, too, about “we were lucky also in our bad luck.” I think right before, just a few weeks or so before you got ready to launch and they were supposed to be doing some testing, but then the [Loma Prieta] earthquake happened? Can you tell that story? I found that was very interesting, how that happened.

[User] I wasn’t there in person, but it happened. There were just a few months before the actual launch, and they were putting the observatory together in California. It had already been put together here, but they had to do final tests out there, and connect it up to the rocket. Last tests, and it turned out, that was the day when two of our engineers went off to get married to each other, so the whole observatory was buttoned up. They were the quality control people, so if they’re not there, we’re not doing anything.\n\n That was the day of the earthquake in California—it was summer of ’89. It was a big deal. Things shook around, and if our equipment had not been buttoned down tight inside, it might have hurt itself. It might not have, but what would you do? You’d have to think and talk and argue about could it have hurt itself, is it still okay, how would you know, do you have to open it up to find out? It could have cost a vast fortune to figure that out. We were lucky about that.

[Assistant] Yes, I thought that was pretty interesting.


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

[User] Oh, yes.

[Assistant] I thought it was an interesting statement in your book, too, about “we were lucky also in our bad luck.” I think right before, just a few weeks or so before you got ready to launch and they were supposed to be doing some testing, but then the [Loma Prieta] earthquake happened? Can you tell that story? I found that was very interesting, how that happened.

[User] I wasn’t there in person, but it happened. There were just a few months before the actual launch, and they were putting the observatory together in California. It had already been put together here, but they had to do final tests out there, and connect it up to the rocket. Last tests, and it turned out, that was the day when two of our engineers went off to get married to each other, so the whole observatory was buttoned up. They were the quality control people, so if they’re not there, we’re not doing anything.\n\n That was the day of the earthquake in California—it was summer of ’89. It was a big deal. Things shook around, and if our equipment had not been buttoned down tight inside, it might have hurt itself. It might not have, but what would you do? You’d have to think and talk and argue about could it have hurt itself, is it still okay, how would you know, do you have to open it up to find out? It could have cost a vast fortune to figure that out. We were lucky about that.

[Assistant] Yes, I thought that was pretty interesting.

[User] Then, there was another lucky about our unluckiness event. I don’t know if I called it that, but after launch, did you see that thing about the gyro that failed?

[Assistant] Share that with us.


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

[User] It feels like it.

[Assistant] Watching projects go through a 15-, 18-year process, like you mentioned, you didn’t survive as much as you were championed and helped along the way. In mentoring these new scientists coming up, do you have suggestions for them on how best to work their way through this new fiscal environment, or an environment that the quality of the work is not what is driving the project as much as the cost and scheduling aspect?

[User] I don’t think that’s actually any different than it was. We just all try to do the best we can and see a way forward. There’s no general answer.

[Assistant] You do see similarities?

[User] Oh, yes. My view of science is sort of like, how do the ants find the sugar in your house? They look everywhere. How does the water get through the flat roof? It goes everywhere, it tries everything. If you’re persistent, you’ll find a way, and it’ll be a different way every time, but you’ll get there. The main thing is just don’t give up if you’ve got a good idea. Eventually somebody will help you find the way. The other ants will find the sugar, and then you’ll all get some. That’s my version of persistence.

[Assistant] I like that.


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

[User] I don’t think that’s actually any different than it was. We just all try to do the best we can and see a way forward. There’s no general answer.

[Assistant] You do see similarities?

[User] Oh, yes. My view of science is sort of like, how do the ants find the sugar in your house? They look everywhere. How does the water get through the flat roof? It goes everywhere, it tries everything. If you’re persistent, you’ll find a way, and it’ll be a different way every time, but you’ll get there. The main thing is just don’t give up if you’ve got a good idea. Eventually somebody will help you find the way. The other ants will find the sugar, and then you’ll all get some. That’s my version of persistence.

[Assistant] I like that.

[User] There’s nothing noble about it; you just want to do it, and let’s find a way, and eventually it’ll turn up. How do you solve a giant crossword puzzle? One letter at a time.

[Assistant] While you’re giving your philosophy, I remember reading that you said your picture of good science begins with obtaining good hard data, with new and evermore ingenious instruments that will include Mother Nature to yield her secrets to us.


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

[User] Oh, yes. My view of science is sort of like, how do the ants find the sugar in your house? They look everywhere. How does the water get through the flat roof? It goes everywhere, it tries everything. If you’re persistent, you’ll find a way, and it’ll be a different way every time, but you’ll get there. The main thing is just don’t give up if you’ve got a good idea. Eventually somebody will help you find the way. The other ants will find the sugar, and then you’ll all get some. That’s my version of persistence.

[Assistant] I like that.

[User] There’s nothing noble about it; you just want to do it, and let’s find a way, and eventually it’ll turn up. How do you solve a giant crossword puzzle? One letter at a time.

[Assistant] While you’re giving your philosophy, I remember reading that you said your picture of good science begins with obtaining good hard data, with new and evermore ingenious instruments that will include Mother Nature to yield her secrets to us.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] That’s a really good basis for any scientist, I guess, to move forward?


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

[User] There’s nothing noble about it; you just want to do it, and let’s find a way, and eventually it’ll turn up. How do you solve a giant crossword puzzle? One letter at a time.

[Assistant] While you’re giving your philosophy, I remember reading that you said your picture of good science begins with obtaining good hard data, with new and evermore ingenious instruments that will include Mother Nature to yield her secrets to us.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] That’s a really good basis for any scientist, I guess, to move forward?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Is it the hard part for scientists to figure out what they want to do when there’s so much to choose from?


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

[User] Yes, I had no idea what we had started. When we started off, I said, “We just have to measure because that’s all there is to do.” We didn’t know that there would be a huge industry. There are many hundreds of people, maybe a thousand people, around the world that are personally, every day, working on the cosmic background radiation and its meaning. We never knew, you could never have guessed that, because you hadn’t got the result yet.

[Assistant] When you thought you were possibly ending your project just started many, many more, didn’t it?

[User] Since COBE, there have been two more satellite missions flown, the WMAP [Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe], which was ours here at Goddard, with Princeton University [New Jersey], and then the Planck mission, which is the European [Space Agency] one, with some American participation. They have pushed the subject so far, and there’s more yet to go. We have a proposal here at Goddard for yet the successor for that, and other people are working on their other ideas. I think there’s going to be yet a fourth cosmology satellite. That may or may not come to the end of what you can do with that.\n\n I feel very privileged to have been there at the beginning. I was a person whose luck just went that way, and I cannot say that that was because I was smart or had good strategy because I actually tried to go some other direction.

[Assistant] You were drawn into that way.

[User] I got drawn in. This is an example of how it’s a very social phenomenon that we’re in. We do it because our friends are doing it.

[Assistant] Very interesting. Share with us, before we close, what are your expectations for the James Webb Space Telescope?


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

[User] Since COBE, there have been two more satellite missions flown, the WMAP [Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe], which was ours here at Goddard, with Princeton University [New Jersey], and then the Planck mission, which is the European [Space Agency] one, with some American participation. They have pushed the subject so far, and there’s more yet to go. We have a proposal here at Goddard for yet the successor for that, and other people are working on their other ideas. I think there’s going to be yet a fourth cosmology satellite. That may or may not come to the end of what you can do with that.\n\n I feel very privileged to have been there at the beginning. I was a person whose luck just went that way, and I cannot say that that was because I was smart or had good strategy because I actually tried to go some other direction.

[Assistant] You were drawn into that way.

[User] I got drawn in. This is an example of how it’s a very social phenomenon that we’re in. We do it because our friends are doing it.

[Assistant] Very interesting. Share with us, before we close, what are your expectations for the James Webb Space Telescope?

[User] I’m expecting wonderful surprises, and I don’t know what they’ll be. I know what people have said they wanted to try, and we’ve designed the observatory so that it can observe the first stars and objects that formed after the early universe. We call it the Big Bang, which is, by the way, a really rotten name for something completely spectacular. Big Bang just isn’t big enough to explain that—how about an infinite and expanding universe?

[Assistant] I like that.


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

[User] We are, actually. People are already having a committee. We started meeting last week on the phone to think what is it that we would recommend we prepare? It’s too soon to tell you really what we need because you should decide what you need after you get a little farther. But we know in basically ideas, for build a bigger telescope, we could build a bigger one, that could do more about planets around other stars. Then, there are the other mysteries. What is the dark matter, the dark energy, and other things that will turn up? You don’t necessarily need the same telescope for all these problems. There will be surprises. Somebody might actually find dark matter in the lab. They’re working on that, too, and with technology that some of us here at NASA started to build.\n\n Harvey [Samuel H.] Moseley, who was here in my office when you first arrived, is one of the inventors of this technology of really, really, really sensitive low-temperature equipment that can maybe tell is a dark matter particle occurs in your equipment. A lot of ideas, so there are a lot of pathways to answers, and who knows? We’ll have ideas for next committees to consider and recommend our future in the next generations of telescopes.

[Assistant] That’s amazing.

[User] It is, it really is.

[Assistant] Do you have anything else you’d like to add, or is there more things you’d like to share?

[User] I could talk forever, but I probably shouldn’t.

[Assistant] We don’t want to miss anything, but we certainly don’t want to take all your morning. We know you have lots to do.


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

[User] It is, it really is.

[Assistant] Do you have anything else you’d like to add, or is there more things you’d like to share?

[User] I could talk forever, but I probably shouldn’t.

[Assistant] We don’t want to miss anything, but we certainly don’t want to take all your morning. We know you have lots to do.

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] Are you going to write another book?


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

[User] I could talk forever, but I probably shouldn’t.

[Assistant] We don’t want to miss anything, but we certainly don’t want to take all your morning. We know you have lots to do.

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] Are you going to write another book?

[User] I’m thinking about it, but I’m thinking about what book to write because I’ve gotten to retirement age, if I feel like it. I’m thinking, what else do I want to tell people, and is it worth telling them? Right now, I’m in the research phase. I’m saying, “I’m going to read all the coolest science books I can find and see if there’s anything they’re not saying.” I’m enjoying that part.

[Assistant] It is fun for you to have the time, at this point, to be able to do that.


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

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] Are you going to write another book?

[User] I’m thinking about it, but I’m thinking about what book to write because I’ve gotten to retirement age, if I feel like it. I’m thinking, what else do I want to tell people, and is it worth telling them? Right now, I’m in the research phase. I’m saying, “I’m going to read all the coolest science books I can find and see if there’s anything they’re not saying.” I’m enjoying that part.

[Assistant] It is fun for you to have the time, at this point, to be able to do that.

[User] I do and I don’t, but it’s a possibility. I don’t think I just want to write another book. I want to write a book about something that interests me, and what would it be? It’s probably the stuff I don’t know about.

[Assistant] Then that’s a lot, isn’t it?


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

[User] Mostly it was familiarization. We would go into the Mir mock-ups so we’d be better able to visualize the configuration of the Mir station itself. Also we visited the factory where they were building the docking module, and we saw a lot of the equipment. It helped us understand the module itself, the hardware that was going to interface with the Space Shuttle airlock. A bit of it was touring, a few things like the Energiya Museum. It just was a good field trip to get to understand better the Russian space program and Roscosmos.

[Assistant] The hardware wasn’t built yet. How did you train on it here in the States?

[User] A lot of it was with simulators. Of course, we very rarely train using flight hardware. It was ironic years later when I was training in the Hydrolab. I saw the Hydrolab mock-ups of the docking module, the one that we had flown. Their water-training mock-up was sitting on the ground outside the Hydrolab. Said, “I recognized that.” It was funny. When we designed our patch, all we saw were engineering diagrams of it, so in our patch it’s white. The insulating blankets on the outside of it were actually burnt orange; so okay, patch is wrong, too late.

[Assistant] How did you feel about being selected for this mission, having been a military person for so long?

[User] All of us on the crew were career military. Ken Cameron, Marine; Jim [James D.] Halsell, Air Force; Jerry [L.] Ross, Air Force; Chris Hadfield, Canadian Air Force; and myself. We were all thrilled to do a mission, and Yuri Gidzenko was Russian Air Force, and Sergei Avdeyev was a civilian cosmonaut, an Energiya cosmonaut, and then Thomas Reiter was with the Luftwaffe. We all enjoyed that post-Cold War opportunity to build a camaraderie with our Russian counterparts.

[Assistant] You mentioned that this was an all-military crew. How did it differ from your first crew, which included a vet [veterinarian]?


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

[User] I would say a bigger difference is that it was an all-male crew and there were no women on it, which is closely related to why, in my opinion, we are so successful working with the Russians. The reason is because we are focused on solving the same problems. These problems are how we cope with the laws of physics, for example. If you calculate orbital velocity required to match up with an orbiting space station, it’s not a multiple-choice test. There is a solution. There is a velocity you have to achieve. There is an orbital plane you have to be in. I think that it takes away in many cases an environment in which you can have a difference of opinion, because the answer to these problems are engineering solutions and they’re not soft answers; they’re not opinions. I think that helps people focus very well.\n\n I did enjoy, on STS-58 and STS-92, having women on the crew. I don’t want to call it a more normal environment, but there is a feeling of—I’ll think of a way to describe this that isn’t funny. Women bring an additional dimension of strength and harmony on the crew, the absence of which was not a problem on 74, and certainly wasn’t a problem for Valery [Tokarev] and me on ISS, but it I think enriches the experience.

[Assistant] That’s interesting. Had you worked with any of the other folks on your crew previously?

[User] On 74?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Jim Halsell and I were in the same astronaut class, so of course we’d done a bit of traveling and a good bit of training together.

[Assistant] Anybody else on the crew? Or was this pretty much a new culture for you?


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

[User] On 74?

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Jim Halsell and I were in the same astronaut class, so of course we’d done a bit of traveling and a good bit of training together.

[Assistant] Anybody else on the crew? Or was this pretty much a new culture for you?

[User] I’d been in the Office for five years at this point, so I knew everyone on the crew pretty well.

[Assistant] STS-74 was the first time we had astronauts in the same lab at the same time from the U.S., Russia, ESA, and Canada. Talk about that historic mission.


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

[User] Jim Halsell and I were in the same astronaut class, so of course we’d done a bit of traveling and a good bit of training together.

[Assistant] Anybody else on the crew? Or was this pretty much a new culture for you?

[User] I’d been in the Office for five years at this point, so I knew everyone on the crew pretty well.

[Assistant] STS-74 was the first time we had astronauts in the same lab at the same time from the U.S., Russia, ESA, and Canada. Talk about that historic mission.

[User] That is interesting. We were the second mission to dock with Mir, and because of the number of nations that were represented we took up a copy of the UN [United Nations] Space Treaty. The Administrator, Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin, was very interested in talking to the crew, at least one person from each country.\n\n Ken and Chris and all the Mir crewmembers were invited to participate in the conversation with Mr. Goldin, and Jim, Jerry, and I were invited to be elsewhere in the spacecraft. I remember the cosmonauts in particular. They loved the number of windows on the Shuttle flight deck, and they expressed a strong preference that the future International Space Station be equipped with a generous number of windows. It took a while, but when the Cupola finally went up in, I think, 2010, that finally happened; unfortunately, I didn’t get to enjoy that view.\n\n Another thing, on STS-74 in 1995 we flew during the government shutdown that year.

[Assistant] I wanted to ask about that.


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

[User] That was interesting. It affected us very little. We were asked by management not to query the ground about the government shutdown. We would try to in an indirect way like [asking], “How’s parking today?”\n\n They’re like, “Yes, parking is still real good.”\n\n Otherwise we didn’t see any effect real-time. However, if we didn’t fly the first professional-grade digital camera, it was maybe the second time this Kodak DCS, think it was 460, was flown. We were doing our best to take pictures and downlink them, assuming that they would be a big hit on the ground.\n\n The photo/TV folks in Building 8 were evidently deemed nonessential, so those pictures were not released real-time. For a long time, it was very difficult to find them in the NASA archives. I don’t know if I just wasn’t looking in the right place. Of course when you fall behind it takes a lot of effort and real diligence to then catch up. It was disappointing to get back and find out that those pictures had not been released to the media while there was a little more excitement in the public.\n\n We were docked to Mir for two days. The first day I went over with the digital camera and took a good number of pictures. Our joint crew photo on our montage is one of those pictures. Then the next morning we got a note from the ground, and it said the digital camera had not been certified for use on board Mir, so we couldn’t take it back over the second day.

[Assistant] What was the potential danger there?

[User] Who knows? Electromagnetic interference. But it’s like, “Okay, we won’t do that.”

[Assistant] That’s a bummer. One of the things that I had read about your mission was that you guys actually decided to create a website, the Utterly Unofficial Website of STS-74. Do you remember that website?

[User] I don’t remember that at all. That’s interesting.

[Assistant] I was curious about that.


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

[User] We did have a very generous supply of Blue Bell ice cream at our postlanding party.

[Assistant] The official ice cream of STS-74?

[User] I’m sure they couldn’t do anything official, but they seemed very pleased with the opportunity.

[Assistant] Did you spend much time learning Russian for this mission?

[User] Not a significant amount, but that’s when I began studying Russian. Ironically, as I mentioned, Ken Cameron had been the first DOR. Later Jim Halsell was the DOR. Then I became the DOR for a while, and then Chris Hadfield replaced me as the DOR. Out of the five of us on the crew, four of us served as the DOR.

[Assistant] [Was that a] coincidence?


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

[User] I’m sure they couldn’t do anything official, but they seemed very pleased with the opportunity.

[Assistant] Did you spend much time learning Russian for this mission?

[User] Not a significant amount, but that’s when I began studying Russian. Ironically, as I mentioned, Ken Cameron had been the first DOR. Later Jim Halsell was the DOR. Then I became the DOR for a while, and then Chris Hadfield replaced me as the DOR. Out of the five of us on the crew, four of us served as the DOR.

[Assistant] [Was that a] coincidence?

[User] Of course really it wouldn’t be a coincidence. I think we all enjoyed our experience of working with the Russian space program and the cosmonauts, really a very collegial group. They’re a very welcoming group. Once we were over there and got to experience Russia a little bit, several of us thought it might be good, instead of just dipping our toe in the pool, to go ahead in all the way. Or it could be like the frozen lake in Star City, maybe we were all going to jump through a hole in the ice.

[Assistant] One of the experiments you were working on, just as you had on your previous flight, was the SAREX [Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment]. Had anything changed since then?


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

[User] That’s something that I’ve thought about in retrospect. I think we just had so much to do that it was okay. But I don’t think any crew after that [did so]. Later I think that we adopted in the Astronaut Office more [crew] for really critical tasks where you have a prime operator and a backup who’s keeping an eye on things, reading procedures, better cockpit resource management.

[Assistant] Do you think that was helpful when you went on Station?

[User] On STS-92 it was. On Station not so much, because with just Valery and me there, we tended to rely more on the ground to be your second set of eyes. That worked out pretty well.

[Assistant] You mentioned that Plume Experiment. There was another one, a Risk Mitigation Experiment on the Mir Wireless Network. I was curious if you could talk about that.

[User] Eventually ISS had a wireless instrumentation system on it, so again I don’t remember much about that. I think we had wireless instrumentation on STS-92. I’m sure we didn’t have any on the outside on STS-74, but we may have had some on the inside.

[Assistant] One of the things we didn’t talk about are ceremonies. A lot of times when you connect with another spacecraft there’s a big welcoming ceremony and gifts are exchanged. Was that the case on that flight?


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

[User] We did.

[Assistant] Can you talk about that? Anything memorable?

[User] He’s always gracious. We’re all just a little sadder now that he’s passed away, but he was just very gracious. After STS-58 we were doing our Capitol Hill stuff, and they were more interested in my visiting with members of the North Carolina congressional delegation than Texas, not being a native Texan. So I went to Senator [Jesse] Helms’s office and visited with him for a little while. He called the photographer in, had me sit at his desk, and pick up the phone like I was actually doing some business. It was like, “Okay.” After Washington I think the cosmonauts went back to Russia, and we came back to Houston.

[Assistant] No trips to Russia for PR [Public Relations]?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Kind of a light PR load after that flight, I guess.


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

[User] He’s always gracious. We’re all just a little sadder now that he’s passed away, but he was just very gracious. After STS-58 we were doing our Capitol Hill stuff, and they were more interested in my visiting with members of the North Carolina congressional delegation than Texas, not being a native Texan. So I went to Senator [Jesse] Helms’s office and visited with him for a little while. He called the photographer in, had me sit at his desk, and pick up the phone like I was actually doing some business. It was like, “Okay.” After Washington I think the cosmonauts went back to Russia, and we came back to Houston.

[Assistant] No trips to Russia for PR [Public Relations]?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Kind of a light PR load after that flight, I guess.

[User] I don’t remember much about it. We did some of the obligatory [events], go to KSC.

[Assistant] I was looking at your biosheet, and it’s interesting because there’s a period of about five years that doesn’t contain much information. You have your flight, then you’ve got your next mission. Is that when you became DOR? Were you working on some other assignments?


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

[User] No. I only had one dive in Marshall, and that was that welding experiment.

[Assistant] Did you help weigh in on the type of needs you might have at the NBL, how it might be designed?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Did you help certify the facility once it came online?

[User] That’s a good question. I don’t know. One of our runs may have been associated with that.

[Assistant] It’s amazing having spent five years basically preparing for your next flight.


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

[User] No.

[Assistant] Did you help certify the facility once it came online?

[User] That’s a good question. I don’t know. One of our runs may have been associated with that.

[Assistant] It’s amazing having spent five years basically preparing for your next flight.

[User] It is. Then I spent four and a half years preparing for the one after that. I once remarked most of my astronaut career was almost ideal. What did you do? I trained and flew, trained and flew. I was getting closer to my ISS flight, and I was walking down the hall behind a younger astronaut, and he complained, “I was sitting in meetings all day.”\n\n I said, “I really hope someday to have a job in which I sit in meetings all day and drink coffee.” Be careful what you ask for.

[Assistant] It must have been nice for your family at that point while you were training for these EVAs because you weren’t on travel. You were able to spend more time with your wife and daughters.


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

[User] That’s a good question. I don’t know. One of our runs may have been associated with that.

[Assistant] It’s amazing having spent five years basically preparing for your next flight.

[User] It is. Then I spent four and a half years preparing for the one after that. I once remarked most of my astronaut career was almost ideal. What did you do? I trained and flew, trained and flew. I was getting closer to my ISS flight, and I was walking down the hall behind a younger astronaut, and he complained, “I was sitting in meetings all day.”\n\n I said, “I really hope someday to have a job in which I sit in meetings all day and drink coffee.” Be careful what you ask for.

[Assistant] It must have been nice for your family at that point while you were training for these EVAs because you weren’t on travel. You were able to spend more time with your wife and daughters.

[User] For the most part. I do remember the time we were in Cocoa Beach at dinner. The phone rings and my wife says, “When are you coming home?”\n\n I said, “Tomorrow.”\n\n “Where are you?”\n\n “In Florida.”\n\n “Did you tell me you were going to Florida?”\n\n “Uh, maybe not. Did I tell you I was going to Florida?”\n\n “No, you didn’t.”\n\n “Oh. Sorry. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

[Assistant] She probably got used to you being around.


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

[User] It is. Then I spent four and a half years preparing for the one after that. I once remarked most of my astronaut career was almost ideal. What did you do? I trained and flew, trained and flew. I was getting closer to my ISS flight, and I was walking down the hall behind a younger astronaut, and he complained, “I was sitting in meetings all day.”\n\n I said, “I really hope someday to have a job in which I sit in meetings all day and drink coffee.” Be careful what you ask for.

[Assistant] It must have been nice for your family at that point while you were training for these EVAs because you weren’t on travel. You were able to spend more time with your wife and daughters.

[User] For the most part. I do remember the time we were in Cocoa Beach at dinner. The phone rings and my wife says, “When are you coming home?”\n\n I said, “Tomorrow.”\n\n “Where are you?”\n\n “In Florida.”\n\n “Did you tell me you were going to Florida?”\n\n “Uh, maybe not. Did I tell you I was going to Florida?”\n\n “No, you didn’t.”\n\n “Oh. Sorry. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

[Assistant] She probably got used to you being around.

[User] They did. For 92 we also did a couple of trips to Russia, and they were a lot of fun. By then the cottages had been built, so we actually stayed out in Star City.

[Assistant] Can you tell us about those cottages?


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

[User] For the most part. I do remember the time we were in Cocoa Beach at dinner. The phone rings and my wife says, “When are you coming home?”\n\n I said, “Tomorrow.”\n\n “Where are you?”\n\n “In Florida.”\n\n “Did you tell me you were going to Florida?”\n\n “Uh, maybe not. Did I tell you I was going to Florida?”\n\n “No, you didn’t.”\n\n “Oh. Sorry. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

[Assistant] She probably got used to you being around.

[User] They did. For 92 we also did a couple of trips to Russia, and they were a lot of fun. By then the cottages had been built, so we actually stayed out in Star City.

[Assistant] Can you tell us about those cottages?

[User] They’re duplexes. They are three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath, got really a westernish kitchen. When I say western, Western European style appliances, wooden floors, a fireplace. I never put a fire in the fireplace. That was too bad, that would have been kind of cozy in the wintertime. By then had pretty reasonable Internet access. Had Kosmos TV, which was a cablevision service. They had several English language channels, so if you really wanted to watch English TV you could.\n\n They each had a basement. Cottages 3 and 4, in the basement of Cottage 3 was Shep’s Bar; the basement of Cottage 4—and you could go from one side to the other—was our gym. What was really nice about being there when I was training for ISS is if you were on one of the prime crews, you had a permanently assigned bedroom. Now if you weren’t there someone else would stay in it. If you were there that was your bedroom, so you could leave clothes in the closet and in the chest of drawers. It made it pretty convenient going back and forth.

[Assistant] Sounds like a nice place. Was that something that NASA put money in to build? Or was that something that was really Russia’s?


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

[User] They did. For 92 we also did a couple of trips to Russia, and they were a lot of fun. By then the cottages had been built, so we actually stayed out in Star City.

[Assistant] Can you tell us about those cottages?

[User] They’re duplexes. They are three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath, got really a westernish kitchen. When I say western, Western European style appliances, wooden floors, a fireplace. I never put a fire in the fireplace. That was too bad, that would have been kind of cozy in the wintertime. By then had pretty reasonable Internet access. Had Kosmos TV, which was a cablevision service. They had several English language channels, so if you really wanted to watch English TV you could.\n\n They each had a basement. Cottages 3 and 4, in the basement of Cottage 3 was Shep’s Bar; the basement of Cottage 4—and you could go from one side to the other—was our gym. What was really nice about being there when I was training for ISS is if you were on one of the prime crews, you had a permanently assigned bedroom. Now if you weren’t there someone else would stay in it. If you were there that was your bedroom, so you could leave clothes in the closet and in the chest of drawers. It made it pretty convenient going back and forth.

[Assistant] Sounds like a nice place. Was that something that NASA put money in to build? Or was that something that was really Russia’s?

[User] The story is NASA put money in to build it. I think a Swedish company came in and built them, but they were owned by Star City. NASA paid rent for them.

[Assistant] Sounds pretty nice based on previous accommodations I’ve heard about.


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

[User] They’re duplexes. They are three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath, got really a westernish kitchen. When I say western, Western European style appliances, wooden floors, a fireplace. I never put a fire in the fireplace. That was too bad, that would have been kind of cozy in the wintertime. By then had pretty reasonable Internet access. Had Kosmos TV, which was a cablevision service. They had several English language channels, so if you really wanted to watch English TV you could.\n\n They each had a basement. Cottages 3 and 4, in the basement of Cottage 3 was Shep’s Bar; the basement of Cottage 4—and you could go from one side to the other—was our gym. What was really nice about being there when I was training for ISS is if you were on one of the prime crews, you had a permanently assigned bedroom. Now if you weren’t there someone else would stay in it. If you were there that was your bedroom, so you could leave clothes in the closet and in the chest of drawers. It made it pretty convenient going back and forth.

[Assistant] Sounds like a nice place. Was that something that NASA put money in to build? Or was that something that was really Russia’s?

[User] The story is NASA put money in to build it. I think a Swedish company came in and built them, but they were owned by Star City. NASA paid rent for them.

[Assistant] Sounds pretty nice based on previous accommodations I’ve heard about.

[User] When I first went over as the DOR my wife and I actually stayed in one of the Russian high-rise apartment buildings, and we had a three-bedroom apartment, which was a little bit older than the cottages and I would say not westernized. But it was a great experience. We really enjoyed living there.

[Assistant] [I] wanted to ask about STS-92. I notice that it was the hundredth flight of the Space Shuttle Program.


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

[User] The story is NASA put money in to build it. I think a Swedish company came in and built them, but they were owned by Star City. NASA paid rent for them.

[Assistant] Sounds pretty nice based on previous accommodations I’ve heard about.

[User] When I first went over as the DOR my wife and I actually stayed in one of the Russian high-rise apartment buildings, and we had a three-bedroom apartment, which was a little bit older than the cottages and I would say not westernized. But it was a great experience. We really enjoyed living there.

[Assistant] [I] wanted to ask about STS-92. I notice that it was the hundredth flight of the Space Shuttle Program.

[User] It was.

[Assistant] NASA celebrates all those [anniversaries].


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

[User] It was.

[Assistant] NASA celebrates all those [anniversaries].

[User] They did not celebrate that one.

[Assistant] They didn’t?

[User] They did not. For some reason the approach was, “Let’s not make a big deal out of this one. It’s just another Shuttle mission.” Really? Okay, fine.

[Assistant] Must have been disappointing to the crew.


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

[User] They did not celebrate that one.

[Assistant] They didn’t?

[User] They did not. For some reason the approach was, “Let’s not make a big deal out of this one. It’s just another Shuttle mission.” Really? Okay, fine.

[Assistant] Must have been disappointing to the crew.

[User] We were so happy being there. In retrospect, I just scratch my head over it a little bit.

[Assistant] Kind of figured there would have been this big momentous event.


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

[User] They did not. For some reason the approach was, “Let’s not make a big deal out of this one. It’s just another Shuttle mission.” Really? Okay, fine.

[Assistant] Must have been disappointing to the crew.

[User] We were so happy being there. In retrospect, I just scratch my head over it a little bit.

[Assistant] Kind of figured there would have been this big momentous event.

[User] In retrospect you go, “I don’t exactly understand the logic there.” Here with this new astronaut class, we really capitalized on the opportunity to draw a lot of attention to that. It seems counterintuitive.

[Assistant] Very much so. Tell me about seeing the International Space Station for the first time as you approached.


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

[User] We were so happy being there. In retrospect, I just scratch my head over it a little bit.

[Assistant] Kind of figured there would have been this big momentous event.

[User] In retrospect you go, “I don’t exactly understand the logic there.” Here with this new astronaut class, we really capitalized on the opportunity to draw a lot of attention to that. It seems counterintuitive.

[Assistant] Very much so. Tell me about seeing the International Space Station for the first time as you approached.

[User] That was pretty cool, in part because we had trained so much. It seemed big. As a matter of fact, when I went out for my first EVA, I’m going out on my back. I’m looking up, and I see it up there, and I say something like, “Oh, goodness, it’s huge.” In retrospect of course it really wasn’t that big. At that time, it wasn’t as big as Mir. We hadn’t put the Z1 truss on it yet. It was long and skinny with solar arrays on it.

[Assistant] You mentioned going out for your first EVA. Would you talk about that? What were your feelings as you were going out?


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

[User] In retrospect you go, “I don’t exactly understand the logic there.” Here with this new astronaut class, we really capitalized on the opportunity to draw a lot of attention to that. It seems counterintuitive.

[Assistant] Very much so. Tell me about seeing the International Space Station for the first time as you approached.

[User] That was pretty cool, in part because we had trained so much. It seemed big. As a matter of fact, when I went out for my first EVA, I’m going out on my back. I’m looking up, and I see it up there, and I say something like, “Oh, goodness, it’s huge.” In retrospect of course it really wasn’t that big. At that time, it wasn’t as big as Mir. We hadn’t put the Z1 truss on it yet. It was long and skinny with solar arrays on it.

[Assistant] You mentioned going out for your first EVA. Would you talk about that? What were your feelings as you were going out?

[User] Really excited. I was the second one out of the hatch then. I’d always wanted to do EVAs, so I was just really thrilled to have the chance. You go out, and it feels good. It’s more comfortable than working in the NBL, because you’re actually floating inside the suit instead of gravity pulling you to the lowest point of the suit. It was very satisfying.\n\n I did a lot of work attached to the end of the arm. Koichi [Wakata] would move me from worksite to worksite. That was really thrilling because while you’re in transit you just look around. You can’t turn your whole [body]—you twist around a little bit. Then a few times as he’d be moving the arm around I would be able to see nothing in my field of view, no Earth, no spacecraft, no nothing. That was breathtaking.

[Assistant] Did you have any sort of overwhelming feeling like you might fall as you came out of the Shuttle?


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

[User] There are just the little habitability techniques. Things as simple as when you open food, don’t create extra trash. If you’re going to open a container, don’t cut the top off, because now you got trash floating around. To things like go spend some time just looking out the window; go get up on the nightside.\n\n Shannon had a technique where we would get along the top circuit breaker panel and get our heads up in the forward windows, and then just be there as you went around the nightside. She said she liked to imagine that she was in an alien spaceship just approaching Earth, or even a nonalien, but on a spaceship approaching a new planet for the first time. Those were all a lot of fun.

[Assistant] What are your memories of going into Space Station for the first time?

[User] I’m trying to remember how far we got in. We got in the node, and it was pretty big. It had a large diameter. I think all of us took one night when we slept on board ISS. I decided right then and there that I wanted to be there for a much longer period of time. It was new, pristine.

[Assistant] Had that new car smell.

[User] Yes, it did. It did.

[Assistant] So when you came back from the mission did you talk with the chief of the Astronaut Office about that?


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

[User] I’m trying to remember how far we got in. We got in the node, and it was pretty big. It had a large diameter. I think all of us took one night when we slept on board ISS. I decided right then and there that I wanted to be there for a much longer period of time. It was new, pristine.

[Assistant] Had that new car smell.

[User] Yes, it did. It did.

[Assistant] So when you came back from the mission did you talk with the chief of the Astronaut Office about that?

[User] I’d already been talking to him about that, and I came back. I was already lined up to replace Scott [J.] Kelly as the DOR. Gosh, I’d already been making the arrangements, working with HR [Human Resources], to retire from the Army and convert to civil service. It wasn’t a quid pro quo, but it was I’d like to convert to civil service, and they go, “Okay, and would you be willing to go be the DOR?”\n\n I said, “Yes, I’d be willing to do that.”\n\n Then there was this, “And maybe Expedition 7 or something, or 8.”\n\n I said, “Yes, we’ll cross that.”\n\n By the time I got to Russia I know I knew I was going to be on Expedition 8, because I had three bosses. I had Charlie [Charles J.] Precourt, chief of the office. I had Mike [Michael A.] Baker, who was the manager for the ISS Program who was located in Moscow, and then Mike [C. Michael] Foale, who was going to be Expedition 8 commander. All three of them were giving me things to do. I have three bosses. Okay, got it. “So which one of you will I offend today?”

[Assistant] On your last Shuttle mission I noticed that you got delayed for a couple of days. What did you do?


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

[User] Yes, it did. It did.

[Assistant] So when you came back from the mission did you talk with the chief of the Astronaut Office about that?

[User] I’d already been talking to him about that, and I came back. I was already lined up to replace Scott [J.] Kelly as the DOR. Gosh, I’d already been making the arrangements, working with HR [Human Resources], to retire from the Army and convert to civil service. It wasn’t a quid pro quo, but it was I’d like to convert to civil service, and they go, “Okay, and would you be willing to go be the DOR?”\n\n I said, “Yes, I’d be willing to do that.”\n\n Then there was this, “And maybe Expedition 7 or something, or 8.”\n\n I said, “Yes, we’ll cross that.”\n\n By the time I got to Russia I know I knew I was going to be on Expedition 8, because I had three bosses. I had Charlie [Charles J.] Precourt, chief of the office. I had Mike [Michael A.] Baker, who was the manager for the ISS Program who was located in Moscow, and then Mike [C. Michael] Foale, who was going to be Expedition 8 commander. All three of them were giving me things to do. I have three bosses. Okay, got it. “So which one of you will I offend today?”

[Assistant] On your last Shuttle mission I noticed that you got delayed for a couple of days. What did you do?

[User] I think it was about six days. Ooh, idle hands are the devil’s playground. We got in trouble. We drank a lot of wine, that’s for sure.

[Assistant] You had wine on board the Shuttle?


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

[User] [interposing] Yes, I did.

[Assistant] What aspects of your current position do y ou most enjoy?

[User] I enjoy being able to thrive in chaos, being able t o channel all of my experiences from the past twenty-four years, and be prepared to answer anything. Just before we started, the Archivist said: “Find me an example of the earliest records of the U.S. Secret Service, for the event that we are going to do tonight.” And I’m just thinking, you know, I remembered working with an archivist where he took me to a stack and showed me some records of the Treasury Department from the Civil War. There was this ledger of Pinkerton’s agents, who became Secret Service. This was their payroll. So, I’m just thinking, you know, I remember this from the past, I remember the archivist, I remember the staff, and I can apply it. So, I guess the greatest thrill for me is being able to apply everything, whether it’s professional or hobbies, what have you, to this job, and make it work, because I feel like I’m flying without a net. I don’t think there was a formal training for this job. I don’t think there is a formal training for this job.

[Assistant] That’s why I skipped that question.

[User] Okay. Well, now you bring it up.

[Assistant] No, continue. I was just joking.


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

[User] I enjoy being able to thrive in chaos, being able t o channel all of my experiences from the past twenty-four years, and be prepared to answer anything. Just before we started, the Archivist said: “Find me an example of the earliest records of the U.S. Secret Service, for the event that we are going to do tonight.” And I’m just thinking, you know, I remembered working with an archivist where he took me to a stack and showed me some records of the Treasury Department from the Civil War. There was this ledger of Pinkerton’s agents, who became Secret Service. This was their payroll. So, I’m just thinking, you know, I remember this from the past, I remember the archivist, I remember the staff, and I can apply it. So, I guess the greatest thrill for me is being able to apply everything, whether it’s professional or hobbies, what have you, to this job, and make it work, because I feel like I’m flying without a net. I don’t think there was a formal training for this job. I don’t think there is a formal training for this job.

[Assistant] That’s why I skipped that question.

[User] Okay. Well, now you bring it up.

[Assistant] No, continue. I was just joking.

[User] I would like to create formal training. I think a manual could be created for a special assistant. I think it could be done.

[Assistant] Out of curiosity, what are those Pinkerton records?


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

[User] Okay. Well, now you bring it up.

[Assistant] No, continue. I was just joking.

[User] I would like to create formal training. I think a manual could be created for a special assistant. I think it could be done.

[Assistant] Out of curiosity, what are those Pinkerton records?

[User] Sure. The Pinkerton records were, I think, from the Treasury, from the Department of the Treasury, and it was from the Civil War. I can’t remember exactly what year. But what I remembered was in a stack area, mid-level, on the west side of this building. Rick Peuser, Richard Peuser, who now works up at College Park, great guy, very helpful, and I’ll put him down as kind of a one-off mentor. Rick Peuser had an enthusiasm about his job, and it affected me, kind of like Connie Potter and Ken Heger, they all were passionate about their job, but Rick had this outgoing style that appealed to me, that I could relate to, and we were also close in age, so I felt like we had more in common. But Rick showed me this record. It was a grey Hollinger box, and he opened it up, and it was this listing of names of people from the Pinkerton Agency, which was a private company doing security and what have you, and it was their payroll for that particular month, and they were getting paid for working for the Federal government. And, as I’ve learned over the years, that eventually became what we now know as the Secret Service. For some people it might not be anything but right now it means the world to my boss, so I have to find a way to find it.

[Assistant] Can you describe a typical day in your unit?


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

[User] It’s helping. It’s helping me. It’s helping m y job, and I think it’s going to help the researcher eventually.

[Assistant] Can you describe your involvements with other pr ofessional organizations, such as SAA, or OAH?

[User] I don’t, I’m not a member of any of them. The y come here to the Archives because we have various leaders who meet with them—so I see them as I’m preparing the Archivist for a meeting. I know they have a benefit and a purpose.

[Assistant]
Emily, do you have any questions before w e conclude?

I’m okay.

Is there anything you would like to add to the interview such as anecdotes or words of wisdom?

[User] Yes, I think that the strength of this agency, well, what I like to promote about it are the records and the people. It’s the people, and I think that some of the hardest working people are the reference archivists, the staff who deal with the general public, with their research questions, who become familiar with the records. I wish we could find a way to increase them fivefold. They are great. I just think about the years here, and you know, look outside my window, and here I am with an office on the mezzanine level of what we used to call mahogany row, and I get to see Pennsylvania Avenue—I think: jeez, I’m sitting here, and you’re actually asking me questions. I’m humbled by it.

[Assistant] We are humbled by the opportunity to ask you questions.


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

[User] I don’t, I’m not a member of any of them. The y come here to the Archives because we have various leaders who meet with them—so I see them as I’m preparing the Archivist for a meeting. I know they have a benefit and a purpose.

[Assistant]
Emily, do you have any questions before w e conclude?

I’m okay.

Is there anything you would like to add to the interview such as anecdotes or words of wisdom?

[User] Yes, I think that the strength of this agency, well, what I like to promote about it are the records and the people. It’s the people, and I think that some of the hardest working people are the reference archivists, the staff who deal with the general public, with their research questions, who become familiar with the records. I wish we could find a way to increase them fivefold. They are great. I just think about the years here, and you know, look outside my window, and here I am with an office on the mezzanine level of what we used to call mahogany row, and I get to see Pennsylvania Avenue—I think: jeez, I’m sitting here, and you’re actually asking me questions. I’m humbled by it.

[Assistant] We are humbled by the opportunity to ask you questions.

[User] You may be my boss one day, who knows, because I realized, you know, time is changing, and I was your age once. I am 46 years old, I could retire in eleven years—I could retire from the Federal government in eleven years, and by then, I will have had 35 years in government. Me, I don’t feel old, well, I do, I physically feel old, but I still feel like a kid in a candy store. I feel like there’s always something new to learn.

[Assistant] Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory—isn’t the National Archives kind of like it?


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

[User]
Dave Scott.

Scott, yes.

Dave Scott.

Scott and [James B.] Irwin were on that flight.

Yes. Then 16 was John [W.] Young and—

[Assistant] Charlie [Charles M.] Duke and Ken [Thomas K.] Mattingly [II].

[User]
—and Charlie Duke, on the surface. Seventeen was Gene [Eugene A.] Cernan.

Schmitt.

Schmitt and the Navy guy, Navy captain.

[Assistant] [Ronald E.] Evans.

[User] Ron Evans.

[Assistant] I think 15 was also the mission where when they were reentering, that they had one of the parachutes collapse because of the venting. Did you do any of the post-flight analysis work on that, any of the materials or anything?


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

[User]
—and Charlie Duke, on the surface. Seventeen was Gene [Eugene A.] Cernan.

Schmitt.

Schmitt and the Navy guy, Navy captain.

[Assistant] [Ronald E.] Evans.

[User] Ron Evans.

[Assistant] I think 15 was also the mission where when they were reentering, that they had one of the parachutes collapse because of the venting. Did you do any of the post-flight analysis work on that, any of the materials or anything?

[User] Well, I don't know. We very likely did test the materials on a chute, but I don't know that we did it as a result of that incident. I don't remember anything about it. We weren't in the chute business, other than materials business.

[Assistant] Do you remember any other—


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

[User] Ron Evans.

[Assistant] I think 15 was also the mission where when they were reentering, that they had one of the parachutes collapse because of the venting. Did you do any of the post-flight analysis work on that, any of the materials or anything?

[User] Well, I don't know. We very likely did test the materials on a chute, but I don't know that we did it as a result of that incident. I don't remember anything about it. We weren't in the chute business, other than materials business.

[Assistant] Do you remember any other—

[User] Well, wait a minute. Hang on a minute. Repeat what you said.

[Assistant] Fifteen was the one where they were venting the RCS after they entered the atmosphere.


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

[User] Well, I don't know. We very likely did test the materials on a chute, but I don't know that we did it as a result of that incident. I don't remember anything about it. We weren't in the chute business, other than materials business.

[Assistant] Do you remember any other—

[User] Well, wait a minute. Hang on a minute. Repeat what you said.

[Assistant] Fifteen was the one where they were venting the RCS after they entered the atmosphere.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] It was either the—


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

[User] Well, wait a minute. Hang on a minute. Repeat what you said.

[Assistant] Fifteen was the one where they were venting the RCS after they entered the atmosphere.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] It was either the—

[User]
We did do something on that, Grady.

I don't remember.

At 302. We went up on the side at 302, just because it's tall and sitting up in the air, and I can't remember what the heck we did, but—

We might have done some venting to see it came back and had all the material.

We had a chute, or a partial chute, or something like that, and we sprayed it with oxidizer. I don't remember the outcome of it. I don't remember very much about it, because I wasn't intimately involved with it.

I don't guess I was either, because I don't remember anything about it. I didn't work in 300 Area a lot in Apollo. I worked mostly in the 400 Area.

Yes, me, too.

[Assistant] Do you remember any other sort of post-flight investigations that either of you did work on?


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] It was either the—

[User]
We did do something on that, Grady.

I don't remember.

At 302. We went up on the side at 302, just because it's tall and sitting up in the air, and I can't remember what the heck we did, but—

We might have done some venting to see it came back and had all the material.

We had a chute, or a partial chute, or something like that, and we sprayed it with oxidizer. I don't remember the outcome of it. I don't remember very much about it, because I wasn't intimately involved with it.

I don't guess I was either, because I don't remember anything about it. I didn't work in 300 Area a lot in Apollo. I worked mostly in the 400 Area.

Yes, me, too.

[Assistant] Do you remember any other sort of post-flight investigations that either of you did work on?

[User]
Well, I told the one yesterday, I guess, having to do with the high-pressure temperature in the fuel line after Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.

I remember doing that.

That was a pretty involved test program that we went through.

I did get involved in a little bit of the PUGS program up in the 300 Area, Propellant Utilization Gauging System, on the service module tanks. That was the crummiest gauging system I ever as associated with. We finally flew without it. Al Williams was really involved in that. I helped him out some. What they were doing was sensing liquid in the tank, little sensors on this pipe that went down through the center of the tank, and as those little sensors got covered with liquid, they'd change state—sometimes. We never did successfully fix it. We finally flew without a PUGS system.

[Assistant] Neither of you I don't think had said anything about either Skylab or the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project much in your interviews. Did you work much on either of those programs?


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

[User] It picked up probably around GT-4. I think that's when it started. This is the first time I've told you, because I generally not—I've never said I did that. I'm doing it for this thing, though, because most—

[Assistant] I was just getting ready to ask you that, though.

[User] I know it, but I generally won't admit to it. I make everybody else—just to listen to where they think it came from. [Charles F.] Deiterich got it, though, for [Eugene F.] Kranz. One of Kranz's meetings, Deiterich told him where it came from. Have you all talked to him?

[Assistant] Chuck Deiterich? Not yet, no.

[User] He's a neat guy. He kind of was a follow-on. You know, if you look at guys that started in Apollo, he was kind of a follow-on. He went all the way through to Shuttle and still had an active role in trajectories and kept up with it all. Yes, that's where that came from.

[Assistant] Well, it's good to get the story straight.


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

[User] He's a neat guy. He kind of was a follow-on. You know, if you look at guys that started in Apollo, he was kind of a follow-on. He went all the way through to Shuttle and still had an active role in trajectories and kept up with it all. Yes, that's where that came from.

[Assistant] Well, it's good to get the story straight.

[User] It sounds as a certain amount of technical arrogance in this whole discussion about the control center, but it was no doubt about it, really where all the responsibility was and who were the top guys. It was us. There's no doubt. Because look at how many people that didn't make it.

[Assistant] That's true.

[User] That were in the Flight Dynamics area.

[Assistant] And certainly there are many stories surrounding the guys in the trench. Made up your own matchbooks, for instance.


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

[User] It sounds as a certain amount of technical arrogance in this whole discussion about the control center, but it was no doubt about it, really where all the responsibility was and who were the top guys. It was us. There's no doubt. Because look at how many people that didn't make it.

[Assistant] That's true.

[User] That were in the Flight Dynamics area.

[Assistant] And certainly there are many stories surrounding the guys in the trench. Made up your own matchbooks, for instance.

[User] Yes, Bostick did that.

[Assistant] Yes, he gave us a sample of one of those yesterday.


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

[User] That were in the Flight Dynamics area.

[Assistant] And certainly there are many stories surrounding the guys in the trench. Made up your own matchbooks, for instance.

[User] Yes, Bostick did that.

[Assistant] Yes, he gave us a sample of one of those yesterday.

[User] That's neat.

[Assistant] We thought so.


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

[User] We got here right after John Glenn's flight. That's when I went into the flight dynamics period. It took me off of—I was working in—I think I mentioned last time, I was flight systems division or something like that. I was an engineer in heat transfer and reentry, building facilities, like that. Then I went in Flight Control Division, and we moved here. So that would be '62, I guess, March, February, about this time of year.

[Assistant] So then you'd commute from here to the Cape before they had the control center here?

[User] Yes, we did that. We had Shepard's flight and all those right after that. We'd go to the Cape, and that's where we got immersed. We did that same thing up into Gemini IV, because we flew NS-1, Gemini I and Gemini III out of there. Some of that was done out of here. They had a backup system for III out of here. Then IV, we did it.

[Assistant] So then did you work on the first two, the unmanned Gemini flights?

[User] Yes, I did all those. I did almost every one of them. Almost every one up until, I guess, Apollo 13. Had some position. Of course, we were bringing people in by Gemini. Bostick came in in Gemini. He was around for Mercury, but he wasn't on the console.

[Assistant] Do you remember anything in particular from those two Gemini flights that sticks out in your mind?


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

[User] Yeah, I'm part of the North Carolina Peace Corps Association, yeah. I am. It's a really good organization, it's very strong. Vibrant group.

[Assistant] A lot of young people.

[User] A lot of young people now, yeah, young people. Who knows why they weren't coming before, but they sure are coming now to join this organization. To take charge of it, which is for us old timers, just a blessing.

[Assistant] It is, yes.

[User] You see something you love.

[Assistant] Encouraging. Yeah. Well, thank you for this interview.


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

[User] A lot of young people now, yeah, young people. Who knows why they weren't coming before, but they sure are coming now to join this organization. To take charge of it, which is for us old timers, just a blessing.

[Assistant] It is, yes.

[User] You see something you love.

[Assistant] Encouraging. Yeah. Well, thank you for this interview.

[User] You're welcome.

[Assistant] We'll get this one going and.


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

[User] Really nothing specific that I can think of. It was just a continuation of helping take care of things for Dr. Gilruth. I think that for things like that, probably a review of the daily log bit would tell you much more than I can remember. Some things, like the Russian shot-putters—of course, that occurred after the end of the daily logs, but the encounter with the TV newsman and Walter Cronkite's remarks and so on wouldn't have been in the logs anyhow.

[Assistant] During our research we found that you kept a scrapbook for Dr. Gilruth of Russian progress in space. Is that accurate?

[User] I don't recall that I did. Whenever I saw anything that I felt he might have missed, I made sure that it got mentioned to him, either by copy of the clippings and so on, but I don't recall keeping a scrapbook for him.

[Assistant] Did you have very much knowledge of what the Russians, the Soviets, were doing during Mercury and Gemini especially?

[User] Not really, not anything more than what was in the papers, because, as I gathered, the U.S. was fairly open with its own press about what they knew about the Russians. They were not open about a lot of things that they were suspicious of, but I think that they were pretty open with the press about what they really knew.

[Assistant] You discussed moving from Virginia to Houston. What was the impact on NASA, making that separation?


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

[User] I stay in touch with him now. He doesn't know it, because he's suffering from Alzheimer's, but I stay in touch, at least a Christmas card and maybe one other exchange of notes with Mrs. Gilruth, and got one from him this Christmas. There's just no recollection of anything now. For a while he would remember spasmodically, but now, apparently, he's completely gone. But I felt very close to him, and I think he's really the best boss I've ever had, because I could be completely open with him about anything and felt he was being equally open with me. We got along very well.

[Assistant] That's important. It seems that you were describing your interview with a media person. How much involvement did you have in public relations for NASA?

[User] It depends on the point of view. From "Shorty" Powers' point of view and from his successor's point of view, I meddled in it too much, but we just had a little bit different way of looking at things, I guess. So we tried to leave most of it with the Public Affairs Office, because that was their job. But every office gets a little bit of meddling from the front office now and then. They just seemed to resent it more than anyone else did.

[Assistant] How well do you think NASA portrayed itself to the American public?

[User] I'm not sure what it is that you're really asking.

[Assistant] Do you think NASA did a good job of presenting itself in public relations?


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

[User] No, not really, because by that time almost all of the engineering and technical problems were being handled by the engineers who were actually doing the work. My position in the front office was more managerial and people contact than it was technical by that time. So I really can't think of any technical input that I had in either Gemini or Apollo. There again, in the daily logs you might discover something.

[Assistant] How did the Apollo 1 fire affect your job, affect you in your job?

[User] Gilruth wanted me to collect all the information on it, but then when he told Joe [Joseph F.] Shea about it, [Joe] insisted that—I believe it was Tom [J. Thomas] Markley in his office be the central point for collecting all the data, which suited me fine. I think Joe just wanted to be sure that there was someone he could trust doing it, and Tom Markley was a very trustworthy guy.

[Assistant] This year will mark the thirtieth anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Do you remember where you were when that happened?

[User] No, I don't. [Laughter] I was just being busy.

[Assistant] Looking back over your career at NASA, what do you think was your greatest accomplishment?


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

[User] Gilruth wanted me to collect all the information on it, but then when he told Joe [Joseph F.] Shea about it, [Joe] insisted that—I believe it was Tom [J. Thomas] Markley in his office be the central point for collecting all the data, which suited me fine. I think Joe just wanted to be sure that there was someone he could trust doing it, and Tom Markley was a very trustworthy guy.

[Assistant] This year will mark the thirtieth anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Do you remember where you were when that happened?

[User] No, I don't. [Laughter] I was just being busy.

[Assistant] Looking back over your career at NASA, what do you think was your greatest accomplishment?

[User] Surviving. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, that's important.


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

[User] So don’t tell me about the need to keep these things in mind. It’s absurd that people don’t remember things like that. What the hell are they doing in the business? I’m an old man and it’s still all up there. I guess they’re all dead. That’s classical. That’s what happened in the Shuttle. It hadn’t been that long, had it? People forgot the decisions that were made, the reasons the decisions were made. The reasons why decisions are made are important because that determines how you’re going to use the machine.

[Assistant] That may be the piece that’s missing; the reasons why those decisions were made. Not just what the decisions are.

[User] Exactly. You deserve to ask, “Why did they do that?” And there is an answer. We didn’t just pull it out of the air. We did that in excruciating detail.

[Assistant] Since you mentioned SpaceX. I have to think you’ve been watching some of how that came about with their process to enter into the exploration business. Do you feel like they’re applying many of the lessons that NASA and that you learned as you were coming through those early days?

[User] I hope they are but I doubt it. But the technology is very superior to Mercury, it’s very superior to Apollo. Doing it today is a hell of a lot easier. It doesn’t require the detailed testing and design that NASA put into it in those early days, so it is easier to do. It has been done, so the test program doesn’t have to be the same. That’s what makes it less expensive. That’s what allows you to be able to do it. You can hire engineers that can read. So yes, it is a lot easier for SpaceX to build a Mercury capsule because that’s what it is, or an Apollo capsule. They haven’t built the manned one yet.

[Assistant] That was my next question.


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

[User] What they did this morning was fantastic. You don’t really know how fantastic that was, because it’s like the reentry of the Space Shuttle in that they had to design it with wide variations in environment to begin with. They didn’t know what the density was going to be, what altitude was going to be. That makes a big difference then on the aerodynamics that you’re going to have to use to slow the thing down, and how the parachute is going to open and on and on. So that means they had to expand the variables. To do it under those circumstances is pretty damn good.

[Assistant] I believe one analysis person made the remark that it was somewhat reminiscent of Apollo. With the ascent engine and the parachutes and the whole episodes of having to figure out all those variables that if one didn’t work nothing was going to work.

[User] Right. Absolutely.

[Assistant] That was a good analogy I thought.

[User] Yeah. If you look at Apollo 11, if you had tried to do that automatically on Apollo 11, the landing on the Moon, I think you’d have waved off. The system would have waved you off. But we had some people on the ground saying it was still working okay. We had guys in the spacecraft that said it was still going where they wanted to go. That allowed you to do it. But that was part of the system too, wasn’t it? Because that’s what that damn control center over there was for. We had 5 million words of computer capability, which is peanuts today.

[Assistant] The comment you made a while ago about SpaceX, that the technology is easier. But I guess the decision making process is the same.


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

[User] Right. Absolutely.

[Assistant] That was a good analogy I thought.

[User] Yeah. If you look at Apollo 11, if you had tried to do that automatically on Apollo 11, the landing on the Moon, I think you’d have waved off. The system would have waved you off. But we had some people on the ground saying it was still working okay. We had guys in the spacecraft that said it was still going where they wanted to go. That allowed you to do it. But that was part of the system too, wasn’t it? Because that’s what that damn control center over there was for. We had 5 million words of computer capability, which is peanuts today.

[Assistant] The comment you made a while ago about SpaceX, that the technology is easier. But I guess the decision making process is the same.

[User] Yeah. They must have some pretty damn good engineers. That’s all I can say.

[Assistant] Well, I think that’s the history of space exploration, is having the engineering force.


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

[User] Yes. I went to work for Rockwell. They paid me. Rockwell immediately paid me $200,000 a year as a consultant. I was worth every damn penny of it when I first went to work for them. I later quit because I wasn’t. I worked for them, I consulted about 10 years for them, and I said I’m not worth the money they’re paying me, so I just quit. Chairman of the board called me and said, “We got to have you.” I said, “No, sir, I’m not worth the money you’re paying me, I’m through.” But at that point I’m now on four, five boards where I’m making a lot of money, so it didn’t matter.\n\n I was on the board of a hospital company. I was on the board of the Park Plaza Hospital, board of governors. These people saw me there, and they asked me to be on their board.

[Assistant] Did you work any more with Max Faget after you left?

[User] Oh yeah. I was on his board too.

[Assistant] That’s what I thought.

[User] Max was a great guy. A very interesting person. After he’d been the president for a while he asked me to go on the board. He said, “When you were the Director of the Center, I thought you were doing a terrible job.” He said, “I’ve since learned how good you were.”

[Assistant] It’s always a different perception when you’re sitting in that “The buck stops here” chair, isn’t it?


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

[User] Max was a great guy. A very interesting person. After he’d been the president for a while he asked me to go on the board. He said, “When you were the Director of the Center, I thought you were doing a terrible job.” He said, “I’ve since learned how good you were.”

[Assistant] It’s always a different perception when you’re sitting in that “The buck stops here” chair, isn’t it?

[User] Like Mr. [Harry S.] Truman says. You can’t stand the heat, better get out of the kitchen.

[Assistant] Interesting time.

[User] But I’m just reminiscing here. I enjoyed every damn minute of it. I wake up in the night sometimes thinking about all the great people I worked for and with, the things we were able to do together and how we did them. How we got them done. Absolutely phenomenal. Without somebody like Gilruth and George [M.] Low it would have been impossible for me to do what I did.

[Assistant] What do you feel like their characteristics were that allowed you to be able to do what you did? What kind of leadership attributes did they have?


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

[User] Like Mr. [Harry S.] Truman says. You can’t stand the heat, better get out of the kitchen.

[Assistant] Interesting time.

[User] But I’m just reminiscing here. I enjoyed every damn minute of it. I wake up in the night sometimes thinking about all the great people I worked for and with, the things we were able to do together and how we did them. How we got them done. Absolutely phenomenal. Without somebody like Gilruth and George [M.] Low it would have been impossible for me to do what I did.

[Assistant] What do you feel like their characteristics were that allowed you to be able to do what you did? What kind of leadership attributes did they have?

[User] I’ve tried to think about that. My definition of leadership is the number one requirement is you have to be willing to accept the responsibility for the organization of which you are a part and the people in it. If you aren’t willing to do that you can’t be a leader. That’s a hell of a responsibility if you do it right and do it well. That’s where it starts. So I say I was willing to do that. But number two, I was willing to let somebody else do it. I always believed in giving people responsibility for doing the job, and letting them do it without interference. You’d find that they weren’t doing it like you wanted it done half the time. But it was being done, and it got done, and in the end might have been better than what I was thinking about doing. So I think that’s the two characteristics of leadership that you have to have. That’s hard to do.\n\n My mother used to say—I think it was my mother—she used to give me a lot of cliches. “You don’t learn anything while you’re talking.”

[Assistant] That’s a good one. I like that.


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

[User] But I’m just reminiscing here. I enjoyed every damn minute of it. I wake up in the night sometimes thinking about all the great people I worked for and with, the things we were able to do together and how we did them. How we got them done. Absolutely phenomenal. Without somebody like Gilruth and George [M.] Low it would have been impossible for me to do what I did.

[Assistant] What do you feel like their characteristics were that allowed you to be able to do what you did? What kind of leadership attributes did they have?

[User] I’ve tried to think about that. My definition of leadership is the number one requirement is you have to be willing to accept the responsibility for the organization of which you are a part and the people in it. If you aren’t willing to do that you can’t be a leader. That’s a hell of a responsibility if you do it right and do it well. That’s where it starts. So I say I was willing to do that. But number two, I was willing to let somebody else do it. I always believed in giving people responsibility for doing the job, and letting them do it without interference. You’d find that they weren’t doing it like you wanted it done half the time. But it was being done, and it got done, and in the end might have been better than what I was thinking about doing. So I think that’s the two characteristics of leadership that you have to have. That’s hard to do.\n\n My mother used to say—I think it was my mother—she used to give me a lot of cliches. “You don’t learn anything while you’re talking.”

[Assistant] That’s a good one. I like that.

[User] I love that. You don’t learn anything while you’re talking. Second thing she said was “You put everybody’s troubles in the barrel, you always choose your own.” Part of my philosophy of life I guess.

[Assistant] I remember you sharing that one before. I’ve used it often. People sit and think about what a horrible day they have, but if you think about somebody else’s, yours almost always seems better.


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

[User] I’ve tried to think about that. My definition of leadership is the number one requirement is you have to be willing to accept the responsibility for the organization of which you are a part and the people in it. If you aren’t willing to do that you can’t be a leader. That’s a hell of a responsibility if you do it right and do it well. That’s where it starts. So I say I was willing to do that. But number two, I was willing to let somebody else do it. I always believed in giving people responsibility for doing the job, and letting them do it without interference. You’d find that they weren’t doing it like you wanted it done half the time. But it was being done, and it got done, and in the end might have been better than what I was thinking about doing. So I think that’s the two characteristics of leadership that you have to have. That’s hard to do.\n\n My mother used to say—I think it was my mother—she used to give me a lot of cliches. “You don’t learn anything while you’re talking.”

[Assistant] That’s a good one. I like that.

[User] I love that. You don’t learn anything while you’re talking. Second thing she said was “You put everybody’s troubles in the barrel, you always choose your own.” Part of my philosophy of life I guess.

[Assistant] I remember you sharing that one before. I’ve used it often. People sit and think about what a horrible day they have, but if you think about somebody else’s, yours almost always seems better.

[User] Absolutely. Go look at somebody else’s problems. They’re big relatively speaking.

[Assistant] You mentioned that you were the antithesis of Max Faget. Can you explain that? I’m curious. Can you expand on that?


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

[User] He wanted the B-2. He was chief engineer and program manager on the B-2 and did a hell of a job. So he made out all right.

[Assistant] Maybe you did him a favor.

[User] Maybe I did. But he was a damn good man as a chief engineer. He was one of the best I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. But he really screwed us.

[Assistant] Yeah, that hurt.

[User] Caused me a lot of pain. Caused NASA a lot of pain. Congress really tore us up not just for that but the whole damn thing. NASA had been in there two weeks before we resubmitted this thing and said, “We don’t need any more money,” because that’s what the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] had told us, you got to say that. They wanted to give us more money as a matter of fact, the committees did, and NASA said, “No, we don’t need any more money.” Then two weeks later we told them we not only wanted more money, we want $700 million right now, and we want $2 billion added to our budget next year. Because we knew the president was going to say, “You could have it.” So they got their pound of flesh and quart of blood from NASA and we got our money.

[Assistant] Dr. Kraft, I certainly don’t want to take up your whole day. But I wonder, since you’re reflecting a little bit this morning, you made a comment earlier that if you don’t mind taking a few minutes and reflecting on it, you said that spaceflight is difficult. So the other part of that question is but why should we do it, why should we keep pursuing ways to explore space?


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

[User] Right. When President Kennedy said, “We’re going to the Moon,” I was a flight director at Cape Canaveral. I hadn’t launched John [H.] Glenn yet. He says, “You’re going to go land on the Moon.” I shook my head. Gilruth had called me and said, “You better listen to the radio today.” Or the television. Whatever it was. “Man is going to make an important announcement.” He said that. I’m just shaking my head. Bits around me and all these things out at Cape Canaveral and countdowns and rockets on the pad. Guidance system to go this way instead of that way. The last Atlas we had launched went that way instead of that way. The last one blew up.

[Assistant] Now you’re going to the Moon.

[User] Now somebody says, “You’re going to go land on the Moon.” That’s pretty damn good.

[Assistant] Yeah, it is good.

[User] President Kennedy was in one of those buildings over there on Telephone Road [Houston, Texas, during his visit in September, 1962], and I had to tell him how we were going to go to the Moon. I didn’t have the slightest damn idea how we were going to go to the Moon. I had to put a bunch of charts in front of me. Telling President Kennedy this is how we’re going to do it. The senator who was with him went to sleep.\n\n He woke up with a start. He said, “Young man, you believe all this shit you’re telling me? How do you?” I almost fell out of my chair and so did the president. Because he was right. I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. President Kennedy, I had never seen anybody laugh so much in my life, and I was laughing right with him, because he probably knew I didn’t know what I was talking about either.

[Assistant] But you had a plan, that’s what mattered.


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

[User] Now somebody says, “You’re going to go land on the Moon.” That’s pretty damn good.

[Assistant] Yeah, it is good.

[User] President Kennedy was in one of those buildings over there on Telephone Road [Houston, Texas, during his visit in September, 1962], and I had to tell him how we were going to go to the Moon. I didn’t have the slightest damn idea how we were going to go to the Moon. I had to put a bunch of charts in front of me. Telling President Kennedy this is how we’re going to do it. The senator who was with him went to sleep.\n\n He woke up with a start. He said, “Young man, you believe all this shit you’re telling me? How do you?” I almost fell out of my chair and so did the president. Because he was right. I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. President Kennedy, I had never seen anybody laugh so much in my life, and I was laughing right with him, because he probably knew I didn’t know what I was talking about either.

[Assistant] But you had a plan, that’s what mattered.

[User] That’s right, I had a plan.

[Assistant] You had a schedule.


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

[User] That’s right, I had a plan.

[Assistant] You had a schedule.

[User] Had a schedule and I had a check to do it with. I had the country backing me.

[Assistant] That helps.

[User] I had the Congress backing me. I had the greatest people in the world working for me, and I was working for the greatest people ahead of me. So that’s a pretty good formula.

[Assistant] That is. It’s a good memory. A good set of accomplishments.


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

[User] On and on. On and on. On and on.

[Assistant] All those little bitty pieces came together, didn’t they?

[User] Yes. I remember we built those damn hydraulic actuators. They had redundancy in the wrong place. They had the O-ring seals. They called them Greene Tweed seals. Had a certain shape and you couldn’t put them in backwards. Except they did. The first time we hooked that thing up it blew up. Not literally, but the damn hydraulic fluid going everywhere. Just a lousy damn design. We went to Moog, [Incorporated] over in Buffalo [New York]. “Build us an actuator with redundant seals on it.” It cost us 50 million bucks. But we had a new actuator and it worked. Just learned all that stuff.

[Assistant] Yes, and built upon it.

[User] Yes, over and over and over again. First time we did metals. Why do you have to have these tags? You have a piece of metal, well, we had to have a piece of metal over here that we stored with a tag on it. This came out of that lot and it cost a lot of money. But when that damn thing failed because of some problem, we had this piece over here that we could run a test on. That costs you money but by God it makes it work in the end.

[Assistant] Be interesting how much money, if you could figure how much money was saved by doing those types of testing and put those processes in place in the long run. Or lives you saved because of making sure those tests were done.


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

[User] It’s hard to explain that to a congressman spending money. If they go see it then a lot of them did. That’s what tiger teams was capable of doing. We don’t have any more tiger teams.

[Assistant] No we don’t.

[User] Well, I got out of you what I wanted.

[Assistant] Well, I think we got more out of you. So we appreciate that.

[User] You probably did but I want to make sure that somewhere there was recorded the fact that we didn’t just haphazardly decide not to have an escape system on the Space Shuttle. There was justification for it and good engineering judgment for it. It worked pretty damn well. If you used it properly. If the red light comes on in your car and says stop the engine, it ain’t kidding. If you don’t stop the engine, you’ll have to buy a new engine. You now know that.

[Assistant] We definitely do.


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

[User] Well, I got out of you what I wanted.

[Assistant] Well, I think we got more out of you. So we appreciate that.

[User] You probably did but I want to make sure that somewhere there was recorded the fact that we didn’t just haphazardly decide not to have an escape system on the Space Shuttle. There was justification for it and good engineering judgment for it. It worked pretty damn well. If you used it properly. If the red light comes on in your car and says stop the engine, it ain’t kidding. If you don’t stop the engine, you’ll have to buy a new engine. You now know that.

[Assistant] We definitely do.

[User] If you don’t do it, I can’t make you do it.

[Assistant] Circumstances will happen, won’t they?